26 Year-Old Time Capsule

I know I’m going to sound like your parents (and even my parents) but, where the heck does the time go?  Every year when the leaves begin to fall and footballs fly, I wonder what happened to the months.  Camp starts and ends in a flash (I always maintained that at camp there are only two days of the week, Shabbat and not-Shabbat; and that throughout the summer the days drag and the weeks fly by).  But really, this time around I blinked in June, and it was now. 

What a year we had here at camp.  We built a beautiful new performing arts center, had a marvelous programmatic summer, once again saw a Klotz in Camp K’ton (Zoe carries on Jeremy, Michael and Melissa’s K’ton tradition), and we avoided the flu (Avodah ‘09’s cheer was, “We beat the swine in 2009”).  Anaf Project in the new building was magnificent as were Chugim presentations, two Dan Nichols and E18ghteen concerts, all-camp Shiurim and final friendship circles.

 

During Kallah Aleph Rabbi Jim Bennett and I dug up a time capsule we (Jim and I) had buried twenty-six years ago, on the occasion of the camp’s twenty-fifth anniversary, when Jim was Program Director.  We were going to dig it up last year on our 50th, but I forgot about it (what a maroon...to quote Bugs Bunny).  Getting it out of the ground at the back of the Beit T’fillah was a real chore.  It took four of us and the tractor to get it out.  We had buried an old safe and every cabin contributed to the capsule.  You wouldn’t believe the things we found.  First there was an Avodah shirt signed by all of our Avodah ’83 campers and the unit heads, Dawn Cincinnatus Bernstein and Lee Freedman.  It was quite moving to point out to the camp when we presented our “artifacts” that Dawn’s son Kyle was “in the house,” currently a counselor and song leader. So were Jim’s kids; Abby a counselor, Ethan an Avodahnik, and Michelle a camper.  There were so many other living connections to that summer so long ago.  Jim and I told the story of burying the capsule and displayed the contents at an all-camp Shiur.  We immediately began collecting items for a new time capsule that we buried at the end of Kallah Bet.  Talk about experiential education at its finest.

The new leadership of our Joint camp Authority (Sandy Adland, Chair and David Barrett, co-Chair) and I are starting to put together an alumni committee to plan an alumni-family Shabbat at camp next August.  You’ll hear more about this as it
becomes more concrete.  It’ll be great to celebrate another Shabbat together G.U.C.I. style with our kids and grandchildren.  

You know what?  It’ll be here before you know it.

Ron