Natasha's daugther Natasha

Natasha Brown, who was a camper in the mid-80s (I hope I'm recalling this correctly), found her way to the Frost Valley alumni reunion a few years ago. It was fabulous seeing her. She reconnected with the camp and swore that she would send her daughter some day. Well, a camper also named Natasha came up to me and said hello and said her mom wanted her to pass along her greetings. And then I realized: this is Natasha Brown's daughter, coming to camp from Newark, just as Natasha had promised she would. What a delightful kid! This generation-after-generation stuff has really got me going.

stars in the sky

A few days ago I mentioned that Katie Kelly, Tacoma VC in the mid-1990s, had shared with the current Tacoma staff some of her old weekly program schedules and was teaching them a song Tacoma used to sing a lot. It's "Stars in the Sky" and - guess what? - the Tacoma staff sang it as Hird's closing campfire last night! Unfortunately, Katie was sitting in a hospital waiting room at the time, having driven a camper to see a doctor. So she missed this reprise. I was quick enough to catch the second half of the song, and here it is.

Eric Blum provides some context:

Just watched the video of "Stars in the Sky" by Tacoma Village at closing campfire and I just thought I would give you a little history of this song. Of course this is my memory and it may be a little foggy but this is how I remember the arrival of this song at Frost Valley. "Stars in the Sky" was first sung at the second closing campfire in the summer of 1986. It was brought to the Valley by Rob Sherman and Dave Bieler (both Forest staff) that year, it was Dave's and mine first summer. We were sitting around the CQ fire one night and Dave and Rob were discussing this song that they had learned while in the Mitzvah Corp, they both thought that it would be perfect for the Forest staff to perform this at closing campfire, our VC Frank Degraw agreed, so the entire Forest staff sang this song for the closing campfire. This song became a staple of Wawayanda closing campfires throughout the mid to late 80's. "Stars in the Sky" almost replaced "Four Strong Winds". It was generally sung in 3 part harmony by Dave Bieler, Susie Sunshine and Rob SHerman with Rob playing the guitar. It's good to see this song once again being sung. Thanks KT for bringing it back.

some thoughts on the raid

"The raid" is an artifact of friendly village-to-village affectional rivalry. I've never been a fan of it (to say the least), but was amused by this mild, aesthetically pleasing version. What you see here is a little raiding done by Tacoma "against" Lenape. You're looking at the main room of Quirk Lodge, where Lenape resides, after some folks from Tacoma had come and gone, leaving a symbol of indoor-outdoor switcheroo. A little bit of camp left behind in what I consider a very non-camp kind of space (common room of lodge, with video-game-enabled TV, etc.). I like the humor here. Do you?

weirdest noise

The weirdest noise contest at Challenge Night. Five groups of Tacoma/Lenape campers and staff cheer them on.

the sounds of fun

Not long ago I wandered by a fun-seeming yet intense game of Tacoma/Lenape volleyball. Turned on my audio recorder and this is what I heard.

inclusiveness is no abstract value

I've been afraid of changing

Last summer, at a closing campfire, six girls who've gotten to know each other at camp over the past five summers sang "Landslide" together. They're all now 14 years old, having met at 9. They're feelings for each other are very, very strong. Saying goodbye each summer is hard for them. They stay in touch all year but it's not the same. They count the days until next summer. They really are afraid of changing, because they know inevitably that while friendships last they cannot remain just what they were. Some of these girls will drift off summers--summer school, family trips, the early need of jobs and a little income to help out. They climbed a mountain and turned around. Can the child within their hearts rise above?

I happened to catch their singing of the song on my recorder and here it is.

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Well, Ive been afraid of changing
cause Ive built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
Im getting older too

Oh, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down

If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well maybe the landslide will bring it down

Max, photographer

Max Flatow writes: "I'm a Frost Valley Alum, 93' - 05' (not 06'...I double checked), having been a camper in every male village but Iscusfa and Woodwise, and working as a counselor in Totem, Lenape and Pac. I've been thinking about FV a lot lately, and how I miss that distinct, pungent smell of cinnamon buns as I walk up the hill from flag raising to the dining hall, on the morning of the last day of each session - which is part of what brings me to this e-mail. I'm currently living in my hometown of Brooklyn, NY, where I am a professional photographer, shooting everything from weddings, corporate/celebrity events and portraits, to travel, editorial and real estate. As a token of my appreciation for all things 'Frost Valley' (or people, rather), I want to offer my services to any Frost Valley alumni (including family and friends) at a special 50% discounted rate. Most of my business is based out of NYC, but am always available for travel."

Here's a link to Max's web site: www.MaxFlatow.com.

The photo above and at right is of Max's Tacoma/Lenape staff, summer of 2002. Max is underneath the arrow, camera in hand.

Below is a sample of the fine photographic work Max does. His subject here happens to be a Frost Valley guy--Ethan Dropkin.

tribute to mom

The theme at this morning's Morning Reflection was "tribute." CIT Briana (Bri) and her sister Kira, a Tacoma camper, sang a song together in tribute to their mother. Everyone there was much moved by it.

Tacoma / Lenape

The kids here seem to be born knowing the village cheers. They seem spontaneous when performed in the dining hall. But of course they are taught and practiced. Two days ago I was walking by Pigeon and Biscuit Lodges, on my way to the Castle, and noticed Tacoma and Lenape sitting under the shade of the Reflection Pond pine trees, their staff forming an informal line in front of them. They were practicing a cheer together. (Yes, the brother and sister villages learn each other's cheers and thus support each other during after-lunch hoopla.) Click on the image above and watch a brief video of this.

Seneca Village

In the previous post, we came upon something called "Seneca Village." Perhaps some reading this will want a clarification. Most will not need it, but what is a blog for if not to give a few people what they need while the others can skip any entry that seems irrelevant?

Yes, Philla Barkhorn really was a camper in Seneca Village.

In the early 70s, when Tacoma seemed to us not enough for the teenage girl campers - when, more than ever, 14 and 15-year-old girls wanted to come to camp - we created Cherokee Village to handle the overflow. What was different about Cherokee, as I've no doubt commented before, is that (a) they lived in lodges (Biscuit and Pigeon) and (b) they ate in the Boys' Dining Hall, in the "back room" called Hemlock Lounge. Both (a) and (b) were huge attractions to the girls: ample electrical outlets in the lodges for plugging in a myriad hair dryers and eating meals with the boys.

Cherokee was not a success in any programmatic or counseling sense (perhaps that story is itself another entry), but from a fill-beds/get-registrations sense it was a huge success. Still more 15-year-old girls wanted to come to camp. So one summer - and one summer only - we extended even Cherokee and created another village, this one called "Seneca." (For readers familiar with our summer program now, this will ring a bell: after creating Pac and Windsong, we needed still more and along came Sycamore.)

The name "Seneca Village" was re-used a year or two later, when it became the forerunner of MAC - FV's first program for kids with disabilities. Seneca operated 2 or 3 summers during 4th session only in the late 70s. Dave King was the VC of Seneca its first summer.

Now here's the archival rarity. Philla remembers the Seneca Village song, so here it is:

Seneca, village we have learned to love,
Living each day in our friendships,
Blue skies above.
Tennis, hiking, waterfront,
That is only half the fun.
The other half is living together,
How we hate to go.

nobody messes with Ta-(uh)-coma

In today's mail arrived** not just the full staff list for summer 1995, but also (a rarer document in every year) the list of the village staffs. (As many or most reading this blog know, our staff lists gave names, addresses, and generally described positions. But village and other assignments were printed separately and were never part of the official record.)

Here's the Tacoma staff that summer:

Katie Kelly (VC)
Jessie Bleichman C
Georgia Chown C
Jill Clark C
Meghan Conley C
Kristen LiVolsi C
Victoria Secora C
Care Coffina (Associate Counselor or "AC"--see below)
Diane Sacker AC
Marta Esquilin AC
Deb Shoenemann AC
Elly Weisenberg AC

Katie Kelly's involvement has been deep and a few years ago she was our full-time Alumni Coordinator. Diane Sacker stayed around quite a while after her AC summer in Tacoma, and has been very active on the alumni committee. Deb Schoeneman is someone I've known since she was a little kid, as she's the daughter of Morris and Sandy; Morris was for many years one of the pediatric nephrologists who spent at least two weeks at camp. Morris and Sandy became avid FV'ers, as did their daugthers, and good friends of the Whites. "Georgia was from England," D'Arcy Oaks says, "funny crazy Brit."

"Cara Coffina was awesome," remembers Karin Turer, "--I think she and Katie Kelley shared a birthday. But Cara's was 7/7/77, which made everyone envious. I'm sure she had a great party this year!"

"Jill was serious, dedicated," D'Arcy Oaks continues, "and probably the most devoted to wellness out of TacoLen (and Katie and I called the 2 villages that summer). Meghan was a counselor's counselor, who used her intellect at camp to persuade young women to do things they didn't want to (like get in the water). Vicky was one of my roommates in college, she also traveled to West Africa with me in the summer of '93."

As for Kristen LiVolsi: if she or someone who knows her well reads this, please let me know if she is related to wild red-headed Scott Livolsi who was a mainstay camper and staffer in the 80s.

Oldtimers eyeballing this village staff will count up the C's and gawk and the gaudiness: six counselors in one village, plus the VC. They lived in cabins 41-45, on "the hill": thus, That means 7 counseling-level staff for 5 cabins. Not to mention the JCs (called ACs in that era). Wow. I say: wow. Earlier, there was a VC and four counselors. Plus 2 JCs. The VC had a JC, as did one other counselor. The other three counselors managed their cabins without assistance. I'm not saying such understaffing was good; but it surely made for a different dynamic (and greater rates of burnout by the end of the summer).

Several of you have asked about the distinction between "AC" and "JC"--a point of which I'm only vaguely aware (since it was only a mid-90s phenomenon), but here's Karin Turer: "AC is not just a different name for JC - it was a legal difference: Associate (not Assistant) Counselors are over 18; JCs were 17. That is what we were told in 1993 (again, I am super-sensitive to this because the change ate up a lot of my cohort!) when FV decided to have more 18+ staff. Maybe it changed later on (and looking at this list, I had Diane in Taco 44 in 1993, so it's hard to believe she'd have been 18 already by 1995!) but as far as the kids my age were told, the AC was simply a way to have a bridge between JCs and Cs." I'm a little sad to think that an administrative decision (a reasonable one, in my view--to be sure) could be thought of, even at this distance, as having eaten up a cohort (FV generation).

Katie Kelly adds this: As far as the entry about Tacoma in 1995 - that definitely gave me a laugh. Georgia Chown is in fact from Australia; she's not "a crazy brit" as D'Arcy seems to remember her. Then there is the whole JC vs. AC thing. I think that the AC designation was brought about for a couple of reasons. One being a legal issue as was mentioned - if the staff member wasn't 18 yet but they had been a JC, then they were an AC. Cara Coffina fell into this category as she had a summer birhday. Her birthday is in fact a day after mine, but I became staff prior to this being an issue at the time. I don't remember though if one was about to be "promoted" to a full counselor if they had the birthday over the summer and turned 18 at which point they were now technically able to care for kids without "adult" supervision.

Diane Sacker adds: In the summer of '95 I was 16 (I have an October birthday) and I'm pretty sure I was Meghan Conley's JC and for some reason they gave us cabin 45 (the oldest cabin).

** from D'Arcy Oaks

lean on me when you're not strong

One of my favorite challenges at Challenge Night is this one: The two people on your team who look most alike (but are unrelated). It never fails to produce hilarious and remarkable results. Here you see a photo of one of the look-alike pairs from this summer's Forest/Susky Challenge Night, back in July (a beautiful night it was, so we held the event at the Olympic Circle).

A few nights earlier it was the always-intense Lenape/Tacoma Challenge Night. What never fails to put everyone in a beautiful mutually appreciative mood is this challenge: Two people from each time who will sing for us a nice song about friendship. I was quick enough with my little recorder to catch two Tacoma girls from one of the teams singing a verse of "Lean on Me." As they sung the whole place went suddenly quiet and everyone realized it was a special moment. At the end there was a huge ovation. Moments like these...they help you carry on, 'cause--yup--it won't be long before I realize I need someone to lean on. When that happens I'll likely come back to this entry--this one right here.

So here's that recording.

"care enough to take care of this place"

This afternoon (still Saturday between sessions 3 and 4--totally quiet) we wandered into one of the Tacoma cabins...Bodman #1. Pretty well clean. Floors swept, bathrooms not so bad, windows open to let in the fresh breeze. More or less ready for the new campers to arrive tomorrow. All of the girls in Bodman 1 left after 3, so it'll be a whole new crew for the counselors there. We saw on a table that serves as a writing desk a stack of magazines, a journal-notebook, a baseball glove, and a small neat stack of (contraband) candy...and a note, folded in half on green stationery. We opened it and read as follows:

Dear Bodman One, We have been at Frost Valley for six weeks, some of us. Frost Valley is a magic place. A place to release our emotions and enjoy the summer sun. We have lived in these rooms for two weeks, and we took care of them. We didn't curse, because we wanted to keep Frost Valley the sacred place that it is. We hope you love it here as much as we do, and that you care enough to take care of this place. Look out for our counselors, Emily & Jesse, and for Little Big Tree.* Thanks, and have a wonderful session. - Bodman One of Session Three**

It's a gift from one group of 14-year-olds to another, and probably none of them will ever meet, or maybe years from now by accident in casual convo about their Tacoma summer. What's especially good about this for me is that it proves that continuity isn't just something that is passed along from year to year by people who stay here for years--but can be generously given from one session to the next. One of the eight Frost Valley core values*** is stewardship, and it is probably (at least judging from the little talks about these values one hears as flag raising) the least well understood. Yet what could be a better instance of stewardship than a group of American teenagers in 2007 asking another group to "care enough to take care of this place." Yes, that's it. And it surely bodes well for our future, all of us.

* At the beginning of this summer, on the final night of staff training week, the entire staff planted a sapling about 100 feet to the east of the famous Big Tree in Big Tree Field. Don't worry: Big Tree is healthy and has many more years to go. But the staff felt that stewardship was all about preparing for the future (the cliche word is "proactive"). So they dedicated what they call "Little Big Tree" and now the little guy stands next to the big guy and it too bodes well for the future.

** The writer of the note was Sami (see pic below) but it was composed by the whole group of girls.

*** The 8 core values are respect, responsibility, caring, community, diversity, stewardship, inclusiveness, honesty.

happy daughters come home

At right: Ruth Krotchko & Phyllis Gherardi, 1984

Ruth Krotchko (now Ruth DiGiacomo) was a camper and counselor years ago (CIT in 1982; JC in '83; counselor in '84) and for the past few summers has sent her twin daughters, Jessica and Rebecca, to camp. This summer they spent two weeks in Tacoma. Here is Ruth's report on the beginning of the drive home immediately after the girls' time at camp was over:

So, when I picked up the girls from FV last Friday it was non-stop chatter about everything - friends, dodgeball, overnight, dining hall, cheers, Geronimo, olympix! everything. I had my two nephews along in the car, so half way down Rt 17 I pulled off to get them ice cream. We got back in the car and I was immediately engaged in their stories again, camp this and camp that. They mentioned you [she's writing this to Bill Abbott] were there when Al was telling the story about the plane crash. Next thing I realized I was coming up to the Liberty exit - I went the wrong way on the highway and went all the way back to where I got onto Rt 17!! So I had to turn around and go all the way back again... Anyway, they convinced me to agree to two sessions next summer (they pushed for three sessions but I can't afford it!). They are already pumped up for Windsong and even looking beyond that to applying to the CIT program. I hope the fever sticks... they also talk about studying abroad in high school so it seems I will have increasing challenges reeling them back home as they continue to exercise their independence.

Ruth's brother John was involved at Frost Valley and her dad was for many years a member of FV's Board of Trustees and I believe served as a chaplain for the Board.

For a photo of Ruth and Phyllis at the 2006 reunion, wearing t-shirts designed for the occasion by Dari Litchman, click here.

lifer in the making

Monica's a special kid--quiet at home but a true star at Frost Valley. From ages 9 through around 12 I was the same way: my personality flourished at camp in way that was somewhat a bafflement to family and friends. I knew camp was home and I knew that if I stayed on I'd have a shot at becoming leaderly and generous. In her fifth summer at FV, Monica is 14 now--a Tacoma camper in '07--but she still deals with that home/camp - shy/star duality. I hiked after dinner with one of the camp directors recently and visited all the Tacoma/Lenape overnights. At a site called Moonshadow I caught up with Monica, the day after her 14th birthday, and here is a 4-minute audio recording of that nice chat. Blink your eye and look again--and this kid will be a CIT. Blink again: a VC. Blink, blink: she'll be like us, having had a great multi-year run of it, and will be off on what I hope and expect will be a very good and very effective life, looking back at the experience that changed everything. On the continuum of things, Monica's exactly us--just born later.

So let us connect somehow with these kids. They have much to tell us--to remind us--of what we once were and hoped for, of a time when a future in which acceptance and joy would was still ahead and would stretch before us seemingly forever, summer after summer.

there's gold in them thar hills!

The all-camp program that for many years took place during the first two-week camping session was called "Goldrush Day." A few directors would walk around the hills and along the trails leading down from the villages, with cans of gold spray paint. They painted little and medium-sized rocks - and once in a while, as a tease, a large rock--a boulder even. Some years the horsebarn staff rode around the villages on horseback before dawn, dressed as '49'ers, shouting the discovery of the Wawayanda mother lode: "There's gold in them thar hills! There's gold in them thar hills! Campers, get up. Get the gold before it's gone!" The campers arose, grabbed a laundry bag or pillow case, and once the signal was given would walk around camp gathering "gold." (This was, for one thing, a way for the camp to get rid of hundreds of pounds of those awful ankle-twisting Catskills round rocks along the paths we all used every day. At the end of the morning campers brought their bags of rocks do the Assayer's Office (the laundry) where the gold was weighed and Frost Valley paper money was given out accordingly. After lunch we gathered in the Flagpole Field (now "Margetts Field") and spent our money at a carnival. There was the kissing booth, various races and contest, face-painting, a water-slide, a haunted house, and the "Dunk Bozo" machine (a staff member sat in a cage while campers threw bean bags at an arm; if the arm was hit it would swing around and known over a bucket of cold water, which fell onto the staff member). In 1975 Valerie Pluto (VC of Tacoma) was a terrific reader of futures (I mean, aside from Goldrush Day, she predicted my future) and so she became the gypsy Palm Reader at the carnival. We all lined up to hear what she had to say about us. First in line was Paul Trela, shown here.

Here's more on Goldrush Day.

staff list for "The Hird" 1985

Here (click on the image for a larger version) is the beginning-of-summer staff list for "The Hird" in July of 1985. The roster changed a bit as the summer went on, but only a bit. It was a superb staff--the best group of VCs I ever directed. I believe this was the first summer of PAC, possibly the second--only called "Quinnipiac" at the start of the summer. Notice that there were just two staff there--Dave Gold and "Flash" Gordon--for all those boys in Hird Lodge. What's odd-seeming is that Hemlock's sister village, Sacajewea ("Sacky"), is not here. It's not that Sacky was in Wawayanda that summer; Sacky was in The Hird, run by Wendy Brady, but not until session 2. (Session 1 that summer had low enrollments. Sacky's staff was spread throughout other villages.) Lenape matched with Tacoma and Pac with Windsong (also new--it has been "Sunburst" before that and "Cherokee" before that). Note too that in 1983 Lenape lived in what had been for many years the home of that village--cabins 16-20 (currently numbered 13-17 and currently the home of Hemlock), but in this year, '85, we moved Lenape over to where Tacoma had always been, cabins 46-50, atop "the Hill," so that all of the Hird could be together on that side of camp. Tacoma now moved into 31-35 where Pokey had been and Sacky was where Susky had always been (36-40), while Hemlock was with Lenape on the Hill, in 41-45. All this moving around was made necessary, or made possible at least, by the destruction of the main "boys" dining hall by fire on New Year's Eve 1982. I'll save that story for another post, but gosh, my memory of all this detail scares me; looking at this mimeographed staff list of a group of good young people 23 years ago, it all seems ridiculously clear. I note finally this was also the first summer of "The Hird" as such, after "Camp Henry Hird" or "Camp Hird." We were a herd...for sure.