Children's Games (Bruegel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Games_(Bruegel)

by lermontov • 3 years ago

57 23 3 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

pawelb87• 3 years ago

"Inflating a bladder to create a balloon or ball" wow

mklarmann• 3 years ago

Yes. Funny to find this here. This is actually still quite common in my home-town Riedlingen in Swabian Albs during carnival festivites. You can see in the picture [1] that they have attached the bladders to a stick, and the tradition is to hit people on the head with this :o)

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrenzunft_Gole

acheron• 3 years ago

I think Laura Ingalls Wilder talked about that in Little House in the Big Woods.

pessimizer2• 3 years ago

https://magazine.outdoornebraska.gov/2014/06/throwback-thurs...

dvh• 3 years ago

"stirring excrement with a stick"

wslh3• 3 years ago

Never played that. It seems for promoting composting? [1] Looking on Internet without a concise answer [2]. Research [3]

[1] https://fitznaturalist.com/2021/01/01/poop-in-the-woods-does...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit_stick

[3] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=+sti...

bibanez• 3 years ago

I only remember doing this as a kid out of curiosity and to annoy other people :)

sdwr• 3 years ago

For promoting composting? Jesus, I don't think you've ever been within 50 feet of a child, nevermind having been one at some point in the long-distant past.

It's fundamental play. Sight, smell, touch are stimulated, in the context of incremental, controlled danger, and tool manipulation.

The poop is "bad", but it's stationary, so safe to approach and investigate the edges of.

Subgames include:

- breaking the crusty layer on the surface, revealing fresh shit inside

- getting close enough to smell the poop, learning how the hedonic treadmill works

- breaking it into pieces

- smooshing it back together

- trying to pick up pieces with the stick

- showing the poop to other kids, seeing if they are disgusted or interested

mistrial9• 3 years ago

no way to avoid poop on a farm with animals all around.

Y_Y• 3 years ago

"shitstirring"

theodric• 3 years ago

Arguably, that's more of an adult's game now, at least in the Slashdot comments section

jonsen• 3 years ago

One of my classmates in elementary school lived close to a closed factory. The backyard with lot of scrap was a wonderful adventurous playground. The city train station was further down the street and the trains passed just behind the fence furthest in the back. When someone heard a train approaching he would yell "Train's coming!". Whatever play would cease immediately and we all ran to pick up one of our poops on a stick and line up at the fence. Great was the joy when one of us hit a window.

smegsicle• 3 years ago

Whatever play would cease immediately

just like the christmas truce of 1914

serallak• 3 years ago

I did a one thousand pieces puzzle of this painting this winter.

Suffice to say, it did take a while.

ianand• 3 years ago

If Bruegel painted it today it would just show an iPad.

fiforpg• 3 years ago

Curiously enough, another painting by Bruegel, Hunters in the snow,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunters_in_the_Snow

is prominently featured in Tarkovsky's Solaris, which is discussed in another thread on the front page of HN today. Cultures and ideas move in mysterious ways.

juliusgeo• 3 years ago

I first saw this painting in the intro to Melancholia, by Lars von Trier. I’ve had it as my desktop background for years. It reminds me a lot of the feeling of watching all your neighbors shovel after a snowstorm. Funny that the movie communicates an unsettling and existential story that is the opposite of cosy.

Children's Games (Bruegel)

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