Maynard Seniors Celebrate Lunar New Year

by Glenn C. Koenig, Webmaster at Town Wide Mall

Maynard, MA - There are many ways to celebrate the Chinese lunar new year, which takes place on the first new moon in early February, even if your heritage isn’t Chinese.  This year, seniors from both Maynard and Stow met together for the first time to celebrate by playing Mah Jongg.

The two groups of players met in the Stow Community Center for lunch, then an afternoon of playing the game, typically in groups of four.  Amy Loveless, Maynard’s Council on Aging director was on hand, as well as  Peg Brown, who started the Mah Jongg group at the Maynard Senior Center last year.

The game is akin to Gin Rummy, where players attempt to create certain combinations of tiles, each in their personal racks.  When it's a player's turn, they can select at tile from the supply of tiles face down, or take the last tile discarded by a previous player.  There are up to 144 tiles in a full set, although some variations of the game omit a few of them.  When a player anywhere in the room completes the desired combinations of tiles, they say "Mah Jongg" out loud for the rest of the room to hear.

To get a better idea of the atmosphere that afternoon, I recorded some video while there, and have now edited a video report as a companion to this news story (click on image at right --->)
I have posted a slightly higher quality version on Vimeo, here:
https://vimeo.com/915508123

Council on Aging Director Amy Loveless told me that she hopes to host another meeting of the two groups in Maynard in the future.  For details, she can be contacted via the Town of Maynard's web page for the Council on Aging:
https://www.townofmaynard-ma.gov/164/Council-on-Aging

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