Adirondack Woodcraft Camps

Another reason why kids should attend summer camp.

2011-04-19T14:06:00.000-04:00

Published on Psychology Today (http://www.psychologytoday.com)

A Nation of Wimps

Created Nov 12 2004 - 1:00am

Maybe it's the cyclist in the park, trim under his sleek metallic blue helmet, cruising along the dirt path... at three miles an hour. On his tricycle.

Or perhaps it's today's playground, all-rubber-cushioned surface where kids used to skin their knees. And... wait a minute... those aren't little kids playing. Their mommies—and especially their daddies—are in there with them, coplaying or play-by-play coaching. Few take it half-easy on the perimeter benches, as parents used to do, letting the kids figure things out for themselves.

Then there are the sanitizing gels, with which over a third of parents now send their kids to school, according to a recent survey. Presumably, parents now worry that school bathrooms are not good enough for their children.

Consider the teacher new to an upscale suburban town. Shuffling through the sheaf of reports certifying the educational "accommodations" he was required to make for many of his history students, he was struck by the exhaustive, well-written—and obviously costly—one on behalf of a girl who was already proving among the most competent of his ninth-graders. "She's somewhat neurotic," he confides, "but she is bright, organized and conscientious—the type who'd get to school to turn in a paper on time, even if she were dying of stomach flu." He finally found the disability he was to make allowances for: difficulty with Gestalt thinking. The 13-year-old "couldn't see the big picture." That cleverly devised defect (what 13-year-old can construct the big picture?) would allow her to take all her tests untimed, especially the big one at the end of the rainbow, the college-worthy SAT.

Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history. "Kids need to feel badly sometimes," says child psychologist David Elkind, professor at Tufts University. "We learn through experience and we learn through bad experiences. Through failure we learn how to cope."

Messing up, however, even in the playground, is wildly out of style. Although error and experimentation are the true mothers of success, parents are taking pains to remove failure from the equation.

"Life is planned out for us," says Elise Kramer, a Cornell University junior. "But we don't know what to want." As Elkind puts it, "Parents and schools are no longer geared toward child development, they're geared to academic achievement."

No one doubts that there are significant economic forces pushing parents to invest so heavily in their children's outcome from an early age. But taking all the discomfort, disappointment and even the play out of development, especially while increasing pressure for success, turns out to be misguided by just about 180 degrees. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget, too, about perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life skill. These turn out to be the spreading psychic fault lines of 21st-century youth. Whether we want to or not, we're on our way to creating a nation of wimps.

The Fragility Factor

College, it seems, is where the fragility factor is now making its greatest mark. It's where intellectual and developmental tracks converge as the emotional training wheels come off. By all accounts, psychological distress is rampant on college campuses. It takes a variety of forms, including anxiety and depression—which are increasingly regarded as two faces of the same coin—binge drinking and substance abuse, self-mutilation and other forms of disconnection. The mental state of students is now so precarious for so many that, says Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, "it is interfering with the core mission of the university."

The severity of student mental health problems has been rising since 1988, according to an annual survey of counseling center directors. Through 1996, the most common problems raised by students were relationship issues. That is developmentally appropriate, reports Sherry Benton, assistant director of counseling at Kansas State University. But in 1996, anxiety overtook relationship concerns and has remained the major problem. The University of Michigan Depression Center, the nation's first, estimates that 15 percent of college students nationwide are suffering from that disorder alone.

Relationship problems haven't gone away; their nature has dramatically shifted and the severity escalated. Colleges report ever more cases of obsessive pursuit, otherwise known as stalking, leading to violence, even death. Anorexia or bulimia in florid or subclinical form now afflicts 40 percent of women at some time in their college career. Eleven weeks into a semester, reports psychologist Russ Federman, head of counseling at the University of Virginia, "all appointment slots are filled. But the students don't stop coming."

Drinking, too, has changed. Once a means of social lubrication, it has acquired a darker, more desperate nature. Campuses nationwide are reporting record increases in binge drinking over the past decade, with students often stuporous in class, if they get there at all. Psychologist Paul E. Joffe, chair of the suicide prevention team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, contends that at bottom binge-drinking is a quest for authenticity and intensity of experience. It gives young people something all their own to talk about, and sharing stories about the path to passing out is a primary purpose. It's an inverted world in which drinking to oblivion is the way to feel connected and alive.

"There is a ritual every university administrator has come to fear," reports John Portmann, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. "Every fall, parents drop off their well-groomed freshmen and within two or three days many have consumed a dangerous amount of alcohol and placed themselves in harm's way. These kids have been controlled for so long, they just go crazy."

Heavy drinking has also become the quickest and easiest way to gain acceptance, says psychologist Bernardo J. Carducci, professor at Indiana University Southeast and founder of itsShyness Research Institute. "Much of collegiate social activity is centered on alcohol consumption because it's an anxiety reducer and demands no social skills," he says. "Plus it provides an instant identity; it lets people know that you are willing to belong."

Welcome to the Hothouse

Talk to a college president or administrator and you're almost certainly bound to hear tales of the parents who call at 2 a.m. to protest Branden's C in economics because it's going to damage his shot at grad school.

Shortly after psychologist Robert Epstein announced to his university students that he expected them to work hard and would hold them to high standards, he heard from a parent—on official judicial stationery—asking how he could dare mistreat the young. Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, eventually filed a complaint with the California commission on judicial misconduct, and the judge was censured for abusing his office—but not before he created havoc in the psychology department at the University of California, San Diego.

Enter: grade inflation. When he took over as president of Harvard in July 2001, Lawrence Summers publicly ridiculed the value of honors after discovering that 94 percent of the college's seniors were graduating with them. Safer to lower the bar than raise the discomfort level. Grade inflation is the institutional response to parental anxiety about school demands on children, contends social historian Peter Stearns of George Mason University. As such, it is a pure index of emotional overinvestment in a child's success. And it rests on a notion of juvenile frailty—the assumption that children are easily bruised and need explicit uplift," Stearns argues in his book, Anxious Parenting: A History of Modern Childrearing in America.

Parental protectionism may reach its most comic excesses in college, but it doesn't begin there. Primary schools and high schools are arguably just as guilty of grade inflation. But if you're searching for someone to blame, consider Dr. Seuss. "Parents have told their kids from day one that there's no end to what they are capable of doing," says Virginia's Portmann. "They read them the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You'll Go! and create bumper stickers telling the world their child is an honor student. American parents today expect their children to be perfect—the smartest, fastest, most charming people in the universe. And if they can't get the children to prove it on their own, they'll turn to doctors to make their kids into the people that parents want to believe their kids are."

What they're really doing, he stresses, is "showing kids how to work the system for their own benefit."

And subjecting them to intense scrutiny. "I wish my parents had some hobby other than me," one young patient told David Anderegg, a child psychologist in Lenox, Massachusetts, and professor of psychology at Bennington College. Anderegg finds that anxious parents are hyperattentive to their kids, reactive to every blip of their child's day, eager to solve every problem for their child—and believe that's good parenting. "If you have an infant and the baby has gas, burping the baby is being a good parent. But when you have a 10-year-old who has metaphoric gas, you don't have to burp him. You have to let him sit with it, try to figure out what to do about it. He then learns to tolerate moderate amounts of difficulty, and it's not the end of the world."

Arrivederci, Playtime

In the hothouse that child raising has become, play is all but dead. Over 40,000 U.S. schools no longer have recess. And what play there is has been corrupted. The organized sports many kids participate in are managed by adults; difficulties that arise are not worked out by kids but adjudicated by adult referees.

"So many toys now are designed by and for adults," says Tufts' Elkind. When kids do engage in their own kind of play, parents become alarmed. Anderegg points to kids exercising time-honored curiosity by playing doctor. "It's normal for children to have curiosity about other children's genitals," he says. "But when they do, most parents I know are totally freaked out. They wonder what's wrong."

Kids are having a hard time even playing neighborhood pick-up games because they've never done it, observes Barbara Carlson, president and cofounder of Putting Families First. "They've been told by their coaches where on the field to stand, told by their parents what color socks to wear, told by the referees who's won and what's fair. Kids are losing leadershipskills."

A lot has been written about the commercialization of children's play, but not the side effects, says Elkind. "Children aren't getting any benefits out of play as they once did." From the beginning play helps children learn how to control themselves, how to interact with others. Contrary to the widely held belief that only intellectual activities build a sharp brain, it's in play that cognitive agility really develops. Studies of children and adults around the world demonstrate that social engagement actually improves intellectual skills. It fosters decision-making,memory and thinking, speed of mental processing. This shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, the human mind is believed to have evolved to deal with social problems.

The Eternal Umbilicus

It's bad enough that today's children are raised in a psychological hothouse where they are overmonitored and oversheltered. But that hothouse no longer has geographical or temporal boundaries. For that you can thank the cell phone. Even in college—or perhaps especially at college—students are typically in contact with their parents several times a day, reporting every flicker of experience. One long-distance call overheard on a recent cross-campus walk: "Hi, Mom. I just got an ice-cream cone; can you believe they put sprinkles on the bottom as well as on top?"

"Kids are constantly talking to parents," laments Cornell student Kramer, which makes them perpetually homesick. Of course, they're not telling the folks everything, notes Portmann. "They're not calling their parents to say, 'I really went wild last Friday at the frat house and now I might have chlamydia. Should I go to the student health center?'"

The perpetual access to parents infantilizes the young, keeping them in a permanent state of dependency. Whenever the slightest difficulty arises, "they're constantly referring to their parents for guidance," reports Kramer. They're not learning how to manage for themselves.

Think of the cell phone as the eternal umbilicus. One of the ways we grow up is by internalizing an image of Mom and Dad and the values and advice they imparted over the early years. Then, whenever we find ourselves faced with uncertainty or difficulty, we call on that internalized image. We become, in a way, all the wise adults we've had the privilege to know. "But cell phones keep kids from figuring out what to do," says Anderegg. "They've never internalized any images; all they've internalized is 'call Mom or Dad.'"

Some psychologists think we have yet to recognize the full impact of the cell phone on child development, because its use is so new. Although there are far too many variables to establish clear causes and effects, Indiana's Carducci believes that reliance on cell phones undermines the young by destroying the ability to plan ahead. "The first thing students do when they walk out the door of my classroom is flip open the cell phone. Ninety-five percent of the conversations go like this: 'I just got out of class; I'll see you in the library in five minutes.' Absent the phone, you'd have to make arrangements ahead of time; you'd have to think ahead."

Herein lies another possible pathway to depression. The ability to plan resides in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the executive branch of the brain. The PFC is a critical part of the self-regulation system, and it's deeply implicated in depression, a disorder increasingly seen as caused or maintained by unregulated thought patterns—lack of intellectual rigor, if you will. Cognitive therapy owes its very effectiveness to the systematic application of critical thinking to emotional reactions. Further, it's in the setting of goals and progress in working toward them, however mundane they are, that positive feelings are generated. From such everyday activity, resistance to depression is born.

What's more, cell phones—along with the instant availability of cash and almost any consumer good your heart desires—promote fragility by weakening self-regulation. "You get used to things happening right away," says Carducci. You not only want the pizza now, you generalize that expectation to other domains, like friendship and intimate relationships. You become frustrated and impatient easily. You become unwilling to work out problems. And so relationships fail—perhaps the single most powerful experience leading to depression.

From Scrutiny to Anxiety... and Beyond

The 1990s witnessed a landmark reversal in the traditional patterns of psychopathology. While rates of depression rise with advancing age among people over 40, they're now increasing fastest among children, striking more children at younger and younger ages.

In his now-famous studies of how children's temperaments play out, Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan has shown unequivocally that what creates anxious children is parents hovering and protecting them from stressful experiences. About 20 percent of babies are born with a high-strung temperament. They can be spotted even in the womb; they have fast heartbeats. Their nervous systems are innately programmed to be overexcitable in response to stimulation, constantly sending out false alarms about what is dangerous.

As infants and children this group experiences stress in situations most kids find unthreatening, and they may go through childhood and even adulthood fearful of unfamiliar people and events, withdrawn and shy. At school age they become cautious, quiet and introverted. Left to their own devices they grow up shrinking from social encounters. They lack confidence around others. They're easily influenced by others. They are sitting ducks for bullies. And they are on the path to depression.

While their innate reactivity seems to destine all these children for later anxiety disorders, things didn't turn out that way. Between a touchy temperament in infancy and persistence of anxiety stand two highly significant things: parents. Kagan found to his surprise that the development of anxiety was scarcely inevitable despite apparent genetic programming. At age 2, none of the overexcitable infants wound up fearful if their parents backed off from hovering and allowed the children to find some comfortable level of accommodation to the world on their own. Those parents who overprotected their children—directly observed by conducting interviews in the home—brought out the worst in them.

A small percentage of children seem almost invulnerable to anxiety from the start. But the overwhelming majority of kids are somewhere in between. For them, overparenting can program the nervous system to create lifelong vulnerability to anxiety and depression.

There is in these studies a lesson for all parents. Those who allow their kids to find a way to deal with life's day-to-day stresses by themselves are helping them develop resilience and coping strategies. "Children need to be gently encouraged to take risks and learn that nothing terrible happens," says Michael Liebowitz, clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and head of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at New York State Psychiatric Institute. "They need gradual exposure to find that the world is not dangerous. Having overprotective parents is a risk factor for anxiety disorders because children do not have opportunities to master their innate shyness and become more comfortable in the world." They never learn to dampen the pathways from perception to alarm reaction.

Hothouse parenting undermines children in other ways, too, says Anderegg. Being examined all the time makes children extremely self-conscious. As a result they get less communicative; scrutiny teaches them to bury their real feelings deeply. And most of all, self-consciousness removes the safety to be experimental and playful. "If every drawing is going to end up on your parents' refrigerator, you're not free to fool around, to goof up or make mistakes," says Anderegg.

Parental hovering is why so many teenagers are so ironic, he notes. It's a kind of detachment, "a way of hiding in plain sight. They just don't want to be exposed to any more scrutiny."

Parents are always so concerned about children having high self-esteem, he adds. "But when you cheat on their behalf to get them ahead of other children"—by pursuing accommodations and recommendations—you just completely corrode their sense of self. They feel 'I couldn't do this on my own.' It robs them of their own sense of efficacy." A child comes to think, "if I need every advantage I can get, then perhaps there is really something wrong with me." A slam-dunk for depression.

Virginia's Portmann feels the effects are even more pernicious; they weaken the whole fabric of society. He sees young people becoming weaker right before his eyes, more responsive to the herd, too eager to fit in—less assertive in the classroom, unwilling to disagree with their peers, afraid to question authority, more willing to conform to the expectations of those on the next rung of power above them.

Endless Adolescence

The end result of cheating childhood is to extend it forever. Despite all the parental pressure, and probably because of it, kids are pushing back—in their own way. They're taking longer to grow up.

Adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends, according to a recent report by University of Pennsylvania sociologist Frank F. Furstenberg and colleagues. There is, instead, a growing no-man's-land of postadolescence from 20 to 30, which they dub "early adulthood." Those in it look like adults but "haven't become fully adult yet—traditionally defined as finishing school, landing a job with benefits, marrying and parenting—because they are not ready or perhaps not permitted to do so."

Using the classic benchmarks of adulthood, 65 percent of males had reached adulthood by the age of 30 in 1960. By contrast, in 2000, only 31 percent had. Among women, 77 percent met the benchmarks of adulthood by age 30 in 1960. By 2000, the number had fallen to 46 percent.

Boom Boom Boomerang

Take away play from the front end of development and it finds a way onto the back end. A steady march of success through regimented childhood arranged and monitored by parents creates young adults who need time to explore themselves. "They often need a period in college or afterward to legitimately experiment—to be children," says historian Stearns. "There's decent historical evidence to suggest that societies that allow kids a few years of latitude and even moderate [rebellion] end up with healthier kids than societies that pretend such impulses don't exist."

Marriage is one benchmark of adulthood, but its antecedents extend well into childhood. "The precursor to marriage is dating, and the precursor to dating is playing," says Carducci. The less time children spend in free play, the less socially competent they'll be as adults. It's in play that we learn give and take, the fundamental rhythm of all relationships. We learn how to read the feelings of others and how to negotiate conflicts. Taking the play out of childhood, he says, is bound to create a developmental lag, and he sees it clearly in the social patterns of today's adolescents and young adults, who hang around in groups that are more typical of childhood. Not to be forgotten: The backdrop of continued high levels of divorce confuses kids already too fragile to take the huge risk of commitment.

Just Whose Shark Tank Is It Anyway?

The stressful world of cutthroat competition that parents see their kids facing may not even exist. Or it exists, but more in their mind than in reality—not quite a fiction, more like a distorting mirror. "Parents perceive the world as a terribly competitive place," observes Anderegg. "And many of them project that onto their children when they're the ones who live or work in a competitive environment. They then imagine that their children must be swimming in a big shark tank, too."

"It's hard to know what the world is going to look like 10 years from now," says Elkind. "How best do you prepare kids for that? Parents think that earlier is better. That's a natural intuition, but it happens to be wrong."

What if parents have micromanaged their kids' lives because they've hitched their measurement of success to a single event whose value to life and paycheck they have frantically overestimated? No one denies the Ivy League offers excellent learning experiences, but most educators know that some of the best programs exist at schools that don't top the U.S. Newsand World Report list, and that with the right attitude—a willingness to be engaged by new ideas—it's possible to get a meaningful education almost anywhere. Further, argues historian Stearns, there are ample openings for students at an array of colleges. "We have a competitive frenzy that frankly involves parents more than it involves kids themselves," he observes, both as a father of eight and teacher of many. "Kids are more ambivalent about the college race than are parents."

Yet the very process of application to select colleges undermines both the goal of education and the inherent strengths of young people. "It makes kids sneaky," says Anderegg. Bending rules and calling in favors to give one's kid a competitive edge is morally corrosive.

Like Stearns, he is alarmed that parents, pursuing disability diagnoses so that children can take untimed SATs, actually encourage kids to think of themselves as sickly and fragile. Colleges no longer know when SATs are untimed—but the kids know. "The kids know when you're cheating on their behalf," says Anderegg, "and it makes them feel terribly guilty. Sometimes they arrange to fail to right the scales. And when you cheat on their behalf, you completely undermine their sense of self-esteem. They feel they didn't earn it on their own."

In buying their children accommodations to assuage their own anxiety, parents are actually locking their kids into fragility. Says the suburban teacher: "Exams are a fact of life. They are anxiety-producing. The kids never learn how to cope with anxiety."

Putting Worry in its Place

Children, however, are not the only ones who are harmed by hyperconcern. Vigilance is enormously taxing—and it's taken all the fun out of parenting. "Parenting has in some measurable ways become less enjoyable than it used to be," says Stearns. "I find parents less willing to indulge their children's sense of time. So they either force-feed them or do things for them."

Parents need to abandon the idea of perfection and give up some of the invasive control they've maintained over their children. The goal of parenting, Portmann reminds, is to raise an independent human being. Sooner or later, he says, most kids will be forced to confront their own mediocrity. Parents may find it easier to give up some control if they recognize they have exaggerated many of the dangers of childhood—although they have steadfastly ignored others, namely the removal of recess from schools and the ubiquity of video games that encourage aggression.

The childhood we've introduced to our children is very different from that in past eras, Epstein stresses. Children no longer work at young ages. They stay in school for longer periods of time and spend more time exclusively in the company of peers. Children are far less integrated into adult society than they used to be at every step of the way. We've introduced laws that give children many rights and protections—although we have allowed media and marketers to have free access.

In changing the nature of childhood, Stearns argues, we've introduced a tendency to assume that children can't handle difficult situations. "Middle-class parents especially assume that if kids start getting into difficulty they need to rush in and do it for them, rather than let them flounder a bit and learn from it. I don't mean we should abandon them," he says, "but give them more credit for figuring things out." And recognize that parents themselves have created many of the stresses and anxieties children are suffering from, without giving them tools to manage them.

While the adults are at it, they need to remember that one of the goals of higher education is to help young people develop the capacity to think for themselves.

Although we're well on our way to making kids more fragile, no one thinks that kids and young adults are fundamentally more flawed than in previous generations. Maybe many will "recover" from diagnoses too liberally slapped on to them. In his own studies of 14 skills he has identified as essential for adulthood in American culture, from love to leadership, Epstein has found that "although teens don't necessarily behave in a competent way, they have the potential to be every bit as competent and as incompetent as adults."

Parental anxiety has its place. But the way things now stand, it's not being applied wisely. We're paying too much attention to too few kids—and in the end, the wrong kids. As with the girl whose parents bought her the Gestalt-defect diagnosis, resources are being expended for kids who don't need them.

There are kids who are worth worrying about—kids in poverty, stresses Anderegg. "We focus so much on our own children," says Elkind, "It's time to begin caring about all children."

CBS News clip about letters from camp.

2011-02-01T20:09:00.001-05:00

AWC Slideshow 2010

2010-12-06T08:47:00.000-05:00

Some fun stuff!

2010-07-15T11:08:00.000-04:00

Turn Your Backyard into a Discovery Zone

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review – July 06, 2010
By Kellie Gormly

In an age when kids are surrounded by electronic entertainment like computers and television, they often don't play outside nearly as often as their parents did -- and with modern safety concerns, playing in the woods down the street alone isn't safe anymore. ″Children these days are really growing up disconnected from nature,″ says Jim Bonner. He is the executive director of the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, based in Indiana Township. He refers to a book, ″Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder″ by author Richard Louv, which explores this lack in children's lives. Today's…

Read the article

Summer Camp

2010-07-13T11:21:00.003-04:00

"Stories of summer camp. People who love camp say that non-camp people simply don't understand what's so amazing about camp. Camp kids explain how their non-camp friends and their non-camp loved ones have no idea why camp is the most important thing in their lives."

- This American Life

Why is camp so special? What happens in the woods and lakes of our camp that provided our campers and counselors with memories that will last a life time? Woodcraft is like no other place on Earth. No one cares if you were popular at school or at home, here every talent and ability are celebrated and rewarded. Every camper is appreciated and given the opportunity grow and develop in ways that could not happen in the classroom or in organized sports teams. If you look at the photo albums on the camp website you will see the smiles of memories in the making. Camp is a special place because the memories, relationships and experiences that everyone takes away with them. If you have a memory of camp share it. We all love to hear camp stories.

Great New video about getting kids outdoors!

2010-01-14T19:05:00.001-05:00

Emily and Megan celebrating New Year's Eve with their AWC candles.

2010-01-06T17:27:00.003-05:00

Allyson Brosemer is the 2009 Chief's Knife winner!

2009-08-21T14:41:00.002-04:00

Congrats Allyson! Below are all the former Chief's Knife winners from the past that were at camp.

Moose in the Moose River Plains

2009-08-18T19:30:00.002-04:00

This location is about 20 minutes from Woodcraft!

Once upon a time...

2009-08-08T17:49:00.004-04:00

in 2006, Alex Bumpas (our Program Director) met up with a turtle.

AWC Alum Chris Waddell doing amazing things.

2009-08-03T21:03:00.001-04:00

Paralympic Skiing Gold Medalist Chris Waddell Shatters Handcycling World Record

Everyone needs a hero, and former U.S. Disabled Ski Team member Chris Waddell is ready to step in for the taking. The most decorated male Paralympic skier in history has notched another superheroic feat on his belt: a little something called a World Record.

Waddell recently used a handcycle to propel himself over 103 miles of dirt on Utah’s popular White Rim trail. The extended ‘workout’ took a mere three days, whereas the previous record was six days.

“It’s a huge deal,” says Waddell. “This means that I can do this on my own. That feasibly I could go on this type of a ride and keep up with able-bodied friends on mountain bikes.”

“Never have I seen someone put their head down and dig so deep from within,” says Dave Penny, Waddell’s trainer.

Long dirt rides are the norm these days for Waddell, who’s been training for his August Kilimanjaro climb. There, when he summits the 19,340-foot peak made famous by Hemingway, Waddell will become the first paraplegic to climb the tallest free-standing mountain, unassisted.

In reality, the Kilimanjaro climb is a small facet of Waddell’s new foundation, One Revolution. Waddell and his team will donate handcycles to disabled individuals in Tanzania, and speak at schools.

“One Revolution means so many things to me,” says Waddell. “One revolution of the handcycle, one revolution to change the way people see the disabled community and one revolution of the globe, which symbolizes steady, fundamental change.”

http://www.theskichannel.com/news/skinews/20090602/Paralympic-Skiing-Gold-Medalist-Chris-Waddell-Shatters-Handcycling-World-Record

Homesickness by the National Camp Association

2009-08-03T11:36:00.001-04:00

"GROWING WINGS" (One parent's poetic thoughts on homesickness)
by Lois Roisman

Remember that ache in the pit of your gut
When you're liking your camp and your bunkmates, but
Your bed at home's what you'd really prefer
In fact, any old bed but the one where you are?

It might help to know at the camp where I went
Homesickness occurred to one hundred percent
Of the kids, from the ones who were having the best
time of all to the ones who were much more hard-pressed.

I've researched the problem because it's not small
And it's something that plagues children, most, if not all.
What I found will amaze you, because, of all things
That pain in your stomach's about growing wings!

Yes! What an amazement, that knot that you feel
In your belly is really a very big deal!
We can't leap tall buildings with flexible springs
But we can fly away on invisible wings!

That ache in your belly is not 'cause you're sick
It's the tips of your wings that are poking a bit
On your stomach and causing a terrible frown
So just think happy thoughts 'til it all settles down.

If you rub on your tum and sing 'grow-wings-grow-out'
Your wings will take root and will soon start to sprout
By the time you're a grownup and ready to fly
Your wings will be ready to soar to the sky.

So at night when your tummy is feeling that ache
And you're thinking that camp was a major mistake
And the feathers are hurting like needles and pings
Remember: that ache is about growing wings!

Ironman Matt Lieto visits Woodcraft

2009-07-30T13:39:00.004-04:00

Pro-athlete Matt Lieto visited Woodcraft after a grueling Ironman in Lake Placid. Matt completed the Ironman (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run) in just over 9 hours to finish in 5th place overall and in the pro division. Matt qualified for the world Ironman Championships in Hawaii for this October.

Matt lives and trains in Bend, Oregon and is good friends with Taylor and Berkley Leach. Please check out Matt's website to read more about his amazing story and career.

"Tweens" not "Tweets"

2009-07-16T19:21:00.000-04:00

Targeting “tweens,” the U.S. Forest Service and Ad Council launch national campaign

U.S. Forest Service and Ad Council Launch National Campaign to Re-connect Children with Nature
PSA Campaign Debut Coincides with National Get Outdoors Day

New York, (June 10, 2009) /PRNewswire/ — Children in the U.S. spend fifty percent less time outdoors than they did twenty years ago, according to the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

In an effort to encourage children and their parents to re-connect with nature, the U.S. Forest Service is joining the Ad Council today to launch a national multimedia public service advertising (PSA) campaign. U.S. Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell will unveil the campaign on June 13 at Denver City Park to coincide with National Get Outdoors Day. The PSAs will be distributed to media outlets nationwide this week.

The campaign primarily aims to reach "tweens" (children aged 8-12) and their parents. The goal is to encourage children to get outside and experience nature first-hand, instilling a life-long love for nature by fostering a connection with urban and national forests.

Children spend less time outdoors due to safety concerns, an increase in the number of working parents and the development of new technologies that capture free time indoors. As a result of this limited interaction with the outdoors, many children are unaware of the benefits that nature provides, including improving their physical and mental health and emotional well-being. Research shows that children who play outside have lower stress levels and more active imaginations, become fitter and leaner, develop stronger immune systems and have greater respect for themselves and for others.

Furthermore, those who spend their childhood in nature are more likely to become environmentally conscious in the future.

"People, especially kids, need a direct connection to both forests and nature for their health and personal growth—and for the future of conservation," said Chief Kimbell. "It's wonderful to expand our efforts to reach kids through this partnership. The Ad Council has been helping us accomplish the Forest Service mission for over 60 years."

Created pro bono by ad agency Euro RSCG, the campaign includes television, radio, outdoor and Web PSAs, which show the freeing aspects a nature experience can provide by depicting the various qualities – the curious you, the creative you, the adventurous you – that tweens can discover about themselves in nature. The TV spots depict children engaging with nature in various ways and encourage audiences to discover the forest, "where the other you lives." Additionally, the Brigham Young University Ad Lab developed two radio spots pro bono to further engage tweens in the message. All of the PSAs direct parents and children to visit a new website, www.DiscoverTheForest.org, where they can find ideas for outdoor activities, as well as educational and conservation information. Additionally, families can access a new interactive tool, powered by Nature Find™ and Google Maps, where they can search for nearby forests and parks.

"According to our research, the vast majority of children have positive associations with nature and wish they could spend more time outdoors. However, there is a need for greater motivation, guidance and awareness about the many benefits of experiencing nature first-hand," said Peggy Conlon, president and CEO of the Ad Council. "We are proud to join with our longtime partners at the Forest Service to launch this wonderful campaign that will encourage children to spend more time outdoors in our nation's forests and parks."

The U.S. Forest Service and the Ad Council have been partnering on the Wildfire Prevention PSA campaign, featuring Smokey Bear, since 1944. The campaign is the longest running PSA campaign in U.S. history.

"We are excited to partner with the U.S. Forest Service and the Ad Council, two stellar and highly respected organizations, for a campaign that communicates the benefits of spending time outdoors to children and 'tweens,' and their parents," said Phil Silvestri, Executive Creative Director and Managing Director, Euro RSCG Tonic, part of the Euro RSCG Worldwide network. "Our agency is committed to finding ways to educate consumers about today's health issues, such as the rise in childhood obesity and juvenile-onset diabetes, and we feel it is important to stress the benefits of outdoor play to today's youth so that they lead healthy lifestyles and don't miss out on one of the basic joys of being a kid – playing outside!"

Beginning this week, an integrated social media program will extend the reach of the PSA campaign online with strategies designed to engage both parents and children. Additionally, the U.S. Forest Service and the Ad Council are engaging a series of campaign partners in the federal government and nonprofit sectors to share the messages with their groups and members.

Campaign launch activities will continue throughout the next several months. As an extension of the campaign, the U.S. Forest Service and the Ad Council will kick off a national photo and art contest in September. Children will be invited to submit a photo or other form of art, which illustrates the creative ways that they are interacting with nature to find "the other you" outdoors. The winner will receive a prize that will promote increased outdoor activity.

The new PSAs and Web sites have been researched extensively and tested with children in the target audiences. The ads are being distributed to approximately 33,000 media outlets nationwide. Per the Ad Council's model, all of the ads will air and run in advertising time and space donated by the media.

In addition to the campaign website, www.DiscoverTheForest.org, parents and children can visit www.NationalGetOutdoorsDay.org for more information on the National Get Outdoors Day events nearest to them.
U.S. Forest Service

The U.S. Forest Service (www.fs.fed.us) manages 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands for the American Public. Its mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. The U.S. Forest Service is the agency responsible for overseeing the use of Smokey Bear in cooperation with the National Association of State Foresters and The Advertising Council.
The Advertising Council

The Ad Council (www.adcouncil.org) is a private, non-profit organization that marshals talent from the advertising and communications industries, the facilities of the media, and the resources of the business and non-profit communities to produce, distribute and promote public service campaigns on behalf of non-profit organizations and government agencies in issue areas such as improving the quality of life for children, preventive health, education, community well-being, environmental preservation and strengthening families.
Euro RSCG Tonic

Euro RSCG Tonic is a leading integrated marketing communications agency specializing in health and wellness brands. The agency provides advertising, marketing services, corporate communications and interactive solutions to global, regional and local clients. The agency's client roster includes GlaxoSmithKline, Schering Plough, Roche, Astellas, Stryker and Shire Pharmaceuticals.

The agency is part of Euro RSCG Worldwide, Advertising Age's and Campaign's 2006 Global Agency of the Year, which is made up of 233 offices located in 75 countries throughout Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Middle East. Headquartered in New York, Euro RSCG Worldwide is the largest unit of Havas, a world leader in communications.
Press Contacts:
U.S. Forest Service
Press Office
202-205-1134
The Ad Council
Ellyn Fisher
212-984-1964
efisher@adcouncil.org
Euro RSCG Tonic
Theresa Tepper
212-475-6303
ttepper@powellny.com

Camp off to a great start

2009-07-10T19:25:00.002-04:00

Woodcraft is currently in the 12th day of its 84th year. The first week of the summer was, as our Program Director likes to call it, full of "liquid sunshine". It was wet and the rain never seemed to relinquish. Our staff did a great job coming up with creative ways to combat the weather and our campers were strong- swimming and playing like it was a normal sunny day. This week has been much better, a little rain, but 3 beautiful days that has made for some good picture taking. Currently, our Hadarondah division, our youngest girls, are out on an overnight trip to 8th Lake and Russian Lake.

Please check back to the blog regularly. Counselors will soon be updating the blog with trip reports, etc.

Here is a picture of Bobby and Becky. They are second generation Woodcrafters.

MTV visits Woodcraft!

2009-05-31T10:44:00.003-04:00

MTV just recently filmed part of their critically acclaimed series, True Life, at Woodcraft as part of the Town of Webb's Spring Fling dance. True Life is a documentary series that follows people and their everyday lives. Check out this link to find out more about the series. MTV was following a home schooled student from a nearby town who was invited to the dance. Below are some current and former Woodcrafter's who are members of the Town of Webb Union Free School who were here to show off their dance moves.From left to right: Bill, Parker, Alex, Malik, Whitney, and Jake

Amazing beaver dam near camp!

2009-05-25T11:36:00.004-04:00

This beaver dam is a three tiered structure that is blocking a stream that feeds into West Pond near Woodcraft. The picture below is the first level. Check out this website to learn how beavers regulate the water level and the pros/cons of beaver dams. Site

Great New York Times article about being outside!

2009-04-22T20:07:00.000-04:00

New York Times: The Case for Natural Happiness

New York Times – April 15, 2009
By Paul Bloom

Why should we care about nature? Should we care about it for its own sake — or for our sake, because it happens to make us happy or healthy? These might not seem like the brightest questions. Few people need convincing that the destruction of rain forests, the mass extinction of species and the melting of the ice sheets in Greenland would all be very bad things. Do we really need to list the reasons?

We do. After all, in many regards our species has already kissed nature goodbye, and we are better off for it. Technology has come to be more diverse than the biosphere. In 1867, Karl Marx observed that there were 500 types of hammer made in Birmingham, England. In 1988, Donald Norman, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, suggested that the average American encounters 20,000 different kinds of artifacts in everyday life, which would be more than the number of animals and plants that we can distinguish. And right now, there are about 1.5 million identified species on Earth — impressive, but nothing compared to the more than 7 million United States patents.

This is mostly good news. No sane person would give up antibi otics and anesthesia, farming and the written word. Our constructed environments shield us from heat and cold and protect us from predators. We have access to food and drink and drugs that have been devised to stimulate our nervous systems in magnificent ways. We sleep in soft beds and have immediate access to virtual experiences from pornography to classical symphonies. If a family of hunter-gatherers were dropped into this life, they would think of it as a literal heaven.

Or maybe not. There is a considerable mismatch between the world in which our minds evolved and our current existence. Our species has spent almost all of its existence on the African savanna. While there is debate over the details, we know for sure that our minds were not adapted to cope with a world of billions of people. The life of a modern city dweller, surrounded by strangers, is an evolutionary novelty. Thousands of years ago, there was no television or Internet, no McDonald’s, birth-control pills, Viagra, plastic surgery, alarm clocks, artificial lighting or paternity tests. Instead, there was plenty of nature. We lived surrounded by trees and water and animals and sky.

This history has left its mark on our minds. Children are irrepressible taxonomizers, placing the world of distinct individuals into categories based on their appearance, their patterns of movement and their presumed deeper natures, and some psychologists have argued that the hard-wired capacity to organize and structure the world is specially adapted to nature: we are natural-born zoologists and botanists. We may also have evolved to get pleasure from certain aspects of the natural world. About 25 years ago, the Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson popularized the “biophilia” hypothesis: the idea that our evolutionary history has blessed us with an innate affinity for living things. We thrive in the presence of nature and suffer in its absence.

Our hunger for the natural is everywhere. It is reflected in art: the philosopher Denis Dutton, in his book “The Art Instinct,” suggests that popular taste in landscape painting has been shaped by preferences that evolved for the African savanna. The appeal of the natural is also reflected in where we most want to live. People like to be close to oceans, mountains and trees. Even in the most urban environments, it is reflected in real estate prices: if you want a view of the trees of Central Park, it’ll cost you. Office buildings have atriums and plants; we give flowers to the sick and the beloved and return home to watch Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel. We keep pets, which are a weird combination of constructed things (cats and dogs were bred for human companionship), surrogate people and conduits to the natural world. And many of us seek to escape our manufactured environments whenever we can — to hike, camp, canoe or hunt.

Wilson emphasizes the spiritual and moral benefits of an attachment to nature, warning that we “descend farther from heaven’s air if we forget how much the natural world means to us.” But there are more tangible benefits as well. Many studies show that even a limited dose of nature, like a chance to look at the outside world through a window, is good for your health. Hospitalized patients heal more quickly; prisoners get sick less often. Being in the wild re duces stress; spending time with a pet enhances the lives of everyone from autistic children to Alzheimer’s patients. The author Richard Louv argues that modern children suffer from “nature-deficit disorder” because they have been shut out from the physical and psychic benefits of unstructured physical contact with the natural world.

So the preservation of the natural world should be important to us. But how important? The psycholo gist Philip Tetlock has pointed out that many people talk about the environment as a “sacred value,” protected from utilitarian trade-offs — when the Exxon Valdez spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil, 80 percent of the respondents in one poll said that we should pursue greater environmental protection “regardless of cost.” But he also points to the need to balance environmental concerns with social and political and personal priorities. (Few of these respondents would be willing to hand over their pensions for a more efficient cleanup of the Alaskan shoreline.) And even if we did value nature above everything else, we would still have to decide which aspects of nature we care about the most. You can see this in the debate over the creation of giant wind farms in the ocean or on hillsides. Proponents are enthusiastic about the cheap, green energy; critics worry about the loss of natural beauty and the yearly filleting of thousands of songbirds and ducks.

In the end, an indiscriminate biophilia makes little sense. Natural selection shaped the human brain to be drawn toward aspects of nature that enhance our survival and reproduction, like verdant landscapes and docile creatures. There is no payoff to getting the warm fuzzies in the presence of rats, snakes, mosquitoes, cockroaches, herpes simplex and the rabies virus. Some of the natural world is appealing, some of it is terrifying and some of it grosses us out. Modern people don’t want to be dropped naked into a swamp. We want to tour Yosemite with our water bottles and G.P.S. devices. The natural world is a source of happiness and fulfillment, but only when prescribed in the right doses.

You might think that technology could provide a simulacrum of nature with all the bad parts scrubbed out. But attempts to do so have turned out to be interesting failures. There is a fortune to be made, for instance, by building a robot that children would respond to as if it were an animal. There have been many attempts, but they don’t evoke anywhere near the same responses as puppies, kittens or even hamsters. They are toys, not companions. Or consider a recent study by the University of Washington psychologist Peter H. Kahn Jr. and his colleagues. They put 50-inch high-definition televisions in the windowless offices of faculty and staff members to provide a live view of a natural scene. People liked this, but in another study that measured heart-rate recovery from stress, the HDTVs were shown to be worthless, no better than staring at a blank wall. What did help with stress was giving people an actual plate-glass window looking out upon actual greenery.

All of this provides a different sort of argument for the preservation of nature. Put aside for the moment practical considerations like the need for clean air and water, and ignore as well spiritual worries about the sanctity of Mother Earth or religious claims that we are the stewards of creation. Look at it from the coldblooded standpoint of the enhancement of the happiness of our everyday lives. Real natural habitats provide significant sources of pleasure for modern humans. We intuitively grasp this, and this knowledge underlies the anxiety that we feel about nature’s loss. It might be that one day we will be able to replace the experience of nature with “Star Trek” holodecks and robotic animals. But until then, this basic fact about human pleasure is an excellent argument for keeping the real thing.

Ali Erkurt wins advertising competition!

2009-04-02T15:20:00.003-04:00

Ali was on the AWC staff last summer. Ali is a computer wizard from the great country of Turkey. He gave me the link, but it has a few grammatical errors from google translation. Ali is second from the right holding the certificate. Congrats Ali!

Link

Twitter and Facebook

2009-03-29T11:21:00.001-04:00

AWC is now on Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter= www.twitter.com/woodcraftcamps

Facebook: www.facebook.com, search Woodcraft Camps

Enjoy!

Woodcraft is on Twitter

2009-03-19T19:03:00.000-04:00

Check us out on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/WoodcraftCamps

Article from NY Times

2009-02-26T19:27:00.000-05:00

The 3 R’s? A Fourth Is Crucial, Too: Recess

By TARA PARKER-POPE

The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it.

New research suggests that play and down time may be as important to a child’s academic experience as reading, science and math, and that regular recess, fitness or nature time can influence behavior, concentration and even grades.

A study published this month in the journal Pediatrics studied the links between recess and classroom behavior among about 11,000 children age 8 and 9. Those who had more than 15 minutes of recess a day showed better behavior in class than those who had little or none. Although disadvantaged children were more likely to be denied recess, the association between better behavior and recess time held up even after researchers controlled for a number of variables, including sex, ethnicity, public or private school and class size.

The lead researcher, Dr. Romina M. Barros, a pediatrician and an assistant clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said the findings were important because many schools did not view recess as essential to education.

“Sometimes you need data published for people at the educational level to start believing it has an impact,” she said. “We should understand that kids need that break because the brain needs that break.”

And many children are not getting that break. In the Pediatrics study, 30 percent were found to have little or no daily recess. Another report, from a children’s advocacy group, found that 40 percent of schools surveyed had cut back at least one daily recess period.

Also, teachers often punish children by taking away recess privileges. That strikes Dr. Barros as illogical. “Recess should be part of the curriculum,” she said. “You don’t punish a kid by having them miss math class, so kids shouldn’t be punished by not getting recess.”

Last month, Harvard researchers reported in The Journal of School Health that the more physical fitness tests children passed, the better they did on academic tests. The study, of 1,800 middle school students, suggests that children can benefit academically from physical activity during gym class and recess.

A small study of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder last year found that walks outdoors appeared to improve scores on tests of attention and concentration. Notably, children who took walks in natural settings did better than those who walked in urban areas, according to the report, published online in August in The Journal of Attention Disorders. The researchers found that a dose of nature worked as well as a dose of medication to improve concentration, or even better.

Andrea Faber Taylor, a child environment and behavior researcher at the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois, says other research suggests that all children, not just those with attention problems, can benefit from spending time in nature during the school day. In another study of children who live in public housing, girls who had access to green courtyards scored better on concentration tests than those who did not.

The reason may be that the brain uses two forms of attention. “Directed” attention allows us to concentrate on work, reading and tests, while “involuntary” attention takes over when we’re distracted by things like running water, crying babies, a beautiful view or a pet that crawls onto our lap.

Directed attention is a limited resource. Long hours in front of a computer or studying for a test can leave us feeling fatigued. But spending time in natural settings appears to activate involuntary attention, giving the brain’s directed attention time to rest.

“It’s pretty clear that all human beings experience attentional fatigue,” Dr. Faber Taylor said. “Our attention has to be restored from that fatigue, and there is a growing body of research evidence that nature is one way that seems particularly effective at doing it.”

Playtime and nature time are important not only for learning but also for health and development.

Young rats denied opportunities for rough-and-tumble play develop numerous social problems in adulthood. They fail to recognize social cues and the nuances of rat hierarchy; they aren’t able to mate. By the same token, people who play as children “learn to handle life in a much more resilient and vital way,” said Dr. Stuart Brown, the author of the new book “Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul” (Avery).

Dr. Brown, a psychiatrist in Carmel Valley, Calif., has collected more than 6,000 “play histories” from human subjects. The founder of the National Institute for Play, he works with educators and legislators to promote the importance of preserving playtime in schools. He calls play “a fundamental biological process.” “From my viewpoint, it’s a major public health issue,” he said. “Teachers feel like they’re under huge pressures to get academic excellence to the exclusion of having much fun in the classroom. But playful learning leads to better academic success than the skills-and-drills approach.”

Map of Camp by Zach Clemans

2009-02-16T19:16:00.001-05:00

New Illinois Governor Vows to Fight Nature-Deficit Disorder

2009-02-03T17:59:00.000-05:00

My Web Times – January 30, 2009

Following is the text of Pat Quinn's first press conference as Illinois governor.

Pat Quinn: It’s an honor to be here, it’s a special place, the building of the people of Illinois. I was really moved by the serious purpose of the Illinois Senate today and how the senators conducted themselves this entire week. I think they were the essence of fairness and due process.

I think every person in Illinois should be proud of our House of Representatives and our senators there and our senators this week for how they conducted themselves. I really think they followed the Constitution. The rule of law prevailed in Illinois. We are ready to move forward. We understand that we have to amend the flaws of our politics and our government.

I think it’s extremely important that the people of Illinois come together, and its something I’m going to work on night and day to make sure we try to ask folks to put aside differences of the past and focus on the common good. I think there’s a great opportunity for great reform. We want to make this a year of great reform for Illinois. I think we can do that if we summon the energy of the people, and some of the energy of the, energy of the members of the legislative and executive branch.

I want to salute the four constitutional officers I’ve worked with over last several years: Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Secretary of State Jesse White, Comptroller Dan Hynes, Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. I think in the last 50 days that have been trying, we have worked together as at team. We have been meeting on a regular basis, the four constitutional officers and the governor, because we have so much talent in the legislature and executive branch to put a strategy and blueprint together to come up with the reforms that are vitally needed by the public.

I was reading today the speech of President Ford after the resignation of President Nixon, and I think there was a line in there that struck me. He pointed out that he was not elected by the ballots of the people so he asked the people of America to confirm his office by their prayers. And I have the same request of the people of Illinois. This is probably the most trying difficult time as a state. We’re in two wars as a country; we have an economy that is faltering in America and in Illinois. We have a fiscal crisis, a budget crisis in this state as there is in almost every state in the union and we all know we have an integrity crisis. And I hope we can in the best traditions of Lincoln’s democracy, to come together not for a profit, for a cause we believe in. And that cause is to protect our state and our democracy and to move forward.

Not too long ago, about 12 days ago, I went to a dedication of a school gym. In Chicago, at Logandale Middle School. It was dedicated to Staff Sgt. Jason Vazquez who lost his life in Afghanistan defending our democracy. It was a very moving ceremony on that day. And I remember the principal of the school saying that every day at that school, when Jason was there and when the children today are there, that they start the day by saying "expect the best." And I think that’s what we’ve got to do in Illinois. Expect the best. We will achieve the best. And we will make the will of the people the law of the land.

I’ll be glad to answer any questions you may have.

Q: Governor – the department heads – do they all move forward in their jobs or are you going to look at all the serious department heads?

A: I think it’s important that each and every person in an appointed position in a department, a cabinet director will look at each and every one. I know many of them, not every single one. Everybody will be under review, that’s the way it’s gonna be.

Q: When did you start meeting with members of former Gov. Blagojevich’s staff about a transition? When did you meet with his chief of staff and just get the wheels in motion?

A: Well there wasn’t really a transition the way that President Bush was gracious and cooperative with President Obama. President Obama acknowledged that and said he was so grateful with President Bush for being cooperative with information and staff members and so on, but there was no transition here, it was nonexistent. So we will have a period of time, probably the rest of … the coming month, to have a transition and make sure that things are done properly. I’m confident that’ll happen. I think that everyone who works for state government understands that their job is public service. And I really want to salute the hard-working employees of Illinois, the public employees; some of them out there are moving snow during a snow storm or making sure that children are protected or doing what has to be done with respect to law enforcement. So I think we should honor the hard work of public employees as we honor the labor of everyone in Illinois and make sure that everyone who’s breathing and able bodies has a job. That’s job one for I think for the governor of Illinois.

Q: Will closed parks open this week?

A: I sure hope so. I think we need to, with dispatch, open the parks of Illinois. I recently read a book – it talked about nature deficit disorder where we should leave no child inside. I think in these hard times where a lot of families can’t take a lot of vacations out of state, our state parks are precious. As lieutenant governor I worked on our rivers and conservation and I think parents want to take their children to see an eagle fly over the Illinois River — you can do that right now — and I think it’s very, very important that we reopen the parks and make sure they’re welcome.

Q: How do you walk into the office with a $4 billion budget hole facing you?

A: It could be worse. We’ll find out, you know? We don’t really know, we really don’t know the nature, the size of the deficit. We don’t, I wasn’t given access to all the information necessary. I think in the coming weeks, certainly going to ask the speaker of the house and the president of the Senate to move the State of the Budget Address from the 18th of February to the 18th of March and I think that will give us a little time to assess the damage, find out what the deficit truly is. I think the governor has to level with the people of Illinois. That’s what they want — then we’ll have a blueprint for getting out of this morass.

Q: Would you have to be digging for months practically where the money is?

A: I’m very grateful to Comptroller Dan Hynes, he’s provided some information from his end of things. Obviously there may be bills held up in agencies that haven’t arrived in his office but I think a comprehensive, and certainly the state treasurer, Alexi Giannoulias and I flew down today, and he’s a very good friend, and I think all of us working together will figure out where the deficit is and also will think will have to put the full court press on to make sure Illinois gets every dollar it can from the federal government. It’s very important to keep our state, like Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, the heartland, a strong, vibrant, and we want to make sure we’re working hard for the federal stimulus.

Q: Can the state of Illinois afford an income tax increase?

A: We’re going to take a look at what the damage is. I think it’s very important to know what the facts are. And I think right now, that’s the duty: to do fact finding on fiscal matters. We’ll spend the probably next six weeks doing that. On the 17th or 18th of March when the budget address is, I’ll have a full plan for the people of Illinois how we get to a better place.

Q: Are you staffed yet?

A: In the coming week, there will be some names that we will talk about. I don’t think it will be in the next day or two. I have my family here tonight and my mom is 91 and my aunt, her sister, who she hasn’t seen in 6 years. My aunt lives here in Springfield, she’s disabled, and so it was quite emotional getting together. I think we may be going to the governor’s mansion tonight for dinner, that’s what I heard. But I hope that’s the case. We look forward to it, I do, living in the governor’s mansion. It is the people’s house. I’m grateful to the people of Illinois. I think all the people, they feel blessed to have such a special place. It’s the third-oldest mansion I think in the country and it is a place where we want to bring the world to Illinois. It’s a very important year, the year of Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial of his birth. The American president most admired of all by far, is Abraham Lincoln, from people from foreign lands. And we want them to come to Illinois, the city of Abraham Lincoln and other places in Illinois to look for Lincoln. You can go to Beardstown and see a courthouse where Lincoln actually practiced in. So I think the governor’s mansion is going to get a good work out this year in letting the world know that Illinois has a lot of good things and what they may have seen in the last 50 days is really just something in the rearview mirror.

Q: Are you going to spend the night there tonight?

A: I don’t know. I have an apartment at Lincoln Towers and uh, my Mom is in, she has a walker. So there’s an elevator there. So we’ll figure out what it is.

Q: Governor, have you heard from President Obama or anyone else today?

A: Not today, no. The (state) Senate just acted. Barack Obama is an inspiration for all of us. I was at his swearing in there, on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol last week, and it was really one for the ages. And I really think we’re all blessed in Illinois to have a great president who knows the country and knows our state.

Q: Have you heard from former Gov. Blagojevich?

A: No.

Q: Are you concerned he’s going to drag it out by filing a lawsuit and tie you in knots for awhile?

A: It would be meritless.

Q: What needs to be done to fix state governance and politics?

A: I talk this morning to Patrick Collins. Pat Collins, I asked him to head up a reform commission, and I think that reform commission of a number of men and women will make some excellent recommendations. Their report will be due around about Easter, about a hundred days from now, and I think it will be what the doctor ordered, the prescription necessary, the strong medicine necessary to deal with the culture of corruption that has afflicted our state for far too long.

Q: What about historic sites?

A: I think both the parks and the historic sites should be places that are open. I think that historic based tourism along with nature-based tourism; those are the two fastest growing types of tourism in our country. People don’t go to another town to look at their Wal-Mart, they know what Wal-Mart looks like. So going to a special place that Abraham Lincoln, or maybe one of his colleagues along the way, spent serious time in is something I think we want to have open so that people can enjoy it.

Q: How will you pay for opening the parks?

A: We will find the money because I think its squeezing a nickel to close parks and historic sites, you squeeze a nickel and lose a half dollar. That’s not smart government.

Q: You’ve only been governor for a few moments. Is this one of your wildest dreams come true?

A: Some people who are here, like this Ray Long over here, he’s observed me in past situations. I think it comes as a surprise, you know. When I woke up on the morning of Dec. 9, it was quite a shock. I think to everybody in Illinois. And it still is something I guess you have to accustom yourself to. And I’m an organizer. I believe in organizing. Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and organize. So that’s what we gotta do in Illinois for everyday people. I know that my mission here in the next 700 days is to work as hard as I can for those people who don’t have lobbyists in Springfield, who don’t have friends in high places, maybe they’re afraid of losing their job or losing their home or their income’s declining, my job is to fight for them.

Q: Will you support campaign finance reform legislation?

A: I believe in that and we’ll have a lot to say about that.

Q: Does that mean spending limits?

A: It’s a little early yet, we’ll have a good plan.

Q: Will you move jobs from Springfield to the southern part of the state? There’s a lot of people nervous around here.

A: The decision, it’s going to be reviewed from top to bottom, that decision.

Q: What can you do to restore confidence in government in Illinois?

A: Well, I think one way to do it is to be accessible. I think it’s not good for the governor to be isolated, insulated and not get around the whole of Illinois. I think I probably am the only statewide official who’s actually lived south of here. I lived in Madison County, St. Clair County, lived in E. St. Louis, in 704 N. 76th St. and I lived in a mobile home near Edwardsville long ago, and so I think it’s important that the whole state of Illinois understand that their governor understands their county, their area. There’s issues that, you know, aren’t big issues in metropolitan Chicago that are major issues in other parts of Illinois. And I believe in walking. I walked across Illinois from the Mississippi River all the way to Lake Michigan. And I think we’re going to do a lot of that walking, it’s a good way to catch up to people.

Q: Pontiac Prison?

A: That one will be reviewed as well.

Q: How soon will you have the title of governor chiseled on your tombstone?

A: I don’t have that…(inaudible)

Q: Is there anything you need to undo in these last few days before he was ousted?

A: We have to find out if anything happened in the last several days. As I said, the cooperation was spotty as far as any kind of information. We’ll find out.

Q: What official actions would you look at overturning?

A: Which ones?

Q: Are there certain official actions you’d look at overturning that Blagojevich has made besides state parks?

A: Well appointments, and thing like that, transfers, things that were done at the midnight hour.

Q: What about Kurt Granberg (state legislator appointed by Blagojevich to become head of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources)?

A: I believe there should be a natural resource professional in the Department of Natural Resources. I’ve said that for six years.

Q: Will you run in 2010 for governor?

A: You know, I don’t think the people of Illinois need politics right now. We’ve had our dose of that, a heavy dose for the last seven weeks. This should be a year of government, where people really work on repairing damage and making things better, and there’ll be plenty of time for politics in 2010.

Q: What will be your first official action be and when will you take it.

A: Tomorrow.

Q: What is it?

A: No, it’ll be a surprise. You won’t come back. It’s my one and only shot.

Q: What about exempt state employees, two or three thousand, do they need to worry now? Will you review everybody?

A: Yeah, I think…if you’re an employee, public or private, you’re always going to be under review. If you’re not doing a good job, then you should be, you know, concerned. But if you are doing a good job, being diligent, that’s what we’re looking for.

Q: Will you review everybody, or are there certain classes of folks that you think will be gone?

A: I haven’t looked at any of that, but I think they’ll be a thorough review over the next month or two to make sure that state government works for the people who pay the taxes.

Q: There are many folks in Springfield who remember you for your many trips here, and they proudly remember is that you were a hard worker and a cheapskate. They say that with pride.

A: Cheapskate? Frugal...that’s different. Cheapskate? I’m very, very generous, I’m always picking up the tab.

Q: Let’s talk about your frugality. That’s something you’re proud of, isn’t it?

A: Well, I am proud of being frugal, I’m a VIP member at Super 8 (shows card to laughter) and I moved up from Motel 6. I think being frugal is useful, but I am very generous, I think everybody will tell you that I’m generous to a fault.

Q: How will frugality define your time as governor?

A: I think we’ll have to tighten our belts, whenever possible. We want to focus on the key, key priorities of government – public safety, education, decent health care. Those are the kinds of things that I think people look for. And you know, we’ll have a budget on the 18th of March that will be a proper one for the times we are now finding ourselves in.

Q: Governor, what did you think of the governor’s speech?

A: Well…

Q: I’m sorry, I mean Blagojevich.

A: He spoke for himself. I know it came from the heart. You can tell he was speaking from the heart. I don’t think he was persuasive. You know, I think now is the time to go forward. There’s a reason God put our eyes in front of our head. If we could always look backwards, we probably wouldn’t go very far in Illinois or anywhere else. I think we need to look forward. You know Gov. Blagojevich and his wife…they are now private citizens, and we should leave it there.

Q: Are the names coming off the toll road signs and are you putting your name on them?

A: (Laughter) The answer is I’m not putting my name on there. Only you would ask that question, I suppose. I think those signs will come down.

Q: Why aren’t you putting your name on there?

A: I’m not in for this imperial governorship routine. I think it should be a government that is proud of its people. We need a humble governor who’s proud of our people. So frankly, if they have to change signs on the borders of Illinois, I would like to see is the "People of Illinois Welcome You."

And we are a hospitable group of 13 million citizens, and we want to see the world come to Illinois and see about Abraham Lincoln, the Mississippi River, Lake Michigan, hopefully, the Olympics. Really it should be the people calling the shots, not the officeholders’ vanity. So to answer your question, we will find a way to take those signs down that are obviously no longer accurate.

Q: Are you going to use executive security?

A: We’ll have adequate security. We’ll see what that develops to.

Q: Gov. Blagojevich did not have regular press conferences, did not give interviews, He was adamantly opposed to tax increases. You taught economics. What is your philosophic approach?

A: Well, number one I believe in regular contact with the press. I enjoy the back-and-forth, and I think that’s a good way to be accountable. So we’ll have regular gatherings. I hope they’re as well attended as tonight. We’ll see about that. I think it’s important that when you come into a community to answer questions from the media. It’s part of our First Amendment, having a vigorous press. Issues of taxation, and all of that… I taught tax law for 24 years, and nobody likes paying taxes. April 15 is not my favorite day. Never will be. So I think it’s important that to understand that in our democracy, the price of being in our democracy that citizens do agree to pay taxes in order for the common good. So we will find a way to have a fair system which hopefully keeps taxes as low as possible.

Q: Former Gov. Thompson said that it’s been a custom of Illinois to extend their predecessor security detail for a year. Will you extend that courtesy to former Gov. Blagojevich, or is he done?

A: No, I already told the superintendent of state police that when the governor arrived at home and was secure… former governor Blagojevich… that would be the end of security. And he agreed. As a matter of fact, he thought that was the proper way to go. I did yesterday speak to the people in the city of Chicago, where I lived. I lived in a neighborhood in Chicago in the west side. I have full confidence in the Chicago Police Department. They serve and protect. A number of policemen live in my neighborhood. And they will do, I’m sure, an adequate and good job to protect Rod Blagojevich and Patti Blagojevich and everyone else in their family.

Q: Why did you stop? Was it a purely money-saving concern?

A: I don’t think there’s any statue that requires this, and under the circumstances I think that was the appropriate way to go.

Q: Have you changed the locks on the offices?

A: Somebody’s doing that, I don’t know.

Q: Governor, what is your plan for education funding reform?

A: Well that’s a major issue. I will have something to say, but not tonight. I think it’s something that re really have to understand that, jobs follow brainpower, and if we’re going to have jobs, we have to have smart people from early childhood. I taught community college, I believe in community colleges. I think, we want as many young men and women in Illinois to go to four-year universities, and when they graduate we want them to stay in Illinois. We don’t want them to go somewhere else. We have a good state and we’re gonna be even better.

Q: Capital plan?

A: Well we need to pass a capital plan. I would hope we could do that with dispatch. That is a top priority. We have a federal stimulus plan that does not require a local or state match. We’ll have to spend that money in a very prudent way, a very quick way, so we can get our economy going, and at the same time we want to fund for the state of Illinois capitol construction plan, a way to really build. I think we should build in a sustainable way, a green way, we don’t want to be building like we did in 1956. We want to make sure we do a 21st century capitol plan that invests in sustainability like energy conservation, energy efficiency, water conservation. If we’re doing roads, we should have trenches along the road, so we can have fiber there so we can have high-speed internet. That’s the way to really have smart government.

Q: What are you going to do for the rest of tonight?

A: My mom and aunt and some of our family members are here. I think we’re going to have dinner over at the Governor’s Mansion. I haven’t been there in a while, but I know that my past experience that it is a... the staff is a really committed people. They really believe that the mansion is a special place in Illinois. I’d like to see artists come, people who are writers, so that folks in Illinois can learn from them. As lieutenant governor, I often times would have special people that we would honor, and I look forward to doing that in the Governor’s Mansion.

Q: What about tomorrow? What are your plans tomorrow?

A: Well I think we’re going to do something in front of the governor’s office, roughly around 10 o’ clock or so, we’ll have one announcement there. We’ll see how many of you guys come back.

Q: Is there a governor in Illinois history that you’d like to model…

A: My office is in the Hall of Governors, so I get to walk by there. (John Peter) Altgeld is certainly a special man, he was a man of courage, and I think a poem was written about him, a very important poem. You know, I think he’s a good man.

Q: Will Rod Blagojevich’s picture go up in the Hall of Governors?

A: Yes.

Q: How will you respond to the Blagojevich plan to not increase the income or sales tax?

A: Well I think that we need to assess the damage left by my predecessor. I kept going to dinner … (with someone) who ate it up at dinner and ran up the bill, and then you look around when it comes time to pay the bill and they’ve left the building. And, you know, if that is what’s happened in Illinois, we have a huge credit card bill, billions of dollars, we’re gonna have to assess how much the debt is - nobody knows. We’ll find out, though, and then once we do that, we will have a plan to pay off the debt. The reason this is important, especially in times of tough economic conditions, if Illinois doesn’t pay its bills soon to vendors like hospitals, well they employ thousands of people. More people work for hospitals in Illinois than car plants, and both of them are important. So we want to make sure that the state is not failing to paying its bills, and then leading to layoffs of thousands of workers for state vendors. This is a big issue, it’s connected, and we will have a plan. But it’s going to take a few weeks to put that together. And that blueprint will be all lined in the budget address.

Q: Are you going to take the pay raise that comes with your new position?

A: No…

Q: I think it’s about $40,000.

A: You mean the pay raise the governor got?

Q: The increase in pay for lieutenant governor versus governor.

A: Well it’s a different job. I’m not going to take the highest pay of the governor. I think he got a pay raise last year? Something like that. We won’t go that high. But it’s a different job, I haven’t even looked what the salary is. I haven’t even looked at that.

Q: The Republican Party is already saying you benefited as Blagojevich’s running mate through his contributions and all Democrats who didn’t oppose him in 2006 should share some of the blame for all of this…your thoughts on this in the future and now?

A: Well I led the effort on recall, and I think recall is something we need to get in our Constitution. I hope we can get it in the ballot in 2010. I think that is one of the very best ways the public can act if something goes wrong after an election. And so, I’ll let that be my point of view.

Q: Did you make a mistake by not speaking out in 2006?

A: I was a pretty loud speaker for recall. I was for recall for 33 years. I think this may be the moment for recall.

Q: What’s on the menu for your first meal?

A: I have no idea, I’m sure it’ll be very good. I look forward to engaging everyone here. Dialogue, question and answer, Socratic Method, very good. Learn a lot. I’ll see you all later.

Nature Essential for the Brain, Scientists Report

2009-01-26T19:41:00.000-05:00

Boston Globe – January 02, 2009

By Jonah Lehrer

The city has always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of London, where citizens gathered to discuss chemistry and radical politics, to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris, where Pablo Picasso held forth on modern art. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce; even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains.

And yet, city life isn't easy. The same London cafes that stimulated Ben Franklin also helped spread cholera; Picasso eventually bought an estate in quiet Provence. While the modern city might be a haven for playwrights, poets, and physicists, it's also a deeply unnatural and overwhelming place.

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.

"The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations."

One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban roil.

This research arrives just as humans cross an important milestone: For the first time in history, the majority of people reside in cities. For a species that evolved to live in small, primate tribes on the African savannah, such a migration marks a dramatic shift. Instead of inhabiting wide-open spaces, we're crowded into concrete jungles, surrounded by taxis, traffic, and millions of strangers. In recent years, it's become clear that such unnatural surroundings have important implications for our mental and physical health, and can powerfully alter how we think.

This research is also leading some scientists to dabble in urban design, as they look for ways to make the metropolis less damaging to the brain. The good news is that even slight alterations, such as planting more trees in the inner city or creating urban parks with a greater variety of plants, can significantly reduce the negative side effects of city life. The mind needs nature, and even a little bit can be a big help.

Consider everything your brain has to keep track of as you walk down a busy thoroughfare like Newbury Street. There are the crowded sidewalks full of distracted pedestrians who have to be avoided; the hazardous crosswalks that require the brain to monitor the flow of traffic. (The brain is a wary machine, always looking out for potential threats.) There's the confusing urban grid, which forces people to think continually about where they're going and how to get there.

The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception -- we are telling the mind what to pay attention to -- takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.

Natural settings, in contrast, don't require the same amount of cognitive effort. This idea is known as attention restoration theory, or ART, and it was first developed by Stephen Kaplan, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. While it's long been known that human attention is a scarce resource -- focusing in the morning makes it harder to focus in the afternoon -- Kaplan hypothesized that immersion in nature might have a restorative effect.

Imagine a walk around Walden Pond, in Concord. The woods surrounding the pond are filled with pitch pine and hickory trees. Chickadees and red-tailed hawks nest in the branches; squirrels and rabbits skirmish in the berry bushes. Natural settings are full of objects that automatically capture our attention, yet without triggering a negative emotional response -- unlike, say, a backfiring car. The mental machinery that directs attention can relax deeply, replenishing itself.

"It's not an accident that Central Park is in the middle of Manhattan," says Berman. "They needed to put a park there."

In a study published last month, Berman outfitted undergraduates at the University of Michigan with GPS receivers. Some of the students took a stroll in an arboretum, while others walked around the busy streets of downtown Ann Arbor.

The subjects were then run through a battery of psychological tests. People who had walked through the city were in a worse mood and scored significantly lower on a test of attention and working memory, which involved repeating a series of numbers backwards. In fact, just glancing at a photograph of urban scenes led to measurable impairments, at least when compared with pictures of nature.

"We see the picture of the busy street, and we automatically imagine what it's like to be there," says Berman. "And that's when your ability to pay attention starts to suffer."

This also helps explain why, according to several studies, children with attention-deficit disorder have fewer symptoms in natural settings. When surrounded by trees and animals, they are less likely to have behavioral problems and are better able to focus on a particular task.

Studies have found that even a relatively paltry patch of nature can confer benefits. In the late 1990s, Frances Kuo, director of the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois, began interviewing female residents in the Robert Taylor Homes, a massive housing project on the South Side of Chicago.

Kuo and her colleagues compared women randomly assigned to various apartments. Some had a view of nothing but concrete sprawl, the blacktop of parking lots and basketball courts. Others looked out on grassy courtyards filled with trees and flowerbeds. Kuo then measured the two groups on a variety of tasks, from basic tests of attention to surveys that looked at how the women were handling major life challenges. She found that living in an apartment with a view of greenery led to significant improvements in every category.

"We've constructed a world that's always drawing down from the same mental account," Kuo says. "And then we're surprised when [after spending time in the city] we can't focus at home."

But the density of city life doesn't just make it harder to focus: It also interferes with our self-control. In that stroll down Newbury, the brain is also assaulted with temptations -- caramel lattes, iPods, discounted cashmere sweaters, and high-heeled shoes. Resisting these temptations requires us to flex the prefrontal cortex, a nub of brain just behind the eyes. Unfortunately, this is the same brain area that's responsible for directed attention, which means that it's already been depleted from walking around the city. As a result, it's less able to exert self-control, which means we're more likely to splurge on the latte and those shoes we don't really need. While the human brain possesses incredible computational powers, it's surprisingly easy to short-circuit: all it takes is a hectic city street.

"I think cities reveal how fragile some of our 'higher' mental functions actually are," Kuo says. "We take these talents for granted, but they really need to be protected."

Related research has demonstrated that increased "cognitive load" -- like the mental demands of being in a city -- makes people more likely to choose chocolate cake instead of fruit salad, or indulge in a unhealthy snack. This is the one-two punch of city life: It subverts our ability to resist temptation even as it surrounds us with it, from fast-food outlets to fancy clothing stores. The end result is too many calories and too much credit card debt.

City life can also lead to loss of emotional control. Kuo and her colleagues found less domestic violence in the apartments with views of greenery. These data build on earlier work that demonstrated how aspects of the urban environment, such as crowding and unpredictable noise, can also lead to increased levels of aggression. A tired brain, run down by the stimuli of city life, is more likely to lose its temper.

Long before scientists warned about depleted prefrontal cortices, philosophers and landscape architects were warning about the effects of the undiluted city, and looking for ways to integrate nature into modern life. Ralph Waldo Emerson advised people to "adopt the pace of nature," while the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted sought to create vibrant urban parks, such as Central Park in New York and the Emerald Necklace in Boston, that allowed the masses to escape the maelstrom of urban life.

Although Olmsted took pains to design parks with a variety of habitats and botanical settings, most urban greenspaces are much less diverse. This is due in part to the "savannah hypothesis," which argues that people prefer wide-open landscapes that resemble the African landscape in which we evolved. Over time, this hypothesis has led to a proliferation of expansive civic lawns, punctuated by a few trees and playing fields.

However, these savannah-like parks are actually the least beneficial for the brain. In a recent paper, Richard Fuller, an ecologist at the University of Queensland, demonstrated that the psychological benefits of green space are closely linked to the diversity of its plant life. When a city park has a larger variety of trees, subjects that spend time in the park score higher on various measures of psychological well-being, at least when compared with less biodiverse parks.

"We worry a lot about the effects of urbanization on other species," Fuller says. "But we're also affected by it. That's why it's so important to invest in the spaces that provide us with some relief."

When a park is properly designed, it can improve the function of the brain within minutes. As the Berman study demonstrates, just looking at a natural scene can lead to higher scores on tests of attention and memory. While people have searched high and low for ways to improve cognitive performance, from doping themselves with Red Bull to redesigning the layout of offices, it appears that few of these treatments are as effective as simply taking a walk in a natural place.

Given the myriad mental problems that are exacerbated by city life, from an inability to pay attention to a lack of self-control, the question remains: Why do cities continue to grow? And why, even in the electronic age, do they endure as wellsprings of intellectual life?

Recent research by scientists at the Santa Fe Institute used a set of complex mathematical algorithms to demonstrate that the very same urban features that trigger lapses in attention and memory -- the crowded streets, the crushing density of people -- also correlate with measures of innovation, as strangers interact with one another in unpredictable ways. It is the "concentration of social interactions" that is largely responsible for urban creativity, according to the scientists. The density of 18th-century London may have triggered outbreaks of disease, but it also led to intellectual breakthroughs, just as the density of Cambridge -- one of the densest cities in America -- contributes to its success as a creative center. One corollary of this research is that less dense urban areas, like Phoenix, may, over time, generate less innovation.

The key, then, is to find ways to mitigate the psychological damage of the metropolis while still preserving its unique benefits. Kuo, for instance, describes herself as "not a nature person," but has learned to seek out more natural settings: The woods have become a kind of medicine. As a result, she's better able to cope with the stresses of city life, while still enjoying its many pleasures and benefits. Because there always comes a time, as Lou Reed once sang, when a person wants to say: "I'm sick of the trees/take me to the city."

The Baileys celebrate a Woodcraft New Years!

2009-01-11T15:16:00.005-05:00

Woodcraft featured in local historical society exhibit

2008-12-17T17:58:00.004-05:00

AWC was the main attraction in the Town of Webb Historical Society's exhibit on local summer camps. Check out a picture that was featured in the Adirondack Express.

Let it Snow!

2008-12-07T16:07:00.005-05:00

Woodcraft has been blanketed with snow since late November. There is about 15 inches of snow on the ground and the Old Forge Nordic Ski Team has been using the trails here at camp for training. Today we have received an additional 6 inches and and it is still coming down. I walked around camp today to take a few snowy pictures. Check out the link on the left hand side name "Woodcraft Photos" to see the pictures on Flickr.

In Memory of Larry Hunt

2008-11-18T22:15:00.001-05:00

Hunt, Lawrence W.

Age 98, Larry was born September 25, 1910, the son of Eliphalet and Elenora Hunt.He died on November 7, 2008. He is survived by his brother, Wilson H. Hunt of Valley Park, MO and special friends Stan Bidlack, Dave Hoffman, Ann Markovits, and Jack and Friedelle Winans. He also leaves a legion of friends, colleagues, and admirers across the nation who greatly mourn the end of his long and extraordinary life. He served in the Merchant Marine and the U.S. Navy during WWII. He was a master-craftsman, builder and outdoorsman, and an inspiring leader of youth. His intelligence and wealth of know-ledge, information and experience were awesome. Those who had the pleasure of his company and the benefit of his talents will ever cherish his memory. As Larry wished, cremation has taken place and there will be no formal services. Special thanks must be given to the many caregivers at Silver Maples and CRC who cared for him over the past several years. Those who would like to express their appreciation of his life are encouraged to con- tribute to the Forever Woodcraft Foundation, Adirondack Woodcraft Camps, P.O. Box 219, Old Forge, NY 13420. Arrangements by Staffan-Mitchell Funeral Home.

PBS Documentary about the Adirondack Mountains

2008-11-16T11:22:00.001-05:00

This is what Woodcrafters have come to know and love each summer for 7 weeks. You will see many familiar sights. Enjoy!

My Summer Home

2008-11-09T17:34:00.003-05:00

Essay for English Class...

My favorite place to be is at my summer home. Adirondack Woodcraft Camps (AWC). Every summer my friends and I go back to AWC, which makes camp so fun. Most years I see my friends from years past and make new ones. What also makes it fun are all the activities like archery, nature, and climbing. My favorites are riflery and swimming. In swimming there are awards that we work for and we have to learn different strokes and water safety. We use the safety skills on camping trips like canoeing the Fulton Chain. I love the beautiful mountains we climb, like Mt. Marcy. Also the small lakes encircled by a plethora of leaves that change from green to orange slowly and fall innocently to the ground. Mostly I love the friends I make and keep over the years.

by Jordan Levi (2008 Wenonah & 7th Grader at Town of Webb Union Free School)

Bald Eagle at Camp!

2008-11-05T18:38:00.002-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I was driving into my cabin at the "Field of Dreams" and right before my eyes was a Bald Eagle! It must have caught something in the middle of the field, but the sound of my car scared it away after a few seconds. Hopefully there is a pair of them around for the summer.

Autmumn view of West Pond at dusk

2008-10-03T19:37:00.001-04:00

Early Enrollment!

2008-10-03T19:20:00.002-04:00

Early Enrollment is underway. Everyday we are getting inquiries for summer counselor positions and camp enrollments for next summer. We are running out of our Mountain Hardwear Day Packs as complimentary gifts for early enrollment, so hurry up! Remember, those who enroll early are given the 2008 rates for the 2009 summer and get a nice day pack to climb Bald Mountain and to explore the high peaks.

Connor is this year's Chief's Knife winner

2008-08-30T12:32:00.003-04:00

Click on the newspaper article to enlarge

Alex visiting Block Island

2008-08-28T21:25:00.001-04:00

Post camp High Peaks trip

2008-08-25T19:10:00.010-04:00

One week after camp ended, Max and I decided to do one final hike this summer. Our destination was the Adirondacks High Peaks. Our goal was not less than two peaks in one day. We had a two hours drive to Chapel Pond at Route 73 south of Keene Valley. We decided to use this trail head because it is closest to the summit of Giant (three miles) and because you have to gain less elevation than on other approaches because you already start very high. We thus took the Zander Scott Trail which has an ascent from Route 73 of 3050 feet.

After signing in at the trail head, we started hiking in a slow but constant pace. Pretty soon we had our first views of Chapel pond and of many of the High Peaks. We then continued our hike and soon arrived at Giant washbowl, a very nice little lake. After taking a picture and taking a short break, we continued our journey. The trail then started to swingback and zigzag up the peak. The trail is in a very good shape and we made some good progresses. After a while the trail reached a certain elevation, where the underground almost exclusivly consists of rockface. At this point we had amazing views towards the south and the west. We saw most of the Dix range, the Great Range, Skylight, Haystack and many other peaks in the west. There are many good spots to look back and enjoy the views of the High Peaks. We finally reached a peak which turned out to be a false summit. We kept climbing and eventually we had to slow down because there were some steep sections in this part of the trail. We finally reached the junction to Giant and RPR and hurried up to climb the last 0.2 miles of the way up Giant (Elevation 4627 feet (1410 m). Order of Height, 12). Upon reaching the top, we enjoyed the views to the northwest and west. St. Huberts is very distinctly visible, so are many of the peaks. For me, this was the most west I have been so far and this view was a new one for me. All my previous hikes lead me to the very center of the High Peaks.
By the time we reached the summit of Giant, it was already 2 pm. The reason for this was the fact that we started our hike very late, approximately at noon. There was not a lot of time left to do another peak, we thought. We thus hurried up and started to hike to RPR. After about 5 min. my friend decided that he was not in shape to do this other peak so he went back to Giant. After a steep descent, the trail up RPR ascends in a moderate grade. I climbed the 1.3 miles distance in about 35 min. and reached the top of RPR (Elevation 4420 feet (1347 m). Order of Height, 20.) I met some very nice old ladies on top of the summit. They asked me to take a picture of them and then also took a picture of me. Thank you very much. The views from RPR are very impressive. The slides on the eastern side of Giant can be seen but also many High Peaks in the west are in sight. However, I was most impressed with the views towards the south and east. Among others I could see Lake Champlain.
Since my friend was waiting for me, I soon had go back to Giant. It didn't take me very long to go back to Giant. The only problem was that by this time my knees started to hurt. I've been on seven other High Peaks trips but I have never had problems with my knees. So I was a little surprised by that. We were both very tired and wanted to get back to the Trail head. We hurried up and reached our car around 4:40 pm. We were very happy and immediatly started our two hours drive back since we got very hungry.
On this trip I climbed my 24th and 25th peak. This made me very happy. I'm really glad that it all worked out and that I could do this trip two days before flying back to Switzerland. Another reason why I liked this trip very much was because of the weather. It was almost perfect hiking weather. The temperature was pretty much perfect, not too hot and not too cold. The sky was a little bit clouded but not too much so we did not have to worry about sunburns. It wasn't too hazy either so we could see pretty far. It did not rain on our trip and the trails weren't wet either. We had pretty much perfect conditions.

More pictures are accessable at
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=66737&l=4e22f&id=515736857

See what an alum of Woodcraft is up to...

2008-08-16T13:41:00.002-04:00

Chris Waddell was a camper at Woodcraft for about 10 years (from Outpost to Trail Camp, and then on staff). His parents, Jim and Nancy, worked in the Outpost and were also in charge of the Waterfront. Chris has inspired countless people with his courage after he was paralyzed in a ski accident while at Middlebury College.

WSJ: Why Safe Kids Are Becoming Fat Kids

2008-08-13T13:09:00.000-04:00

Wall Street Journal – August 13, 2008
By Philip K. Howard

Just when we thought playgrounds were accident-proof -- no more merry-go-rounds, high slides, jungle gyms, seesaws or pretty much anything that's fun -- it turns out that safety itself can be dangerous. A recent heat wave in New York exposed a new playground risk: The ubiquitous rubber safety matting gets hot, not as hot as McDonald's coffee, but hot enough to scald tender feet.

The outrage was immediate. "Playgrounds should be designed with canopies," one park- safety advocate declared. "How many burn cases will it take," Betsy Gotbaum, the city's public advocate asked, "before the city wakes up and acts?"

The headlong drive for safety has indeed created dangers, but not those identified by the safety zealots. Risk is important in child development. Allowing children to test their limits in unstructured play, according to the American Association of Pediatrics, "develop[s] their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength." Scrapes and bruises are how children learn their limits, and the need to take personal responsibility.

The harmful effects of our national safety obsession ripple outward into society. One in six children in America is obese, and many of them will face a lifetime of chronic illness. According to the Center for Disease Control, this problem would basically cure itself if children engaged in the informal outdoor activities that used to be normal. But how do we lure children off the sofa? One key attraction is risk.

Risk is fun, at least the moderate risks that were common in prior generations. An informal survey of children by the University of Toronto's Institute of Child Studies found that "merry-go-rounds . . . anecdotally the most hated piece of playground equipment in hospital emergency rooms -- topped the list of most desired bits of playground equipment." Those of us of a certain age can remember sprinting to get the contraption really moving. That was fun. And a lot of exercise.

America unfortunately is going in the opposite direction. There is nothing left in playgrounds that would attract the interest of a child over the age of four. Exercise in schools is carefully programmed, when it exists at all. Some schools have banned tag. Broward County, Fla., banned running at recess. (How else can we guard against a child falling down?) Little Leagues forbid sliding into base. Some towns ban sledding. High diving boards are history, and it's only a matter of time before all diving boards disappear.

Safety is meaningful only in the context of other benefits and risks. Safety always involves trade-offs -- of opportunities, of scarce resources and, especially in the case of children's play, of learning to manage risk. The question is whether the trade-off makes sense. Soft rubber matting will cushion any fall. This is probably a good thing, at least in situations where children may fall on their heads. But rubber matting also gets hot.

There's only one solution. Someone on behalf of society must be authorized to make these choices. Courts must honor those decisions. Otherwise, the pious accusations of safety fanatics, empowered by the nearly universal fear of being sued, will guarantee a cultural spiral downwards toward the lowest common denominator.

For America's children today, that means spending more than six hours per day staring at a screen. Is that the way we want our children to grow up?

"A little common sense goes a long way," observed Adrian Benepe, New York City's parks commissioner. "Children should wear shoes. They're foolproof protection against hot surfaces." Shoes have undeniable virtues in an urban setting -- a small but useful lesson for young children.

I have an additional idea as well. Why not replant a few of the trees that were cut down, or radically pruned, in an effort to create a controlled play environment? The shade from the trees would keep the rubber matting a little cooler. Who knows, maybe we would even allow children to climb them.

Auroras Explore the High Peaks

2008-08-12T19:44:00.008-04:00

Last week the Auroras and I set out on an ambitious trip to the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. We left on Tuesday with the intention of climbing four Peaks before our pick up time on Friday. Our trip began at the drop-off point in St. Huberts. Our first half-mile of hiking was through the private Ausable Club. We hiked a bit over four miles on the first day to our camp site just outside of the private land owned by the Adirondack Mountain Reserve.

On the second day we had planned to climb Nippletop and Dial Mountains. Unfortunately it rained heavily through the night and in the morning we found ourselves on the wrong side of a rain-swollen brook. The rain continued till about 10:30 that morning. We weighed our options through the morning and as the rain stopped I spent an hour wading in the stream positioning rocks for a safe crossing. The bad weather had set us back a bit but we took out the map and decided there was time enough in the afternoon to climb near-by Mount Colvin (Elev. 4057, Rank: 39). The trail to Colvin was a gradual ascent from our campsite over about two miles. It was the first High Peak for some of the Auroras so the scene on the summit was somewhat celebratory. A rocky point on the summit offered spectacular views primarily to the north and east.

On day three we awoke early with good weather and after a few bagels we took off for Indian Head -- possibly the single most breath-taking view in the Adirondacks -- and eventually Gothics (Elev. 4736, Rank: 10). Indian Head is not a High Peak but rather an amazing happenstance of geology that provides a picturesque view of Lower Ausable Lake framed by Colvin on the south shore and Sawteeth to the north. We spent nearly an hour on the Indian Head enjoying the view and eyeing Gothics with anticipation. Gothics looks particularly impressive from the Indian Head when the clouds scrape across its rocky summit.

On the way to Gothics we stopped to fill our water bottles in a brook that ran into the Ausable River. I happened to take out my guidebook to check the mileage to the summit when I saw a blurb about a 150-foot waterfall just a few hundred yards from where we sat. This was a stroke of luck for us because otherwise we would have missed the falls. The same rain that had kept us on the wrong side of the brook the previous day was now adding to the torrent that spilled over the rocks. After a brief photo session at the bottom of the falls we stopped for lunch at the top and then moved up the trail to Gothics. The trail on the south side of Gothics is formidable and easily the least travelled of the three approaches. From the col between Gothics and Sawteeth the trail rises 1200 feet in just a mile. The Auroras climbed impressively and were rewarded with amazing panoramic views of the entire region.

After such a long day we bounded down the mountain in what was surely record time. We knew that back at the camp site our dinner was the Aurora favorite and my trail culinary specialty: 'diLLas (quesadillas, with anglicized L's). We ate till there was nothing left to eat and settled in for our last night on the trail. On the hike out we passed by the markedly less rugged members of the Ausable Club and disrupted a tennis lesson or two. This trip was exactly what I envisioned for the Auroras when I looked north at the High Peaks from Treadway Mountain back in July and I couldn't have gone with a better group.

Another video clip about the importance of getting kids outside

2008-08-09T11:20:00.000-04:00

On the Today Show

2008-08-06T08:54:00.000-04:00

Trail Camp's second High Peaks trip

2008-08-04T09:33:00.018-04:00

Trail Camp just returned from a very exciting trip. We spent four days in the Adirondacks High Peaks. On the third day of second session (Wednesday, July 30) we left camp right after breakfast and drove for about two and a half hours to the High Peaks. We were dropped off at the parking area in St. Huberts, which is a private golf club that is part of the Adirondacks Mountain Reserve. A very big area of this part of the High Peaks is private land.

We had an easy hike in, although, we had to carry all the food for four days. We reached our campsite close to Indian Head and we set up our base camp. After getting settled in, we hiked a small loop. First, we hiked up Indian Head, which is a huge rock formation that looks like a human head. This rock is a couple of hundred feet above Lower Ausable Lake. There are some very good views of Sawteeth, Fish Hawk Cliffs, Colvin, and Blake. We stayed there for a wile and enjoyed the views. Afterwards, we hiked to Fish Hawk Cliffs. From there, we had some good views of Indian Head and again we could see Ausable Lake, Sawteeth, Colvin, and Blake. We then hiked back and cooked hamburgers on our stove. After going to bed, a huge thunderstorm passed by. We had lots of rain that night and we could hear very loud thunders and see very bright lightnings.

On the second day, we started hiking around ten o’clock. We hiked to Elk Pass Lake and then climbed a very steep ascent to Mount Nippletop (Order of Height: 16; 4620 feet). On our hike up the peak we had some amazing views of the Great Range. We finally reached the top and had lunch. This peak offers some amazing views of the Dix Range, Elk Lake, the Great Range, Mount Marcy, Mount Haystack, Colvin, and Blake. Upon reaching Mount Nippletop, we continued to Dial Mountain (Order of Height: 41, 4020 feet). After 1.9 miles we reached the summit and enjoyed the views before continuing our loop. After another 1.3 miles we reached Bear Den Mountain. We took another brake and then hiked to Noonmark. In 1999, there was a fire on this hill. Nonetheless, this is one of my favorite places in the High Peaks. Since the trees haven't regrown very high yet, you have some of the nicest views and the vegetation is very interesting. A new generation of paper birch is growing but also many flowers and berries can be found. After a longer brake, we continued our hike and finished our 12-mile loop for that day. We were very tired but happy having achieved so much.

On our third day, we left our campsite around ten o’clock and hiked towards Colvin. The first mile was the same as we hiked the previous day. When we reached a junction, however, we turned right and started climbing in a moderate grade. Steep and flat parts followed each other until we got very close to top. The last part of the way to the summit involved a lot of steep parts with bare rock faces. We managed these obstacles easily and finally reached the top of Colvin (Order of Height: 39, 4057 feet). This peak offers great views of Lower Ausable Lake, Sawteeth, the Great Range, and even Giant Mt. We ate our lunch on top of this mountain and then continued our hike towards Blake. The 1.4 miles hike to Blake was not very rewarding since Blake did not offer any views (Order of height among the original 46 peaks: 43, 3960 feet). Therefore, we climbed back to Colvin and all the way down to our campsite. In the evening we ate some chicken and rice and then climbed the loop to Indian Head again. This time, we were there during sunset and we enjoyed the different shades of colors. We came back to our campsite just before it got dark and we went to bed early.

On our final day of the trip we had to get up very early because we wanted to climb another peak before being picked up. We had Oatmeal for breakfast and packed our tents, sleeping bags, and sleeping pads. We left our campsite at 8:15 am. and hiked about 1.5 miles until we reached Rainbow Falls, a splendid sight consisting of a 150-foot unbroken plunge.

We then started our ascent to Sawteeth. The trail is in a very good condition and it is not very steep compared to other trails like the one to Nippletop. Nonetheless, it took as far more than an hour to climb the 2.2-mile ascent. When we reached the col., we had a great view of Pyramid Mt. and Gothics which is my favorite High Peak. From the col. it took us another 15 minutes to climb the final half mile to the top of Sawteeth (Order of Height: 35, 4100 feet). From the top, we could see Gothics, Armstrong, and Basin, although they were partly hidden in the clouds. About ten minutes after leaving the summit, it started thundering and lightning. There was also a little bit of rain but it wasn’t too bad. It only took us 45 minutes to climb all the way back to Rainbow Falls at the bottom of this peak. We ate lunch and then hiked out to our pick up point. About 15 minutes after leaving Rainbow Falls, it started pouring. There was so much rain that we could barely see and the road was almost flooded with water. Luckily, our hike out was on a dirt road and not on a muddy trail. Therefore, we could make very good time and arrive at the pick up point early. About five minutes before getting there, the rain stopped. Since we were early, we had to wait for about an hour. Everybody was tired and very happy when our driver showed up.

This trip was a big success in my opinion. We had a very good time and we also achieved a lot during our four days on the trails. We climbed four peaks, went to Indian Head, Fish Hawk Cliffs, and Rainbow Falls and we had some of the best views in the Adirondacks High Peaks. That’s, what Trail Camp is all about. This trip meant very much to me personally. I climbed two peaks that I haven’t climbed before. Together with Sawteeth and Dial, I now have climbed 23 peaks, which means I am half way to climbing all peaks of the Adirondacks High Peaks.

Dom
Divisional Director TC

What a great clip...

2008-08-03T16:10:00.002-04:00

The Place of the Comprehensive Summer Camp in the Education of Youngsters Today

2008-08-03T10:17:00.002-04:00

This was an article published by Vincent/Curtis Educational Register in 1980. The author is John J. Leach, the father of John and Dave who currently own and run the camp. This paper is almost 30 years old, but many of the messages still hold true. Enjoy!

Part III

Sylvia Ashton-Warner, an author and teacher who wrote “Spearpoint”, tells of her experiences with urban and suburban American youngsters after teaching in the “out back” country of New Zealand. She writes of the “over stimulation” of many American youngsters today being bombarded with startling sounds, startling music, startling visuals, startling films and startling experiences while they are still trying to discover themselves in the chaos of our large culture and for which they do not have the background, training, nor maturity to accept. The well organized summer camp teachers campers from “inward-out”,- from the camper himself to his small group of cabin mates or tent mates to the camps as a whole and then to his culture. The good camp program should be designed to satisfy the basic needs of youngsters to capture a quiet, calm mastery of themselves, then of their environment and learning tools. The skilled camp leader recognizes that a fine camping experience in the laboratory of the great out-of-doors where “learning by doing” and learning by example under the strong moral leadership of honest, sincere, dedicated, courteous, and sensitive counselors is the order of a 24 hour day. Youngsters often reflect the “pressures” that beset them at home or in school and the parents should consider the unnumbered advantages of having their children enjoy the vast, silent, tranquil forest environment, with wildlife varied and abundant, with streams running clear and pure, and the air fresh and nourishing. The environment as described will produce a feeling of “inner-peace” within the camper who experiences it for an extended period of time.

A liberal theologian once described his most important role as “not that of getting his parishioners into heaven, but getting heaven into his parishioners”. If a camping experience is to develop good characteristics in a camper, it must be done subtly. Character can’t be forced or legislated. If, however, it is planted and nurtured in the right climate, it will grow. How successfully a camp can do this job determines how good camp is.

The comprehensive summer camp must be enjoyable and fun for all, and yet interwoven into those happy and carefree summer days must be a purposeful plan of constructive and directed activity that produces so many worthwhile results. It is sometimes likened unto a physician’s sugar-coated pill. The coating of sugar is fun, the romance of the forest, the canoe and mountain trips and all of the activities that youngsters of different age levels love to do. Underneath the coating of sugar is the “brown-part” of the pill. It is the responsibility of the camp to see that the pill is “swallowed” and that each ingredient of the pill is assimilated with the effect that each youngster leaves camps a little richer and a little finer in all respects that when he entered. As was pointed out earlier, this writer has never subscribed to the very short camp sessions because the results of the assimilation of the “pill” cannot be accomplished in one or two weeks.

The well-organized comprehensive camp has a minimum of heavy regimentation and/or nerve-wracking competition; rather it provides the opportunity, within reasonable limits, for growth and development based on individual needs. The opportunities permit and encourage “educatastrophies” or happy discoveries that illuminate life. The system avoids the Prussian method of cultivation as Theodore Roszak calls it; “Bulldoze the terrain flat, sock in a powerful herbicide so nothing alien takes root and only then plant your potatoes in uniform rows exactly two and a half feet apart. Now you can be sure that you harvest will be safe, containing nothing more than you planted. Run some tests…yes, they’re spuds all right. Not a surprise in the bunch and all the same size too.” The good camp uses another method of cultivation campers. It practices reverence for the peculiarities of the terrain. It nurtures the maverick vocation in each of us and does not uproot traces of intuitive growth. “Keep this outcrop of rocks here and that clump of dwarf pines there; don’t know what this stuff is here, but save some of it and plant around the rest. All the expectations may not be fulfilled, but some happy surprises are bound to result.”

The camper in a good camp learns to adapt to the minimum number of rules and learns to live with, respect, and depend on his fellow campers. Another criteria which parents should consider in selecting a camp for their youngsters is the number of repeat campers who return to the same camp for two or more years. Lifelong friendships are made at camps where youngsters meet their camp mates in a crucible far different than from their everyday school life. A high rate of return of campers is an important and valuable plus for the camp that can document this attribute. The writer is aware that all things old are not necessarily good nor all things new necessarily poor, however, there is a definite advantage to a camper who chooses a camp with several years of successful experience. Each camp has many unique strengths and to spend a summer at a time proven camp is to experience a time tested tradition of living, learning, and enjoying.

When youngsters reach young adulthood and their days of attending camp are behind them, the characteristics of independence, resourcefulness, self-reliance, self-confidence, enthusiasm, respect, tolerance, loyalty, and honesty should have been ingrained into the individual make up. These characteristics will be the basis for forming each adult into the type of citizen who will lead a fulfilling, productive and contributing life in our society. The camping skills learned at a good comprehensive summer camp will provide the adult with the basis for participation in one of the fastest growing individual and family recreation activities which is worldwide in scope and is limited only by the imagination and the daring of the participant. Individual and family camping can be a life can be a lifetime activity and each year new innovations and products are marketed to make the life of the camper more enjoyable and more comfortable. Although practically every country provides organization and camping areas, more are being built each year to encourage more people to take part in this wholesome and educational activity.

The late Senator Everett Dirkson one wrote, “Life is a matter of development or decay; you either grow or you retrogress; there is no standing still; you go backward or forward. The challenges will make you grow, if you are willing to assert a leadership and look on the challenge as something to be met and disposed of.”

There is no part of our entire educational system that has a better capability of preparing youngsters to have the confidence and willingness to accept the challenges of life than the comprehensive summer camp.

The Place of the Comprehensive Summer Camp in the Education of Youngsters Today

2008-07-29T14:04:00.002-04:00

This was an article published by Vincent/Curtis Educational Register in 1980. The author is John J. Leach, the father of John and Dave who currently own and run the camp. This paper is almost 30 years old, but many of the messages still hold true. Enjoy!

Part II

Some “camps” have extended the single objective athletic which was initially of a few days duration into an extended period of the same activity and refer to them as “camps”. Although, the clinics provide fine training in a single type of skill, they are not true camping in the commonly accepted definition. The poet, William Wadsworth, once wrote, “the child is father of the man”. This single line emphasizes his strong belief that the experience which a child has determines the kind of man or woman he or she will become. Since the time this line was written, specialists in the field of mental health and child development have discovered to a greater degree that the early formative years of a child’s life are of the utmost importance in developing the characteristics (favorable and unfavorable), which will follow him through his adult life.

Education, of which camps and camping are a very important part, stresses the importance or providing children with the opportunity to participate in worthwhile activities; in fact the “Golden Rule of Education” is often stated as the need to teach youngsters to do better the desirable things that they are likely to do anyway.”

Parents should expect their youngsters to return home from a good comprehensive camp with all or most of the following attributes improved over what they were when they left for camp.

a. a stronger feeling of independence, resourcefulness and self reliance
b. an improved self image and a greater degree of enthusiasm
c. a greater feeling of “inner peace” within themselves
d. a greater respect for the rights and thoughts of others
e. a strong feeling of loyalty to those leaders and principles which have governed their camp life
f. a better knowledge of and an acquisition of out-of-doors skills in camping, woodsmanship, craftsmanship, etc.
g. a stronger tie between parents and youngsters
h. a greater degree of sportsmanship and the ability to enjoy things “according to the rules”

The well organized comprehensive summer camp will provide the diversity to challenge each camper, and yet, the challenge must be reachable. By accepting these challenges and succeeding in most of them, a youngster gains confidence in himself. A youngster’s resourcefulness is improved by his being forced to call on that hidden or new reserve source of supply or support which he might never have realized he had within him. Once having accomplished a challenging task, it no longer holds any fear for him and he willingly faces a new challenge with enthusiasm. Well trained and indoctrinated leadership will know how to urge this extra effort; - they will also know the symptoms of homesickness and support the camper through a few “rough” days a very few might have until he or she gains the feeling of independence which they will need later in life when they leave the security of the home again. The writer believes that these attributes cannot be gained in a short term camp. Four weeks should be a minimum stay and hopefully the parent will be able to provide an eight week experience. An insecure camper can “fake” his independence and resourcefulness for a camp session of a few short days, but he really acquires the benefits when he is on his own for a four to eight week period.

The diversity of challenges must be such that each youngster has multiple success experiences, yet they must be difficult enough to force a near maximum effort. Success begets success and as each successful experience becomes part of the camper’s background, he or she gains in self image. By having greater impressions of himself, he or she is able to face new challenges with less doubt of success; or as one great camp director often admonished, “Hitch your wagon to a star. You may not reach it but you’ll be so much better off having tried”.

After spending a lifetime as a teacher and school administrator, the writer often saw the frustration in youngsters who put forth maximum effort in academics and/or athletics, music, and other co-curricular activities but never really achieving the success experience of being best at something. A great opportunity and responsibility of the comprehensive summer camp is to provide the diversity of activities and sensitive staff members which will insure the attainment of several success experiences for each camper. Each camper should complete his stay in camp with the knowledge that he is or was the best in one more categories of activities.

Nothing is more contagious than enthusiasm, and the parents seeking a camp for their youngsters should look for positive signs of this enthusiasm in those with whom they speak regarding camp, or better yet in a visit to the camp being considered. The positive, enthusiastic atmosphere is the only kind to which youngsters should be exposed at a good comprehensive summer camp.

Auroras and Trail Camp Rafting pictures

2008-07-28T16:46:00.002-04:00

Start of 2nd session

2008-07-27T21:55:00.007-04:00

During the last two days camp was really busy. There was so much going on. So many people were arriving, picking up their children or dropping off their children. For me, this weekend was very exciting. I finally got to know the parents of my campers and I had long chats with many parents about their expectations, about their children, and about what trips I was planning for second session. However, there were also some sad moments. For some campers Saturday was the last day of camp and they had to say goodbye to their friends and counselors. However, some campers were lucky and could spend some time with their parents before coming back to camp for another 3 weeks. Some other campers are from far away and, therefore, their parents could not come visit them during parents weekend. Me and Chris, we took these campers to town and played some miniature golf . Afterwards, we went to eat some ice cream, and returned to camp. It was a lot of fun and I am really glad that I could do that. The only bad thing about this trip to town was the weather. All Saturday morning and all Sunday we had very nice weather but Saturday afternoon and Saturday night we had a big thunderstorm. The lightnings were very impressive but the rain was a little bit unfortunate.
And finally today, some new campers have arrived. Some of them have never been to camp before. Others have been here for many summers. Having these new campers makes me very excited for next session. I'm really looking forward to the next 3 weeks and I am very confident that this session is going to be even better than the first session.

Dom
Divisional Director Trail Camp

Article from Boston Globe

2008-07-25T11:32:00.002-04:00

Nature nurtures learning

National movement touts benefits of outdoor education

By Peter Dizikes, Globe Correspondent | December 31, 2007

At most schools, a bug in the classroom is something a janitor or computer technician has to deal with. At the Dennis C. Haley Elementary School in Roslindale, bugs are part of the curriculum.

For that matter, so are ants, crayfish, crabs, plants, rocks, and even four turtles and a lizard that live in the school lobby.

The Haley school is in the vanguard of a national back-to-nature movement - often called "No Child Left Inside" - that within the last two years has seen the creation of dozens of regional programs to draw families and students outdoors.

This is not the environmentalism of the past, which usually argued that children need to appreciate nature so they will help protect it. Instead, the new sales pitch is based on self-interest: Walking in the woods, smelling the roses, and digging in the dirt are good for mental health, learning, and brain development. Being close to nature may foster people's ability to concentrate, improves the behavior of children with attention disorders, and boosts science test scores, research shows.

"The tragedy we are facing in this generation is that there is no time for children to explore, to play, to go outside," the influential pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton said before a panel discussion this month at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Brazelton, a Cambridge resident and clinical professor of pediatrics emeritus at Harvard Medical School, believes outdoor play lets children "find themselves, find out what they're like as people, find what works, and what doesn't work."

These concepts inform many back-to-nature plans, including a bill introduced in Congress in July to help pay for outdoor education in schools; state initiatives like Connecticut's, begun in 2006, which is designed to draw families to state parks; and one launched this year by the US Forest Service, called "More Kids in the Woods," which funds two dozen programs, some allowing inner-city children from New York and Baltimore to participate in environmental education activities.

At Haley, where students don't have ready access to the woods or lush backyards, studies often involve long-running themes relating to animals, habitats, and the human impact on the environment. The school has wetlands and gardens, and it is building an outdoor classroom. Students often visit the neighboring Boston Nature Center, and fifth-graders take a week-long trip to Camp Beckett in the Berkshires, where they explore and study forest ecosystems.

Explaining his approach, principal Ross Wilson cited a 2003 paper by Harvard researchers Christopher Wimer and Ronald F. Ferguson, who argue that students learn more when their daily lessons, stored in the brain's short-term memory, are placed in a larger framework, allow ing them to enter the mind's long-term memory.

"Typically in education a student will study a topic for a short time, take a quiz or test, and forget what they've learned," said Wilson. But by "weaving environmental education into the curriculum," he said, "we provide experiences for our students outside the classroom, allow them to build vocabulary, make connections, and they can store long-term memories and build upon that in the future."

Nature may help children in other ways. In 2004, a University of Illinois study found that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder experienced "significant symptom abatement" after spending time outdoors.

A California Department of Education study from 2005 showed that sixth-graders improved their science scores by 27 percent after taking week-long outdoor education classes. Several University of Michigan studies have suggested that proximity to nature enhances people's ability to concentrate.

Harvard naturalist Edward O. Wilson, an intellectual godfather of the renewed back-to-nature movement, said his observations support the idea that nature teaches children how to learn.

In 1986, Wilson (no relation to the Haley school's principal) coined the term "biophilia" in a book of the same name, arguing that humans have a deep genetic need for contact with nature. Wilson, who participated in the same Harvard panel discussion as Brazelton, defines biophilia as "an innate tendency - an instinct if you wish - to affiliate with nature, to observe it, to live near it, to understand it, to have it within reach."

Yet since Wilson wrote "Biophilia," the average American's time spent plugged into electronic entertainment has increased by almost one hour per day - thanks to the rise of the Internet, video games, and movie rentals - while per-capita visits to national parks are off 25 percent.

"In terms of our recent American experience, this has been a big change in the last 30 years," said Richard Louv, author of "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder," a keystone text of back-to-nature advocates published in 2005.

"The era of kids going outside and not coming back until the streetlights are on is unlikely to return," said Louv.

"The 1950s aren't coming back."

But getting outdoors is still crucial to the human experience, and early contact can go a long way, said E.O. Wilson, the subject of an upcoming PBS documentary that updates the life story he told in his own memoir, 'Naturalist.'

"There is no substitute for having your personal, precious body out there in the middle of nature," he said.

Haley second-grader Johnnae Smith already shares Wilson's excitement. As principal Ross Wilson guided a visitor through a science class this month, Smith rushed up, eager to explain the life cycle of the mealworm beetle she held in her hands.

"First it's a worm, then a larva, and then, after it goes through those stages, it turns into a little bug," she said.

Then, she added one more piece of empirical data: "It tickles."

Trail Camp Trip to the High Peaks

2008-07-24T14:01:00.035-04:00

Last Week, Trail Camp went on a hiking trip to the High Peaks. On Monday morning Trail Camp was dropped off at the Garden in Keene Valley. Our Hiking group consisted of 8 campers aged 14 and 15 and 3 counselors. We had a 5 miles hike in. We chose to take the southern trail to John's Brook Lodge. The trail follows John's Brook the whole way. We had to cross the brook after about half a mile which wasn't very easy becase of the heavy rain on the previous day. We then hiked another 2 miles and got to a bridge that has been rebuilt this spring. After crossing the bridge we passed the Interior Outpost and about a quarter hour later we reached John's Brook Lodge. We then took a break before we continued our hike to Bushnell falls. We reached the lean-tos in the early afternoon. Because of our big group size we had to stay in two different lean-tos. After settling into the lean-tos we spent some time at the Bushnell Falls. I like these falls very much and that day, they were even more impressive because of the high water. After spending some time at the falls we went back to our lean-tos and cooked dinner. One of the campers volunteered and cooked hamburgers on our stove.

On our second day we got up early, ate breakfast and hiked to Mount Marcy (Order of height: 1; 5344 ft (1729 m)). Mount Marcy is the highest peak in the State of New York and has amazing views. It is pretty much in the center of the High Peaks and we could see many other peaks from its top. We were one of the first groups on top and enjoyed the view very much.

We hiked down the other side of Marcy and reached Four Corners. From there the campers had the option of hiking Mount Skylight (Order of height: 4; 4920 ft (1500 m)). The weather was good so we had a very good view from top of Skylight. At this point we decided to hike back to camp. For this purpose we split up in two groups. One group hiked the same way back over Marcy. The other group also hiked back over Marcy but took a different way. We hiked to a Lake called Tears of the Cloud and bushwhacked Gray Peak (Order of height: 7; 4840 ft (1475 m)). This was the only trailless peak we did on this trip and it was very special. There was a distinct trail but it was not maintained by the NYSDEC and there were no trail markers. When we reached the top marked by a sign we saw the other group on their way up Marcy. We could also see the Lake Tears of the Cloud where the traiheadl to Gray Peak is. We then hiked back up Marcy and back to our Lean-tos.

On our third day we hiked two totally seperate dayhikes. One group hiked the upper Great Range consisting of BasinMountain (Order of height: 9; 4827 ft), Saddleback Mountain (Order of height: 17; 4515 feet), and Gothics (Order of height: 10; 4736 ft). The other group only hiked one peak: Mount Haystack (Order of height: 3; 4960 ft (1512 m)). I have done a very similar trip before so I wanted to do Haystack while another group of hikers went to climb the other three peaks. Haystack is not very far from our campsite but we had to gain a lot of height. Haystack is the third highest peak in the state of New York and is almost five thousand feet high. The hike was very strenuous but the views made everthing worth it. We then hiked back and spent some more time at the Bushnell falls.

Our fourth day was the day of our hike out. We left our lean-tos around 10 o'clock and hiked back to John's Brook lodge. One group stayed there and had an extended lunch break while the other group hiked one more peak. It only took us 60 min. to hike 2.5 miles to the top of Lower Wolfjaw Mountain (Order of height: 30; 4175 ft). We not only hiked a far distance but also climbed a lot of elevation. The way back to JBL took us about 40 min. After eating lunch we hiked back to our pick up point (the Garden, Keene Valley). We arrived about five min. before our pick up time. Our driver was already there waiting for us. Our drive back took us about 2 h 15 min and everybody was tired but happy to have achieved so much. On this trip I climbed three new peaks which makes me a "21er". This is one step closer for me to becoming a 46er. Of all 7 trips I have done to the High Peaks so far this is definitly one of my favorite ones.

Dom
Divisional Director TC

The Place of the Comprehensive Summer Camp in the Education of Youngsters Today

2008-07-24T10:40:00.000-04:00

This was an article published by Vincent/Curtis Educational Register in 1980. The author is John J. Leach, the father of John and Dave who currently own and run the camp. This paper is almost 30 years old, but many of the messages still hold true. Enjoy!

Part I

The education system in each of our fifty states is unique in many respects, but there is an even larger degree of commonness in our individual state controlled systems. Some our basic concepts in modern education are derived from the school systems of the European countries from which the majority of our early settlers came. However, as early as 1916 Dr. Charles W. Eliot, former president of Harvard University, said, “The organized comprehensive summer camp is the most significant contribution to Education that America has given to the world”.

Camping is a way of life that began with man. His mode of living included the sky as his roof, the earth as his bed, and he learned to live with the wildlife about him. The natural environment seemed to be limitless in scope and little or no degree of environmental education or conservation education was taught or practiced other than the basic skills of survival. In more modern times, camping has become a back-to-nature, educational and recreational movement wherein man gains knowledge, understanding, and enjoyment through the use and preservation of nature and its resources.

Organized camping varies country to country in extent, type, and sponsorship. Camping for school children under the term of “outdoor education” is prevalent in Australia, Denmark, Egypt, Germany, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Africa. These countries have camps which are sponsored by the schools, subsidized by the government, and the regular teachers are given special training for their camping responsibilities.

France has a large national camping program, called Vacation Colonies, which are sponsored and financed by government and industry. The Soviet Union maintains an extensive government program of camping for youth, whereas Sweden has camps for youth and adults operated by municipalities.

The United States, Canada and Great Britain have led the organized comprehensive camping movement for more than a century and the type of camp with which we are most familiar and to which Dr. Eliot of Harvard referred is uniquely American, Canadian, and British in its founding and continued success in operation.

The first private comprehensive camp was formed in 1876 and the oldest existing camp is Camp Dudley which continues to function as a comprehensive camp in Northern New York State. Gradually many youth service agencies formed fine camps. However, it is the private, longer term, comprehensive camp with which this writer is most familiar and in which he believes intensely to be the best type of organization to accomplish the many educational and recreational goals toward which ever good camp should strive.

Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, many camp Directors formed an association to share ideas, establish standards, and help to arrange for a system of continued qualified leadership. As with many similar well intentioned organizations, some of the original members believed that the emphasis changed from those goals which provided the best experience for youngsters to those of a more economic nature. Parents searching for the best camp for their children should make a personal contact if possible by a visit to the camp, or request a visit in their home with a member of the camp leadership or present or former camper. The goals, philosophy, and concepts along with the type of leadership are more important than the location, although the natural assets and facilities can certainly not be minimized and make the achievement of these goals much more certain and more enjoyable for the camper.

Good Camp facilities may include tents as well as buildings of a more permanent nature such as sleeping cabins, dining halls, lodges, infirmary and administrative offices.

The activities of a camp are usually adapted to the geographical location to include special emphasis on canoeing, mountaineering, back packing trips (on trails as well as bush whacking), rock climbing, rappelling, extended hiking, survival techniques, or other activities in keeping with the environment. Learning skills in camp craft, woodcraft, nature lore as well as outdoor physical conditioning and other activities not commonly practiced in urban areas usually are the central theme of the organized comprehensive camping program.

The well organized comprehensive camp should have a strong “in camp” program of crafts (wood, leather, metal, ceramics, photography. Entomology, taxidermy, fly tying, nature study, textiles, etc.) what front activities (individual skills as well as life saving, etc.), athletics (team sports as well as life time individual sports), riflery, archery, animal husbandry, social skills (table manners, amenities, etc.), a library to serve all ages of campers and staff and a museum type collection for reference purposes. The camper and his parents should have a degree of input into those activities on which he or she desires to devote a greater amount of time. The camp leadership, however, must assume responsibility to insure exposure of each camper to as great a variety of the “in camp” activities as possible. The “in camp” program assists the less aggressive camper to gradually become involved in more vigorous activities while continuing to learn, recreate his way of life and achieve many of the goals desired. The program also provides a constructive, educational, experience for those campers whose natural tendencies and life’s direction lead them into these fields. The “in camp” program provides a constructive, educational experience for the true “woodsman” during his preparation time for a more vigorous experience or during his “lay over” between vigorous experiences while at the same time providing the exposure for a possible latent interest and/or skill in some other area.

Aurora Trip to Pharaoh Wilderness

2008-07-23T19:33:00.000-04:00

Today the Aurora's and I just returned from a three-day trip to the Pharaoh Wilderness in the East-Central section of the Adirondack Park. This was an exciting trip for me because it was my first experience that far east in the Park. Our trailhead was at Putnam Pond which is about eight miles west of the point where Lake George and Lake Champlain almost touch.

The first day of our trip we hiked west along the southern shore of Putnam Pond before turning north and hugging the shoreline for about a mile until we reached our camp-site. We stayed at a spot called Clear Pond -- which was exactly that, a small and unbelievably clear body of water that reminded me a lot of Lake Kan-Ac-To here in camp. Fortunately we were the only group in the area and were able to stay in the lean-to. Briefly the weather threatened rain but it quickly cleared up. We had burgers for dinner as the sun set over the mountains to the west of our little pond.

On day two we left our gear at the campsite and filled some day-packs with lunch and water before we set off to climb Treadway Mountain. It was a hot day with clear skies and we made great time up the mountain. Our group was all strong hikers and we were almost at the summit before the heat forced to rest in the shade for a while. Once on the summit we took a relaxing lunch break and enjoyed the nearly panoramic views the mostly bald summit provided. Treadway is something of an underrated mountain because its neighbor to the southwest, Pharaoh Mountain, shares its name with the wilderness section as well as nearby Pharaoh Lake. From Treadway we could see the southern end of Lake Champlain, the northern end of Lake George, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the High Peaks of the Adirondacks. All of this was visible along with countless other lakes and mountains that I attempted to identify with my map. Unfortunately storm clouds chased us off the mountain before we were ready to go. Back at camp we set up a tarp to cook under but yet again the weather changed and we had quesadillas during another postcard style sunset.

The rain finally came for good at around 3:00 this morning. We awoke and packed in the lean-to as the rain continued to fall. A quick breakfast of bagels and cream cheese fueled our rain-soaked hike back to the Putnam Pond trailhead. The view of the High Peaks to the north from the summit of Treadway was hopefully a bit of foreshadowing for the next trip I take with Auroras.

-Chris

Richard Louv talking about "Last Child in the Woods"

2008-07-23T15:13:00.001-04:00

Woodcraft Alum...

2008-07-23T12:18:00.000-04:00

Here are three Woodcraft alums who are currently doing some amazing things...

Chris Waddell

http://www.one-revolution.com/

Taylor Leach

http://www.xcoregon.org/?page_id=60

Paul Josephson

http://nepalpaul.blogspot.com/2008/07/buffalo-and-goats.html

Woodcrafters exploring the Adirondacks...

2008-07-23T11:43:00.000-04:00

Wenonahs

The Wenonahs are currently on a 3-day canoe trip that took them from Axton Landing to Tupper Point along the Raquette River.

Auroras

The Auroras are exploring the Pharaoh Wilderness in the eastern central Adirondacks near Schroon Lake. They are on a 3-day overnight that has some great terrain and has Pharaoh Lake, the largest lake in the Adirondacks that is completely surrounded by forest preserve.

Iroqouis Village

The IV is canoeing a large portion of the famous 90 Miler Canoe Race.
They began on First Lake of the Fulton Chain and will make it to Eighth Lake. This unique waterway is also part of the Northern Forest Canoe trail which begins in Old Forge and ends 740 miles later in Fort Kent, Maine.

Trail Camp

The Trail Camp just completed a 4-day stint in the High-Peaks. They climbed 5 high peaks and including Marcy and Haystack. Check out some cool photos of their trip here.

Outpost

The OP went on an overnight trip on a large island on Eight Lake. The spent two days exploring the island, swimming, and paddling.

Hadarondahs

Our youngest girl's division spent an overnight at a lean-to on the Moose River near camp. They hiked out to the river, set up camp, and by all accounts had a great time.

Ranger Post

The Ranger Post split up their division for their last trip. Half of them went on a canoe trip from First Lake to Raquette Lake (about 20 miles in a canoe), and the other half went to the Pharaoh Wilderness where the Auroras are currently.

Woodcraft's Blogger

2008-07-23T09:49:00.001-04:00

Welcome to Woodcraft's first blog. In an effort to share Woodcraft's unique experiences with family at home, counselors and campers will be posting to this blog. They will be sharing their adventures in the High Peaks, St. Lawrence River, and here at Camp. The blogs will be full of pictures with descriptions and detail every day of their trips.

This blog will also be a great way to stay in touch will friends during the off-season. Campers will be able to read about Camp and stay in touch with each other.

Please email T if you have any questions at tim@awc1.com