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Author Archives: JAMES F. O'NEIL

SUMMER CAMPS FOR KIDS: “IT’S TIME TO START THINKING ABOUT IT”

May 13, 2016
EVENTS, GROWING UP, MEMOIRS
3 Comments

BY: JAMES F. O’NEIL

“A lot of parents pack up their troubles and send them off to summer camp.”  — Raymond Duncan

[Music plays]: Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.  Here I am at Camp Granada.

 . . .

Summer camp.  Often looked forward to, by kids and adults both.  Most campers fondly recall the experiences long after they reach adulthood.  [Make sure you find and see the 1993 film Indian Summer to fondly recall some awakening memoriesofatime: “Indian Summer starts out like one of those reunion movies where friends from long ago gather again, to settle old scores, sort out old romances, open old wounds, and make new beginnings.  All of those rituals have been performed by the end of the film, but curiously enough, the movie isn’t really about what happens.  It’s about how it feels.  This is a story more interested in tone and mood than in big plot points.”  –Roger Ebert, April 23, 1993]

indian summer cover

NOT ALL HAPPY CAMPERS

Camp is usually a time to make new friends, try new things, come face-to-face with animals, bugs, unusual weather, strange sleeping conditions, and many new responsibilities.

Experiential:  Arts and crafts:  Yes, potholders, and key fobs.  Field trips.  Flowers and weeds’ identification.

Music: sing-a longs, campfire songs: “She waded in the water and she got her feet all wet….”; mysterious drum poundings and even dancing.

Water: swimming, boating, rescue; leeches, water bugs, and small water snakes.

Health: Nutrition, meal preparation, outdoor cooking (and camping)–and clean-up duties.

Safety: First Aid, wood carving, rock climbing, sailing.

Potty Training: Constipation from inability to utilize outhouses, or hating Porta Potty/Port-O-Let facilities.  (Does eating an entire can of whipped cream really work as a laxative?)  I confess here: I dreaded summer Scout Camp for this very reason: I am potty trained, but I need a clean flushing toilet, with my quiet time, my reading time for TIME magazine.

time magazine cover

QUIET-TIME BATHROOM READER

After my experiences in summer camp (some of which I have written about previously: https://memoriesofatime.com/2015/05/30/you-are-such-a-boy-scout/), camping was never high on my bucket list.  I did some with the family when the boys were young, making sure we camped in a park with adequate running water, and clean toilets.  I hope they were never scarred from their own summer camp experiences.  One did attend Scout camp, and, later, high school Band Camp.  The other experienced summer ROTC camp, and a real “summer camp” in Afghan-Land.  (I have learned little about the toilet facilities there.) 

Overall, as an old fart looking back at my scouting summer camps, I know it wasn’t that bad.  One time we were housed in old military Quonset huts:

quanset hut Absolutely the best summer dorms for me–except for the loud snorers who sometimes kept me from falling asleep.  Spacious.  Lighted (some electricity).  And cleaner floors, for some reason.

The other camp facility I liked had a screen door, wood floor, bunk beds; canvas roof, wood sides halfway up, then screening to the top.  The canvas roof could be rolled up or down, for heat or light or air, depending on the needs of the resident scouts.  Heavy rain could be a problem, however, with overspray into the “cabin.”

Then, of course, the tents.  Not tents, as we think tents, but tents with hard floors, soft canvas sides, soft tops.  Hot, when Chicago-area summer temperatures were high.  But no grass underfoot. 

scout tents padutchbsa.org

SCOUT FACILITY PICTURE PADUTCHBSA.ORG: THANKS

For excursions, and overnighters, we had those fold-up tents that were put up and taken down in the usual way–the kind that most people associate with camping, bugs, snakes, bears, cold, rain, romantic wilderness trips, bucolics, starry-starry nights, shooting stars, “sitting around the campfire singing Girl Scout songs”–and our sleeping bags, with other Abercrombie and Fitch, Coleman-Stove equipment:

CAMPING-COLLECTION photo by jim golden

EVERYTHING PICTURE BY JIM GOLDEN

Camp counselors planned our days well: the events were structured to help us get our different merit badges: Camping, First Aid, Botany.  I did not do well with plant recognition.  To this day, everything is poison ivy; I herbicide anything that looks like a hand.

poison ivy jewel-weed-poison-ivy

SEE THE DIFFERENCES?

(I do recognize beautiful Queen Anne’s Lace.)  The meals were healthy and pretty good–especially, for me, the hot dogs grilled on the campfire.  I’m not a fussy eater; I liked nearly everything they put in front of me.  I had no trouble with KP duty, cleaning up and doing dishes: my mother taught me well at home. 

We arrived at camp on a Sunday; we departed for home on a Saturday morning–unless we were Senior scouts or Eagle Scouts staying for two weeks or more.  Parents came on Thursday night for Visitor Night: Campfire, songfest, and crying time by those young’uns who had been away from home for the first time.  (I was one of those who cried, but did not want to leave early; some did.)

Glued into my Journal #35, I have this sacred piece of memory, dated 8/11/52, written in ink, in cursive [I was 11]: “Dear Mom, I miss you very much.  I wish I was home with you.  I lost my new raincoat, we were doing the dishes and I ran out and forgot it.  I have so many mosquitoe [sic] bites it isn’t funny.  Please come out Thursday and visit me.  We are having very good meals.  We have to wash the dishes and wait on the Scouts.  I washed today at dinner and I serve tommorrow [sic].  I am going for second class.  I will be second class (Chuck said) [Chuck was our Assistant Scout Leader] by the time we are out of camp.  I miss you very much.  With Love, Jimmy XXXXXXXX P.S.  I got my Kiwanis Patch  Jim XXXXX”

This says it all about Summer Scout Camp 1952.

©  James F. O’Neil  2016

scouts at st mary's 1951

 MY SCOUT PATCHES AND SUMMER CAMP BADGES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STILL JOURNALING?

May 9, 2016
JOURNALING, WRITING/BLOGGING
1 Comment

“…many things have been omitted which should have been recorded. . . .  It is not easy to write in a journal what interests us at any time, because to write it is not what interests us.” –Henry David Thoreau

Still?  Haven’t started yet?  For an introduction, or a refresher, see https://memoriesofatime.com/2015/05/18/journal-keeping/

composition book 1No expensive blank-page, hardcover or leatherette book: use notebook paper, a speckled notebook, or some similar writing book.  (Avoid notebooks wire-bound that flatten or break or can scratch or poke.)  

Keeping it regularly?  Faithfully?  A few times a week?

Stuffed with “stuff,” like receipts, greeting cards, pictures, favorite essays from magazines, emails from friends?  or also filled with dreams and bads and goods?

Are you conversant with your soul?  Do you confer with those who have crossed over to the Other Side?

Can you/do you capture life as you see it, the now, the past, the present?  (You are not stuck in the past, are you?)

Do you connect the few facts you know, the slim insights you have attained, the “chance extensions of sensibility into which you have been once or twice tempted into a larger enough context to make sense of the world…or the works of art you encounter”?–[Leslie Fiedler]

Chronological order: date, day, time.  A good record (for reference, a place in time).

Not boring details.  But details.  What is that saying about details?  “The idiom “the devil is in the detail” refers to a catch or mysterious element hidden in the details, and derives from the earlier phrase ‘God is in the detail,’ expressing the idea that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; i.e. details are important.”  — [Wikipedia–and other sources]

No day is bereft of material to write about…about which to write.  See, hear, touch, taste, and smell.  Then understand, react.  Then WRITE.

Note the particulars that make you your journal, your journal you.

Need more than this?  Need a book for starters?  “If you want to change your life and know that you have the answers within, then learning to journal as a tool for rediscovering what you already knew, is the best way I know how. This book stands alone; and if you want to have a master teacher guide you into the depths of your soul, get this book and the companion workbook.”  [Marcia C. Bliss comment in 2013]:  Journaling for Joy: Writing Your Way to Personal Growth and Freedom by Joyce Chapman, 1991, 2013.

journaling for joy

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REMEMBERING MOTHERS

May 7, 2016
EVENTS, PEOPLE
2 Comments

BY: JAMES F. O’NEIL

“Men are what their mothers made them.”  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I thought and believed at one time that my mother was God, or at the very least a god-like figure:  https://memoriesofatime.com/2014/05/09/your-mother-is-not-god-shes-not/    

For the past few weeks, I have been going through old journals, scissoring out unwanted and unneeded material.  Old essays, old emails, and old class notes–among other things.  Glued-in essays no longer relevant.  Gone.  Deleted.

So volume by volume, I page through.

On May 5, 2016, I was working on Volume 91: 12-11-2008–10-12-2009.

My reading became deliberate.  My entries slowed me down.  Few clips of the scissors.  More attention to the words.  A Mother’s Day.  A mother’s illness, and hospitalization.  A mother’s death [10-7-2009].  A chronology of events, details. 

Ironic timing: Another Mother’s Day is here. 

And some vivid memoriesofatime:

Mom in Ohio 2008Mom Relaxing on Swing, Ohio Cottage 2008

 

©  James F. O’Neil   2016

 


 

 

BEING MORE CRITICAL: SOME KINDS OF CRITICAL APPROACHES OR HELPS

April 29, 2016
ARTISTIC VENTURES, LITERARY CRITICISM
3 Comments

“Every effective…critic sees some facet of…art and develops our awareness with respect to it; but the total vision, or something approximating it, comes only to those who learn how to blend the insights yielded by many critical approaches.”  –David Daiches

What is New Criticism?  Deconstructionism?  Formalism?  Historicism?  Psychoanalytical?

Here is perhaps a simplified (not simple) help that a reader or viewer might use to bring to a work of art (mostly literature and film, that might use “standards”) to help with some understanding, beyond the first impression–which is normal: “I liked it!” or, “Thumbs up!” or, “Five stars!”  What to say next?

So begin (if you care to):

HISTORICAL (H): concerned with the text, language, biography, influences, historical “facts” (then); Is this the real accurate text?

FORMALISM (F): concerned with the text (alone): its form, style, structure, meaning, effect (from text), the “textual approach”

SOCIO-CULTURAL (S): concerned with the text as social commentary (needs to be a historical first); about morality, economics, and cultural beliefs (then, primarily).  Sees the text as a document of political influence.

PSYCHOLOGICAL (P): [FREUD]: studies author/artist, work/characters, reader/viewer.  The “on-the-couch-method” that is rich, looking for motivation, for answers to the whys of actions or of likes and dislikes.  (Does not always have to be about dreams and cigars.)

MYTHOPOEIC (M): [JUNG]: by using all four previous approaches, uncovers or tries to discover patterns of ritual or seasons, to present a work as the verbal aspect of ritual with archetypal patterns.  Within a work “myth” is the narrative”; archetype is the “significance.”  Hand washing in a film may not be simply hand washing….  What is the book Hansel and Gretel doing in the film I, Robot?  (The most complex but, perhaps, the richest approach to literature.)   

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