What to DO with the kids?

This is the color of the sky today, no clouds anywhere on the horizon.
 

 Los Angeles sky today

It's burning hot and a little humid today—nothing like NYC though, sympathies go out to all living creatures—and lizards are darting in and out of rocks. One could say it's officially summer now that the weather's gotten hotter, but for me what makes it summer is seeing the worried look on women's faces. You see it in Silverlake, Highland Park, even Mt. Washington, that look of despair: worried mothers wondering what to do with their children over the summer break. 

The results of all that worry are varied, and you can see that too: kids waiting for buses to take them to day camp, or families packing up the car to deliver their children to camp somewhere in Utah. But for those not going anywhere this summer, there's plenty of angst: what will the kids DO? I can tell you, a mother feels guilty when her kid lies on the couch all summer long reading comic books. I remember that fear so clearly, that despair, that panic as summer approached and I had nothing for my kids to DO. That's over now, as they're both grown, but I know that look and I can see it everywhere.

I never sent my own kids to camp, which is ironic I suppose, as I spent every summer, from the age of seven on, at overnight camp near Louisville.  But in Junior High that changed, which leads to this story about Ann Myerson, who I hadn't thought about in years until hearing a program about summer camp on "This American Life" a few weeks ago. Here's my own "this American life" summer camp story without the commercials:


In the summer between seventh and eighth grade my parents had the idea that I should go to camp far from Louisville. I had no say in the matter; earlier that year my father had caught me sneaking around with my next-door neighbor, a Catholic boy. My father was terrified I'd get in trouble like another neighbor, a tall-for-her-age, precocious preteen, who one day disappeared to go off, we imagined, to a home for unwed mothers in Cincinnati. Perhaps my father's sense of it was real, but I was only thirteen when his decision was made: that summer I'd be going to Jewish summer camp in the middle of nowhere.

I flew down to Camp Blue Star in Hendersonville, North Carolina, in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, and landed in a field of green. This picture found online is pretty much how I remember it—a camp surrounded by dense woods, with ticks on every leaf and blade of grass, and nocturnal creatures rustling behind every bush, causing me to sleep with one eye open, a flashlight in my hand and my clothes on.

 Camp Blue Star, Hendersonville, N.C.

I bunked with a cabin full of Louisville girls, gung-ho joiners who were there to have some fun; but I wanted nothing to do with them. Our counselor Susan Green, the daughter of Alan Guttmacher, an early president of Planned Parenthood, was my only advocate; I was a loner, that is, until I befriended Ann Myerson from the next cabin over, the first real beatnik I'd ever met.

As I recall, Ann lived near Arlington, VA., a Jew with straw-colored hair and a wide, confident smile that covered her braces. I was thin, with a boy's figure, but Ann had a woman's body, with ample breasts, a high waistline and powerful thighs. She was totally committed to a bohemian lifestyle, playing guitar and singing folk tunes (in the vein of Bob Dylan), smoking cigarettes (where she found them I don't know) and cutting afternoon activities. Her favorite thing to do was to climb to the top of one of the cabins, take off her clothes and sunbathe nude, all the while making sure the boys on their way to the swimming hole could spot her. 

Camp Blue Star boys staring up at Ann

I'm not sure whose idea it was, but towards the end of that summer we plotted to be stowaways on a bus heading an hour outside of camp. Our plan was to hide in the back of the bus, jump off after the campers had departed for their field trip, then explore wherever it was we had landed. We bribed the younger kids not to giggle or give our positions away by staring at their feet, where we were hiding—which they readily agreed to do. I want to say we exchanged their loyalty for a few cigarettes and a bag of candy, but I really can't remember.

The ride out went without a hitch, but after the campers debarked, we could hear, with much trepidation, a counselor making his way through the bus checking on what the youngsters had left behind. We held our breaths and tried to make ourselves invisible, but there was no place to hide, and he caught us with our hands over our heads, scrunched down into a ball behind the last seat.

Gotcha!

Things happened pretty quickly after that. When the campers returned, we sped back to camp—Ann and I forced to sit up front, humiliated in front of our once loyal minions— straight back to the Camp office, where our counselors and the director were waiting.

Our punishment turned out to be rather benign: the director made us write a letter home informing our parents of our misdeeds, and stating that we'd not be welcomed back if we ever did anything like that again. As it was, I never went back to camp after that summer (although I did keep in touch with Ann for a few years). My father realized that Camp Blue Star hadn't helped like he had hoped in calming my rebellion, which continued throughout my teenage years.

Shock and stupidity

On Sunday night, we went to Bottega Louie to celebrate our twenty-third wedding anniversary! (It was a shock really, since I still don't feel like a "wife"—can't someone come up with a better name?) I'd been wary of this restaurant's slick white marble floors, blank white walls and hip downtown crowd, but once inside, it was surprisingly warm. They have a young crowd because the food is so good and not too expensive; you can expect huge portions too, maybe too big, but that's how they do things at Bottega Louie. The only drawback is the noise—hundreds of excited voices bouncing off the glass and marble make it hard to hear. If you're like us, don't forget to bring your ear trumpets!

Ear trumpets come in handy at Bottega Louie

I've gotten my daily dose of shock lately—besides being married for so long— from just reading the newspapers, and I know I'm not alone. After the initial shock of the Israeli raid on the Gaza flotilla, Michael Chabon wrote a piece in the NY Times formulating the idea that the "blockheadedness" of Israel was but a grim reminder that our illusions of Jewish intelligence are but a lie: "We construct the history of our wisdom only by burying our foolishness in the endnotes..." You can read the entire article here.

I never bought into the idea of Jewish intellectual superiority, although that idea was bred into me on a daily basis, much like Chabon. Why did I not believe? Because, for the most part, the Jews I grew up with were all hard- working, poor (at least at the beginning), first and second generation Jews who strove to do better than their out-of-touch immigrant parents and grandparents. Among them were smart kops and dumb clucks, but mostly, people like anyone else. In fact, I often felt the opposite: some exceptionally unenlightened people populated the Jewish community of Louisville.

illustration by Maurice Sendak, 

from "The First Shlemiel," by I.B. Singer

Within my own extended family, one could find enough stupidity to last a lifetime: there were crooks and gamblers, the mentally ill and the incurably angry, the ones who went to school and squandered their good education, and the many who never made it past high school; the beauties and the old maids, the businessmen and the door-to-door salesmen, the envious and the greedy, the well-off and the ones incapable of making a penny, who, when faced with their own miscalculations and failures, grew bitter. These were the shlemiels and shlimazels of my childhood, who still populate my head.

illustration by Maurice Sendak, 

from "The First Shlemiel," by I.B. Singer

When people talk about the exceptionalism of Jews, it's supposing Israel should have relied on its superior intelligence and not attacked the Gaza flotilla, but Israel is no more or no less wise than any other nation, its Jews no smarter than any other people, its military, no more enlightened than our own. As Chabon writes, he neither condemns nor condones, makes excuses for or forgives, but adds Israel to the long list of nations that have acted— and I might add, will continue to act—stupidly.