Charlotte Tukey, mother of SafeLawns founder Paul Tukey, enjoys a game of ladder golf with her fiance Ralph Beckwith.

UNITY, MAINE — The SafeLawns Foundation combined old-fashioned outdoor fun with landscape education at this year’s Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine, during its annual three-day run in late September.

It became a family affair for SafeLawns founder Paul Tukey, who was joined at the educational booth by his 71-year-old mother, Charlotte, and her fiancé, Ralph Beckwith, on Friday. Paul’s 19-year-old son, Paul III, then helped out on Friday and Saturday as hundreds of the 59,000 fairgoers enjoyed the Lawn Games for Life! exhibit set up next to the SafeLawns booth.

Featuring several of the games from the book, Tag, Toss & Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games — including Hoop Trundling, Bocce, Croquet, Kubb, Molkky, Ladder Golf and Frisbee, among others — the Lawn Games for Life! area proved to be popular with all ages.

“After a year of traveling the nation with these games, the Fair brought it all together,” said Paul Tukey Sr. “There is no better time to remind parents about the risks associated with synthetic chemical lawn care than when their children are actually rolling around in the grass having a good time. Health risks should never have to be a part of a family’s outdoor experience. For these three days, at least, pesticide exposure wasn’t a care.”

Here are a few other scenes from this year’s Fair:

This old-fashioned wooden croquet set, on loan from LL Bean in Freeport, was put to constant use and brought back a raft of childhood memories for many fairgoers.

These wooden hoops, on loan from the Cooperman Company of Vermont, are typically used for “trundling” or racing through the grass. This particular fairgoer drew a crowd with her innovative hoop dance.

Teenagers gravitated toward the giant flying disk.

The game of Bocce, also loaned by LL Bean in Freeport, was a hit with all age groups.

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With organic lawn care education and advocacy taking up much of our time of late, it’s always a great bonus when our other focus, outdoor lawn games, finds its way to the public consciousness all on its own.

Booklist, an on-line resource that includes more than 130,000 reviews, focused on our book Tag, Toss & Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games this week: http://bookends.booklistonline.com/2012/08/27/tag-toss-run-by-paul-tukey-victoria-rowell/. Middle school librarians and frequent reviewers Cindy Dobrez and Lynn Rutan were effusive in their praise of our book, a call to arms to get children back outside.

“This book might just inspire a whole new set of memories for this generation of kids!” wrote Rutan.

“What a cool little book!” said Dobrez.

The Lawn Games for Life! campaign inspired by the book will be center stage at the upcoming Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine, for the nation’s largest celebration of all things sustainable. The dates are the 20th-22nd of September and it’s well worth the trip, no matter where you live in America.

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Thanks to WCSH6 in Portland, Maine, for this rousingly good segment about our book, Tag, Toss & Run:
http://www.wcsh6.com/news/health/fit_at_five/article/208319/223/Fit-at-Five-Lawn-Games. The piece was filmed, incidently, in Maine in my mother’s back yard where we moved and have been playing lawn games as a family since 1972 — the year the first video game, Pong, was introduced. As I said in this piece, what has happened physiologically and psychologically to children in that time is not good. But as the piece also demonstrates, the urge and fun of outdoor play is primal in all of us. So get outside and have a blast!

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Did you know that badminton is named for a 19th century duke in England? We’ll discus these and other fun game facts on Friday on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Our book Tag, Toss & Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games and our campaign Lawn Games for Life will be featured by host Joy Cardin on Wisconsin Public Radio on Friday morning at 6 a.m. central time. You can join the conversation by using the toll-free call-in number 1-800-642-1234 (local Madison Listeners use 263-1890). You can also e-mail talk@wpr.org. For more about the show, click here:
http://wpr.org/cardin/. And to listen live on Friday, click here: http://wpr.org/webcasting/live.cfm

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This is the LL Bean store in 1965.

When you’re from Maine, your childhood heroes and icons are generally few and far between. We’ve had but a few nationally notable athletes, a boxer named Joey, a driver named Ricky and a runner named Joan, among others, who we collectively keep on a first-name basis. There’s a statue in Bangor, not far from a certain author’s home, that we feel genetically compelled to drive our children past at least once in their early lives.

Generally, though, my home state has stood more for its environment and values than any other notoriety. Maine has suffered through the ugly underbelly of development just like most other states in our union, but much about the state remains unchanged, too. Today’s children can wander through Acadia National Park, just the same way the children did 100 years ago. Thanks to a remarkable former governor, the massive Baxter State Park also stands as a living outdoor history museum where the monuments are the tall trees and clean water that used to span the continent.

Last Friday I was visiting the place I will always call home, stopping first for a breakfast with Mom, before trekking a bit farther north to LL Bean. Around the world the company is known as a billion-dollar retail giant, but for those of us old enough to have actually visited the original yellow store on Main street, the place is like a little neighborhood kid we once knew who grew up well.

LL Bean is one of the few stores left that sells real wooden sets for bocce and croquet, two of the 40 games in our book, Tag, Toss & Run.

Back when fishing was my family’s primary avocation, clomps up the store’s bowed stairway were an annual pilgrimage. Before “merchandising” even joined the retail lexicon, the store’s hooks and lures were quite literally tossed into random boxes by the back wall. Think unkempt dollar store at a quarter to closing time on Christmas Eve and you’d have the right picture in mind.

These past few days the company threw itself a 100th birthday bash, inviting superstar musicians to town and sending fireworks high into the Freeport sky. I was among a handful of Maine authors invited to mark the occasion; they set me up in a comfortable I-wanted-everything new home store right in the center of what is now a rambling LL Bean campus.

The LL Bean pinstripe shirt, circa 1977.

It was my first visit to LL Bean since I left Maine in 2011 and, for whatever melancholic reasons only my subconscious psyche could explain, all sorts of memories came flooding back . . . My feet freezing cold in the winter time in my first pair of Bean boots, realizing that I would have been better off choosing the pair with the felt liners. My first red-and-white pinstriped LL Bean shirt that I wore most every day during my sophomore year in high school; man, I (thought I) was cool.

As LL Bean grew up, the town grew up around it. More stores came and more shopping opportunities meant more tourists. Some purists complained that the town’s character had changed; I lived in Freeport for a few years back in the ’80s and ’90s and quickly learned that, in Freeport, two camps exist between LL Bean supporters and detractors.

Today, however, from the perspective of someone from Maine who lives in Rhode Island, I see the company as doing far, far more right than wrong — not because it makes a bunch of money for the heirs of Leon Leonwood Bean, but primarily because it celebrates my home’s most significant virtues of environment and values.

The company represents a bygone era when everyone hunted and fished in fresh air and clean water. Without someone of substantial means and influence painting that authentic picture for today’s America, then would anyone care if the rivers and streams were polluted, or not? And although it’s true that you can no longer watch the moccasins being hand sewn on the rickety second floor, and stuff is more likely to be imported from China than made in Maine, LL Bean still guarantees the stuff with its no-questions-asked guarantee.

The activist/author at the LL Bean home store.

Finished with signing copies of my book, Tag, Toss & Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games last Friday, I wandered off to meet Seth, this generation’s Maine champion that the kids all keep on a first-name basis. LL Bean invited the Olympic snowboard two-time gold medalist to play outdoor games with the folks from Healthy Hometowns, the company’s charity arm that supports outdoor activities. When I got there Seth was doing more signing than playing, with a steady stream of wide-eyed admirers getting some earnest encouragement from their hero.

I never did pull rank, cut the line and shake Seth’s hand. It was best, I thought, to let the kids have every possible moment with the man who wore Maine on the bill of his cap. Maybe they, too, would be inspired to grow to be a champion, or at least to represent what is right about the world, or rail against what is wrong. Or maybe they would start a store one day, one that paints pictures of the way life ought to be and offers satisfaction guaranteed.

So much has changed in the past 100 years, so we ought to stop once in a while and recognize those who have at least tried to keep things the same.

Olympic champion Seth Wescott poses for a photo with some of his many fans.

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Co-author and SafeLawns founder Paul Tukey will sign copies of the book Tag, Toss & Run at the LL Bean flagship store beginning at 10 a.m. and then join Olympic champion Seth Wescott at an outdoor games demonstration for the afternoon.

Here’s the full story: http://www.pressherald.com/life/go/At-LL-Bean-so-much-to-celebrate.html

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The Rhode Show on NBC in Providence teased our appearance this coming Sunday at the Newport Flower Show — including the cutest little hula hooper, my daughter Aimee: http://www.wpri.com/dpp/rhode_show/wpri-rhode-newport-is-birthplace-of-popular-games. We’ll be doing a signing of the book, Tag, Toss & Run following the fun, interactive presentation that begins at 11 a.m.

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We spent April and May traveling the country to attend massive gatherings, from the Ecpot Flower & Garden Festival in Orlando, to the Captain Planet Foundation Festival in Atlanta and Earthfest outside Philadelphia. On Saturday, however, we brought the Lawn Games for Life! campaign down to scale at our first private family function in Massachusetts — then concurrently helped enliven the 350th anniversary of the town of Milton.

“It was really the perfect thing to have alongside the luncheon,” said Sally Sass, who hosted a bar mitzvah for her son Ethan.

It didn’t take the group of young boys more than a minute to begin losing the formality of ties and shoes on the lawn at the Sherborn Inn near Natick, Mass. Adults got into the act, too, with games ranging from Ladder Golf, to Bocce, Molkky and Croquet — all from the book, Tag, Toss & Run.

“I was so pleased, and Ethan was psyched because his friends had a lot of fun being able to run around and play games,” said Sally.

Meanwhile, 25 miles away in Milton, volunteers from Fitness Unlimited, the largest health club on the South Shore, helped us keep hundreds of families busy at more than a dozen game stations.

“I can’t think of a better way to celebrate an historic occasion like this than to play these old-fashioned outdoor games,” said organizer Brian Kelley. “Seeing the smiles on everyone’s faces, seeing everyone so engaged and happy, makes this a perfect day.”

Hundreds of people enjoyed the Lawn Games for Life! celebration as a part of the 350th anniversary for the town of Milton.

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Ladder Golf is among the many games available to revelers at the 350th birthday celebration for the town of Milton, Mass., on Saturday afternoon.

MILTON, MASS. — Declaring to America that he doesn’t want to relegate an old-fashioned outdoor childhood to memory, Paul Tukey has been a man on a mission for the past two months.

Carting a carload of games from around the world to city after city, Tukey has brought his new Lawn Games for Life! campaign to everywhere from Disney World to the Captain Planet Festival, to Earthfest in recent weeks. Now the author of the new book, Tag, Toss & Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games, will set up shop in Milton for the town’s 350th anniversary celebration on June 9 beginning at 3:30 p.m. at the high school fields.

“Playing these old-fashioned outdoor games, some of which have been played for centuries, is a great way for one of the oldest towns in New England to celebrate its own heritage and bring its families together,” said Tukey, a former HGTV host and internationally recognized environmental advocate. “Playing outside is primal for people of all ages. The greatest aspect of this campaign has been watching grandparents play with their grandkids and seeing all the smiles on everyone’s faces.”

Tukey will assist local organizers in setting up game stations for some of the classics, like bocce, badminton and croquet, as well as some other less familiar games such as molkky from Finland or kubb from Norway. The games involve tossing, jumping and running and he insists there is something for everyone in his presentation.

“Maybe you’re not up for a sack race, but you can play many of these old games from your chair if necessary,” said Tukey, who noted that 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the introduction of video games. “The main point is to get outside, enjoy the surroundings and your friends and family. We’re going to have fun together, far more fun than you’d ever have on a computer.”

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