April 2009
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April 24, 2009

Stu & Charlie

Those of you who have been following "Life of Charlie" are overdue for an update.  Stu recently traveled out to LA to visit his grandson (as well as his own sons and daughter-in-law).  And, of course, he had his camera ready to record the visit.  In one of our favorite shots, Charlie has a laugh as he reads a story to Stu.  Well, maybe it was the other way around, but Charlie seems like a pretty smart kid and it won't be long before he's doing the reading, and maybe even writing stories like his dad (a TV & movie screenwriter).  We're hoping Charlie will bring his parents out to visit CK-NJ sometime soon.  It's hard to believe that he hasn't seen camp yet, particularly since we have him on the preliminary camper roster for the summer of 2014, or thereabouts.

Speaking of Stu, it was his birthday yesterday.  Tonight we have our annual "Stu and Jeremy Birthday Bash" because Jeremy's birthday is tomorrow.  You'll probably hear the birthday cheer wherever you are tonight.  We'll try to keep it low enough so it doesn't show up on the Richter scale.

Tomorrow, we're back out at camp where, even in cool Blairstown it's supposed to reach the mid-80's!  I hope we get ice pops for snack.  In addition to tours, Stu and I are meeting with the Blair Academy arts faculty to go over details of the fine and performing arts facilities.  Then, while Stu carries on with some tours, I'll be meeting with Adam, Paula and Stevey for some special pre-summer orientation activities.

A camp day is always a good day.

Tom

P.S. -- Here are some more spring photos of camp (thanks to camper parent Dave Folsom): Spring Photos, Part 2.

April 21, 2009

Forsythia

The big deal about spring is that it's right before summer, which means you-know-what.  But, actually, springtime all by itself is a season to enjoy and not rush through.  Every spring weekend at camp has been beautiful as shown in part by the flowers.  We started with snowdrops and crocuses.  Then daffodils and lots of little purple flowers for which I do not know the name.  Forsythia came into full bloom in this part of Warren County last week, as you see in this photo of Jeremy and Andy enjoying a warm afternoon on the Blair Academy campus.  All around the campus, trees are barely showing their fresh, light green colors and I expect any weekend now the leaves will be bursting forth all over campus.  That makes me think of summer again, and shade, and "afternoon shade", and camp activities and . . . wait!  I'm getting too excited about camp.  Let's enjoy spring while it's here.

Enjoy spring.  Dream about summer.

Tom

April 13, 2009

Frisbee Golf!

As Jeremy told you last week, I found out about the Blair Academy Frisbee golf course and decided to go up and explore.  With the map and the description of the "holes" and my trusty camera, I got up to the campus early yesterday before the first tour.  It was really windy and surprisingly cold, though the sun was shining and some nice flowers blooming.  Sure enough, some folks at Blair have laid out a Frisbee golf course, marking each hole with a blue and white numbered sign (did you know that Blair and Campus Kids share the same blue and white colors?).  I didn't have enough time (or warm clothes) to walk the whole course, but I think these photos will give you the idea.


Looks like fun, right?  Invite me to play a round with you this summer.  In the meantime, I'll be practicing.

Tom

P.S. -- Here are some more photos I took yesterday at camp: Spring Photos.

April 9, 2009

Camper Choice!

Hey Campers!  I just wanted to let you know that the Camper Choice Surveys are in the mail and should arrive at your house soon.  Be on the lookout for a bright orange mailer with your name on it!  This is the form you tell us about your activity interests.  When you fill out the Camper Choice Survey, you get to check off the activities you like and how often you think you would like to sign up for them.  As I was running the forms through our postage meter, Tom and I were joking around and wondering if anyone knows what these are actually for. 

Well... we collect these forms and the entire leadership team (and your bunk counselors) reads them before you get to camp.  The activity coordinators pay special attention to them.  As you know, we have a unique schedule that allows for camper to choose his or her own schedule.  With the exception of swim instruction for our younger campers, everything else is completely your choice.  The schedule varies from day to day so that the activities you want are offered at different times.  Thanks to the information you provide on the Camper Choice Surveys, we estimate how popular activities are and how often we should put them on the schedule.  In the survey, you can submit your suggestions for theme days and special events.  We take these forms very seriously and any feedback you have is important to us!  Please fill it out soon!

I actually have another exciting piece of news to let you in on... Tom just got word from one of the head honchos at Blair Academy that there is an official 18 hole Frisbee golf course with a designated par on campus.  It travels all over camp and looks amazing.  Sidewalks count as sand traps and the parking lots are water hazards.  We received a detailed description of each hole and a photocopy of a map.  Tom is going to be on campus this weekend doing tours and he promises to snap a few pictures!  We'll write more about Frisbee golf next week after we complete our investigation!

~Jeremy

April 8, 2009

Holiday Greetings

As we enter this holiday season, I want to wish everyone a Joyous Passover and Happy Easter.  Among our campers and staff we have different religious traditions, but we share the common goal of peace among all people.  The religious, cultural and racial diversity of our camp community makes it a fun and and interesting place to be.  Camp wouldn't be the same without this diversity and we are grateful for the unique opportunity to meet so many new people.

Tom

April 1, 2009

More Summer Plans

It's a very busy time of year at the CK-NJ office as the weather warms up and our campers start their spring breaks.  We've been making lots of decisions about camp for this summer, so I thought I'd use this blog to share some of them with you.

»»We see that an increasing number of our campers and staff are vegetarians, so we'll be making a few menu adjustments.  Wednesday night barbecue will now feature only veggie burgers and tofu dogs.  Campers who don't like these items can have extra baked beans (sorry, no bacon in the beans).  This will save us from throwing out all those uneaten hamburgers and hot dogs.

»»A coalition of campers and staff, led by Matt Lurrie and 25 freshmen and sophomore girls, have told us that it's not fair to announce "pajama night" every Tuesday when only some of the campers and staff actually wear their pajamas to supper.  Therefore, we will now require everyone to put on their pajamas before entering the dining room for Tuesday suppers.  Weeks 1, 3, 5, & 7 the boys will wear striped pajamas and the girls will wear polka dots.  We'll reverse that for Weeks 2, 4, 6 & 8.

»»As we have been giving tours of our new location at Blair Academy, our returning campers have been debating which dorms they want to be in.  All the dorms are very nice and nobody can decide which division should live where.  So, to be fair, every two weeks we will move the divisions, in a counter-clockwise rotation, from one dorm to another, thereby giving every division a chance to experience every type of dorm.  For example, the girls living in Insley Hall for Weeks 1-2 will move for Weeks 3-4 to Davies-East and the younger boys who had been living there will move to Annie Hall, and so forth.  You'll get the idea once you are at camp.  We'll be sure to have extra vans to help everyone move their stuff.

»»Speaking of dorms, we have a problem with junior boys during Weeks 1-2: there are already too many of them signed up for camp.  We think we can easily solve this problem by pitching tents at the lake that is on the far side of the Blair property (Lake Genevieve).  We probably only need to put about ten campers out there and, of course, a counselor or two.  We'll see if ten boys want to volunteer to live in the tents the whole time or if they want to switch off with some of the other junior boys after a few days.

»»As you know if you have visited Blair, it seems as if every faculty member has a dog, usually a large dog.  But most of the faculty leave the campus for the summer, which means that the few dogs left behind get very lonely.  Therefore, Campus Kids has agreed that we'll help fill the "summer dog gap" by having campers bring their dogs to camp so they can socialize with the Blair dogs.  We'll take turns.  Some campers will bring their dogs each week (you'll get your assignment in the mail).  No small dogs, though.  The only eligible dogs are those weighing 60 pounds or more.  Bunk groups will take turns doing pooper scooper patrol on a daily rotation basis.

»»Since our bunk group theme this summer is an international one ("Around the World in 40 Days"), we have decided to start a pen pal program.  It's very simple.  Each bunk group will get 100 new pen pal names (kids from a variety of other countries) each day.  You'll sit down with your bunk group and write letters to those 100 kids.  We estimate that it should only take you a couple of bunk times and maybe one or two activity periods each day to complete the task.  That should be no problem because it's fun and it promotes world peace.  Since you'll get 100 new names every day, each bunk group will have written to 4,000 kids from other countries by the end of the summer.  In total, our whole camp should complete about 88,000 pen pal letters during the eight weeks.

»»Parents have been complaining that we give kids too many choices and they want us to take action.  They think that certain important activities should be taught to all the campers because they are life skills that everyone should know.  We tried to resist this suggestion, but the pressure's been too great.  Therefore, the following activities will now be required for every camper: chess, bass guitar, jogging (3 - 5 miles 3x per week), fishing, and water color painting.  Stu's been busy re-arranging our Camper Choice programming system.  Preliminarily, he says that we can probably do all of this and still give campers the choice of at least one other activity every day.  We'll let you know when he's finalized things.

»»If you were at camp last summer, you remember Simon's song about "facts".  Well, we've been contacted by the local authorities in Blairstown who said that they had been contacted by the authorities in Hackettstown who said they had received lots of complaints last summer from some neighbors who overheard the song.  They are demanding that a song with a different ending be used this year and we are being forced to comply.  We hope that some of the creative talents at CK-NJ will be able to help us solve this dilemma.

As you can see, we have been very busy planning for a super camp season.  But this blog is getting too long and I don't have space to list all of our cool decisions here.  So click here to read the other new things happening at camp this summer.

Tom

April 2009
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