Centre of what? I have NO idea!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
San Francisco Chronicle
Before kids stopped talking and started texting, there was summer camp, where generations of children met face-to-face in what for many was their first time away from home.
At camp in the 1980s and early '90s, girls blushed over purity tests ("Have you ever ...?") boys dressed like members of Wham! and went punch-for-punch (chest shots), and teens had 24-hour relationships ("Hi ... I love you ... Don't talk to me.").
"Camp Camp: Where 'Fantasy Island' Meets 'Lord of the Flies,' " (Random House; $25), a glossy scrapbook of camp photographs and memories collected by Roger Bennett and Jules Shell, arouses that nostalgia.
Bennett, who was born and raised in Liverpool, England, spent just one summer in camp. He remedied his lack of expertise by watching Ivan Reitman's 1979 comedy "Meatballs" (Reitman wrote the book's foreword) and then by poring over thousands of camp photographs, letters and diary entries. The final result is a dense chronicling of teenage mob mentality, loneliness and commitment to obeying customs, regardless of their absurdity. Bennett spoke with us from Manhattan, where he lives and works.
Q: Your first book, "Bar Mitzvah Disco: The Music May Have Stopped, but the Party's Never Over," was wildly successful, perhaps because many remember the year in elementary school when bar and bat mitzvahs occurred weekly. How do you explain the book's success?
A: "Bar Mitzvah Disco" was about bar mitzvahs in the same way Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" was about the animal kingdom. The book began to tell the coming-of-age story of our generation via one night of adolescent madness in which many of us were proclaimed to be men and women overnight, even though we were often light-years away from puberty. Summer camp was the logical next step, as it was the place where so many truly came of age in the one or two golden months a year in which we escaped the smothering embrace of home to create temporary teenage utopias run by kids, for kids, each one a sexual petri dish with its own musical soundtrack and sense of style.
Q: In this day of hypercompetitive and academically focused camps, do you see the nostalgic feelings some associate with camp becoming extinct?
A: Walk into American Apparel and look at the vast quantities of velour shorts, ringer T-shirts and tube socks on sale, and it seems like the 1980s summer camp experience never went away. But while summer camp is more popular than ever, the era captured in the book is most definitely a thing of the past. Our book has developed a following on Facebook as a place where those who went to camp in the '70s, '80s and '90s can come together and debate critical issues - which is a more effective aphrodisiac, Hai Karate or Drakkar Noir? Which Keds were cooler, white canvas or white leather? But it has also become a favorite of high schoolers who live for camp in the present, and to them the era it depicts is closer to Henry Ford inventing the Model T and the Wright brothers taking flight than today.
Q: What are the best and worst camp experiences you came across?
A: We subtitled the book "Where 'Fantasy Island' Meets 'Lord of the Flies' " because even for the most camp-crazy, it was the unique juxtaposition of opposites that was camp culture, which gave the place its beauty. This was a complex place where bursts of frantic excitement coexisted with long periods of calmly hanging out, the thrill of a newfound love was replaced by the shattering pain of being viciously dumped (all in the same night), and the freedom to test your boundaries existed alongside an unshakeable homesickness. The worst aspect of the book was surprising, seeing as it showcases the stories of individuals in their 20s and 30s. A number of people we wrote about are no longer with us. Indeed, the book is dedicated to a counselor who shaped hundreds of lives and passed away last November at the age of 37, a fact that makes the mission of all our projects seem a little more critical - to offer readers an opportunity to ask themselves who they are and how they got to be this way.
Q: What research methods did you employ?
A: We spent nearly three years piecing this story together, collecting tall tales and over 80,000 photographs via our Web site and completing more than 300 interviews with former bunkmates across the country, each more willing than the last to catalog the ways in which camp made them who they are today. If Mr. Tom Brokaw wanted to capture the essence of our generation, he would have written this book. We uncovered vast networks of former campers across North America whose number, fanaticism and collective power are staggering. While most have gone on to create what pass as normal lives on the surface, most seem ready to respond to a Color War break-out at a moment's notice.
Q: What didn't make it into the book?
A: Nearly 80,000 photographs that should be in the Smithsonian. I come from England, where summer camps do not exist. I did not encounter summer camp until I came to Maine at the age of 19 as a rare breed - the foreign counselor. What I encountered blew me away. Writing this book was an opportunity to immerse myself in the wonder that is America, an experience roughly on par with de Tocqueville's as he researched "Democracy in America." The first draft we submitted came in at about 1,000 pages. We were staggered by the vast breadth of camps - each in a compressed universe with its own rhythm, traditions and more ritual than your average Shriner Temple. We still receive photos every day and post the most stunning on www.campcampbook.com, paying tribute to each Champion sweatshirt, Swatch watch and pair of OP shorts.
Q: What would you have liked to include?
A: Perhaps this is another book, but we wish we had more interviews with camp directors - men and women who dedicate their lives to shaping those of thousands of kids, motivated more often than not by the depth of their own experiences when they were campers. They are unsung heroes. And I wish we had more of an opportunity to dwell on the mysterious beauty of the Kodak Disc Camera, the weapon of choice for so many of the photographs we received. As we say in the introduction to the book, "The graininess and poor definition of their photographs are much missed and deeply mourned."
Q: Any humiliation rituals you left out?
A: We collected more than 40 different types of wedgies, from the Reverse to the Hook of Death, but only had room for seven in our list of "20 Acts of Violence That Say I Love You," which documented random acts of hazing, some so creative they stand as a unique tribute to the spirit of innovation that makes this country great. One of the most interesting discoveries we uncovered in our interviews was that so many of the victims of everyday sadism actually loved it. As one said, "To be on the wrong end of a rattail or an atomic wedgy meant your counselor noticed you - that in a perverse way, you had arrived."
Q: Would you send your own children to camp?
A: Of course, if only to create an excuse to keep going back to camp. The institution of camp is all about instilling a sense of self-confidence, freedom, exploration and experimentation. What parent wouldn't want to inculcate all of those values in their kids? Our only challenge will be to pick just one camp from the hundreds of amazing possibilities in the book. We will pre-rip our kids' underpants, though, to ensure that in the event they are on the wrong end of a bungee wedgie, the ordeal will not last too long.
Q: Explain the Academy of the Recent Past and what are some projects planned for the future?
A: The Academy of the Recent Past ( www.academyoftherecentpast.com) is a collective dedicated to creating popular histories by rummaging through the flotsam and jetsam of our lives, inspired by Jean Baudrillard's quote that the "Miracle of collecting ... is what you really collect is always yourself." A couple of our upcoming projects have San Franciscan partners, including "For Those Who Tried to Rock" ( www.triedtorock.com) with the remarkable David Katznelson, an attempt to create a sonic history of popular music as told by the stories of bands that never made it, those formed by teens with that perfect mixture of big dreams and questionable talent in suburban garages, high school music rooms and college dorms across America.
Q: Do summer camp and American politics have anything in common?
A: Summer camp traditionally ends in Color War, where the entire camp is divided for several days of Olympic-style competition, pitching friend against friend and sibling against sibling. The animosity and dirty tricks executed there make those in the election cycle look like child's play, yet at the end, winner and loser cry together, and prepare to sign each others' yearbooks. Draw strength from that, America!
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Sullivan County Democrat
County plays prominent role in new camp book
By Jeanne Sager
Now the camps that shaped the likes of the MTV Networks President Doug Herzog, Discovery Channel show host Josh Bernstein and thousands of other kids from the ’70s and ’80s have been immortalized in print.
Gracing the cover of the book that hit shelves nationwide last month is Sullivan County’s own Camp Sequoia – the now-defunct Rock Hill camp that still draws alumni to a gather at the Meadowlands for a yearly tailgating party at the preseason Jets/Giants face-off.
"Camp Camp," published by Crown Publishing, an imprint of Random House, is filled with pictures and stories from campers who spent their formative summers at dozens of sleep-away spots around the Catskills.
Actress Rachel Cohen sent in a copy of the old "purity tests" the kids passed around Camp Tel Yehudah in Barryville in the mid-’80s and related the fateful night a rainstorm that turned the production of Elie Weisel’s "Dawn" into a comedic disaster.
"The book is about the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel. Heavy stuff," Cohen recalled. "The grand finale of our performance was the entire cast singing ‘Goodnight Saigon,’ the [Billy] Joel song that opens with the sound of whirling helicopter blades. By then, rain was seeping through the scenery. We were singing away on stage in our Holocaust outfits laughing, aware we had just turned this most somber of books into a comedy."
Fellow camper Mik Moore, now the director of communications and public policy at Jewish Funds for Justice in New York City, related his memories of the intercampus basketball rivalries at Tel Yehudah – and the year a kid from Argentina joined his team to help take them "over the top… out of nowhere."
The rest of the time at camp was spent singing, Moore said. Singing or dancing.
And when kids from New York brought Public Enemy and Heavy D, a girl from Seattle brought Sir-Mix-a-Lot and a kid from Chicago brought his "house sound," rap started to spread.
"It is one of the great untold stories: the role Jewish summer camp played in the spread of rap music to the suburbs of America," Moore said.
Some of the area’s operating camps get their 15 minutes too.
Scott Rothschild’s photo of football great Herschel Walker’s visit to his camp in 1989 came straight from Monticello’s Camp Kennybrook, while a number of former campers and counselors at Camp French Woods sent their memories to book editors Roger Bennett and Jules Shell.
Camper Katie Schumacher sent a plea from Hancock – "Dear Mom, Please pick me up from camp tomorrow. I’m so homesick. By (sic) please pick me up!"
But life got better – she found silk screening.
"When I was really homesick, I could go to Arts and Crafts and sob and still accomplish something!" the Short Hills, NJ mom recalled.
French Woods owner Ron Schaefer finished reading "Camp Camp" just in time to open his facility for its 39th season.
"The book is great," he said. "Camp has been a very important factor in so many people’s lives.
"The camaraderie, the friendships made… you can’t recreate that opportunity anywhere else," he said. "Not to mention the sense of self-assuredness children are able to get by going away to camp."
They feel free leaving their parents and going it on their own for a summer, but they’re still in a safe haven, Schaefer said – that’s the beauty of the camp experience.
In fact, Bennett and Shell call their ode to camp "Where Fantasy Island Meets Lord of the Flies" because of the insulated environment formed in rural locales away from the hustle and bustle of daily life.
An English college student who earned a trip to America at 19 to work as a counselor at a camp in Maine, Bennett said he found an incredible "compressed universe" where kids were learning life skills and coming of age.
When the duo finished their "Bar Mitzvah Disco," a book published in 2005, they found a natural sequel.
"Bar mitzvahs are sort of a fake ceremony in which a child becomes an adult in the Jewish faith," Bennett said. "Camp is the place where so many people came of age – over 80,000, a vast nation of young Americans who are now successful lawyers, doctors, what have you, still dreaming of color war.
"It’s the perfect prism through which to look at the culture of the ’70s and ’80s of America," he continued.
As a Brit with only a summer’s taste of camp life, he treats the subject with reverence but allows himself a bit of space – making space in the book for the good, the bad and the incredibly geeky.
Case in point – the book’s cover.
Kevin "Bird" Harrison has devoted a blog to each time his young mug – dressed in an over-sized Camp Sequoia t-shirt with one athletic sock drooping and glasses that dominate his face – makes it into national press for the book. The account executive for a sunglasses manufacturer is now married with a daughter and will always remember the fatal mistake of going to sleep in the boys’ bunk.
"You could wake up in the middle of the lake with your bed balanced in kayaks, or be induced into the act of wetting yourself by having your hands dipped in a bucket of water," he says. "But the boys’ bunk was also a place of radical inclusion. Amid the peculiar stench of wet towels, Deep Heat, Hai Karate aftershave and pine sap that hung heavily, there was much that brought the bunkmates together."
With a foreword by "Meatballs" director Ivan Reitman and the stories and pictures of what was really going on inside the forests of the Catskills and beyond, "Camp Camp" isn’t just a love letter to camp.
It’s a campers’ love letter to the places that made them who they are. Places like Sullivan County.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
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