Camp Echo Weekly E-Newsletter Mar 24, 2002 ***** Camp Echo E-List Update ----------------------- The Camp Echo E-List is now at 394 members. Spread the word! Who's Applied For Echo 2002? ---------------------------- Since last week: Nataasha Eme-Stensrud, Margo English, Corrie Knisely, James Lavigne, Lindsay Luken, Matthew Malec, Robert Soltys. Staffing Update --------------- Letters of agreement went out on Saturday to cooks, wranglers, male ACs, all JCs, and trip/wilderness staff working all summer. The next batch will include female ACs, as well as SCs and Area Heads working all summer. If you have any questions please email me and I will let you know your status. JCs need to pay particular attention to the work permit instructions. Katie Trippi has offered to help people find classes for Lifeguard certification. First Aid and CPR will be available at Echo on Saturday June 8th; if you won't be there on that day, and still need to update your certification, ask Katie about those classes too. Alumni Notes (Send in your news!) ------------ Mary Kleschen writes, "Reading both Katie Trippi and Kate Tate's messages in one week is a real treat and a trip back to Camp Echo in the early 1970s. I too had Christie Pollock and Polly O'Brien as my Outpost counselors and also have a repertoire of Echo nighty-night songs that I have been singing to our three girls (now 9, 7, and 4) at bedtime since their tiny baby-in-a-crib days. The lineup starts with "Now Is The Hour," morphs into "Circle Game," followed by "One Tin Soldier," then "Mister You're a Better Man Than I," during which I finally fall asleep. The girls are usually able to outlast their mother. "We're living in Guam where I've been since the mid 1980s and plan to someday repatriate to the mainland. For now, John Donohue's 4th of July party when we're back in Evanston visiting cousins who live a few blocks away has been a great way to see that the Echo spirit continues with a new generation (splattered eggs and all). "As Kate Tate said, the email newsletter is a good way to be connected from afar. I look forward to being able to volunteer as the Camp Doctor some summer, maybe during First Timers Camp with the (very) Senior Counselor and Astronomer Extraordinaire John Donohue." Hans Woudman writes, "Congratulations with the E-Newsletter, quite a worthful 'instrument of dialogue' for today's and yesterday's people having a common red-line in life: Their past or present engagement for and with Echo. Before the installation of the world wide electronic highway, it really wasn't the same 'peace of cake' to bring everybody together on the same platform. You're really 'spreading the word' indeed! For my family and myself, I'm living D-Day less four, in other words, this Saturday, some 8 or 10 persons will come and assist me in order to move from the village of Courroux to Vicques. Two vans are available and last but not least, a tractor (John Deere) from a farmer and friend of mine, Fredi Leyser from Courcelon, with a huge kind of farm-wagon behind. One of my favorite songs? During girls camp, I remember the counselors playing guitar and passing from cabin to cabin playing and singing for example the emotional and nice song like "Black Girl." I also remember Tom Fischl [I think it was Joel Fink - Editor] with, "Way down in the jungle where nobody goes ... there was the wishy-washy washer woman washing her clothes" ... and, this song always ran faster and faaaaaster, niccccczzzze!" Dick Fischl writes, "We love the E-newsletters! My personal connections go back 67 years to 1935, when I was a first-year camper at the age of 8. Usually, you had to be old enough to be a Y member, but my brother, age 16, was there, and my Dad was on the Advisory Board. He and my mother needed a rest from their kids, so history was made. "Echo was strictly a boys' camp, and the camp director was the Boys Work Secretary from the Evanston Y, C.G. (Red) Moser. Red was an outstanding mentor for boys and young men. He initiated the Y Club program that operated through the school year, and received national recognition for his work. "There were only a handful of small cottages on the lake, and nothing directly across from the swimming area which was at the end of the point where Triangle Lodge is now. There were no showers, so we had a mandatory soap dip in the morning (sans bathing suits!) The lake bottom was muddy, and it was not unusual to have a leach or two attached when you came out. "There were 9 cabins surrounding the campus, and the first 3 were for the junior campers. There were usually 8 boys and 2 counselors to a cabin. One of the original cabins remained as "Mouse Haven" until not many years ago. [Isn't it still there? -- Editor] There was no electricity, so cleaning the kerosene lanterns was a daily routine. We awoke to a bugle call, and went to bed with taps played by Red. "I learned to swim at Echo, and we had sailing, canoeing, rowing, baseball, hiking, crafts and fantastic young men on the staff. I was at camp for two weeks the first year, and then for a month the next two years. By then, I was a regular Y member. Membership cost $10, and it was always a favorite birthday present. I'll save some more history of our family's connections for future publications. Needless to say, Camp Echo molded and shaped the lives of our family now in its third generation of campers." Peter Frankel writes, "I just got back from the vet today where I had to put Buck to sleep. He had a big cancerous tumor and it grew so rapidly that it was deemed inoperable." Robert Hart Bahner, of Munster, Indiana (formerly of Evanston) died March 5, 2002 at the age of 53. Rob Johnston confirms that, "This is indeed our beloved Bob 'Phantom' Bahner -- one of the all time greats." Bob was an Echo staff member in the late 1960s. Speaking of Restaurants ... ----------------------- Jim Field offers, "For a great dining experience, go to Mimosa in Highland Park. Ask for the owner, Kevin Schrimmer. He and I spent several great summers as campers at Echo. Sing the Echo song and see if you can wrangle a discount. Tell him that I sent you, and you may lose the discount!" Rob & Linda Grierson offer, "We love The Lucky Platter on Main Street in Evanston. One of the owners is Eric Singer, Echo staff member from the early 1970s. The cornbread is fantastic! We recommend the House Salad and the Tuna Melt." Hans Woudman offers, "After you eat at Prairie Moon in Evanston, it would be interesting to try 'Tapadera im Krug' at Basel-Switzerland, the famous Mexican meat and fish restaurant with a huge fish-buffet (about 40 different sorts) every Friday during lunch time!" Song of the Week (make sure nobody is looking!) ---------------- THE WISHY-WASHY WASHER WOMAN [motions in brackets] Way down in the jungle where nobody goes [hand held above eyes, searching left to right] There's a wishy-washy washer woman washin' her clothes [hands making rotating washing motion] She goes Ooh-Ahh, Ooh-Ahh [lean left, fists to chest, fists outstretched] [lean right, fists to chest, fists outstretched] That's how the washer woman washes her clothes! [hands making rotating washing motion] Waddy-ah-dah! [arms bending at elbows, palms open, at side] (gootchie gootchie gootchie) [hips rotating, arms bent at sides, fists pumping] Waddy-ah-dah! (gootchie gootchie gootchie) Waddy-ah-dah! (gootchie gootchie gootchie) [same] Ah, that's how the washer woman washes her clothes! [hands making rotating washing motion] (Repeat, faster -- three times total) Echo Memories, Part 2 --------------------- Contributed by John Donohue, long-time volunteer at First Timers Camp. Written in 1999 for another E-list; reprinted with John's permission. -- "[Last week] I wrote of showing a bunch of city kids up at [Camp Echo] a real starry sky, ending with a spectacular meteor(ite?) streaking across the horizon. While that normally would have been my Number One astral experience of the summer (probably even the decade, or given current year - the century,) it was not. To my great astonishment I was to have an even more awesome night just a week later. "Again it was one of those perfect end-of-August nights, with enough of a temperature drop to make the outdoors comfortable. We were now into Family Camp, and the evening program was the Camp Echo version of Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy, played by various teams using a machine with bells, lights, whistles and buzzers. [The machine was built by my father, Paul Grierson, in 1971 -- Editor] As the evening moves along the players segue from younger to older, and witty wrong answers are sometimes given greater appreciation than those of dull, factual accuracy. We had finally buzzed the last incorrect, but hilarious, answer and put the machine away. I had also just been thoroughly thrashed in some sort of card game by a pre-teen prodigy. Around 11:30 pm I said goodnight to her and her mother, turned out the lights in the Dining Hall, and walked outside to go to my tent, take a few Ibuprufen, and go to sleep. "As I started across the field to the Sailing Area I thought to myself 'We must have quite a defined overcast, as the city lights reflection is stronger than I have ever seen it.' Then I suddenly realized THERE WAS NO CITY LIGHT TO BE REFLECTED up here in pristine Michigan. Yet the sky was ablaze with white light, and the stars that were usually omnipresent in the night sky were hardly visible. What I was witnessing was the most awesome, and most unusual, display of aurorae borealis I had ever seen. "I have often seen regular Northern Lights, which have been flickerings of colored lights, almost like faint, distant 'heat lightning' in the northern skies, usually of a late summer's eve. While there has been no doubt of what they were, the phenomena were nonetheless not gut-grabbing, but more something which almost had to be pointed out and identified. This was totally different: An all-encompassing, always-changing display of absolutely white light that dominated three-fourths of the sky, stretching far towards the southern horizon as well. "It was the first time in my life that I was able to use the word 'coruscating' even to myself. After a few moments of awe I went dashing back into the woods to find my friends so that they could come out in the open from their cabin and see such a wondrous sight. (It was also a chance to try to get back at least a little respect from the young lady who had so trounced me in her card game.) They came out into the field and were properly impressed as well. At this point I figured that the experience was too precious not to be shared, and I went to my daughter's cabin to awaken her and some others, insisting that they absolutely had to come see the skies. "There were waves, there were flashes, there were torii (again, the only word that fit the moment,) and the sky undulated like a field of white grain in a summer breeze. It was like nothing I or the others had ever seen. I went around to most of the cabins awakening the inhabitants, figuring that at the worst they would only curse me out. Eventually there were about 50 of us, from ages 61 (me) down to 10 months (youngest granddaughter - who won't remember, but I'll tell her about it,) all developing cricks in our necks from gazing at a Michigan sky gone mad. "Most gradually grew tired - camp can be an exhausting experience if you live it to the fullest - and went off to bed. I eventually left and went down to the sailing dock, where I lay down with a pillow for almost another hour, still absolutely fascinated by the celestial light show. When I finally went back to my tent (I love the teen-age and college staff, but neither their music nor their hours are mine, so I usually bunk alone - or with the occasional grandchild) I turned on the radio for a few moments of smooth jazz before going to sleep. The late-night (really, early-morning by now) disc jockey on the local NPR station was just saying 'If you are still awake at this hour stop listening to us and go out and look at the sky. There is an unbelievable show of Northern Lights going on up there.' "As I finally nodded off my last thought was, 'God, what a fabulous summer!'" Wish List --------- If you, or anyone you know, has any of these items to donate, let me know. Laptop Computer (Pentium or G3) iMac, any generation, any color - even Dalmation! Request, Last Chance -------------------- We're collecting photocopies or scans of the emblems/logos from Staff shirts over the years. We have 76, 77, 78, 79, 87, 88, 94, and 97. Can you provide others? We're only talking about Staff shirts, not camper or regular shirts. Feel The Spirit! -- Rob Grierson Camp Echo Director rg@mcgawymca.org 847-475-7400 x259