Summer Challenge Week Three: Summer Camp

Challenge #3: Summer Camp. In this interpretive challenge you are encouraged to remember your own memories of camp: what camp(s) did you attend? What activities did you do that you remember most? What were the people like? The scents, sounds, and tastes? What did you learn or make there?

Or, you can be inspired by the idea of camp and its activities to add some creative thinking and inspiration to your daily life. Return to “camp” by taking a class or seminar that lets you indulge in a subject that you love. If you don’t have time to attend “camp” as an adult, is there an activity that you can do this week that you learned at summer camp?

With this as your touchpoint, this week capture your memories of camp and the activities that you remember in detail. You can do this as a writing exercise, a camp inspired activity, or record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

While I owe much about what I know to education, I owe my knowledge of much of what I love to camp.

In the absence of school, camp is often the ruling activity of summer. In American pop culture summer camp evokes a camp-fire-esque rosy glow of an overnight camp with cabins by a lake. Traditional camps are still out there, but they are now joined by camps of every kind—from Apple camp to etiquette camp.

The roots of summer camp go back to the turn of the century, where the changing urban and suburban landscape, along with new protective labor and school attendance laws, meant that a generation of middle- and upper-class boys was facing a summer free of farm chores. At that time, the summer months were viewed, as camp director Henry W. Gibson, puts it, “as ‘a period of moral deterioration with most boys … who have heretofore wasted the glorious summer time loafing on the city streets, or as disastrously at summer hotels or amusements places.’" Summer camps gave boys a place to go in the summer months and be, well, boys. Camps for girls appeared around 1920, with a focus on arts and crafts rather than athletics. (1)

While my version of summer camp never meant a traditional sleep-away week in the wilderness, it did mean a wealth of activities focused around a theme. From PGA National junior golf camp to teen theater camp at the B.R.I.T.T. (the now closed Burt Reynold’s Institute of Theater Training in Tequesta, Florida), I have many memories from the diverse range of camps that I attended. These experiences at summer camp gave me a chance to indulge and explore the activities that I was passionate or curious about, and most importantly taught me that learning is something that happens all the time through new experiences.

One of my favorite summer camps took place the summer before fifth grade, when I attended the Bush Holley House Camp in Cos Cob, Connecticut. It is this camp that I attribute with my fascination for antiques and love of time travel (also known as the slightly less exciting sounding past time of visiting historic houses). When I think about the Bush Holley House Summer Camp it evokes the scent of box wood hedges and the brightness of sunlight highlighting the cracks in the boards of the barn.

I don’t have too many memories of the other campers or the camp counselors, but the activities are still vivid in my mind. Each day we would have a craftsman or historian talk to us about life in the 18th century and then we would recreate games and chores that children would have done in the house 200 years ago. I learned to dip candles, pull taffy, press flowers, and create my own tin pattern so I could be identified by my lantern. Already an avid reader, the stories about the house—how the British soldiers had come in the night, the family fleeing out the back door to hide in the grape vines—and the house itself (the front door still to this day wears the scar of a bayonet) captured my over-active imagination and created a love affair with history and storytelling.

All of this is inspiration for the third summer challenge: Summer Camp. This is a challenge that is open to interpretation. You are encouraged to remember your own memories of camp: what camp(s) did you attend? What activities did you do that you remember most? What were the people like? The scents, sounds, and tastes? What did you learn or make there?

Or, you can be inspired by the idea of camp and its activities to add some creative thinking and inspiration to your daily life. Take a class or seminar that lets you indulge in a subject that you love. If you don’t have time to attend “camp” as an adult, is there an activity that you can do this week that you learned at camp?

With this as your touchpoint, this week capture your memories of camp and the activities that you remember in detail. You can do this as a writing exercise, a camp inspired activity, or record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

1. Instrumental in writing this blog post was Slate’s article by Abigail Van Slyck, A Manufactured Wilderness, introducing the author’s book by the same name. Visit the article to see a great slide show of images from some of the first American summer camps.

Summer Challenge Week Two: Summer Jobs

Challenge #2: Summer Jobs. What summer jobs have you had? Which was your favorite and why? Which was your least favorite and why? Is there anything you have “taken with you” as a learning experience, or a story, from a summer job? Is there anything that you would never do again? Is there anything that you would like to do again? Who were the people you worked with? What were their habits? What were the sights, sounds, smells, and even tastes of that summer job? So often as adults we ask people, “what do you do?” Think about what you could learn if you asked, “What summer jobs did you have?” With this as your touchpoint, this week capture your memories of either a cherished or loathed summer job and the people and place that made up the environment. You can do this as a writing exercise, or record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Although not on my original list, this challenge was inspired by an in-class writing exercise from the Summer Workshop for Returning Writers that I’m taking, taught by Julia Thacker. She was, in turn, inspired by author Aimee Bender’s monthly writing exercise on her website. I thought that it was too good a summer challenge to not share.

I find summer jobs infinitely interesting and a wealth of great sensory and plot details. With their seasonal beginning and end, they are not unlike short stories. With a summer job we get to experience people and tasks (and sometimes even places) that we will most likely not see or do again (much to some people's relief).

Summer jobs are often filled with a creative cocktail of repetitive activities and really interesting people which is ideal for creating “sticky” and interesting details. For instance, my brother worked at the record store at the mall one summer, and if I remember correctly, his manager spent a great deal of time sleeping under the desk in the back. My sister worked in the sundries shop at a local hotel and had stories that covered the spectrum from wedding nights
gone wrong to strange conversations with even stranger guests.

While not my first summer job, the most vivid of them—my time hostessing at Chuck & Harold’s on Palm Beach, the summer after my freshman year at BU—was the first to come to mind for the in-class writing exercise and I have placed it below to share.

Summer Job 1997

In June, on Palm Beach, it rains at least twenty-eight days out of the thirty in the month. From the hostess stand at Chuck & Harold’s, I would watch the sheets of it fall every afternoon like clockwork. Sweeping in from the west, it would come as a downpour, flooding the street and knocking down husks from the palm trees lining Flagler Drive. It would end just as abruptly, leaving the evening air smelling humid and lush.

When the rain began, the busboys would unroll the plastic curtains around the outside tables that lined the sidewalk. When the curtains were rolled back it signaled a shift change. The daytime staff would take off their aprons and finalize tips with managers. While the evening servers and night managers would arrive, straightening ties, and tying on their aprons. The tables would be reset and the menus would change from brunch and lunch, to early bird special and dinner, the paper would sometimes still be warm from the printer in the back office.

I would take my break and eat conch chowder and a fresh, warm roll out in the courtyard behind the kitchen. When I returned to the front, the parrots would be on the power lines outside the post office with their loud calls and the first of the early bird diners would descend, elderly and frail with dispositions that belied their looks.

A veteran waiter once told me that he believed people are at their worst before eating. By the end of the summer, I felt that I had enough anthropologic evidence to back up his theory. One event, resulting from a busboy hazy with purpose while wooing one of the younger waitresses, hastily cleared a table without watching where he wiped the crumbs. When I arrived to seat a party of four, one of the men said to me, while shaking a liver-spotted pointed finger, “You can brush the crumbs off that chair or buy me a new suit.” Evenings that began like that signaled a long night.

The afternoons, though, when it rained and the only customers were the trust fund bachelors who would come in and sit at the bar, greeting the entire staff by name, were slow and good for daydreaming. I would answer the phone, take reservations and, in-between calls, write lines of poetry on scraps of paper with the thick waxy pencil from the hostess stand. It was my favorite time of day—the dining areas set and expectant, the rain moving east, out to the ocean, and the summer stretching ahead feeling slow and infinite in the moment—safe with the promise of another semester of college on the horizon.

*****

All of this is inspiration for the second summer challenge: summer jobs. What summer jobs have you had? Which is your favorite and why? Which is your least favorite and why? Is there anything you have “taken with you” as a learning experience from a summer job? Is there anything that you would never do again? Is there anything that you would like to do again? Who were the people you worked with? What were their habits? What were the sights, sounds, smells, and even tastes of that summer job? So often as adults we ask people, “what do you do?” Think about what you could learn if you asked, “What summer jobs did you have?”

With this as your touchpoint, this week capture your memories of either a cherished or loathed summer job and the people and place that made up the environment. You can do this as a writing exercise, or record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Summer Challenge Week One: The Beach

Challenge #1: The sea-side has its own unique culture, and can be evoked in many ways, through colors, textures and scents, or even through sounds or activities. This week you are encouraged to use as a point of inspiration the beach, especially the experience of going to the beach and your beach related memories. (If you have never been to the beach you can do this exercise with a local swimming spot or lake-side destination.) Key to this challenge is considering: What sensory experiences make up your memories or sense of being at the beach? What memories of the beach do you have? Who are you with? What does the beach mean to you (or even represent)? How is the beach you go to unique from other beaches? Relaxation and play are key ingredients for creative thinking—if the beach is not near, is there a way to evoke a “life’s a beach” frame of mind? With these as your touch-points, this week capture your memories of the beach or, if possible, plan an ocean-side Artist Date. Record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts and share here on The Paper Compass.

Growing up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, our family tradition was to go to the beach every Sunday, where we would sit in a large group with my dad’s family—my grandparents, my aunt and uncle and cousins—and sometimes other families that our parents were good friends with. As a kid, nothing was better than Sunday mornings on the beach, building sand castles, listening to the adults talk and laugh, and spending hours jumping off the low wall from the parking lot into the soft sand. On the way there, my parents would always pick up a dozen doughnuts, and sometimes even Munchkins. Jelly doughnuts were my favorite even if it was sometimes difficult to distinguish sandy finger prints from granulated sugar. (To this day though, I still crave Dunkin Donuts on Sunday mornings.)

My grandfather was always one of the first people to go in the ocean, no matter how cold. I remember that he had a special pair of rubber-bottomed, net shoes that he would wear in the water so that he would not cut his feet on the barnacles on the rocks. My dad and I would go out to meet him, my dad helping me past the waves. We would join Grandpop where it was just deep enough for me to not be able to touch. I would bob under the surface until I could push myself back up with my toes and doggy paddle, circling my dad. Grandpop would float on his back in the water for long stretches of time, his net shoes pointing up toward the sky.

At the end of the day, we would go back to my dad’s white Volkswagen bus (the same kind you see in grainy pictures of Woodstock) and slide back the door and the heat from the summer day would roll out at us like an invisible wall of fire. The white naugahyde seats would be so hot that they’d burn the back of your legs. We would cover every inch of them with towels, now damp and sandy. Then we would climb in and roll the windows down one struggling crank at a time, and slide the back windows open as far as they would go. On the drive home the wind would dry your skin leaving a film of ocean salt and sand.

The beach and summertime have always gone together in my life, with the exception being the decade that we lived in Florida. Even then though, the beach with its breezes was a least a place to take refuge from the humidity, the sun and heat being inescapable. For many, going to the beach, for a day or a week, represents a summer tradition. It is a destination cultivated around sunlight, heat and free time.

Being at the beach contains a certain liberation from daily life unlike other destinations. It is a location that invites you to breathe deep, take in the vast uninterrupted expanse of the ocean, and partake in two traditional beach behaviors: relax or play. In a way, the beach encompasses all of the most treasured values of summertime.

The beach is also rich in sensory experiences that make our memories of it very powerful and evocative. Luckily much of what gives us a sense of place at the beach has to do with things that to this day remain unchanged, making it easy to evoke memories through something as simple as the scent of suntan lotion, a salty breeze, or even certain colors.

All of this is inspiration for the first Summer Challenge: The Beach. The sea-side has its own unique culture, and can be evoked in many ways, through colors, textures and scents, or even through sounds or activities. This week you are encouraged to think about or use as a point of inspiration, the beach—especially the experience of going to the beach and your beach related memories. (If you have never been to the beach you can do this exercise with a local swimming spot or lake-side destination.) Key to this challenge is considering: What sensory experiences make up your memories or sense of being at the beach? What different memories of the beach do you have, who are you with? What does the beach mean to you or even represent? How is your beach unique from other beaches? Relaxation and play are key ingredients for creative thinking—if the beach is not near, is there a way to evoke a “life’s a beach” frame of mind?

With this as your touchpoint, this week capture your memories of the beach or, if possible, plan an ocean-side Artist Date. Record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts and share here on The Paper Compass.

PS. The image for this post is a painting that my dad created. It is much enjoyed in my family for its open interpretation of the image: either a calm sea with a breaking wave in the foreground or when flipped upside-down a sea with menacing sky.

2011 Summer Challenges Commence! Tapping into a Season of Creative Experiences

Summer has arrived. Through the open windows come the sounds of lawn mowers. In the evening, the soft murmur of voices punctuated by laughter as neighbors sit on their porches and talk late into the night. The light lingers, and only by nine o’clock can the first stars be distinguished in the sky. The heat comes, tanning skin, dampening brows, and making the fans work hard through the still afternoons.

This is my favorite time of year. There is something special in the long days, the slow heat, and the sense of extended time that lends itself to creative exploration, awareness of the moment, and playfulness. As I wrote last summer, summertime seems a season where the veil between the past and the present becomes translucent. Memories rise to the surface like ice cubes in a glass of lemonade, clinking together, gently reminding you of things long forgotten or of the origins of traditions still carried out. This point of memory is a wellspring of ideas that can foster new creative endeavors or add kindling to on-going ones. Summer also gives us a feeling of there being time to relax, and creativity always blossoms when you have time to daydream.

Summer Challenges began last summer, inspired by a vague memory that turned into a weekend project to reacquaint myself with a pack of Big League Chew, a gum I hadn't had since I was about ten. From this simple adventure developed some great moments of inspiration and re-connection to many other memories (and some old friends). In the eight weeks of the Dog Days of Summer last year, we explored Candy, Books, Ice Cream, Sunrise, Sunset & High Noon, Spontaneous Play, Wanderlust, Adventures, and Alfresco as touch points for remembering and creating.

I hope that you will join us for another eight weeks of Summer Challenges. We will be exploring a number of new topics, such as Camp and The Beach, as well as many more. These posts are inspiration points for exploration to jump start creative thinking (or even an Artist Date.) They can be interpreted in many ways, and “captured” creatively through any medium from writing and painting to photography to a brief sketch. Whether they inspire you to a completed piece, point you to a long lost memory, or are noted as an idea for later use, I hope that you will share some of your experiences and work in the comment section after each post.

Happy creating!