Analysis: Summer Camp Stories, Then and Now
Lynn Neary, NPR
NOTE: The following is a transcript of a July 08, 2004, broadcast of NPR. To listen to the broadcast, click here.
LYNN NEARY, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington, sitting in for Neal Conan.
There's a subculture in American society that you may not know much about. Members of this group share old rivalries, secret songs and memories of mosquito-infested nights in the woods and mountains. These are the veterans of overnight summer camp. For some, the experience was a nightmare of homesickness and social torture. For others, it was a peak life experience where they learned independence along with skills like canoeing and archery and, in some cases, had their first experience with young love. Many of these veterans enjoy lifelong friendships.
Our very own Susan Stamberg is one of these stalwart veterans, and she joins us today to talk about her summer camp experience. Did you go away to sleep-away camp? And if so, did you love it or hate it? Do you remember your favorite campfire story or song, your best or worst experience? We're looking for camp stories, so give us a call. Our number here in Washington: (800) 989-8255; that's (800) 989-TALK. And our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg is with me now in Studio 3A.
Susan, now I understand you had a mini-reunion last night with some of your summer camp friends from Camp...
SUSAN STAMBERG (NPR Special Correspondent): Ponemah, Happy Land for Girls(ph). And yes, we did. But, Lynn, we're talking about camp; I came prepared to talk about nuclear physics here, you see. What are we doing?
NEARY: Oh, I'm so sorry, Susan.
STAMBERG: Yeah. It's a big disappointment.
NEARY: Can you make that switch?
STAMBERG: I'll try.
NEARY: OK. All right, then. Now the friends that you met with last night--these are people you met in camp. Dare I ask how long ago that might have been?
STAMBERG: If you promise not to gasp, I will tell you that I started going to Camp Ponemah, Happy Land for Girls in Kent, Connecticut, in 1947.
NEARY: Wow.
STAMBERG: And I went there for 13 years, on and off, first as a camper and later as a counselor. And these two friends--and we get together--we all--everybody lives in the Washington metropolitan area. So we need our Ponemah fix, and we get together about every month and a half over girls' dinner, where we do the skits--you're not going to believe this, Lynn--we sing the songs; we have a wonderful time. One of these women, Jane Wise Pierce(ph), was a camper of mine. I was her counselor. The other one, Bobbi Davis Miller(ph), she and I began as campers together around the age of nine, and then we were counselors together years later. So these are long friendships.
NEARY: Now are these some of your oldest friendships, then?
STAMBERG: They must be, must be.
NEARY: What is it about--I've heard this from other people who have gone to sleep-away camp, which I never did...
STAMBERG: Yeah.
NEARY: ...that somehow you forge really special friendships there.
STAMBERG: Well, so many things, but particular--I guess I'd better speak personally. Two things about me; one, I'm an only child, so this was such a rare opportunity to learn about living with other people. You know, you were in a cabin. There were four other people there, and you needed to know how to get along with them. So that was one big piece of it. The other is, I grew up an only child in Manhattan, so all I knew was concrete. I thought that every tree had a little stone wall that grew around the bottom of it. And until I got to Camp Ponemah, Happy Land for--we could all say it together--Camp Ponemah, Happy Land for Girls...
NEARY: I can't possibly say it as well as you do, Susan. It's very practiced on your part.
STAMBERG: ...in Kent, Connecticut--it was the first time I ever realized that trees don't come with those little walls, and they could grow in giant clusters and in forests.
NEARY: Now wait, when you first got there you were nine, I thought you said.
STAMBERG: I was nine. Awww.
NEARY: Well, were you a little bit nervous at all...
STAMBERG: Oh. Oh.
NEARY: ...about all this nature...
STAMBERG: Yeah.
NEARY: ...and being away from your parents and all that?
STAMBERG: Everything. I sobbed my heart out every night at camp until two nights before the end of that first season. This was a two-month sleep-away camp. And then I sobbed because I was going to have to leave. And after that I came back every year, so sure I was nervous. And then these trees--I mean, unbridled, there they were. Yeah. But it didn't take very long.
NEARY: Were you truly deep in nature? I mean, is it really a true deep-nature kind of experience?
STAMBERG: Yeah. No electricity in the cabin, no running water in the cabin. They were cabins, and when it rained, you pulled a canvas curtain across the windows and you had to go down a little boardwalk to the facilities, and you brought in pitchers filled with water and poured them in basins in order to brush your teeth. So it was pretty rugged. Yes, we were--that was with nature, I think.
NEARY: Susan, while we still have you, we want to take a call from Jordan in Cleveland, Ohio. Hello, Jordan.
JORDAN (Caller): Hi.
NEARY: Go ahead.
JORDAN: Hello, everybody. I'm a big camp aficionado. I went to Camp Moshavah in Wild Rose, Wisconsin. I grew up in about 11 different cities in my life before I was 18 years old, and I was one of these kids that fell into the `Camp is real life' category as opposed to school.
STAMBERG: Yeah.
JORDAN: School was the fiction. You lived your entire year just to get up to camp. And I went to Moshavah for about 12 years, and during that time I grew from being a camper into being a staff member and eventually running the whole camp, being what we call Rosh Mosh, which in Hebrew means the `head of the camp.'
STAMBERG: Oh, boy. `Big honcho,' that means.
JORDAN: And in 1995--and I hope my wife isn't listening, because if I got the year wrong I'm in deep trouble--I took all of my old camp friends up to Camp Moshavah for one last bachelor weekend.
STAMBERG: Oh.
JORDAN: It was about 104 degrees. We didn't shower the entire weekend which, by the way, as you know, is a badge of honor in camp. And we had the best time. The only problem was, on Sunday morning, we were supposed to leave camp at about 6 in the morning and drive from possibly Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to Milwaukee, take off on a flight and be on time for the 2:00 wedding. They canceled our airplane. So...
STAMBERG: Oh, Lord.
JORDAN: ...we had to spend the next few hours scrambling around the Milwaukee airport trying to find a way to get me, the groom, to my wedding in Cleveland, Ohio. Needless to say, what--my wife didn't know what was going on, because our friends and relatives who were already in Cleveland were smart enough to know that she was a little bit hesitant about letting me go to this thing in the first place, that if she knew that I was trapped in the airport and couldn't get to the wedding, that would have been the end of things.
NEARY: But it all ended happily.
JORDAN: Thank God, it ended happily; three children, 10 years of marriage. We just celebrated our anniversary.
NEARY: And are those kids all going to sleep-away camp, by the way?
JORDAN: They are not old enough yet, but we are all going together. In six days we are leaving for Wild Rose, Wisconsin, where my wife will be the camp mother. I will be the camp father. So we continue the tradition.
NEARY: All right. Thanks so much for calling, Jordan.
STAMBERG: That's great.
JORDAN: Thanks for the discussion. Be well.
NEARY: Very dedicated. Now, Susan...
STAMBERG: Yeah.
NEARY: ...I'm not going to ask you if you remember your camp song, because I know you do...
STAMBERG: Oh, many of them.
NEARY: And...
STAMBERG: How much time have you got?
NEARY: We actually have a recording...
STAMBERG: Oh, yes.
NEARY: ...with you and your friends from your reunion last night. Maybe you could tell us who we're going to hear now.
STAMBERG: Yeah. You'll hear Jane Wise Pierce, Bobbi Davis Miller, and we had a lovely dinner someplace in Washington, and then went where our cars were parked at the Giant supermarket lot, stood in the back of the parking lot and recorded these songs for you.
NEARY: Let's hear that.
(Soundbite of recording)
STAMBERG, Ms. JANE WISE PIERCE and Ms. BOBBI DAVIS MILLER: (Singing, to the tune of "All Through the Night") Camp Ponemah on the hilltop, all hail to thee. Thou hast giv'n us happy hours, joyous and free.
STAMBERG: Uh-oh, here's the hard part.
STAMBERG, Ms. PIERCE and Ms. DAVIS: (Singing) Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. So we now in happy chorus all hail to thee.
(Soundbite of laughter)
STAMBERG: I think it needs work.
Unidentified Woman: I do, too.
NEARY: So, Susan, no singing lessons at this Camp Ponemah for girls, I take it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
STAMBERG: I think it needs work.
NEARY: Now do you have a favorite memory from camp that you'd share with us, or a campfire story or campfire moment that you can remember?
STAMBERG: Yeah. They used to play mean tricks on us, and you'd think I wouldn't have been so gullible. I mean, I was probably 20. They said girls, including counselors, were all going on snipe hunts. And what you--have you ever heard of a snipe hunt? Probably not, Lynn.
NEARY: No, I haven't.
STAMBERG: Well, what you do is you go out in the woods and we spread you around, and each of you sits at the base of a tree in the total pitch dark. You may have a pack of matches, but no flashlight, and you will hold a paper bag. And you will light your matches periodically, and when a snipe flies towards you, you will catch it in the bag. I sat there, Lynn, for four hours. They had to come get me. Other campers and counselors, you know, packed it in way ahead, but not me. They had to come and find me in the woods, sitting like an idiot with a match and a paper bag. That was it.
NEARY: Well, Susan, thanks so much for being with us today.
STAMBERG: Oh, pleasure.
NEARY: NPR's Susan Stamberg. And we were, of course, joined by her friends from camp--let me see if I'm going to say this right this time--Ponemah for girls.
STAMBERG: Very good.
NEARY: Could you say that again, Susan?
STAMBERG: Yeah. Well, you forgot the `Happy Land.' Ponemah--comma--Happy Land for Girls.
NEARY: Thanks so much, Susan.
STAMBERG: Pleasure.
NEARY: Of course, most of us when we think of summer camp do think of that traditional overnight variety, the kind of place in which days are a bustle of lakeside activities and nights teem with bedside chatter. Buzz Ebner is the owner and director of Camp Awosting--and they're all hard to pronounce, for some reason. That's one of the oldest traditional sleep-away camps in the country. He's also the director of Camp Chinqueka, which his family has operated since the 1950s. Both camps are in Connecticut. And he joins us by phone from his office in Litchfield, Connecticut.
Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.
Mr. BUZZ EBNER (Owner and Director, Camp Awosting and Camp Chinqueka): Hello, Susan. How are you?
NEARY: This is Lynn, and Susan has...
Mr. EBNER: Oh, Lynn. OK.
NEARY: ...gone on to other duties now, but...
Mr. EBNER: OK.
STAMBERG: My camp was near Litchfield.
NEARY: But she tells me that her camp was near your camp. But...
Mr. EBNER: I was listening online and I heard the Ponemah name, and it's ironic because I attended many Ponemah socials that the--Awosting, which was a boys' camp, used to get together with Ponemah, which was just about 20, 25 minutes down the road. And she mentioned Bobbi Davis; I was a camper with her brother, Winchie Davis(ph), at our camp. So we have many connections.
NEARY: All right. We have...
Mr. EBNER: We know each other.
NEARY: We have the camp connections going on here.
Mr. EBNER: Right.
NEARY: Now how long has your family been in the summer camp business?
Mr. EBNER: Well, my dad started when he was in college back in the late '20s, early '30s, and was advised by him--well, 1929, the crash, and jobs were tough; he was getting into the teaching field, and they said, you know, `Ebner, you need to get a job in a camp and that'll get you a job teaching.' So he started in--I think it was a Westchester recreation camp up on the Hudson, and would up with Camp Awosting in the '30s. And...
NEARY: Well, what was camp like back then compared to the way it is now? Could...
Mr. EBNER: Well, from the stories that, you know, he relayed to me and, of course, as a camper in the '40s and '50s, camp was a lot of field sports--you know, baseball, softball, basketball; a lot of hiking, nature work and, of course, swimming, sailing, canoeing on the waterfront. And those were the basics of camping and being, you know, out next to nature, enjoying, you know, the open air and nature.
NEARY: Is that pretty much the way it still is? Or...
Mr. EBNER: No, it's greatly changed from the camps 50 years ago. As Susan had mentioned, you know, there were no electric facilities in any of the bunks. There were no bunks. You had flashlights. We did have kerosene lamps. We had a kerosene lantern outside of each bunk and we had kerosene lamps in the dining room to eat dinner by. And the chef cooked meals over wooden stoves that they fired up and 4 or 5:00 in the morning. And, you know, we also had a central facility for--there were no plumbing facilities in any of the cabins, so yeah, you washed in a central area. We didn't have dishpans or anything to wash in. They had, like, oh, a battery of faucets that--you just, you know, walked up, took your turn, like in the barracks.
NEARY: So it's not quite so rugged anymore, then, you're saying.
Mr. EBNER: No, it isn't.
NEARY: And are there more things being taught now at camp? Are there different kinds of skills or...
Mr. EBNER: A lot more. I know my dad, back in the late '50s, early '60s, started to bring in motorized sports--minibikes and go-carts. Woodworking was always a program in our camp and has been popular, and, of course, that was his field of teaching and education, as it was mine. So it's been a strong program to continue. But we've also brought in video filming and photography, computers. We have ceramics and we just introduced in the last couple of years mountain boarding, and also brought in the adventure programs with the climbing towers and zip lines and...
NEARY: Oh, right, of course. You've got to have that, don't you?
Mr. EBNER: Yeah, that's a big one with a lot of the camps these days. And...
NEARY: But do you still have canoeing and archery?
Mr. EBNER: We still have canoeing and archery, yes. About the only program that we have deleted, which was a real staunch program--everybody loved it--was riflery.
NEARY: Uh-huh.
Mr. EBNER: And for obvious reasons--you know, guns and children, parents are just not too kind with anymore, so we saw the light and said, you know, `It's time to disband with that.' We never had an accident. We always thought it was a well-run program. But...
NEARY: Well, Buzz, we're going to take a short break right now.
Mr. EBNER: ...time has run out.
NEARY: We're going to take a short break, Buzz.
Mr. EBNER: OK.
NEARY: And when we come back, we'll take some calls. We're talking about summer camp, what makes it so memorable, how it's changing. We want to hear from you. Call in and share your memories of camp, good or bad. And if you work at a camp, tell us about your experience. The number, (800) 989-TALK. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
NEARY: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington.
We're talking about summer camp, why we love or hate them. Our guest is Buzz Ebner, the owner and director of Camp Awosting, one of the oldest continuously operating private camps in America; also Camp Chinqueka, which is family has owned since the 1950s.
Buzz, am I saying those names correctly?
Mr. EBNER: You're doing very well, Lynn.
NEARY: All right. Good.
Mr. EBNER: The Indian names are tough to pronounce sometimes.
NEARY: They certainly are. You're invited to join our discussion. Give us a call at (800) 989-TALK, and our e-mail address is totn@npr.org. And we are now going to go to Martha, and she is in Arizona. Hi, Martha.
MARTHA (Caller): Hi. I'm right next to Ft. Huachuka, which has been in the news lately.
NEARY: And I wasn't going to dare say that name, so...
MARTHA: I went to summer camp in 1933 at the age of 11. It was in the depths of the Depression, and it was an extremely upscale camp. It was Camp Trail's End near Lexington, Kentucky. And my parents negotiated $75 for the entire two months.
NEARY: Wow.
MARTHA: And I was with some really, really upscale women, young women, who pretty much ignored me. And we were on the banks of the Kentucky River, where I learned to swim. Sally Blanding(ph) was the head counselor, and she later was Dr. Sarah Blanding(ph), who was president of, I believe, Barnard College.
NEARY: Huh, that's interesting. Now listen, when you say that you were pretty much ignored by some of these girls--sounds like they were kind of snobby--did you have a bad experience socially with that? Because I understand that certainly can happen sometimes.
MARTHA: Oh, no. You know, they ignored me and I ignored them, but there was so much going on and the days were so well filled that, you know, it wasn't a difficulty. It was just something that more or less, in retrospect, I was later able to see.
NEARY: Do you look back on it as a really good and...
MARTHA: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And at the end of the camp, we took a three-day barge trip down the Kentucky River. We probably didn't go more than 30 miles. And they showed us how to--that was before sleeping bags, or before we had them, and they showed us how to fold our bedrolls. And after each meal, the barge stopped and we got off and we washed our tin plates and cups in the sand.
NEARY: All right. Well, thanks so much for your call, Martha.
MARTHA: It's been a pleasure.
NEARY: All right. While traditional sleep-over camps are still popular, kids nowadays can choose from a long list of programs. Math camps, music camps and fat camps are among the many. Recently added to the roster are camps which prepare kids for the arduous process of applying to college. The Brighton Foundation, based in Pasadena, California, offers one such program. Joining us now from his home in Santa Rosa, California, is Andrew Froug(ph), a rising high school senior and recent graduate of Brighton.
Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION, Andrew.
Mr. ANDREW FROUG (High School Senior): Thank you.
NEARY: Maybe you could describe what this camp was like, how the program worked.
Mr. FROUG: Well, basically, we spent nine days in UCLA, and they prepared us for college with, you know, SAT tests, ACT tests. We had a specialist in all kinds of different areas, like writing, counseling, interviewing. And we got to really have the college experience while learning how to get into a college like UCLA.
NEARY: Now was this your idea to attend this camp?
Mr. FROUG: Actually, it was my aunt's.
NEARY: Uh-huh.
Mr. FROUG: Because her daughter went to Punahou High School in Hawaii, and that's, you know, a very good high school, but unfortunately, I go to public high school which doesn't have the resources to hire counselors to help us with that. So she told us about their Web site, brightonedge.org, and I checked it out and I thought it would be good because I really didn't feel like I had the tools at that point to get into a good college.
NEARY: So did you want--you wanted to go to this camp.
Mr. FROUG: I did. I wanted to go at first. You know, before the camp started, I was really resisting and I was nervous about it--you know, making new friends, you know, away from home for a week and probably having a hard curriculum. And I resisted, but I'm glad I went.
NEARY: Now it was nine days. It was an overnight camp. What did you learn besides how to get into a college?
Mr. FROUG: Well, I really learned what college life was like on campus, I think, because we did stay at the Saxon Suites, which is a dorm on the UCLA campus. And I really felt like I was able to learn how to manage my time. We were given, you know, assignments outside of class and we had to go down to the computer lab and, you know, work on them and learn, you know, to make friends. And it was a very different experience than anything that I'd ever had before.
NEARY: Was it all work and no play?
Mr. FROUG: I wouldn't say that at all. The first few days were a bit intense, but after that it got to be pretty fun.
NEARY: Because I was going to say, if you didn't have any good sort of fun times, then it wouldn't be exactly like college, I don't think.
Mr. FROUG: Oh, no, no, no. No, it was very enjoyable. At the end, you know, we got to go down to Westwood, the coast. I got to see "Spider-Man 2," which I've been dying to see. And, you know, we had a dance party at one point, which was fun. And it was very enjoyable.
NEARY: Now was this your first and only camp experience, or had you had another kind of camp experience besides this one?
Mr. FROUG: You know, I hadn't really done anything with any camps before, so this was a new experience. And, you know, this was so much fun I think I might try something like this in the future.
NEARY: All right. Well, thanks so much for being with us, and good luck getting into college, Andrew.
Mr. FROUG: Well, thank you very much.
NEARY: Andrew Froug is a recent graduate of the Brighton Foundation, a nine-day camp which helps kids with the college admission process. And he joined us from his home in Santa Rosa, California.
We are talking about the camping experience, the overnight camping experience, specifically. Give us a call at 1 (800) 989-8255.
And there's an e-mail here. It says, `I had many camp experiences. The strangest was the summer before seventh grade when my mother thought I was wasting my summer. On a Thursday afternoon, she informed me I was headed to Concordia Village French Camp. On Sunday I was at camp, speaking only French at meals. Did I say that I had never spoken any French before that day? French was my mother's dream, which I got to live.'
So we are now hearing, Buzz Ebner, about a lot of different kinds of camps that are around these days, other than these sort of traditional sleep-away, learn-about-the-woods kinds of camps.
Mr. EBNER: Yes. Well, the traditional camp still has a place in, you know, campers' ranks for a summer program. We find that some of the campers that we have for eight weeks--we find that these campers now--that we've done two-week and four-week programs--they break their summer up. And we have many campers that will start out the summer two weeks with us. They'll do a summer teen travel program, maybe another week, 10-day sports specialty camp program. We've even had children get sort of energized in our go-cart or minibike program; they've gone on to a minibike or go-cart specialty camp. And they still come back to us for the last two weeks to finalize the summer. So yeah, they have expanded and enhanced in the camping areas, but we find that the children still enjoy the traditional type program.
NEARY: OK. We're going to take another call now from Matt in Oakland, California. Hi, Matt.
MATT (Caller): Hi, Lynn. Thanks for taking my call. I went to a summer camp here in California called Camp Beaverbrook. And I know there are a lot of Beaverbods out there who are NPR listeners, and I hope they're tuning in and jumping up and down with delight, hearing that our camp is being mentioned on the air. Our summer camp went from 1961 up to 1985, and it was a wonderful place. It was a sleep-away camp. It was very, very rustic. And it seemed to attract outgoing, zany lunatics, of which I consider myself to be, you know, one of the prime examples. And it was a wonderful experience, because being a member of a big family--I came from a big family--it was an opportunity to go off somewhere and have an experience with a lot of peers, a lot of younger kids, a lot of older kids, too, and live and be enriched by that experience. It was tremendous.
And I actually have a question for the guest.
NEARY: Mm-hmm. Go ahead.
MATT: And that is--you mentioned that you had to quit your riflery program for obvious reasons. How long ago did you do that?
Mr. EBNER: We suspended this probably about 12 years ago. Yeah.
MATT: Uh-huh. OK. I'm just curious about that. Now...
NEARY: Did you take rivalry when you were at camp?
MATT: I beg your pardon? Oh, yes, we did.
NEARY: `Rivalry'--OK. Riflery.
MATT: We had a fantastic riflery program. As a matter of fact, the riflery range was a rendezvous spot for a lot more than riflery. But we don't have to talk about that on the air.
NEARY: I imagine there was a little rivalry as well, but go ahead.
MATT: Yes. Yes, indeed. But, you know, what I wanted to get in was just that if there are any Beaverbods listening who haven't known or haven't found out, we have a Yahoo! group, Camp Beaverbrook Yahoo! group, so come and check in and se--talk to your old friends and share pictures and memories. And we're having a big reunion coming up soon, and I think it's fantastic, Lynn, that you're talking about this topic, which is so near and dear to so many people's hearts.
NEARY: I know. There's a lot of you out there, a lot of you campers out there.
MATT: Yes.
NEARY: Thanks so much for your call.
MATT: Thank you.
NEARY: But I have to say that it was not a universally wonderful experience for everyone, and we have an e-mail here from Raimondo, who says, `I went to camp in 1957 from San Francisco. The name of the camp I have managed to erase from memory. I hated it. I had my first fight. It ended in a sound and embarrassing defeat. I lost a lot of standing. One night the counselors took us out to a campfire for stories; of course, there was the headless maniac story. All at once, someone jumped to the center and the fire went out. We scattered, screaming. My older brother, Frank, was with me, but I lost him in the rush.' And, in capitals, `I WAS TERRIFIED. My mother called after one week and I cried to come home. Two weeks of hell.'
So, Buzz Ebner, not everybody loves camp.
Mr. EBNER: No, it's not for 100 percent of the population. And we find that occasionally we will come across a camper that--camp just does not agree with them. But we do have many campers that--I can remember my daughter peeling, literally unclenching the fingers from Mom's car handle--door and saying, `What do I do now?' And she just said, `Go. Call us in two days. We'll let you know how he's doing.' And at the end of the two weeks, `Mom, I want to stay. I am having so much fun here.' So, you know, a lot of times it's the separation, the anxiety, being on your own. But I think summer camp is more than the activities.
NEARY: Well, it used to be that when parents dropped their kids off at summer camp, they didn't see them for weeks or months.
Mr. EBNER: Right.
NEARY: But that's not necessarily the case anymore. An increasing number of worried parents can log on to Web sites where they can see photos and, in some cases, video footage of their children away at camp. Joining us now from his office in New York City is Ari Ackerman, the CEO and founder of Bunk1.com, a company that allows parents to check in on their kids using Web technology.
Thanks for being with us, Ari.
Mr. ARI ACKERMAN (CEO, Bunk1.com): My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
NEARY: Maybe you can describe how Bunk1.com works.
Mr. ACKERMAN: Sure, we have about 2,000 camps around the United States and Canada where they have a link on their Web site that parents log into and are able to see, in a password-protected area, so it's a safe environment for their kids--they're able to see pictures of what's going on at camp, and, as you mentioned, see videos of what's going on at camp, and send these one-way e-mails that are printed out for their kids at camp. So the kids are not on computers. They're still enjoying the camp experience. They're outdoors. They're with their friends. They're living the camaraderie and the joy of camp as we remember it, but the parents sort of have this one-way window to access what they can see and what's going at camp.
NEARY: Now doesn't this take something away from the camp experience, the fact that you're supposed to go away to camp and your parents aren't supposed to be in contact? You're supposed to learn independence and get to experiment a little bit without the parents around?
Mr. ACKERMAN: We hear that question a lot, but the truth is every picture that we see--we upload about 15,000 pictures a day. And every kid is so happy and smiling and enjoying the experience that it's tough to say that they're really not enjoying seeing Mom and Dad see what's going on over there. And parents also, they thank us for this--allowing them to see what's going on. We get thousands of e-mails in the office here a day saying, `Thank you; I finally got to see what my little son or daughter has been talking about all these years. I get to share their experience with them.' And when the child comes home, actually, from camp, they get to experience that magic of summer camp together.
NEARY: I gather that this is becoming something of an addiction for some parents, that they can't stop checking in all day.
Mr. ACKERMAN: Oh, we see it all day long. I mean, parents are logging in 15, 20 times a day in the hope that they've uploaded new pictures on the Web sites of the camp house.
NEARY: Were you ever a camper yourself?
Mr. ACKERMAN: Of course. I was a camper and counselor for 11 years.
NEARY: And so what do you think of this idea? Would you have liked it?
Mr. ACKERMAN: I wish I had this idea when I went to camp. I would have had a lot more pictures of my camp experience, and I would have been able to share the experience when I got home with my family and with other friends of mine that weren't at camp with me. It's just a unique experience and it also allows--the e-mail service also allows a lot of dads to now write to their child at camp even more so than they had in the past.
NEARY: All right. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Ari.
Mr. ACKERMAN: My pleasure.
NEARY: Ari Ackerman is the CEO and founder of Bunk1.com, a company which allows parents to check in on their kids who are away at camp via the Internet.
And let's go now to Sarah in Buffalo, New York. Hi, Sarah.
SARAH (Caller): Hi! My name is Sarah from Buffalo, New York, and I just want to tell everyone about Interlocken Arts Camp in northern Michigan.
NEARY: That's a very famous camp.
SARAH: Yeah, it's--well, it was just--I went there for many summers and it was the most phenomenal experience. I'm a violinist and it afforded me the opportunity to meet people from all over the country and all over the world, and meet people who enjoyed every avenue of the arts, from music to creative writing to dance and theater to visual arts--everything you could ever imagine. It's an eight-week program where, honestly, the arts are just so magical and so alive. It's set on a gorgeous lake in the woods. It's--honestly, it's just one of the best places I could ever have my children go to.
NEARY: All right. Well, thanks so much for calling, Sarah.
SARAH: Thank you.
NEARY: And I just want to remind you that you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
Now, Buzz Ebner, I wanted to ask you about coed camps vs. single-gender camps. What are your camps and what do you think is the best idea?
Mr. EBNER: Well, the Camp Awosting has always been a private boys' camp and just boys. We have integrated and we now have female staff, but it's still just boys. And then our Chinqueka, which is our girls' campus, it's five miles away, is just girls. Before that, we did interact with Camp Ponemah, where Susan Stamberg was a camper and a staff member, I guess. And it was my dad's vision, I guess, that he wanted something a little closer to the boys' program. So that's why he established the girls' camp, Chinqueka, in 1955. But we actually strongly considered merging the two campuses in the late '80s when things were a little on the slow side and we thought `Well, our enrollment's down. We could make the camps merge, be coed.' This seemed to be the direction that a lot of the camps were going. But we thought we'd survey our campers and parents first. And it was actually the girls that voiced the loudest noise that said, `Please, no, we like it the way it is.' It's less stressful. We never gave thought to `Is there stress in camp?' But a coed camp--they have to come up for the morning breakfast all, you know, fixed up and hair done and everything.
NEARY: Oh, right. But, you know, I imagine there are some forays across those five miles every now and again between those two camps. You can't tell me that...
Mr. EBNER: But, you know, the girls said, you know, they could come up in their pajamas, their hair could--whatever it wanted to be, and they thought that that was far better than having to meet the boys first thing in the morning.
NEARY: But is it true that some experience their first love at summer camp?
Mr. EBNER: It probably is. You know, there are a lot of, you know, socials; there's a lot of interaction. We had a group of girls over here yesterday from the girls' camp, and we're just starting up a coed day camp this year and that group was just over here for an exchange with some things so, you know, we have a lot of interaction with coed activity even though we're still a boys' camp.
NEARY: Let's hope that Ari Ackerman's cameras are not focused in that direction.
Mr. EBNER: No, well, but we do have a Webmaster at each camp now, and we do put up daily Web shots. Not streaming video...
NEARY: Oh, you do?
Mr. EBNER: ...yet but daily Web shots on our camp Web sites.
NEARY: Well, thanks so much for being with us, Buzz.
Mr. EBNER: OK.
NEARY: Buzz Ebner is the owner and director of Camp Awosting.
When we come back from a short break, we'll finish up this discussion about summer camp and move on to a new topic about reading and the drop in the rate of reading.
I'm Lynn Neary. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
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NEARY: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington.
Tomorrow on "TALK OF THE NATION/Science Friday," join guest host Joe Palca for an update on telescopes at Mt. Graham and the fires that are threatening them.
Here are some of the stories in today's NPR News headlines. Former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay pleads not guilty to charges that he deceived investors and government regulators. NPR's Wade Goodwyn is covering that story. And five US soldiers were killed in a mortar attack in Iraq today, but a missing US Marine has turned up alive and well in his native Lebanon. NPR's Howard Berkes is in Salt Lake City where the family of Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun has been waiting for word on his whereabouts. Those stories are coming up this afternoon on "All Things Considered" from NPR News.
Right now we are talking about summer camp. To join the conversation, give us a call at (800) 989-TALK. And the e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
Now to someone in the trenches. Joining us from Camp Pinecliffe in Harrison, Maine, is Katie Graeff, a rising sophomore at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and a first-time camp counselor at Pinecliffe.
Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION, Katie.
Ms. KATIE GRAEFF (Counselor, Camp Pinecliffe): Hi.
NEARY: Now as I understand, you were a camper for seven years before becoming a counselor.
Ms. GRAEFF: Yes.
NEARY: So what's it like on the other side now?
Ms. GRAEFF: Oh, it's very different, I can tell you that. Definitely. I was at Pinecliffe from 1993 until 1999, and I haven't been back since until this past summer. And it's been going amazing. It's definitely wonderful. It's just something that I never really expected I'd do. And now being on the other side, you realize a lot more about your camp experience as a camper. Yeah.
NEARY: In what way? What do you mean?
Ms. GRAEFF: Well, I had no idea the kind of things that went into making camp what it was for me, and now being a part of the 2004 staff, I realize all the energy that the staff and the counselors put into the 208 girls that are currently at Pinecliffe. We had precamp which I didn't even knew existed as a camper. From what I thought when I was 15, when I was nine, whatever, I thought that all the staff got there the same day as the campers did, but I was very wrong. We got there a good 10 days before and we were working together as a unit to become, you know, a team for the campers when they arrive.
NEARY: How did your experience as a camper prepare you for being a counselor?
Ms. GRAEFF: Oh, it prepared me very well. I know what to expect. I know what goes on. I know the secrets. I know what the campers are thinking. I know...
NEARY: What are the secrets? What are they thinking?
Ms. GRAEFF: Well, no, there's the secret--like, all the surprises. The surprise activities, the--all of the events that every age group gets to prepare for the rest of the camp. Like I did that when I was a camper. I can share my experiences and our schemes with the girls that I'm currently living with, and I can give them insights on how it is being a camper that's going through those activities, like evening programs, like the fun stuff that the kids can do for one another during evening programs. Since I was there, I can kind of give them another insight, something that not other counselors can do.
NEARY: All right. Well, let's go to a call now. Ann is calling us from California. Hi, Ann.
ANN (Caller): Hi. How are you?
NEARY: Hi. Go ahead.
ANN: I'm really enjoying the stories. I was a camp counselor. I got swept up. I was a student at UC-Davis and I and other students there got swept up. My job was to be the swim instructor and lifeguard. That was my credentialing. I mean, I was licensed to do that, and also teach art. But my sideline, my ranch job, at this ranch camp, was pasteurizing the milk. And one of my fellow UC-Davis students--his job turned out to be milking the cows. And, you know, it was just kind of amazing. And I think if I had been a camper, this would have been a wonderful experience. A lot of the kids that we had were coming from Los Angeles, from Hollywood, and their parents were in the industry. Not all of them, but a goodly number of them. And they'd be up here for--up there for one or two weeks, sometimes three; a couple were there for all summer, which I'm not sure I'm comfortable with. But their parents were off in Europe or shooting films. At 6 AM everybody would get up and have jobs--everybody had jobs. The kids had jobs. And it was really kind of cool watching the kids sleepy-eyed down there picking the beans, but we ate those beans for dinner and the food was fresh and the exercise was good and it was really wonderful.
NEARY: Now what year was this when you were...
ANN: This was back in 1971, '72.
NEARY: I wonder if there are camps like that now?
ANN: I don't know. You know, I am now motivated to find out if they still exist. I know that Rod Jamieson(ph) passed away. but I believe his son was carrying on so I'm hoping they're still there and now I'm thinking I've got to go back and see if it's there. In the evening--this was one of my fondest--one of my fondest memories was falling asleep under the stars because there was a grape arbor and we were overseeing about probably 20 girls that lined up almost like "Seven Dwarfs," you know, only there were 20...
NEARY: Oh, cute.
ANN: ...and just--they were all bedded down and we were off to the side but under an arbor, and I just remember being tired and well-fed and well-exercised after a big day on the ranch and just counting stars--shooting stars and falling asleep. I mean...
NEARY: Thanks so much, Ann, for your memories.
ANN: It was great.
NEARY: Good talking to you.
Katie Graeff, one last question. Do you get a lot of time to read there at Camp Pinecliffe?
Ms. GRAEFF: Absolutely not. There's no time. That's the one thing that I thought was the hardest by far is there's not as much time to myself. I live with seven 12-year-olds in a small bunk, and they're--you know, they're doing their own thing and I just have to always keep an ear open to make sure that everything's running smoothly. And...
NEARY: And do the girls read when they're there?
Ms. GRAEFF: What?
NEARY: Do the girls read?
Ms. GRAEFF: They do read. There's lots of card games. There's lots of Madlibs that their parents sent up with them and fun games that are camp-oriented that the girls can participate in during rest hour and--yeah, so I don't really find myself reading as much. If I do have a free moment, I probably do fall asleep.
NEARY: OK. Well, thanks for being with us today, Katie.
Ms. GRAEFF: Of course. Thank you.
NEARY: Katie Graeff is a camp counselor at Camp Pinecliffe in Lewiston, Maine. She joined us by phone from Camp Pinecliffe.
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