1.    Stand Up Paddleboarding (SUP) was offered as a brand new activity.  It proved to be incredibly popular with the campers of all ages and the staff too.  No doubt we’ll be adding more SUP boards and paddles next summer.   The possibilities are endless – think  SUP trips on the Mississippi River ☺.

2.     Mad Science was another popular addition to Kamaji’s instructional program. The brainchild of Rebecca Langsam, (a Kamaji Junior Counselor) attracted over 200 campers between first and second sessions.  Whether they were making gloop or disappearing ink or nail polish or exploding volcanoes(!), every class was filled to capacity.

3.    We added a brand new canoe trip to our Wilderness Trip Program.  Campers going into the 7th grade spent three days canoeing the very beginnings of the Mississippi River.  It’s a beautiful unspoiled part of the river.  We hope the campers enjoyed their adventure.

4.    The drama program was strengthened by the addition of “KamaGlee”.  Each week campers had the opportunity to learn and perform a different song.  From  “What is this Feeling?” from Wicked to “True Colors” it was hard to know who enjoyed the performances more — the singers or the audience.  Seriously, the campers were great.

5.    The swim program offered a “junior” Lifeguarding class.  Participating campers participated in a shortened version  of the same course our counselors take to earn their Red Cross Lifeguard certification.

6.     During second session, some of the Pine Manor campers asked if they could choreograph and then teach a dance routine in the regularly scheduled dance class.  They did just that during the past week and will be performing their dance for the rest of camp on Wednesday.

7.     Basketball was offered as an instructional activity.  While this wasn’t exactly the first time basketball was taught, it was the first time this century.  Welcome back!

8.    Although not exactly a “first”, 2011 ranks number 1 in the percentage of cabin counselors who are former Kamaji campers: 41 out of 57.  That’s over 70 percent!  We are flattered that so many Kamaji alum have returned to “give back” to current campers.  And if you throw in the counselors who weren’t campers, but who have worked here before, that percentage jumps to almost 80%.

Wow!  Kamaji may be 98 years old, but every June it is reborn.  Just wait until our 99th camping season.

More Kamaji News
Here are some program highlights of the past few days.  Our regular instructional activities have been carrying on since the last Adventure Day and will continue through tomorrow afternoon.  Last Thursday’s evening program was the 4th of August Kamaji Goofy Field Relays.  The truth is that we usually have these races on the 4th of July, however, a thunderstorm that evening  forced their cancellation. We have now proclaimed the 4th of August a new holiday at camp.  (Look for pictures on Smugmug.)  On Friday night, campers and counselors gathered in the Lodge to hear Mike give a Kamaji history lesson.  The campers seemed to enjoy hearing about the “good ‘ol days” of no flush toilets and pine needle skiing.  Saturday we were treated by the drama program to a wonderful performance of “The Wizard of Oz”.  (Pictures on Smugmug.)  Last night’s evening program was a real favorite — All-Camp Capture the Flag.  (Pictures on Smugmug.) This afternoon we are hosted about 30 Camp Chippewa campers (they are boys) who are competing with Kamaji campers in tennis, archery, sailing and swimming meets.  Tonight’s evening program is the last Council Fire of the session.  Tomorrow’s evening program will be the big Staff Show, a real camper favorite.  Wednesday morning is “Packing Time”.  Remember the day before your daughter left for camp.  Imagine packing 145 campers (and 14 CITs) all at the same time.  Whew!  Anyway, Wednesday afternoon will feature Kamaji’s Variety Show followed by Final Banquet and Candlelight O’Naug She Nodin.  Thursday is the day you’ve had circled on your calendar since your daughter left for camp.

Travel Information for August 11, 2011
August 11th will be a long day for campers traveling home!  We’ll have a 6:00 a.m. wake-up bell with the buses leaving camp bout 7:45 a.m. for the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport.  We are sending campers to 20 different cities around the country.  We’ve already sent you a travel schedule, but it would probably be a good idea to check with your daughter’s airline to see if there are any last minute changes.  If you have any questions about your daughter’s travel home, just write or call.

If you are meeting your daughter at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, you should pick her up at the Transit Center of the Lindbergh Terminal between noon and 12:30 p.m.  Your daughter and her luggage will be there.

If you are picking up your daughter at camp, you MUST be here at 8:00 am.  Your daughter and her luggage will be waiting for you.

If your daughter is flying on DL 789 to St. Louis or DL 2207 to Chicago O’Hare she will be escorted by a Kamaji parent.  You should plan on meeting your daughter outside the secure area of the concourse where she arrives or at baggage claim. You may want to ask a Delta ticket agent if you can have a security pass so you can meet the flight at the gate, however, don’t be surprised if the ticket agent says “No.”  The parent escort will bring the campers out of the concourse and to baggage claim and remain with them until all parents arrive.

If your daughter is on a flight other than the ones mentioned above and is flying home as an “Unaccompanied Minor” you should be able to obtain a security pass from the airline which will allow you to meet your daughter at her arrival gate.  Plan on arriving at the airport in plenty of time to obtain your security pass.

Again, if you have any questions about travel, just ask.

End of Season Information
Here are some final details about the end of your daughter’s stay at Kamaji:
1.    If your daughter is missing clothing or equipment items, please notify us as soon as possible.
2.     Your daughter’s store account refund or bill will be sent to you in the next two weeks.
3.     Information about Kamaji’s 2012 camping season will be sent to you next week.
4.     We’ll be sending a link to an on-line evaluation form in a few days.  We hope you’ll take a couple of minutes and complete it.  Thanks in advance.

Some Thoughts About The Session From Ye Directors
(Ed. Note: This section of the letter may sound familiar to many of you.  The concepts are not new, but we’ve freshened it up a bit.)

Be prepared!  In a few days your daughter will be hanging out with you.  The second session of Kamaji’s 98th season will be history.  We want to warn you that your daughter may, at any time during her first few days at home, fall into the “Kamaji Zone”.  You will immediately notice a change in her behavior.  Don’t worry as these changes will only last a short time.  Right after your daughter eats breakfast don’t, we repeat don’t, panic if your daughter suddenly jumps on the kitchen chair and sings at the top of her lungs.  That’s what we do at meals.  And after breakfast, YOU had better sit down.  We don’t want you to faint if your daughter runs to her room to make her bed and straighten up her closet.  Don’t worry.  We are confident that THIS behavior won’t last more than a few days.  If you are sitting at the dinner table and you would like her to get something from the kitchen, just tell her that it’s her turn to be “hopper”.  And if you go out to dinner at a nice restaurant, please remind her NOT to put her chair on the table when you leave.  And be prepared.  Your daughter will expect you to have 4 or 5 different activities planned for her each day.  (How about paddleboarding, horseback riding, Mad Science and sailing —  just to start.)  There may be certain words missing from her vocabulary — words like “TV”, “texting”, “facebook”, “download” and even “hair dryer”.   Don’t worry.  Most girls will pick up these terms quickly.  There are other behaviors — too numerous to mention — that you may observe during the first few days your daughter is home.  If you cannot interpret any of them, feel free to call the “Kamaji Kommand and Kontro Center”.  Trained camp personnel will be on duty 24 hours a day to answer your call.

Another way to ease your daughter’s transition into the “other” world is to show her the “Smugmug” pictures.  She hasn’t seen any of them and what a great way to re-live the past few weeks.  We suggest that you go through the pictures with her.  We don’t want you to miss the chuckles.

We’ve written over the past weeks how enthusiastic the campers are about every aspect of camp. Some of the most memorable events of the past season seem to be times when the campers break out in spontaneous “joy”.  (Just ask your daughter about “Little Sally Walker”.)

This season just zoomed by thanks to the campers. Why is camp better than ever?  Well, just think about your daughter’s life here at camp.  No matter what the campers do here, they do it with other people who can hear, see, and touch.  We eat together, sing together, learn how to do new things together.  We know each other’s names.  We laugh together, swim with “buddies”, sail with a crew, set tables with our tribe, clean cabins together and sort laundry with our porchmates.  We have a shared language (Metigs, Za, Za 2, O’Naug, keylog, gooey rolls), a shared history (“We were here in ‘2011, ‘2011…”), our own rituals (Boy, oh boy, what a day it’s been!), and most of all, shared experiences (remember our canoe trip, Tribe Day, Adventure Day).  In simple terms we are a “community” where each camper is connected to her porchmates, her counselors, her tribemates, her “Kami Sister”.  We touch, see and hear each other a million times every day.  Yup, Kamaji campers seem to have more invested in camp than ever before!  Maybe they have figured out that sleeping in a bed right next to your best friend is a whole lot better than being a “friend” on Facebook.

One Last Favor . . .
We were thrilled to welcome 71 new Kamaji campers this summer.  Wow!  That’s a lot.  Most new Kamaji families hear about camp from friends or relatives so the large number of new campers is thanks to the support of many of you.  Looking ahead to 2012, if you know families who might be interested in hearing about Kamaji, please let us know.  Referrals can be friends of yours, friends of your daughter’s, relatives from another city or business contacts.  We’re never get tired of talking about camp, so please send the names and contact information for anyone who may want to hear Kamaji’s story.   Thanks in advance for your help.

A Final Note of THANKS
Lastly, thanks to you for trusting us with your daughter.  We know what a leap of faith putting your daughter on that plane represents.  We promised you that we would treat your daughter as if she were our own.  We hoped we lived up to that promise.

We can only imagine how excited you will be to have your daughter back home. We wish your family the very best for the rest of the summer and the upcoming fall.  We hope that your daughter enjoyed herself as much as we enjoyed having her here.  We equally hope she’ll return for Kamaji’s 99th camping season.  “Boy, Oh Boy, What a Summer It’s Been!”

Campingly yours,

Mike, Kathy and Kat

Fifteen minutes into 4th period I wandered down to the lake to see if I could make myself useful.  As I walked down the waterfront steps, the first thing I noticed was how absolutely beautiful everything looked.  The blue of the water was matched by the blue of the sky.  I sat on the stone steps and scanned the lake.  Far to the left Kamaji’s pontoon boat was anchored with eight hopeful fisher-campers and two counselors.  Just a bit to the right, I could see nine Kamaji sailboats, some with their multi-colored sails.  Far offshore there was a kayak class and a Stand-Up-Paddleboarding class.  From a distance it’s hard to see the actual paddleboards so it looks as if the campers are gliding on the water.  Looking a bit to the right I noticed about 5 windsurfers who, as they skimmed Wolf Lake, caught the reflection of the sun in their sails.  And further to right I could see the Kamaji water-ski boats pulling campers in the distance.  All of these activities were taking place far off shore so it was impossible to see which campers and counselors were doing what.

That certainly wasn’t the case with a couple of activities taking place right in front of me.  On the swim docks Sarah Bronson and Mary Bauer, two swim instructors, were showing a group of campers how to jump in the water with rescue tubes.  I heard the counselors say, “I want each of you to practice that three times.”  The campers grabbed the tubes and put into action the instructions they had been given.  (By the way, Lifesaving is a new Kamaji class this summer.)  Right in front of me four campers were in  their first day of sailboard (windsurf) instruction.  Amy Moscowitz and Elizabeth Helzberg were in the water teaching the campers how to balance on the boards, pull up the sails and how to make the sailboards go in the direction they chose to go.  Mind you, while two instructors with four campers sounds like a great ratio, there is a wealth of directions to explain to each camper.  Nonstop instructions.  “Lean back and pull up the sail.  “Tip the sail back and you’ll turn to the right.”  “Evelyn, that was great! Now pull in your sail.  “Alicia, look at your mast.  Make sure it’s straight up and down.”  “Good job, now try to step around to the other side of the board.”  I had forgotten how hard sailboarding is.  There’s so much to learn and remember.

So, what were this director’s impressions after 45 minutes of sitting on the stone steps?

1.  I was “wow-ed” by the beauty of the entire scene.  With the floodlight of sunshine reflecting off the crystal blue waters and with all those sailboats, motorboats, kayaks, sailboards and paddleboards skipping across Wolf Lake,  it seemed like a choreographed ballet performance.

2.  I was grateful  there wasn’t a single boat on Wolf Lake that didn’t belong to Camp Kamaji.  We are very fortunate to have a lake with little/no outside boat traffic which creates a private lake of sorts.

3.  I was very, very impressed with all the wonderful instruction by Kamaji’s counselors.  During 4th period, a total of 26 counselors were helping 66 campers learn skills they will have for the rest of their lives.  If you happen to take a resort type vacation during the next year, your daughter may be able to teach you a thing or two.

4.  Perhaps my most lasting impression of that 4th period was of the counselors.  Wow. They take their responsibilities seriously.  And what a lot of responsibility they have!  Sixty-six campers learned new skills and did it under watchful, caring eyes.  If you were a visitor, you’d have a hard time telling the difference between the 16 year old Counselors-in-Training and the 24 year old college graduates.  They all looked like pros to me.

More later. . .

Mike

Other Camp News
As we wrote earlier, Sunday was Tribe Day.  You probably saw the hundreds of Tribe Day pictures on Smugmug.  Although the pictures tell a story all by themselves, we thought it might be helpful to explain how Tribe Day works.  After cabin cleanup, the campers dress in everything they can find in their tribe color.  (See Smugmug.)  Each tribe member spends the rest of the morning at three different instructional activities, however, these are not regular instruction activities.  For instance, in the canoe activity, three pairs of canoes were tied together at the sterns.  Then two campers from each tribe got into the canoes and they had a round robin canoe tug-of-war contest.  (See Smugmug.)  In paddleboarding, the campers paddled from the shore with cups of water on the paddleboard.  They had to fill up cans being held by counselors who were sitting in inner tubes in the middle of the lake.  (See Smugmug).  Tribe Day lunch is the traditional foot long hotdogs served at the waterfront.  The highlight of Tribe Day lunch is dessert, when we serve watermelon.  That may not sound like a big deal, but the fun begins when all the campers and counselors take their watermelon to the swim docks and proceed to spit the seeds into the lake.  (See Smugmug.)  Tribe Day afternoon activities are all on the waterfront.  There are swim relay races including  the traditional Peanut-Butter-Relay, where tribe members must swim with an open-faced peanut butter sandwich on their face.  There is the Put-Six-Tribe-Members-in-a-Canoe, Give-Them-Plastics-Buckets-and-Try-to-Swamp-the-Other-Five-Tribes’-Canoes event.  And so on.  (See Smugmug.)  After the afternoon Tribe Day activities, everyone went back to their cabins, changed from their swimsuits back into their tribe clothes and got ready for the Big Tribe Banquet featuring the traditional Tribe Banquet Ice Cream Sundae Buffet.  After the Tribe Banquet everyone headed down to the flagpole where we announced the results of Tribe Day.  We weren’t finished yet. Sunday ended with our weekly O’Naug She Nodin program.  Whew!  What a day.

On Monday morning, severe thunderstorms were in the forecast for most of the day.  We postponed the four scheduled Wilderness Trips and prepared some indoor activities for the campers.  Thunderstorms did rumble past us, but nary a drop of rain fell on Camp Kamaji all day.  Monday’s instructional program wasn’t interrupted at all, and we even were able to have the Wild West Night outdoor games.  At about 10:00 pm, after everyone was back in her cabin ready for bed, Kamaji was treated to a good old fashioned thunderstorm.  There was quite a lightning show and about 2 inches of rain fell in short order.  Of course, the rain ended by morning and by late Tuesday morning, the sun was out for good.

Today, Wednesday, is Kamaji’s last Adventure Day and the sky couldn’t be any bluer.  Have you ever been in an airplane at 35,000 feet and marveled at the color of the sky?  Well, that’s what you’d see if you were here with us today.  The Great Spirit continues to watch over Camp Kamaji.

Kamaji’s Wilderness Trip Program is still going strong after taking a Tribe Day break.  On Tuesday, Cabin 3 Porch 2 left for a four-day Voyageur’s National Park trip; Cabin 1 Porch 2 left for their three-day Upper Mississippi River trip and Nutshell Porch 1 left for their two-day adventure to Webster Lake.  In addition, the nine Pine Manor eight week campers left the shores of Wolf Lake in our 90 year old, 27 foot long “war” canoes to explore Cass Lake’s Star Island, which just happens to be where Camp Kamaji began in 1914.  Four other Pine Manor campers, who were unable to go on the Canadian canoe trip, also left on Tuesday for a two-day trip to Island Point.  Later this week, the eight week campers in Cabin 2 Porch 2 and the Cabin on the Hill will take a two-day trip to Cass Lake’s Norway Beach.  There will also be two overnight kayaking trips and a horseback riding overnight.  We’ll be camping right up to the end of the season.

Well, that’s it for now.  Time to go outside and play.  We recommend it to you, too.

Mike, Kathy and Kat

Kamaji’s Tribe Day was scheduled for Saturday. That’s a really big deal. Tribe Day is pretty wild. Campers spend the whole day dressed from head-to-toe in their tribe colors. They participate in all kinds of wonderfully fun noncompetitive activities and continuously cheer and sing tribe songs. When we went to bed on Friday we checked the weather forecast for Saturday. Not good. Rain on and off all day with the chance of severe weather in the afternoon. Not exactly good news for Tribe Day. We woke up early Saturday morning and checked again. Same forecast. It wasn’t raining yet, so our first thought was “wait and see”, but that really wasn’t an option. You see, Tribe Day has a special menu. Foot long hotdogs for lunch and the “Tribe Banquet” for dinner. And, don’t forget that Tribe Day also means spitting watermelon seeds in the lake after lunch. By 7:00 am, Marjena and the kitchen staff had to know if Tribe Day was “on”. Either they would start preparing the Tribe Day menu or get started on other meals. One more check of the weather. Rain and thunderstorms on Saturday and clear skies for Sunday. Tribe Day would have to wait one more day.

So what ended up happening? Well, despite the forecast, Saturday’s morning clouds gave way to afternoon sunshine. Regular activities continued all day as you can see by the Smugmug pictures. Saturday’s new menu meant an outdoor steak BBQ dinner which came off without a hitch. And the weather was wonderful for Saturday’s Council Fire. In other words, even the Weather Channel can’t compete with the Great Spirit when it comes to making sure Kamaji’s program goes off without a hitch.

Today is Sunday . . . and Kamaji’s bell just rang. Gotta get to breakfast where Tribe Day will be announced by the Tribe Leaders who will do so in some creative clever way.

Oh and the forecast: Another sunny, warm and dry day on tap.

By the end of the day we’ll have a few hundred pictures on Smugmug.

Got to go.

More later . . .

Mike, Kathy and Kat

Today is Adventure Day.   If you are a new Kamaji parent, you might be wondering, “What is Adventure Day?”  Let us explain.  Most days of the week, your daughter spends a good part of the day participating in four different instructional activities.  Because campers are programmed into activities individually, they don’t often find themselves with their porchmates during the instructional times.  That’s mostly a good thing.  Through the instructional activity program, campers meet and get to know a lot of different people because of shared interests.

But we digress – back to Adventure Day . . .

On Adventure Day, the porch groups spend almost the entire day doing things together.  After breakfast, the adventure begins with a big time cabin cleanup, including changing sheets and LAUNDRY.  Imagine trying to collect the entire porch’s week’s worth of dirty clothes, towels, sheets, etc, putting everything in huge laundry bags and carrying the huge laundry bags to the laundry room.  Whew!  Talk about an adventure!  Needless to say, this super cabin cleanup takes the campers and counselors a good portion of the morning.  After an early picnic lunch, the porch groups head off for a variety of activities.  Today’s adventures included a trip to Itasca State Park for the Nutshell (all three porches) as well as Cocoon and Tikinigan.  Itasca State Park is the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River.  Campers can actually walk across the river as it leaves Lake Itasca because the river is only about 7 feet wide.  Lake Itasca is beautifully breathtaking . . . and there’s has a wonderful beach.

For those cabin groups who elected to stay in camp on Adventure Day, porch groups could choose to go waterskiing, sailing, climbing on the wall, horseback riding, swimming, and playing softball.  Cabin 1 Porch 1 had the most unusual Adventure Day activity today.  The spent an hour giving three of Kamaji’s Rainbow Boys extreme make-overs. (See picture immediately below.)

Adventure Day’s dinner is always a Rainbow Burger Bar-be-que. After dinner, all the porch groups worked on their projects for the big Kamaji Kraft Fair to be held next week.  The second Adventure Day of second session was clearly a success.

Katie Thoresen, one of the counselors in Cabin 3 Porch 2, took her camera with her this afternoon and chronicled her porch group’s afternoon Adventure Day activities.  Those pictures are on Smugmug.

Here’s some other headlines from the past week.

The Weather Report

In a word — “Great.”  Temperatures remain near normal.  That means highs near 80 degrees and lows near 60.  Just like we advertised.  We have had some rain, but the National Weather Service has officially classified them as “Camp Director’s Showers”.  That’s a technical meteorological term for rain which occurs between 10 pm and 8 am.  Let’s hope there is more of the same in the days to come.

From the Health Desk

The medical news during the past week has been mostly good.  That’s not to say that there hasn’t been some colds, some bumps and bruises and a few rashes. The good news is that all of these ailments seem to take their course pretty quickly. Trust us, if your daughter has been treated for anything out of the ordinary, you would have received a call from us.  No news on the health front is good news.

Last Saturday, our friends Drs. Jeff Neil and Terri Inder returned home to hot, humid St. Louis and were replaced by Adam Blonsky.  Adam is a pediatrician from St. Charles, IL and dad to camper Jordan.  This is Adam’s fourth rotation as Kamaji’s Camp Doc. Adam, Lynn, son Ben and daughter Olivia will be here until this coming Saturday, when Adam’s place will be taken by Alan Braverman, a cardiologist from St. Louis.  This will be Alan’s 6th summer as the Kamaji Doc.

Trips, Trips and More Trips
Since our July 20th note, the Wilderness Trip Program has been running at full speed.  Cocoon has completed their 3-day canoe trip to Lake Andrusia.  Nutshell Porch 3 went on their 2-day Mississippi River trip and a combination of 4 week campers from Cabin 2 Porch 2 and Cabin on the Hill finished up their 3-day Crow Wing River trip.  On Monday, Cabin 4 Porch 1 left for their 4-day trip to Voyageur’s National Park and Cabin 3 Porch 1 left for their three day trip to the source of the Upper Mississippi River.

Tuesday’s big Wilderness Trip event was the return of the Canadian trippers who completed their week long White Otter Wilderness Area trip in northwestern Ontario.  It sounds as if they had a spectacular experience.

Today, Wednesday, the Hatchery girls headed off their big 2-day Adventure to Webster Lake and a group of eight lucky campers left for a three day rock climbing trip to the amazing North Shore of Lake Superior.  Tomorrow Nutshell Porch 1 is scheduled to head to Webster Lake and a group of advanced riders will trot down the road for an horseback overnight.  By the way, if you use the computer program “Google Earth”, you can visit all these places by clicking on the “My Places.kmz” .  You can also get a birds-eye view of Camp Kamaji.

Well, that’s about all for Adventure Day.  We hope your Wednesday was as full of adventure as ours.

Mike, Kathy and Kat

I don’t want to brag, but since many of you have been suffering through terrible heat, humidity and violent storms, I thought I’d start with a weather report.  Kamaji weather has been pretty great the past few days.  Thursday and Friday were glorious.  Bright blue skies, high temperatures around 80 degrees and lows in the sixties.  Perfect weather for camp. Saturday was cloudy and cool, but more on that later. The Sunday morning wake-up bell just rang and the sun is breaking out of the clouds.  The forecast is for sun and a high temp in the mid to upper 70′s. Jealous? We hope so.  And that’s the weather report from the shores of Wolf Lake.

We posted pictures on Smugmug taken during Thursday’s and Friday’s evening programs.  Thursday’s program was Shrek Night. As you could see from the pictures, the staff all dressed up in character.  (You probably noticed Will, the maintenance man, as Shrek.)  The campers had to follow clues which took them to different Shrek characters who then gave them parts of the Shrek story.  As with most of these evening programs, it’s the journey rather than the destination which is the most fun.

Friday was such a magnificent day that we couldn’t resist having Open Waterfront in the evening.  (A counselor hunt had been planned, but we’ll do that another night.)  Open Waterfront means that the campers can choose between swimming, kayaking, canoeing, sailing, paddleboarding, playing on the windsurf boards, going to the sandbar on the pontoon boat or going for a ski boat ride. As you can see from Smugmug, there weren’t any bad choices.

When we woke up on Saturday, every weather forecast warned of rain and severe storms all day long.  Bummer.  We quickly planned for some alternatives to the regular activity program. No problem there.  We’ll have Casino Night in the afternoon if it rains.  The biggest disappointment would be an indoor Council Fire program on Saturday night.  It’s just not the same sitting around an imaginary campfire in the lodge.  Anyway, those weather folks didn’t figure on the positive energy of the Kamaji campers and the Great Spirit.  Although we didn’t see much of the sun, it never rained.  Regular activities during the day, an outdoor bar-be-que chicken dinner and, most importantly, Council Fire where we could all watch “the fires leap toward the sky.”  Thanks, Great Spirit.

Before signing off, we invite you to take another look at the Smugmug pictures from Friday night’s  Open Waterfront.  When I put the pictures on-line, I couldn’t help but notice the huge smiles on the faces of the campers.  Whether they were playing in the water, balancing on windsurfing boards or just taking a ski boat ride, the campers seemed to be having the times of their lives. Look again.  I’ll bet those pictures will put a smile on your face, too.  Have a happy Sunday.  We will.

The breakfast bell is ringing.  It’s Sunday morning at Camp Kamaji and on Sunday we have Goo-eeeeey Rolls.  Got to go.

Mike, Kathy and Kat

This is the first “news report” of second session. We’ll be writing you every few days. Our hope is that between the “Smugmug” pictures and our ramblings, we hope you’ll have a good idea of what’s going on here at Kamaji. So, here’s a summary of the first few days of second session.

Saturday’s Opening Day came off almost flawlessly. Most flights were on time and the buses arrived at camp right on schedule at 5:00 pm. After dinner and a little time to unpack, it was time for a big game of John-Jacob-Jingleheimer Schmidt, followed by a trip or two down the famous Kamaji waterslide. The warm weather made the waterslide a very nice way to end Opening Day.

Sunday morning was warm and cloudy. While the 8 week campers participated in regular instructional activities, the newly arrived 4 week campers participated in health checks followed by the Kamaji swimming safety check. The plan for the afternoon was regular instructional activities for everyone, however, a pretty good summer rain led to a change. Porch groups spent about an hour in their cabins preparing lip-syncs which were then performed in the Lodge. The rain ended by dinner time, so Sunday night’s Tribe Initiation came off without a hitch. If your daughter is a first year camper, you should have already heard which tribe she is in.

Monday morning we distributed camp clothing and took those porch pictures you saw on Smugmug. Monday afternoon was the 2nd session kick off of Kamaji’s regular activity program. We posted more Smugmug pictures showing Monday’s activity classes. Monday’s evening program was Country Club Night. Campers dressed in their finest Country Club attire to play croquet, visit the club spa, and play golf on Kamaji course. At the end of Country Club Night, everyone gathered by the waterfront for a special ceremony to announce this session’s Tribe Leaders. And here they are. For the Ishkadays, Grace Miller and Alex Dorfman; for the Waubuns, Ariana Michel and Jordan Blonsky; for the Mundahmins, Olivia Morison and Talia Worth; for the Metigs, Julia Addis and Alexa Farris; for the Geshigs, Emma Stanicek and Sylvie Stolar; and for the Nanahtahgas, Erin Blumenthal and Amy Rogin. Congrats to them all!

As mentioned earlier, on Tuesday, we got a break from the heat. Regular instructional activities were the order of the day until late afternoon when we had a bit of rain. No worries. The Manor campers (who are all 8-weekers) organized a wild game of Pillow Case Bingo for all the other campers. The rain let up by dinner, so Monday evening’s Council Fire program was a big success.

As mentioned above, today is Adventure Day. It’s hot and humid and as we speak almost everyone in camp is now on or in Wolf Lake. That’s the place to be.

So, What’s New at Kamaji This Summer?
We’re glad you asked. A lot of new things greeted the 2nd session campers on Saturday. Two new instructional activities have been added since last summer. One is something called Stand Up Paddling or SUP. “What’s SUP?,” you might be asking. Well, you stand on this really big windsurf-looking board and paddle around the lake using a really long sort of canoe paddle. Well, we purchased 8 SUP boards and paddles this spring. Word is that SUP is the latest rage on the west coast and it was a huge hit with the campers first session. The other new activity, which also received rave reviews 1st session, is Mad Science. Mad Science is the brainchild of junior counselor, Becca Langsam, who spent the spring preparing camp-appropriate science experiments. Last session some of the Mad Science projects included making rainbows in a glass by layering liquids, making homemade lava lamps, making volcanoes, blowing up balloons using baking soda and vinegar and, a real favorite, making slime.

What else has changed at Kamaji? Well, Kamaji sailors have a brand new Yacht Club building and a new X-boat to sail. The climbing wall also got a complete make-over which adds about six new climbing routes. The pontoon boat, which is used for the fishing activity, has been torn down and reassembled. The biggest winter project was replacing Kamaji’s Swamp. The Swamp is where the men who work at Kamaji live. The old swamp was built in 1930 and sort of falling down the hill. We hope all these additions and improvements will make Kamaji better than ever..

Medical Report
Here’s the news from Kamaji’s Club Med. (Zzzzzzzzzzzzz) That’s great. It means that the campers are healthy. If you are new to Kamaji, you should know that Club Med is Kamaji’s health center. Club Med is staffed by Katherine, Sarah and Kelsey, Kamaji’s three nursing assistants and Kamaji’s camp doctor. This week  two, count them two, Camp Docs on duty. Terrie Inder and Jeff Neil, both pediatric neurologists from St. Louis and, more importantly, parents to camper Eliza Inder are staffing Club Med this week.. Our policy is to call you if your daughter is admitted for an overnight stay in Club Med or is taken to see a doctor or dentist in town. (We do NOT call if your daughter spends a few hours just resting in Club Med or if she visits for a scraped knee, sore throat, bug bite, applied band-aid or Tylenol request). Kamaji’s policy assures you that if your daughter receives anything more than routine health care you’ll hear from us. No health-related news is good news.

Out and About
Kamaji’s Wilderness Tripping Program is running at full speed. On Tuesday morning campers and counselors from Cabin 4 Porch 2 left for a 4 day trip to Voyageurs National Park on the Canadian border and Cabin 1 Porch 1 took off on a three day Upper Mississippi River canoe trip. Very early this morning, 7 Pine campers and 2 Kamaji Wilderness Trip Leaders set off for their seven day Canadian canoe trip to the White Otter Wilderness area north of Atikokan, Ontario. The White Otter is a huge wilderness area, where the Canadian trippers will paddle for hours in a row and portage their gear and canoes over long and rocky portages. They will see amazing scenery and wildlife and learn what a true wilderness experience is really like. Later this morning, Cabin 2 Porch 1 left for a three day canoe trip on the Crow Wing River and Tikinigin left Kamaji’s shores for their three day canoe trip to Lake Andrusia. We hope all the trippers have a wonderful time.

As mentioned earlier, it’s hot and humid today. Wolf Lake awaits. More later….

Mike. Kathy and Kat

AREA CAMPS PROVIDE YOUNGSTERS SUMMER ADVENTURE

Each of the questions were followed by a list of multiple choice responses.   The responses to where I live were limited to choices urban, suburban and rural . . . followed by list of states.  Now truth is I live in two different places: in the off-season I am a resident of suburban Clayton, Missouri but during the summer, I reside . . . at camp — which happens to be in a rural area in the state of Minnesota.  But Camp was not even a boxed option to check off!!

Ticking of the appropriate boxes,  I  clichéd myself as married and having two kids (both boys) and a very fat cat.  Easy enough to answer.   But those single-choice responses did not take into account that I am “mom” to over 300 girls  every summer   . . . at camp!!  And that I have an additional three cats and a dog (Marjena’s brood) plus Oreo and Patch (Kamaji caretaker Randy’s two dogs) who spend almost every day . . . at Kamaji.  And then there’s the 10 horses . . .  at camp.

And, yes, I have had education beyond my college days — went to grad school in fact (where, by the way, I first  met Mike).  But there was no choice for education other than in a school environment.  How limiting given how much other-than-book-learning I’ve acquired thus far in my lifetime.  Think of all the learning that takes place . . . at camp!

And while there was a huge variety of occupations to choose from — everything from A to Z — there was not one mention of working . . . at camp!!  In actuality I should  check off  teacher and dietician/food service manager and medical liaison and counselor and accommodations manager and business manager and sometimes photographer and  videographer and youth worker and stay-at-home mom (after all I am at camp — my home-away-from-home — all summer long with my 300+ ‘daughters’).   But again I was limited to checking off only one occupation . . . and, again, camp director was not one of those choices!!

And, okay, so maybe I am 39+ years of age in real life but I am young-at-heart . . . at camp!!  (You guessed it —  “young-at-heart” is not a choice option!!)

Baffled as to how to accurately respond, I wonder what, if anything, my college will do — once it has compiled all my limited-to-one-choice responses — with the information??  After all, I can’t even respond to most of the questions because whatever answer I choose won’t fully describe who I am!!  Bottom line is: I cannot fit in tiny boxes with labels attached (i.e., urban, rural, married, single, no children, some children, dogs, cats, young-middle-aged, middle-aged, verging-on-old-age,  college, post-college, doctor, lawyer, etc).

It is the sum of my total life experiences which shape who I am rather than some anonymous computer compiling labeled-limiting-data on me and likely then categorizing me according to some label.

Likely many of you know of what I write.  As far back as early grade school kids label one another according to a perceived social status — cool, sporty, brainy, nerdy, geeky, loser . . . which continues through high school with even more labels attached including boho,  indie, wannabe, jock, goth, tree-hugger, preppy, punk, straight-edge, skater, poser, scenester, etc. added to the list.

Labeling isn’t all bad.  Take for example Bill Gates, billionaire geek extra-ordinaire.  Because of him geek is chic.  But labels are not quite as simple as they may seem.  For example, if you play sports, get good grades, skateboard, and like to wear all black, are you a nerdy jock-skater who’s into goth or a skater goth-jock who’s a bit of a nerd?

Labels can negatively stereotype or be a source of pride and comfort.  Finding a group to identify with is sometimes an important part of the process of defining who you are.  But defining anyone solely by the way she looks, what she believes, what she likes or does or, in the case of my college questionnaire,  by  demographics — can be an insult to the many dimensions that make up a person . . . that make up me!

It’s important to look beyond labels (or, in the case of the questionnaire I received, beyond little square boxes).  There’s more to every individual than a single “label” or a few ticked-off boxes on a limited-to-one-choice-response generic questionnaire.

All I can say, is thank goodness for camp!!  Camp allows me to be whoever I want to be, how many whoever’s/whatever’s possible(!!) instead of simply a one-dimensional stereotype pre-defined by marital status, education, profession, etc. and categorized by someone else!!

As for my college questionnaire — I decided not to complete and submit it after all; instead I boxed it into my computer’s trash compactor!!r

by Kamaji Blogger Kathy Jay

K

Admittedly flattered by the comments,  I could not agree more about the euphoria of Kamaji’s campers.  Happy campers to the max!!

Oh-oh – not so fast!!  Google-searching the definition of happy camper, I learn that happy camper, while on the one hand implies satisfaction and contentment, on the other it is often used in a negative contradictory way.

No one is really clear as to  where happy camper, a phrase in use since 1983, originated.   It is thought that the expression came from a line delivered by Chevy Chase in the movie Vacation and was made more popular after former Vice President Dan Quayle (foolishly) used it in an address during a visit to American Samoa where he told his audience “You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.”

Regardless of where it originated, the expression happy camper is oftentimes used  in a way that contradicts the happy Kamaji campers seen on camp’s video!!

HAPPY CAMPER (noun): (1) a person who is pleased with the situation in which s/he finds him/herself.  Often used in the negative; as, the passengers left behind on the island were not a bunch of happy campers. www.thefreedictionary.com; (2) A person who is very pleased or content.  Example: When he saw the report card, he was not a happy camper.  Usually used with a negative www.dictionary.com (3) a person who is pleased or happy, — usually used in negative contexts.  It is not a group of happy campers that gets off the bus (Randon House Historical Dictionary of American Slang);  (4) to be satisfied, also “not a happy camper” is said to someone who looks unhappy. www.coolslang.com; and,  (5) a person who is very pleased (usually used with a negative): “He was not a happy camper after he lost his license”. www.dictionary.babylon.com.

(I guess then were I to apply the definition correctly from its meaning found in several dictionaries, I could safely say “Dan Quayle’s was anything but a “happy camper” given the ridicule targeted at him following that “wish-I-could-take-that-back” happy camper quote.)

In a word-or-two, happy camper, then, does not necessarily suggest what one would think.  If you get my meaning (pun intended).

Kamaji’s  campers,  who are anything but not happy campers are arguably so much more than simply “content” or “satisfied”  campers as well.

So what would be an appropriate expression describing those Kamaji campers who, in the Kamaji video, are bubbling over with  laughter, singing at the top of their lungs, playing happily with camp friends, smiling hugely, joyously living camp life large??? Given that happy camper with its negative connotation no longer seems fitting, I coin the expression Kamaji Camper.