another McFarland joins us

Pokey girls at lunch...from the youngest cabin (21). At far right is Sarah Dickson, daughter of Cathy Dickson who as Cathy McFarland was (with her sister) a camper and counselor years ago. Cathy's mom, and Sarah's grandma, is (also) Cathy McFarland, a fabulously effective and helpful member of FV's Board of Trustees and former executive director of the Victoria Foundation. Sarah's brother Andrew is also here for his third summer. All in the family, for sure.

Pokey-Totem for the 90s

Karen Carnegie Johnson ("KC") has scanned and put up on Facebook a number of weekly village schedules for Pokey-Totem from the 90s. Above is one of them.

Jess Gonzalez tells her Frost Valley story

Here's Jess, telling her story:

In 2008 the new Program Director, Mike Obremski, called me over and over until I applied to work at Frost Valley. That June, I started training to be the Village Chief for Pokey Totem. I knew little about the valley at the time…just that my church use to use the site for youth retreats. I would soon find out that I had not one but two connections to Frost Valley history.

That first summer, I explained the breakdown of Frost Valley to my mother. When I mentioned the separation of the camp into Wawayanda and the Hird, she stopped me to tell me that my grandfather had gone to Camp Wawayanda as a child. I questioned my grandfather about it though at the time, he did not offer up much information. However, he did venture up from Sparta to visit me on my day off 4th session. He was so excited to get a tour around camp and hear that the villages that existed when he was a camper were still around. That Christmas, he shared with me a treasure that I one day hope to own. It was a wood burned and painted map of Camp Wawayanda that his brother had made during their time at camp.

My second connection to Frost Valley comes through the land that it once inhabited. I grew up going to and working at a small camp in northwest New Jersey called Camp Johnsonburg. This land was previously owned by Stevens Institute of Technology and served as the transition home for Wawayanda in the mid-50s. A few weeks into my first summer, I also found out that Stu Alexander had worked at Johnsonburg before coming to the valley. It seems that everywhere I look in my own history, I find a bit of Frost Valley that I did not know existed…and I couldn’t be happier to find it.

post-O mode

Ah, but before I go back to Sunday/Monday's Olympics, let me first present this priceless pic - of a Pokey girl at breakfast yesterday, the morning after Olympics. She was not unhappy (I spoke with her at some length) - just tired and not quite ready to move on. By the end of breakfast, you'll be pleased and not surprised to know, she perked up and was skipping out of the DH with her buddies. Clean up, wake up, see what the sunshine brings. That's the post-O mode.

sister counselors

Never before in the history of Frost Valley have there been siblings serving as counselor and junior counselor assigned to the same cabin. Am I right? Please tell me if there is a precedent. In this instance, we have sisters - indeed, daughters of an alumnus, Peter Boyd - as C/JC in cabin 21 in Pokey. They are Sarah (JC) and Elizabeth (C) Boyd. And what a combo they are. I played Geronimo with Pokey, Totem and the youngest Mac kids (who are housed in two cabins) and loved seeing the kids' wonderfully positive response to the Boyd sisters.

- - -

A note from John Butler asserts--correctly, to be sure--that I am wrong about the Boyd sisters being first. "Joel and Court Ambrosino were co-counselors in Outpost, Cabin Infinity [#8] in 2002 (I think this was the year) session 3 or 4. Court was a JC, and Joel was the HC. Their other brother Ben was the assistant Program Director then too (or maybe even Program Director...)." Ben did work full-year at FV and spent at least one summer as Program Director, yes.

cool rockpaint

Two Pokey girls sit in what is always the coolest (in several respects) place in camp: 12 feet below ground level, at the bottom of the Biscuit Creek Falls pool. When it's 90 degrees in the middle of a sunny field not 200 yards away, it feels like 65 down here. A whole activity period, nothing to do but sit, talk, let the spray coat your face and arms with chilly Biscuit water, and...rockpaint. Look at the close-up and see that these two have gathered - and neatly set in a row - a series of differently colored variously textured stones. They are exploring the colors the stones make when you wet them and scratch them across the larger creek rocks. They've just begun to dab their faces. Yes, remember this? Natural facepainting! They've "discovered" it on their own.

Pokeys go back to basics

This morning at breakfast I noticed two earnest Pokey campers making what they called "fresh squozen orange juice." Watch and enjoy. I especially like their skeptical cabinmate.

Dave Gold redux (video)

a story like an owl hoot in the solitary woods

Alyssa Zuliani was a camper and counselor in the late 70's and 80's (she calls herself "a silent lifer"). When she was in Pokey (her VC was "Patty Pokey" - and also Alyssa's counselor), she writes, "I remember you joining us for a bit on our overnight by the creek and telling us a ghost story - great memory! This is only one of the many great times I remember about FV."

Now a little more about the story, as she remembers it. This is very cool. How articulate and nuanced a memory is this?!

"All I can remember about the story at the moment is that it was scary, but in a lonely way, not a terrifying way. More like the hoot of an owl in the solitary woods, Eros and Psyche-like, than an axe-murderer type! Will try to remember more."

videos: Pokey-Totem cheer & Susky too

Seen and heard your Pokey-Totem cheer for the day? No? Well your day's not complete without it, so click on this link and see a video of what will for many be a familiar cheer--recorded during the current (4th) session at camp. The cheer is called "Bang Bang Choo Choo Train."

Now let's leave the dining hall and watch Susky in the Big Tree Field perform their favorite cheer: here's your link.

3 Pokey staff reunite in.... California

When we gathered together all the L.A.-area Frost Valley people--who knew there were so many?!--there was a mini-reunion of three lifers who worked together in Pokey one summer. I snapped a shot of the three of them with my handheld Treo and am happy with the result--three happy women, from left to right: Janet Miller*, who was the Pokey VC that summer; Dana Russell, who was a counselor; and K.C. Carnegie, who was apparently a J.C. (I'm sure K.C. will correct me about this.) What was gratifying and amazing to me was that the three of them had not gotten together before this, yet they were all in that far-off city. Of course it would to be good to hold regional/area gatherings. Let me know if you're interested in organizing one. Some concentrations of FV people are in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, DC, probably Virginia.

* Now Janet Miller Stier. (With our FV connection we also discovered that we were both at Penn--I as member of the faculty and Janet as an undergrad psych major. Before long I'd introduced Janet to Byron Stier, a brilliant undergrad who had taken four or five of my courses. Next thing you know...they're married, and they asked me to speak at the wedding!)

'94 Pokey VC hits Hollywood big-time

Karen Carnegie, known to many at FV as "KC," has stayed in close touch with me and us although she's in faraway Los Angeles. I didn't work with KC directly (she came of age after my time, although I do believe she was a camper in my last summers as director--yes, in '85, my last summer on staff, KC was a Sacky girl so indeed she was in the Hird when I was Hird director) but I have come to know and admire her in recent years. When a few of us went to L.A. in September '06 to host an "Frost Valley West" gathering at Rafik Melek Ghobrial's home, K.C. was there of course. She attended the Labor Day '06 reunion and brought with her several great cartoon drawings she'd done--to sell them at our campership auction (they went for a lot of money). The photo here was taken in 1994 when KC was the Pokey VC. The counselor behind her is Bernadette. Elizabeth is the camper to the left of KC and Nicole is below. Yesterday, KC wrote:

I'm out here in Burbank, California, where we've just started to enter into the hot part of summer, with temperatures getting towards the 100s in the non-frosty San Fernando Valley. [Temps in the] 50s with a jacket sounds really nice! Perfect for a campfire. A little plug for the Simpsons Movie, which hits theaters this weekend! Originally I was slated to stay on the series (they split the crew in half then hired new folks to fill out both crews) but as the year went along, more and more artists were pulled onto the feature, and I got drafted into the madness as well. So if anyone decides to go see it, and then stays for the credits, you'll see me on there! (Karen Carnegie Johnson) Names are sorted by studio, and I'm listed under "Stacked Animation Laboratory". This name is a big spoof -- I was part of a small group of artists lent out by Film Roman to work in a double-wide trailer on the Fox movie lot near the writers and producers. The trailer's previous occupant was the production staff for the short-lived book-store-set Pamela Anderson show "Stacked". The "Stacked" sign and poster were up the whole time we were in there, so it became a running joke. Anyhoo, it's my first feature credit, so I'm pretty excited about it.

So that's the Frost Valley news from Hollywood.

Janet Winner's daughter is a counselor now too

Janet Winner was a counselor, I believe, in the early 1970s. I didn't know her very well then, but somehow I got to know her during a northern New Jersey-centered part of her non-summer life when she was, I believe, commuting to NYC for school or job and needed a place to live. It was agreed that she should live in the Montclair house that served as the FV office. (The house was on Valley Road and has since been sold. FV's NJ office--mostly for development [fund-raising and outreach] staff--is currently in rented spaces in a big old church just a few blocks away on South Fullerton Avenue...which I believe was the street on which the office was located after the move from Newark and before the purchase of the house on Valley.) Janet lived in the Montclair office and this was a time when I spent afternoons working there on various projects for Halbe Brown. Then it was years and years before I saw Janet again. It was here at camp, perhaps six summers ago, when one day she and her husband Dick were dropping off their two daughters. Now one of those daugthers, Phoebe, is a counselor in Pokey. And here is a shot of Phoebe with two of her campers and a co-counselor. Phoebe is at right. Yesterday, out of the blue, the normally quasi-shy Phoebe came from nowhere to ask me for one of the "I was a star at Al's Challenge Night" t-shirts I was giving only to a few special winners at Challenge Night this session. I did have a few extras and was charmed by her assertive question, so I gave her one. In a way that seems only to make sense here, this shirt has become a much-coveted item among the staff and older campers, and Phoebe was already happily wearing it last I saw her. Hilarious.

Boyd family redux

Elizabeth Boyd is a very, very talented counselor in Pokey this summer. She is the daughter of Peter Boyd, a former camper, CIT, LIT in 1972, and JC in '73, who has long since settled in Texas with his family. I had lunch with Elizabeth's cabin the other day and it was moving to see how attached to her the kids are. Peter's brothers David and Tim were also campers and staff members in the 70s. Peter and his family have traveled from Texas to Frost Valley many times in the past few summers - most recently between sessions 1 and 2 when he helped, along with other staff alumni, with check-in, greeting parents, escorting new campers up the hill to the villages, etc.