Chess an Unexpected Offering at Local Farmers’ Market
Tai Campbell teaches chess each week at a local farmers’ market.
Farm Fresh
By Beth Borzone |2:06pm
When you venture out to your local farmers’ market, you expect to pick up some fresh squash, strawberries, maybe even a hand-crafted beaded necklace—but a game of chess?
In the age of Xbox and Wii, the Briggs Chaney-Greencastle Farmers’ and Artisans’ Market offers children weekly workshops on how to play chess in the hopes of building community and teaching youngsters life skills.
Tai Campbell, a community activist who runs the workshops, explained that knowing the rules of chess has helped him so much in his life that he wanted to pass that knowledge on to the next generation.
“I’ve been playing chess since I was 5 years old,” Campbell said.
“My father got me into chess. Ever since I was little, I was sitting on his lap playing chess. I really didn’t start applying the game to my life until I was about 19.”
Campbell says chess has helped him acquire good values and life skills.
“There’s so much that I get from chess,” Campbell said, “from family values, to keeping your family connected and protected and just the value of the pieces is the same as the value of life and the pieces in life.”
Campbell is scheduled to give his workshops every Saturday at the Briggs Chaney-Greencastle market. He also runs tournaments for adults at IHOP on Sundays from 5:30 to 11 p.m. and he’s even organized a barbershop chess league at Big G’s Barbershop. (Colesville Patch ran a feature on the barbershop chess league earlier this month.)
While Campbell hopes these venues for playing chess will provide members of the community to have fun and advance their skills, his ultimate goal is to bring people together.
“We’ll get to see the needs of the people, see what they need and see what they want.” For him, chess is more than just a game; “it’s a way we can come together and bring a real change in our communities, because there’s a lot missing.”
Campbell also hopes that chess can be a way to improve communication between generations.
“The kids that are coming up nowadays don’t know which way to go. They care, but we need to show them how to and guide them how to care for their community,” he said.
He hopes that at the farmers’ market, he can share with kids the lessons his dad taught him through chess.
“It’s been a blessing to me, seriously,” Campbell, said. “I’m so happy that my father taught me the game young.
“That’s why I’m doing this for the kids, to expose it [chess] to them early, so they can already have it in their hearts, so later on—even if they don’t get it now—they’ll have the interest still there, because it’s a lifelong lesson learning how to play chess.”
Source: http://colesville.patch.com
Kudos to him.