Today marks the 50^th anniversary of my fist day at Skycrest. I was nine years old and just finished third grade at a new school. It had been pretty mush decided that I would be going to sleep camp that summer after
having been going to day camp the last four years. They only question was what camp.

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This weekend I read of a most unfortunate occurance in Upstate NY. A group of Foreign Councellors were standing on the side of a road when they were hit by a car being driven by a drunk driver. Two British Councellors were killed and a third seriously injured and now in hospital in Albany. My thoughts immediately go to their families and I send condolences for the loss of their loved ones.

To think back to the days when many of us arrived in the USA with great expectations of a summer

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Where was this movie when we were campers. Hahahah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl5NIbqGC_U

An interesting thing happened this morning as I was making my morning coffee (I work from home when not traveling). I was scooping the coffee into the french press, and the though occurred to me that I love the smell of fresh coffee. I asked to myself, "why and what reason" I love coffee so much. Then it hit me, as sometimes it does. My memories of being a CIT in the mornings at Camp Skycrest in the dining hall, making instant coffee to enjoy with breakfast, or huddling around the pot with other… Continue

I was at first heartbroken seeing the movie "Meatballs," years ago, and learning that pulling someone's shorts down to his ankles at camp was not invented at Skycrest. But there's a difference: in "Meatballs," the object is humiliation of the shorts-wearer, while at Skycrest, shorts-pulling while simultaneously shouting, "Skycrest Shorts!" represented a statement about the cheapness of the shorts such that they could be pulled (and maybe some humiliation, too).

By 1977, Danny "Mosquito" Hillman… Continue