This email is supposed to come out on Sunday mornings, so you can avidly read it and mark down all the events and games on your to do list. But I’ve been gone for a couple of weeks on vacation and such and I just completely spaced on writing the newsletter. I hope you’ll forgive me, particularly since we have some great new games in the library that we’ll be spotlighting in the coming weeks!

We all make mistakes. Kind of constantly. Sometimes we are angry or sad or overwhelmed and the mistakes may feel like they’re coming from a bad place, sometimes we mean so well and things fall flat, sometimes they’re just honest mistakes from lack of information or accidents. The thing is, it’s just how life is. We aren’t perfect and we aren’t meant to be, it’s the growth and change that can come from those mistakes that’s the point, not beating up on ourselves or others.

I’ve taught games wrong. I know, hard to believe, such a stellar librarian could do that… And every time it’s happened, I’ve felt awful, partly because I don’t like making mistakes myself, and mostly because I want the people who are playing to have a good time, which includes actually knowing how to play the game! There were times we had to abandon the game because the mistake was so pivotal to play, other times we could add it in or just soldier on and still had a good time—either way, that mistake didn’t define the experience nor the relationships.

There’s a song I learned recently with the lyrics, “Even when I make mistakes, may I learn to love and accept myself fully.” As a group sings this song, they’re mean to change the pronouns, so it could go, “Even when we make mistakes” or you, or they. I love this—the reminder that we are part of something bigger, that we are loved. Whatever mistake you’re holding, let it go. Whatever mistake someone else is holding, or that you’re holding about them, let that go, too.

Alice C, board game librarian

Play new games from Origins Game Fair!

A couple of us got to spend some time at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus last week, supporting local publisher Capstone, and we came back with three new games for the bar:

Rainbow—a press-your-luck card game with double-sided cards where players are trying to lay out cards with no repeats to make a rainbow, but mistakes give points to their opponent
Pina Coladice—Yahtzee plus tic-tac-toe and tiki drink themed from the excellent publisher IELLO
Floral—simple to teach, mean to play—don’t let the flowers deceive you, Floral is a beautiful and beautifully aggressive pattern-building game, good at 2 players, fascinating at 3 and 4

Try our Pride-themed drink menu

Our Pride-themed drink menu is still in effect this week, and profits from these drinks will be donated to The Trevor Project, supporting LGBTQ youth in crisis. You may have heard in the news that the government is shutting down the line—that is only partly true. The queer youth suicide hotline is indeed being shuttered, but The Trevor Project’s work and other support lines continue. Read more about their work here.

Play some Pina Coladice and enjoy a Phantasm, or one of our other Drag-Brunch-inspired cocktails!