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A Word for Gordon Sondland
I feel sorry for Gordon Sondland. Sort of.
Mr. Sondland donated a million bucks to Donald Trump’s inaugural committee and was rewarded with the ambassadorship to the European Economic Union. Little did he know at the time that he was to be called upon as the point man in Mr. Trump’s scheme to squeeze the Ukrainians for inside dope on Joe Biden; that he was going to receive a subpoena to testify before Congress about it; and that testifying would cost him his job when the articles of impeachment derived from his testimony were voted down by the Senate.
Mr. Trump is a vengeful sort of person, and he got his revenge. All that Mr. Sondland can do about it is wear the proverbial T-shirt— “I paid a million bucks for a job negotiating cheese tariffs and all I got for it was this lousy T-shirt.”
Still, Mr. Sondland must be aware that if you make a pact with the devil, you have to be prepared for him to act devilishly. As Mr. Sondland is said to have a nine-figure asset base to fall back on, so he may be worried more about his time than his money. How will he spend it? It doesn’t sound like running the Oregon-based hotel empire that built him his fortune is going to provide him much new job satisfaction. I’ll bet that he comes out with a book, to be published next fall when the presidential election is at its boiling point. But that will fill his agenda for only a few weeks. What else is he to do?
I have only one word for Mr Sondland, and, no, its not “plastics” it’s “Azul.”
Azul is a board game that I have learned to play this winter, and I think it’s fabulous. The game asks you to imagine you are King Manuel 1 of Portugal, and you have come across the Moorish decorative tiles at the Alhambra palace in southern Spain. You are so taken with them that you want the tiles to decorate your own palace, the Royal Palace of Evora. That’s quite an imaginative leap for a humble resident of Prince Edward County to make, but one which is made easier by the fact that the currency of the game is 100 colourful plastic tiles, divided into five styles. Your job in the game is to tile a pattern on a wall at a better rate than your playmates. You take turns to pick tiles from their “factory,” which you assign to a row on the “floor.” After you have filled out a floor row with tiles, you assign a tile to the “wall.” The patterns you make on the wall ultimately determine the points you will receive. The.game take about 40 minutes from start to finish and can be played by two. three or four people. It is sold in the $60 range.
Azul requires strategic thinking at several levels. What tiles are my adversaries collecting from the factory? Should I try to block them, or should I just concentrate on my own plan? Should I work on a difficult- to-fill floor row, or go for an easier one? What pattern on the wall will generate the most points for me?
Board games like Azul are a good thing. You engage face to face with your family and friends; you’re not stuck in silence watching the TV together, or worse, listening to you own headphone-connected devices. But they have to be chosen carefully. Play Monopoly and you wind up dying a slow, drawn out death while the winner triumphantly takes you to the cleaners. Play Scrabble and the same person always wins— and it’s not the one with the largest vocabulary, but the one who knows all the Rules of Scrabble-acceptable two-letter words with no intrinsic meaning. Play Settlers of Catan and watch your civilized playmates turn into ogres. With these negatives, it’s no wonder I’m pitching this particular game to Mr. Sondland.
Meanwhile Mr. Trump continues to amaze as the man who gets everyone else into trouble but the antihero who escapes from near-certain personal defeat at the end of every chapter. The FBI investigation; the Mueller report; the impeachment: they’re all history now. And Joe Biden, the man he was so worried about, seems to be doing a great job of sabotaging his own candidacy that he doesn’t needs Mr. Trump’s help. Maybe Mr. Biden and Mr. Sondland can bond—and commiserate—over a game of Azul. Maybe they’ll come up with a plan that finally ensnares Donald Trump.
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