As most of you know this May I will be assuming the role of Camp Director in Oxford Michigan for Camp Adventure. This program really is not yet in exsistence, that being said I am asking for your help. I occured to me the other day that everyone in this constantly growing blog community is in some way related to camping, and I value all of your knowledge on the topic.
This summer I have to put on a camp for approx. 20 kids a week and roughly 5 staff. Programing will happen but I want to make it memorable, I want to leave a lasting impression on these kids.
Last summer I believe it was Matt asked the mission team to define tradition and to attempt to create our own. That's what I want to ask you to help me do, Creat Tradition. Keep in mind that this is a blank slate, we have cabins, a lake, high and low ropes...all of the standards. But no tradition. There is no joke, or webby man, or guy lime. There is no birdie song in the morning, there is nothing....
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks Artichokes!
3.20.2007
Creating Tradition
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4 comments:
One of the great things about telling stories in the oral tradition was that you could steal them, then reinvent them and make them your own. When I was at camp one of the most requested songs I got was for me to sing the “Lion Hunt”. I had heard it years earlier at a BSA camp as a youth, I took the song gave it my own personality but I have heard many versions of it. The point is that just because someone else has done already done it, which does not mean you can do it and make it unique. The same is true for traditions. You can make the “birdie song” a tradition; don’t shy away because it has already been done. Also traditions are about history, with a new camp you will have to be in the process of creating that history. History can exist with out records, so you need to take picture and put them up, wood burn paddles with campers’ names and hang them, ect. These types of things become the breadcrumbs that lead to traditions. It is not so much that you need to “this is going to be a tradition”, rather it is that you have to do something so well and leave such an imprint of it, that the people who follow will want to do it too.
As fore a suggestion, I used this on Delp one summer, it was fun, but never really became tradition. Every time he would say at lunch “Ok I have a few announcements” I would stand up and sing at the top of my lungs:
Announcements! Announcements! Announcements!
A horrible death to die!
A horrible death to die!
A horrible death to speak with death,
A horrible death to die!
Announcements! Announcements! Announcements!
Pile it in the corner, Pile it in the corner!
Pile it in the corner and watch the flowers grow!
Announcements! Announcements! Announcements!
Speak freak!
After about a week he would stop using the word announcements, but every couple of days he would forget and all of Allen lodge would sing that. It was great fun. Might make a fun tradition, I don’t know.
cdl
thanks charles you brought up a lot of good points, and the kids do love that announcment song!!
CDL-
YOU are the one responsible for the announcements song?!!?! Good thing I don't know you...
I first came to camp in 91, I did not do the Anoucements song until 96 I think, I had never heard it there before and Myself and a Young Lad nammed Matt Grouix stated that summer. I did not know it was still being done, cool.
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