Jon MIttelman

Jon Mittelman came of age here - and became a counselor - in the late 70s and early 80s. We had been in touch on and off over the years but I hadn't seen him until he sent his son and daughter to Frost Valley for session 1. The two photos below: Jon, Sandy Shapiro Bohn, and I in the dining hall on check-out day; Jon and his wife and two children, at the end of their two weeks in camp. Welcome home, Jon!

former directors show up to help with luggage

Sorry the photo isn't very good; these people were moving fast. Yes, a corps of former directors descended upon us this weekend and stayed for today's Session 4 check-in. They wanted to do "manual labor," they said - and so luggage it was. From left to right: Matt Buzcek, Jeff Daly, Joe Elliott, Steve Purkis, and Eric Blum.

a blog entry for the FV wonk

Lots of heads were put together in order to come up with a more efficient check-in for the beginning of each session. I should have said "an even more efficient check-in" because in the past few years it's been already quite good.

When parents and campers arrive, and find out that this form or that (or many forms) are incomplete or missing, they've had to discuss it with the director right there at the table and then wander through various administrative set-ups to finish the paperwork. (I say "paperwork" but I don't mean it's trivial stuff. We're talking about whether we know the camper is going home by bus, a crucial piece of info. Or via health forms, about the medication the child is taking.) But for the start of session 2, we assembled a high-level team of staff, with access to the database of forms via computers. Parents arrive down the hill and are giving a green card if there are no forms missing; these folks move right through to meet directors and go up to the cabins, whereupon mom or dad makes the bed, greets counselors, says goodbye and hits the highway. If you don't have a green card, you move through the room in this photo above, where your forms are completed and any further work is described. Basically, we're just using the square footage of our site a lot better, to keep the lines down and move along fast those who can. Everyone seemed happy with this.

This is the sort of blog entry only former directors or true FV wonks will want to read. But I'm one of 'em, so there you go.

opening day 2009

Terrific, successful opening day yesterday. Rain held off - and indeed, part of the afternoon was a blue-sky/puffy-clouds affair. Many parents volunteered (didn't need to be asked) about the efficiency of our system, which readers of this blog will know has been perfected over years, decades: since we can't have parents' cars climbing the hilly roads up through the villages, we have to have folks check luggage whereupon CIT's (they themselves just arrived) move and sort it, load it onto trucks, and trucks deliver. Usually the delivery has been made before the family is done checking in at the dining hall and has walked up to the village. Since I spent the afternoon escorting families from the dining hall to the villages--giving directions, smoothing the way, chatting them up about the glories of the place--I saw this rational system work at first hand. The counselors, bedecked with their nice collared green staff shirts and constant smiles, greeted them all happily. Jeff Daly (current master of the perfect check-in day) said at the end of the afternoon that we pitched a two hitter. Which is to say, we scattered two overall harmless snafus across the whole process. I have to say, though, that the pitching analogy breaks down since there are more than 27 possibilities for success, plus we have about 25 pitches in our range of approaches.

Alumni who were here: Lee Fleischer, dropping of his son and helping out at the Wellness Center; John Wellington, giving directions and being proud of Jack, a CIT and Kelsey, now a counselor; Peter Tilles, dad of Amanda and Olivia (both campers); Ken Nathanson (dad of Sam, a Pac boy); Sandy Bohn, here for her usual stint (two weeks) helping out as a driver, Challenge Night judge, etc., over the moon about daughter Shaina, a VC, and Mariah, a counselor in Mac Girls, and Braxton, a Pac boy; Sue Ettelman Eisenhower; John Butler, a many-year guy (15?), Hird Director in recent summers, who now works full-time in Newark but took the day to help out. John's cameo at opening campfire received a big applause from the campers and staff. Welcome home, John.

Above, left to right: Olivia Tilles, Hannah Filreis, Amanda Tilles, Braxton Bohn.

the luggage will arrive, we swear

In this video, Bill Abbott tells a typical tale of check-in.

opening day (video)

Here's a video (click on the image above) that captures the spirit and energy of check-in day and the first day of camp (Monday). It's another fine editing job by Brendan Leonard.

more on alumni kids on staff

The two paragraphs below were meant for the previous entry about alumni kids now on staff here. It's one sign - of many, fortunately - that there are readers of this blog out there...that a number of people noticed the names missing from the earlier post.

Sandy Shapiro Bohn is here again, all the way from Arizona. Daughter Mariah is here as a Junior Counselor, came a week early for training. Daughter Shaina, although at first thinking she would have a miss a summer, has arranged to come later to be a counselor for several weeks. Son Braxton came Friday with Sandy and will be here the first session.

Hope Simons Colton’s daughter Lisa is the VC of Susky – one of the most talented VCs we have. (Here’s to the good counseling genes of previous generations of Frost Valley staff!) Hope and son Eric will be visiting later in the summer.

A gang of former staff - volunteers this weekend - and their about-to-be camper children went to Phoenicia to have brunch at Sweet Sue's. Here they are (below). I can assure you that Sweet Sue's made us happier than we look in this shot. That's Kenny Nathanson at bottom left (your left) and Peter Tilles at bottom right. I'm with Sandy standing.

early morn musings

5:30 AM check-in day, first session of summer ’08. I get up early, not because I’m excited (oh, my, I’ve seen too many check-ins to be excited at this point) but because I just get up early at this point in my life. (Later observation inserted here: out the window where I type this, now 6:47 AM, I see go by on the road one of the white Frost Valley mini-school buses, driven by David Lockwood – a former staffer and camp director here to do driving and other odd jobs of the sort constantly needed – and in the bus I see the nodding sleepy heads of lucky one-per-village ‘volunteer’ staff members sent to Montclair, Newark, and Manhattan to be the “bus staff,” greeting parents, loading luggage and supervising the noisy excited trip back up here later today.) Back to 5:30: I step outside onto the rickety old-wood back porch of the Flyfishing Cottage and look westward (in the direction away from camp) and see a dawn view that I suppose could have been seen precisely this way in 1890. Now that’s in itself something to crow about in 2008. The unmown field, wildflowers here and there, is covered a few feet above it with a thick morning mist and the heavy dew on the ground below glistens. (Remember the sun is behind us – in the east, so I don’t see the light directly but I see it start to do its thing on the droplets the night left.) I see the road curving rightward at the old Haunted House site, just at the very western edge of FV’s property along the Neversink. And the Neversink, I hear her sing her high early-summer plenty-of-water-in-me-thank-you throaty breathy singing. And I actually see her, just a glimpse. And I see the old one-room schoolhouse, the furthest-west building FV owns, where Bud Cox lives without a phone (so far as I know) and certainly without an internet connection. The powerline to Bud’s house is obscured by the trees. And because Julius Forstmann sent the powerlines up back along the hill behind the road and the houses along the road, I see not a 20th- or 21st-century wire. The vista is the real deal. I’m here.

I get on my bike, still before 6 AM, and bike as fast as I can. It’s a small-wheeled bike, one of those fabulous fold-up bikes, perfect for the city (where you can fold it and bring it into your office or home so it doesn’t get stolen – or you can take it on the train or throw it in the car’s trunk) but not so perfect for the long slow uphill grade from the western end of camp up to the lake and main area. I want to get in shape (my heart is pumping by the time I reach the boathouse) but I also want to take in the quiet-before-kids scene. It’s really really quiet. So quiet that this is what I hear: starlings in the horsebarn (the horses’ feathered friends); rushing sound of feeder stream feeding Lake Cole; and – just barely – the noisy bugs munching and rubbing legs in the Big Tree Field; the sound of my own faithful heart.

On the way back (nice gentle downhill most of the way) I start to relax as I pass the now-grown pine and other evergreens we once planted along the slope down from the lake along the county road. Any time of day and it’s relatively dark there, and cool. Nice. I open my mouth to breath happily and into it flies bug after bug – the little black guys of late June, some black flies and some just common less bothersome gnats. I knew a camp guy who used to “eat” these – that is to say, seek out places where he could get a mouthful, and then gulped and swallow. “Protein,” he used to say. (Needless to mention: he was an Adventure Camp trip leader.) But I am less sanguine about these bugs in my mouth. I am a 50-something guy, on an urban fold-up bike, in the middle of nowhere, at an ungodly hour (but my point is – it’s godly), with a surprised-shaped O-shaped orifice, deciding whether to pick out the alien critters that wandered in, stopping now, and deciding, what the hell, and take a gulp. I’m here. Did I say I’m here? I’m here.