Tom 

Tom & Jeremy here.  Every summer at camp, we take lots of car trips passed Donaldson's Farm.  It's located right behind the college.  They sell wonderful fresh fruit and homemade pies.   You can also go there for strawberry picking this time of year. 

 One thing they grow a lot of at Donaldson's is corn.  We always joke that you can tell which week of the summer it is by how tall the corn is. 

Today, we thought it might be neat to get out of the car and take some pictures.  We were thinking... why not check in on the progress of the corn each week.  You'll see how quickly it grows!  By the end of the summer it will be taller than the camp director. 

So check back every week this summer and see pictures as the corn  grows!  Well, guess we'd better get back to work.  Our returning staff arrives tonight to join us at camp.  Tomorrow begins their orientation and the new staff arrive on Sunday!  It's so exciting!

Jeremy & Tom

As some of you know, this is the week that Tom and I head up to camp and start setting up the camp office.  There's lots to do in order to make it ready for all the campers arriving on June 23rd so we've been pretty busy.  The leadership team arrives tomorrow and the rest of the staff start showing up a week later.  I'm actually in the middle of packing right now but I took a break when a friend of mine gave me a call to make plans to get together once I have a free weekend (not until July for me).  I've talked to a lot of my friends this week who I won't see for a while and went out for a fancy dinner with my wife yesterday.  I really get into being at camp when I am there and tend to miss a lot of what's going on in the "real world" during the summer.  Apart from saying, "see you later" to people in the real world... I must also say goodbye to people in the World of Warcraft.  Hee hee hee! 

When we're not out snowboarding or backpacking, my wife and I play an online game some of you may know about called the World of Warcraft.  It's a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMORPG for short).  It's a video game that takes place in a fantasy setting where you team up with other players against all sorts of adversaries.  Some of them are computer generated bad guys, but sometimes we also play in battles against other players.  Although it's a lot of fun, I don't have much time to play over the summer.

My character is Gubjub, the troll shaman.  According to wowwiki.com, a shaman is "Shamans are spiritual visionaries of tribes and clans. These gifted healers can see into the world of spirits and communicate with creatures invisible to eyes of normal beings. They are beset by visions of the future and use their sight to guide their people through troubled times. Although the shaman may seem wise and serene at first glance, he is a formidable foe; and when angered, his wrath is as fierce as those who have a connection to Eternals or nature."  But really, I mostly just throw lightning bolts at the bad guys. 

Vanessa plays Virika, the troll priestess.  "Priests are the masters of healing and preservation, restoring their wounded allies, shielding them in battle, and even resurrecting their fallen comrades. While they have a variety of protective and enhancement spells to bolster their allies, priests can also wreak terrible vengeance on their enemies, using the powers of shadow or holy light to destroy them. They are a diverse and powerful class, highly desirable in any group, capable of fulfilling multiple roles."  Thanks again, wowwiki.com!  Ain't she cute?

We play in the World of Warcraft as part of guild known as Resolve.  Resolve is a raiding guild.  That means we get together in groups of 25 players (!) and go up against the nastiest, toughest bad guys in the game!  We also run smaller raids (sometimes called instances) in groups of 10.  It's a lot of fun.  Even when we can't win against the bad guys, we'll keep at it and we keep trying.  For those of you who play, our current nemisis is the evil Lady Vashj! 

Resolve is a group of people from all over the country and all over the world.  We have players in Europe, Australia and Asia.  We talk and joke around over microphone headsets while we play.  Alright... I know it's a little geeky but we have fun.  Vanessa actually got really in to WoW while I was away at camp last summer. 

So anyway, I just thought this might be fun to tell you about.  Sometimes, I think we play too much and I am looking forward to doing all the fun stuff at camp.  Goodbye Resolve!  Goodbye World of Warcraft!  Hello Campus Kids!  It will be nice to be playing out in the quad and skateboarding out back. 

And if you're reading this Emma... I want a rematch in Spit!

See you all soon!
Gubjub the troll,
or Jeremy the assistant director of Campus Kids.

 With tears running down my face, I am writing to tell you that our dear friend Lou Brauner died yesterday.  He would have been 96 on July 8.

Lou had been a van driver for Campus Kids-NJ back in the days that we leased and drove our own vans to take kids to offsite activities and to pick up some of the campers who lived off the normal bus routes.  A professional school bus driver at that time, Lou filled his summers for about ten years working for Campus Kids.  However, he was so much more than just a driver to us.

Lou was the spirit of energy, life and friendship.  Camp meant a great deal to Lou and he was a very special friend to each of us.  Even after he no longer was able to drive, Lou came up to camp for visits, spoke at announcements to the campers and staff and managed in just a few hours to charm each person and to make yet another group of friends.

Lou had several careers during his long life.  Son of an immigrant Hungarian family living in Elizabeth, NJ and raised by his mother, Lou was fortunate that a friend of the family paid for him to go to camp as a youth.  He spent many years living in Cranford, during which time he was a butcher and then found a career at the Western Electric division of AT&T.  He had a wonderful family, including his daughter and her husband, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  Lou’s beloved wife Alice passed away the year before he found Campus Kids and he often reminded me that the joy of camp and his love of the campers and staff filled a huge void in his life.

Lou wrote faithfully for the “Sundial”, our camp newsletter.  His articles were poetic, philosophical and complex.  Yet they were simple in their expression of love for people and for life and for the appreciation of every moment that is given to us.

Many CK old timers will remember Lou’s powerful “lumberjack handshake” and I recall many times in the dining room when there would be a line of senior campers eager to see if they could hang on to Lou’s hand as he sawed back and forth.  Some very old timers will also remember how he got his nickname, “Cannonball Lou”.  He had gone to pick up a group on a day trip and they were swimming when he arrived.  He looked so eager to join them, that someone loaned him a pair of shorts (which were much too big for the ever-lean Lou) and he gleefully ran like crazy, jumped off the edge and performed a magnificent cannonball dive.  Pretty good for a granddad.

Many times at the end of a summer camp season, Lou traveled to Hungary to visit the scores of relatives he had there.  He was still fluent in the language and would bring what I would call “care packages” of clothing and other items that were not available in the country at that time.  His treasure trove included Campus Kids t-shirts and the summer’s worth of “Sundial” issues!  I can imagine him reading those aloud to all the relatives.

I recently spoke to Lou as he was in physical therapy, following open-heart surgery, and we made plans to celebrate his 96^th birthday at camp this summer.  He was really looking forward to being at camp for that party and, I’m sure, was already working on his speech to the campers and staff.  Lou never shied away from the limelight or the microphone.

For those of you who knew Lou, his daughter Carol says that Lou very specifically did not want a memorial service of any kind.  She asks, though, that we all raise a glass to “the memory of his wonderful life” on July 8.  It’s the least we can do to honor a dear friend and a life lived with a richness beyond any reasonable expectations.

I miss you, Lou.

Tom

P.S. -- Our web photo journalist of the past two years, Matt Lurrie, wrote a very nice piece about one of Lou's birthday visits to camp.  I share it here: http://www.campuskids.com/nj06/articles/Lou.htm

  Many people ask us how we get those terrific staff from other countries, known in camp as “the internationals”.

Well, unfortunately, Jeremy and I don’t get to fly all around the world looking for these wonderful people.  Somebody else does that for us, namely the authorized agencies who specialize in international camp counselor programs.  The U.S. State Department allows a certain number of non-U.S. citizens to enter this country with a J-1 Visa that specifically allows them to work as camp counselors in the U.S.  You may not realize that summer camp is a very American institution and, though there are camps in other countries, there is no other country that has the huge number of camps that we do.

We have selected two of the international camp staff agencies to be our representatives around the world.  They have offices in many countries, which recruit candidates and collect their applications, references, background checks, interview transcripts, etc.  The Campus Kids liaison at each agency looks through many hundreds of applications and presents to us the ones they think look best for our camp.  We then review each application and, if we like what we see (which isn’t always the case) we set up a phone interview with the applicant.

It can be tricky setting up an interview across time zones.  Sometimes I am interviewing an applicant when it’s Monday here and it’s already Tuesday afternoon there!  But we work it out and manage to have a good long talk to make sure that both the applicant and me agree that this would be a good match.

If we decide to offer the person a job then, after much cheering on their part, they get busy completing their visa paperwork, finalizing travel plans with their agency, and reading all about being a staff member at Campus Kids-NJ (on or website).

It’s a very exciting time that culminates in arrival day for the new counselors when we finally get to meet all the internationals in person, as well as our American counselors who have traveled in from all parts of the U.S.

Tom

So the Staples guys dropped off a big box of paper.  This can mean only one thing!  It's time to print the Sundial.  Although it's available for reading online, campers and families still love getting their paper copy of the Sundial in the mail.  So... staff assistants, get to work! 

Actually, there are no staff assistants during the "off season".  So Tom's given me a temporary promotion from assistant director to staff assistant! In all seriousness, a lot  of work goes into the Sundial.  First, we have have to collect and edit all the staff entries.  Then it's time to write up all the camper introductions (thanks to all who've sent in their welcome forms to tell us about yourself).  When I'm all done with layout, I send it over to Tom who does the final check for spelling and typos.  Then it goes up to website and the printing frenzy begins.

For those of you who've never seen it, we  use a big duplicating machine called a Risograph to make all the copies (that is, if Sara hasn't broken it).  After all the copies are printed, the real fun begins!  It's time to collate & staple!  Each run of the Sundial is 650 copies.  This issue was 8 pages long so printed out on 4 pieces of paper.   That's a grand total of 2600 pieces of paper and 1300 staples (one in the corner and one at the bottom after it's folded in half).

After a quick and easy trip through the postage machine, the Sundial gets dropped off at the Madison post office.  The postal workers assure us that the Sundial is their top priority and that our campers will get their copies in the next day or so! 

I can't wait to see you all at camp where there's plenty of professional staff assistants to do this work!  Just a few more weeks!

Jeremy