cage ball, that Olympic sport

The 1978 Olympics. Yes, Cage Ball was an Olympic sport that year. All the teams were gathered together for the Field Games all morning. During the Cage Ball round-robin, each team sent thirty campers to compete. Chaos! Wild! But fun.

hoopla 1978

The scene is the Boys' Dining Hall, August 25, 1978. The last full day of camp for that summer, lunchtime. Time for what later become known as "hoopla." I think in '78 we still called this rollicking session "cheers." But it entailed cheering and loud singing (and sometimes a skit). Jean-Louis Lalanne had been an ICCP (international) counselor in the summer of '76, and missed all this. He asked me if I could make a recording of hoopla and I did. I recently rediscovered this old cassette and I'm glad it hasn't deteriorated too much. The recording is fifteen minutes long. At first you hear the villages cheering - Totem, Forest, Outpost, Lenape and Hemlock. Sequoia was with us usually in that dining hall, but they were out that day. And Cherokee, a village older than Tacoma (they lived in Biscuit and Pigeon Lodges and ate in the Boys' Dining Hall), wasn't happening in session 4 that summer (they'd been there 1, 2 and 3). Among the cheers you hear are two versions of "The Gridiron" (Lenape's: "The Gridiron's cold, you can't beat Lenape 'cause we're too old") and a classic Lenape "triple locomotive" left over from the Bud Cox Lenape days ("L L L - E E E - N N N - A A A - P P P P P P P - E E E... LenapeLenapeLenape"). And a Forest cheer that had been introduced and perfected by J.C. Pony in the mid-60s: "Has Forest got the spirit?" "Yeah, man!" Then "Announcements" and then two songs: Father Abraham and Green Grass.

Here's that recording - an mp3 audio file you can download.

Rafik 30 years later

Rafik Ghobrial and me, a photo taken this afternoon on the porch behind the Administration Building.

wellness revolution

Since this summer we're inaugurating a big beautiful new Wellness Center, it seemed apt to dig back into the history of the Wellness Revolution, which took place from around 1976 through 1981 or so. In '77 and '78 in particular, it seemed that every thing we did, said, touched, trained and progammed was wellness, wellness, wellness. It was such a huge change, and bred such natural resistance among the campers and staff (and to some degree camper parents also), that I suppose it could never have happened had it not been so forcefully and relentlessly implemented. Had it not felt to many to be a rejection of beloved customs and the general spirit of the place (what-the-heck fun, a certain spirited recklessness, a non-PC approach to giving kids a good time), it would have seemed too obvious to fuss about. After all, the idea was simple: camp should be a place where kids have lots of healthy options; where they can get away from the Junk Food, Couch Potato World out there.

Several effective and well-meaning zealots were empowered by our Exec Director, Halbe Brown, to make this happen, and several mild-mannered good-health-above-all types, such as the beloved Mike Ketcham, continued in their genial ways but felt emboldened by the zealots, made it all happen. And fast. Cigarette smokers on the staff were confined to a small space. Soda, candy and ice cream served for many years in the canteen were gone. And the after-dinner "canteen" (long lines visiting the camp store on the end of Hayden Lodge) was eliminated, which, since it was a hang-out hour for both camps, felt like a huge loss to everyone. It was our free period after dinner and the only time in those days that Boys' and Girls' Camp could casually get together. Sugar was removed from the dining hall tables.

And staff training was completely redone. I might be misremembering, but I believe that in '78 at least 50% of the week-long staff training was on topics and programs related to Wellness. That's a lot!

The iamge here is a scan of the cover design for the 1978 Counselor's Manual. Oh that design! It was on the manual, on t-shirts, on brochures... everywhere. The people were (ironically) drawn as pudgy generic figures, skin color quite diverse (more diverse than the actual people on staff, though we were trying) and rainbows always in the background (just in case you didn't get the idea).

By '81 or '82 we'd moderated the emphasis a bit, but the change had been made and Frost Valley as a whole - not just summer camp - is much better for it.

Now the challenge is: We have an fine new Wellness Center, which we're formally dedicating on September 13, so we need to re-focus on some of the old Wellness questions. I don't mean health and medical ones (content ones)--although these are also of crucial importance--so much as institutional-political ones: what is the tone with which we want to be wellness "back"? There are many many possibilities among the options.

At the 2006 Labor Day reunion Dari Litchman (a wonderfully design-conscious person) thought to base the reunion T-shirt on this by-then outdated late '70s design. It was hilarious and everyone loved the retro look. How funny (well, not funny, but you fill in the word) that wellness could have become retro! It's then, it's now.

Above: the new Guenther Wellness Center (to the left of the Brown pavillion) as you see it from the lower field. I was standing in front of the Ad Office when I snapped this shot yesterday. The building is up on the hill about 200 feet to the southwest of the dining hall. You can see it's landscaped already, grass growing, and it blends into the hillside well. I'll have more photos of the building later.

hike and talk at the same time

I love this. Just love it. We're hiking one cold early September Sunday morning, up Pigeon Brook. I enjoy taking old-time FV'ers up Pigeon. Eight out of ten times these veterans have rarely or even never hiked along this gorgeous, little, digressive, sometimes steep and always, around the next bend, a little surprising in its turns.

Such was true of Rick and Phyllis Kaskel. Been in and out of the valley since 1978 and yet had never walked more than a little bit up Pigeon.

It was such fun to be with them - and also Bill Abbott who joined us - that I just had to talk with Rick about his long association with our dialysis program, its meaning and impact on his otherwise straight-ahead ambitious professional medical career (he's a big-timer in pediatric nephrology nationally and internationally--in case you didn't know). That impact is huge, but let me have Rick say it for himself. Please listen by clicking here. If you don't know the history and rationale for our dialysis program, this recording is very much worth a listen.

Earlier I had something to say about Rick's visit during camp this summer.

On the way back we hiked back through Sequoia from above. It was quiet, empty, gorgeous. Just a few weeks earlier, in the heat of the late summer, the platform tents, the meetinghouse (a nicely decorated yurt), and the Sequoia barn (used as a showerhouse) were teeming with activity. The scene we saw: it was as if they had just left that morning. Everything was just as it was, only no counselors and campers.

the folks with the thirsty boots

Here is the 1978 Adventure Staff - a photo taken toward the end of staff training that summer, just before the crew scattered to the four corners of the U.S. on their trips.

At bottom, from left: Jody Davies, Kris Fisher, Mary Ann Fisher, [name forgotten]. Second row, sitting, from left: Melanie Brown, Mike Schiffer, Gary Garter, Mike Larison, Alice Selig, Doug Marsh, Debbie Trosvik.

Top, from left: [name forgotten], Danny Shelburne, Doug [last name?], Val Kay, Ray Honeywell, Shirley Kay (Director of the Adventure Program), Alexa Carter, and (the late) Natch Wedel.

tidbits & sidelights: Ray Honeywell and Val Kay met at camp, and later married. Melanie is Halbe Brown's niece, originally from Connecticut and now in the Seattle area. Mike Schiffer is a member of the Schiffer clan that has sent at least four others to the FV staff; they own a house in Claryville. Alice Selig, now Alice Selig Giarusso, is a schoolteacher in northern New England; her brother, Mark, a legendary Hemlock counselor, was killed years ago in a helicopter crash, and the Seligs have set up a perennial campership fund in Mark's memory. I'm sure I have a Danny Shelburne blog entry in me somewhere, so I'll refrain from saying much about Danny here and now, but of course his sister Carolyn was a long-time staffer and became Program Director and Girls' Camp Director. Mike Larison, who also met his wife Diana at Frost Valley, is still there, managing our forestry program.

Giannotti's totem pole

One of the most creative people I've ever met, John Giannotti spent an entire two-week session sitting out on the lawn in front of Hird Lodge carving a new totem pole from a huge tree Chuck White selected and felled for him. John was the camp director and seemed to be able to do all his work--talking with campers and staff, even taking phone calls on an extention dragged out the lodge's window--from that spot. At the end of the session the pole was done and it was time to put it in the ground at the entrance to the main part of camp. Take a look at several photos of this hilarious scene. No one can remember whether this was 1977 or '78. Asked to identify some people in these photos, Michele Palamidy wrote:

Well in the first one i think that is Lou Senor from maintenance in the back [with mustache], Valerie Kay [the blonde on the truck], Karen Giannotti, with her head cut off, Bernard Gauthier [dialysis doctor] bent over near the totem, Paul Brown's back with the heart on his shirt, Jan Gickner on the ground to the right [curly hair, in overalls], and, sitting on the totem pole is one of the Kremers. [The little girl is Dani Giannotti.] Of course that is the indomitable Chuck White driving the backhoe in the later pictures!

John Giannotti writes:

Michele's photos of the totem pole brought back so many wonderful memories. Seeing my then 6 or 7 year old daughter, Dani, in one of them induced incredible tears of joy. Your account of the carving, however, is totally inaccurate! You state that I did 'little else' for two weeks while carving it. Hey, I was Girl's Camp Director at the time! Carl Hess and Chuck White chopped down this twenty five foot hemlock and dragged it up the hill. We mounted just outside of Hird Lodge, where the Girls Camp Director's office was located. I remember getting an extension for the phone so that I could carve and talk to upset parents at the same time. Now THAT was multi-tasking!

John Kremer remembers:

I remember that summer well, and can also recall having to repaint the Totem pole shortly after it was raised, the wood was still so green the paint just did not hold. By the way, the 'Kremer' that Michele recounts sitting on the pole was me - next to Lou Senor, in the dark blue shirt; also in the last photo I am working level with Chuck on getting the pole plumb. 1977 or '78 would have been my 2nd or 3rd summer on the maintenance crew, as one of Carl's and Chuck's boys.

I suppose what intrigues me about this scene is that it is like so many others: it becomes mythic; everyone remembers it more or less similarly yet with different emphases; it serves as a springboard for associational memories. This was the time of our lives.

Sven, Bill, Bob

From left to right: Sven Grotrian, Bill Walton, Bob Davis. They're standing at the edge of Big Tree Field and I'm guessing the year is 1978 and--given that Bill is smoking a pipe--the photos was taken during a "holdover" weekend. Sven was a Hemlock staff member and LIT Director in '76. Bill and Bob co-ran Sequoia Village one summer, and I believe both led Adventure trips at various times. I've lost track of Bill. Bob is a clergyman in, I believe, Massachusetts, and Sven is in NJ somewhere (and in touch with email with me periodically). None of these guys have been to a reunion lately. We hope to see them again soon.

Lacota (not Lakota), the tipi village

In the 1970s there was a proliferation of new villages: Sequoia was created in the early 1970s (our adventure village), Cherokee for the oldest girls (forerunner of Windsong), Winnetou for a group of German-language campers (Winnetou, Winnetou, ja, ja, ja!), Seneca (a forerunner of MAC)...and also Lacota, a Native American village modeled on the Oglala Sioux, the creation of Leon Van Heusen, who was Lacota's first village chief. The Lacota people were very very serious about reproducing Plains Indian ceremonies and customs (and costumes). The tipis were pretty real - the poles were made of Lodge Pole Pines, brought to the Catskills by Chuck White who several times drove all the way to South Dakota and back to pick up the poles just in time for the start of camp. The tipis lasted five or six years, as did this experimental village. "Van" as he was known, alas, died of heart failure in the village's second summer. Folks such as Dave Gansler, Heather Sachs and Rich Weinberg succeeded Van as VCs. In recent years, the name Lakota (with the k) was brought back as a girls village to match Outpost. Here is a photo of the Lacota staff.