Children's Games (Bruegel)

[fiforpg]

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]

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.

[serallak]

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

Suffice to say, it did take a while.

[ianand]

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

[dvh]

"stirring excrement with a stick"

[jonsen]

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.

[wslh]

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...

[theodric]

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

[Y_Y]

"shitstirring"

[mistrial9]

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

[pawelb87]

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

[mklarmann]

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]

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