Pawned!

Restoration Ministries program teaches life lessons.

By Lolly Bowean, Baltimore Sun, May 4, 2008

Thirteen-year-old Antwon McGhee glanced back and forth between the chessboard and his opponent, a 28-year-old recovering crack addict from Chicago.

Moments earlier, Antwon had been as frisky as the 40 other children around him in the Restoration Ministries workshop in Harvey, outside Chicago. But when he bent over the chessboard, he was all business.

For most people, chess is just a game. But in this club, where recovering addicts coach children in chess, it is a way toward understanding life better in a struggling community.

“That’s checkmate,” Antwon’s opponent said after 15 minutes of play. Antwon shook his head no.

“Yes, that’s checkmate,” his adversary said. Antwon stared at the board a few seconds more. “Wanna play again?” he asked with a small grin.

“In life, you’ve got to think like the rook,” Antwon said as he set up for another game.

“He can go anywhere, backward or forward, but only in a straight direction. I’m following God’s footsteps and moving forward. Some people can’t do that.”

The chess club was started last year by Michael Acquaviva, who said he’s been clean and moving forward for four years after spending what seemed like a lifetime addicted to drugs.

On the streets of his native Detroit, Acquaviva was a begging, bug-covered, smelly bum who lived under a bridge and injected heroin and a mix of vinegar and crack, he said.

But now, Acquaviva, 52, is the knight. Like the game piece, he hops around the Chicago suburbs speaking to children, telling his story to students and pushing men at a drug recovery house to do their best, hoping to capture an invisible prize: redemption from his troubled past.

“The chessboard is an even playing field,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who you are. Everyone is the same, and you have one goal.

“If I can help somebody with that,” he said, his voice trailing off. “This really boosts their confidence.”

Acquaviva hopes that if the players can see a bit of themselves in the game, maybe the children and recovering addicts can find their way to victory in life.

“I hope that at this young age, this game will be something they can carry on,” he said. “I strayed away from chess, but I did come back.”

After years of feeling he had little to contribute to the world, Acquaviva found his niche with the children in Harvey.

He started the group after mentioning to an employee at the recovery house where he lives and works that he used to love the game as a youngster.

When the club started, only eight children from Restoration Ministries’ after-school program were interested, he said.

Acquaviva found a way to grab more children’s attention. He announced a challenge: He’d pay $100 cash to anyone who could learn the game and beat him.

“At first it was easy,” he said. “But then I had to work to protect that $100.

“If you watch the kids, you’ll see they are so determined. They are young, but they are focused. They want to win.”

During the hourlong sessions, the room grows silent as the children stare down their opponents. Most of the time they play against adults: the recovering addicts, some college students and community volunteers. Sometimes they play each other.

The children come from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Most are from Harvey, but some come from South Holland and other nearby towns to play.

They don’t take defeat easily. When one child lost, he called his opponent a rascal.

In return, his foe pulled his glasses from his face and let out a breathy huff.

“Smell my breath,” he said, and his opponent retreated while covering his face.

Seated a few spaces over, Aaliyah McGhee, 7, said she thought for sure she had won her game as her opponent TaSonia Bolden, 9, celebrated, “I beat you, I beat you.”

Aaliyah wrinkled her nose and twisted her face in disgust. “I don’t want to play again,” she said, and flicked the remaining pieces off the board.

“Dang! Did you see what she did?” a boy at another table said.

Many times, TaSonia said, she feels powerless.

But on the chessboard, she’s the queen.

“I like the queen because the queen can do whatever she wants,” she said. “I’m just a kid; I can’t take over everything like the queen can.”

Since she started playing chess, TaSonia said she’s quieted down. She prefers the thinking game to watching TV or running around.

“Chess is real quiet. You use your head,” she said.

Aaliyah might have not beaten TaSonia, but she’s won a few times, she pointed out. “I beat my brother. Then I beat my dad. Then I beat my mom. Then I kissed her.”

For Antwon, chess is a way to escape frustrations, he said.

His father taught him the ins and outs of the game, and when he and his sister found out about the chess club they walked in off the street to join.

Though the games are played in silence, emotion is projected in the moves, he said.

“When I get real mad, I play chess,” he said. “It makes me calm down a little. I don’t really care if I win or not. It’s just for the love of the game.”

His opponent reminded him that he was getting distracted, and it showed in his game.

“Just being able to help these kids feels good,” said Jonathan Lane. “If you learn your opponent, you’ll beat him eventually.”

Then Lane grew a little more introspective: “The world can be discouraging,” he said.

“But you can overcome. Once you learn the ways of the world, you become much wiser.”

From Times Online (UK) -

TYUMEN - A microscopic chess set no bigger than a match head could be the smallest board game in the world. The board is 3.5 mm by 2.5 mm and the gold and silver pieces are 0.15 mm and 0.3 mm high.

The set is one of the most remarkable works of the Russian micro-miniaturist Vladimir Aniskin, who has spent a decade perfecting his craft. He uses powerful microscopes and equipment that he designed himself and says that he must work between his heartbeats to create the tiny pieces.

“While working I hold my creation in my fingers,” he said. “Even one’s heartbeat disturbs such minute work, so particularly delicate work has to be done between heartbeats.”

The chess took six months to complete and he has about another 40 works to his name. His first was a grain of rice inscribed with 2,027 letters. “The rice grain took three months, camels in an eye of a needle took two months and camels in a horse hair also took two months,” he said. “Even with these simpler jobs it is still time-consuming.”

Mr Aniskin, 30, works at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science in Tyumen, specialising in developing microphobes for aerodynamic investigations.

Read Original Story Here.

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