Sunday, February 15, 2009

Mah Jongg Mavens

Check out this article from today’s New York Times.

On Martin Luther King Day, my sister and a friend joined the mah jongg mavens at the East River Café for a chance to clack some tiles--cracks, bams, dots winds and dragons—to munch some M&Ms, and, with a bit of luck and some careful strategy, to win small change.

Indeed, Amy and I both came to mah jongg, as the story suggests, through the set that belonged to our maternal grandmother. It’s mine by inheritance, but has taken up residence at my sister’s apartment because she recently taught some colleagues and friends to play and, at the moment, she’s the one who plays more often.

I’m hopeful that’ll change in the near future and that soon enough, I’ll be clacking tiles, munching M&Ms and, with a bit of luck and some careful strategy, winning some small change from my own set of mah jong mavens.

Mahj anyone?

1 comment:

  1. My mother's sister, Tante Anna, played mahj every Wednesday afternoon with my uncle's mishpocha, her sisters-in-law Lottie and Lena, and cousins Miriam and Yetta.

    My mother and her sisters-in-law Betty and Rebecca, on the other hand, were what we might call club women -- Betty and Rebecca were Hadassah chapter presidents, my mother eventually was national president of Pioneer Women/Naamat.

    Then one day we got the news that cousin Gittel had been elected president of the Yeshivah Women's Auxiliary. And Wednesday, Tante Anna came home from mahj -- we lived in the same two-flat -- and said, I told the girls today, Rose is a president, Rebecca is a president, Betty is a president, and now even Gittel is a president. So they elected me president of the mahj club!

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