The Play Pump

Forgive me, I needs must enthuse. All that talk about serious games and serious play and here we have someone who has sponsored the epitomical manifestation of purposeful play and functional fun - the Play Pump. As explained in the Frontline special, punfully subtitled " Turning water into child's play:"

"(Trevor) Field then teamed up with an inventor and came up with the 'play pump' -- a children's merry-go-round that pumps clean, safe drinking water from a deep borehole every time the children start to spin. Soup to nuts, the whole operation takes a few hours to install and costs around $7,000. Field's idea proved so inventive, so cost-efficient and so much fun for the kids that World Bank recognized it as one of the best new grassroots ideas."

Yes, and of course yes, the Play Pump is only part of the solution to the rest of the world's crying need for an accessible supply of potable water, and my focusing on the use of a children's playground device doesn't begin to do justice to the seriousness of the problem. But, see, fun is my passion, my purpose. Fun, the kind of fun that is central to human growth, essential to the evolution of the species, is what I'm here for, what I'm working for. And the Play Pump, and the similar "Power Wheel" (which also generates electricity) are the very embodiment of that very thing. And, though I haven't actually played with a Play Pump, it is clear that it embraces everything I ever thought was major about Major Fun. Functional fun. Lasting, liquid laughter. Purposeful play.


suggested by Shael DeKoven Weidenbach, funspotter

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith