David Sacker's daughter, in Susky this session, entered the dining hall for lunch yesterday with a friend, heard the music playing, and felt the happy urge just to dance. She had no idea I was filming until about halfway through. This is total camp unselfconsciouness, at its best. The kids are feeling free.
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- Liz Tolmach
- the perfect Catskills day
- skills passport
- '80s pals
- Stu Duff's son
- friends
- Goldrush Day, early 1970s
- new trustee Amy Melican is seen in her Pokey photo
- Bill Brown visited and hung out with Bud Cox
- Fenn Putman's granddaughters
- Amy Furman Melican
- Zabriskie
- Bruce Comiskey, Totem VC 1975
- the sign-up-for-'16 song
- Olympic Circle and "the rec hall" in the 1960s
- classic counselor look
- kids play
- The CIT experience: hushed good sad stupor on the ...
- Two former Pokey counselors and their Pokey daughters
- Advill takes "5 Trong" to heart
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- Barbara Sunshine and Joe Kennedy
- yes, 11 year olds like to hike
- camp unselfconsciousness: happy, free
- pita pizzas for all
- PAC love
- Gary Kaufman
- Adam Weiss
- Joel Lubell made a trunk for his daugther Ella!
- they're back! two of the founding doctors
- Frost Valley Olympics, 2015
- reunion of 5 recent Lenape VCs
- Geoff Hazel recalls Camp Wawayanda in the 1960s
- "to feel that magic one more time"
- Gold family update
- 1996 map of Frost Valley
- 1960s staffer remembers "CQ burgers"
- a weekend of lifer visits
- 2015 Olympics games begin
- your 2015 Lakota staff (almost all of them, anyway)
- first-ever Challenge Night at EVR
- Josh Tucker makes a visit
- David Sacker's chip off the old block
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- Mike Schneider
- Saturday is a day for themes, including Windsong's...
- Blum House - our new staff lounge!
- look-alikes
- Giannotti's week
- Sandy
- do kids at Frost Valley miss their smartphones? I ...
- Lakota girls hanging out after breakfast
- walking across the field
- eating with a trong
- Challenge Night goes to the Farm
- welcome to the Challenge Night hair salon
- Bill Primack is back - dialysis doctor whose first...
- old friends
- Pocohontas Village ("Pokey") in 1977 or '78
- story for a starry night
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- Honma grandchildren - two big fish in the big FV pond
- Kate's daughter
- Geronimo with Outpost - video sequence
- Lakota pyramid
- 3 MAC big-timers
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- Lauren Eufemia Italiano's daughter is back
- John Giannotti is here teaching sketching & making...
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- photo of two Totem cabins (1969)
- after dinner with Lakota
- mid-1970s
- "the order of the oar" in the old dining hall
- our former campers are now sending us their own kids
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- shining staff at check-out
- Jeff Daly visits and hangs with some old friends
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- CITs attend both opening campfires
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- Tacoma's dance performance
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July
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summer camp blog
about Al
why do this?
It seemed time to gather together photos and recordings. I'd always hesitated because I didn't want to imply that my own take was definitive. The blog--the medium of the blog--seems the right combination of diary-like subjectivity (blog readers simply know this is the blogger talking) and a communal forum for various perspectives and multiple stories.
Castle depicted in old postcard
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Wawayanda chapel in early July
Old Wawayanda
When I die let my ashes
flow down Biscuit River,
let 'em roll on in water
the color of sky.
I'll be halfway to heaven
at a New Wawayanda,
saying "Wawayanda spirit
it never did die."
flow down Biscuit River,
let 'em roll on in water
the color of sky.
I'll be halfway to heaven
at a New Wawayanda,
saying "Wawayanda spirit
it never did die."
in memoriam alumni tree
planted at September 2006 reunion
links
sunset at Friendship House
Al's hand-motion antics at opening campfire
Frost Valley
is a place where good things happen when people pay attention to each other. There’s endless beauty here - the high meadows, blankets of evergreens, and pristine brook trails – and you can meet nature in all its forms. But more than that, it’s a place where our ties to friends and family are strengthened. When a community of people came to the Catskills to build Frost Valley, they had in mind a place where you can sit next to someone you think you know, and then really get to know them. It also happens to be where the everyday light and shadow is enough to inspire artists; where American fly-fishing was born; and where today, a quarter million acres of green forests still remain “forever wild.” At Frost Valley, where we are does have an effect on how we treat each other. Here, a family can relearn what “family style” means as they share a meal together. The rose-gray river stones in the hearths and chimneys around camp reflect the colors of nearby Biscuit Creek and pull you into the surroundings. If you need more reasons why it’s so special here, we encourage you to explore citizen science activities during every season. But you don’t have to, because you might have more fun just learning silly camp songs. And by the end of your stay, when you your family and newly found friends are composting like pros together, everyone becomes richer, including next year’s butterfly garden.
after lunch, inevitably Dave King
...and if I could transport myself
not just back to this place, but to a certain moment in my personal history here, it would perhaps be:
end of lunch on any July day in 1968, and Dave King (our camp director) walks to the center of the dining hall, without microphone, and without introduction of any kind begins to lead one of the 25 or so camp songs we sang in those days. He is the maestro, waving one arm to the rhythm we are to follow and with the other arm, at turns, directing us to sing quietly or loudly or pointing toward some one camper who isn't singing or (rarely) is talking. And it's "Young Folks Old Folks" or "Zum Gali Gali" or "Deep and Wide" and I look down to the end of the table at my counselor and he's singing too, no hesitation, not too old for this, totally entranced and I myself turn my gaze back toward Dave....
Okay, I ache for that. Not being young again, not quite. More like being momentarily again part of such harmony.
end of lunch on any July day in 1968, and Dave King (our camp director) walks to the center of the dining hall, without microphone, and without introduction of any kind begins to lead one of the 25 or so camp songs we sang in those days. He is the maestro, waving one arm to the rhythm we are to follow and with the other arm, at turns, directing us to sing quietly or loudly or pointing toward some one camper who isn't singing or (rarely) is talking. And it's "Young Folks Old Folks" or "Zum Gali Gali" or "Deep and Wide" and I look down to the end of the table at my counselor and he's singing too, no hesitation, not too old for this, totally entranced and I myself turn my gaze back toward Dave....
Okay, I ache for that. Not being young again, not quite. More like being momentarily again part of such harmony.
save Frost Valley's Monarchs
ache
"The blog is awesome - I just went back through the whole thing again. I'll say this without shame - I ache for Frost Valley. I spend a lot of time and cerebral metabolism trying to devise a way I can get back up there for a session...."
waterfront 1961
looking in the direction of Wildcat Mtn. and the boathouse (which is off to the left)
definition of "Village Chief"
Village Chief \vil aj cheef\ n: An overworked, underpaid, camp official expected to be everything to everyone, including, but not limited to, Counselor, Mediator, Motivator, Programmer, Administrator, Police Officer, Caretaker, and Supervisor, all while maintaining good working relationships with parents, campers, counselors and support staff, and without whom any summer camp would struggle to function adequately.
Wawayanda flag raising
July 2006
Dot Conklin
is an original Catskills denizen. She has family scattered all across the region, she knows all the old stories about one-room schoolhouses, what this Claryville house was used for in the old days, and so on. Dot was the first recipient of a recent annual staff award, and when she received this honor everyone stood and applauded, tears in their eyes. Finally a chance to recognize a true community elder - hard working, honest, a kind & beautiful soul. [LINK]
