By Adam Kaplan
It’s that wonderful time of year when our email inboxes are filled every single morning with, “The greatest deals of the year for 24 hours only!” (Of course, that same online vendor will send us almost the exact same email about “The greatest deals of the year for 24 hours only!” every day for the next month!) It is that splendid time of year when a simple trip to Target will require that the wise person bring a backpack, hiking boots, and a camp stove since they are likely to have an arduous hike to the store from the enormous distance they were forced to park their car! It is that magical time of year when Jingle Bell Rock becomes so repetitive that those first few electric guitar strums at the beginning of it sends me into a Pavlovian rage that sends those in my vicinity running for cover. It is that meaningful time of year when every other Fox News segment addresses the pervasive and incredibly damaging “War on Christmas” that endangers the very fabric of civil society. (Oops…sorry about that. I promised myself that I would never go political in the Arrowhead!)
On top of those annoyances, many are turned off by the whole gift giving part of the holiday season because it is so indicative of how pervasive the commercialization of our culture has become. Without exaggeration, many businesses are entirely dependent on all of us buying into the whole holiday shopping season concept. Businesses either thrive or are destroyed based solely on how successful they are at getting us to buy gifts during this time of year. Whether you are a religious person or not, I suspect that there are very few of us that are not on some level really turned off by the garish homage to commercialism and consumption that the holiday season represents
Many also despair at the arrival of the holiday shopping season because they are presented with the daunting (and often incredibly expensive) task of procuring gifts for long lists of friends and family. There are parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and children that have to be addressed. Without a doubt, this can be an extraordinarily stressful task, and one that, for many, is so intimidating that they dread the holiday season for this reason alone.
While paragraphs two and three of this article suggest, I am not without a certain degree of cynicism when it comes to this time of year and many of its gift giving trappings, I have to say that I am a real believer in the aspect that requires each of us to think about a gift for each of the important people in our lives. I think it is a really healthy exercise for each of us to take some time out to think about each person in our lives that is special to us. To really think about them…to think about what they like. To think about what they love. To think about what they need. To think about what makes them special. To think about what things they are interested in. Our lives are so busy these days that we rarely take the time to think about those that are so special in our worlds. If we do it right, the holiday season forces us to take time and do so.
Now to be clear, I am not being paid by the folks at Macy’s to use my profound influence on my voluminous readership to boost sales. In fact, I am one of those that believes that a personally made piece of art, or a thoughtful note make the best gifts. In truth, these handmade and personal gifts speak even more strongly to my point about spending time thinking about people personally.
But regardless of whether you purchase a gift or hand make something for those on your list this year, let’s all reshape our thinking about the task of tackling our holiday lists this year. Give each of those folks the most precious gift you can give them…your time and your thoughts.
Have a great holiday!
(The preceding article was brought to you by the United States Chamber of Commerce and its affiliates.)
It would be a profound understatement for me to simply state that Camp Nebagamon has been an important part of my life. I suspect like many of you, Camp Nebagamon has occupied a critical and formative part of my heart and mind throughout most of my life. My experiences there and the relationships I have made along the way have had a definitively positive impact on the person I am today. I know a large part of what has brought me back to Nebagamon again and again over the years has been my desire to be an active participant in helping to make the magic happen for others and keeping it going for the generations to come. What an incredible gift to get to be part of a nearly 100-year legacy of positively impacting the lives of children in such a sacred and beautiful place. And now I have the privilege of working in support of this calling year-round! For the first time ever, Camp Nebagamon will have a full-time team member entirely dedicated and focused on building and strengthening the bonds of our camp community by creating new experiences and opportunities throughout the year for our alumni to support and connect with the greater Camp Family like never before!
One of the biggest transitions ushered in with November affects us caretakers directly. Our already small crew of three becomes only two at the middle of the month when our seasonal caretaker finishes work for the season. In an average year, the first two weeks of November find us winding down our outdoor work with a bit of wood splitting and stacking. This year, nature threw a spanner in the works when a four-inch snow dump occurred at the beginning of the last week of October, when we would normally start the fall leaf blowing. Caretaker/Cook Cody Keys and I had to switch things up this year and put off leaf blowing in hopes that warm temps would return and melt the snow off of the fallen leaves. We reversed our normal schedule and went after the wood piling up at C.N.O.C. first. The cold temps persisted and our late October snow stuck around for more than a week. But with Cody’s time with us growing short we were forced to start leaf blowing in poor conditions and had to move about camp’s grounds to blow leaves in any open ground we could find. The conditions forced us to be nimble; we were able to do the front yards of the waterfront houses but not the back shady areas. The Lumberjack Village gets good southern exposure to the sun so we were able to blow leaves throughout, while there was still two inches of snow covering the grounds of the more tree-shaded Axman Village. Thankfully, things continued to melt and allowed us to make steady progress as we hopped about camp in an odd pattern, blowing leaves wherever the melted snow allowed. One last big warm up occurred the weekend before Cody’s final couple of days and we were able to get all of the grounds’ leaf blowing completed on his final day with us. We were so excited to be that close to finishing at the start of his last day that we made a pact that we would go home at whatever time we finished. All day we worked hard and pushed ourselves forward, at last we did it and had blown the final leaf. I checked my watch, and what would our bonus time be? We were able to treat ourselves with a whole extra hour off!!
11th – Ivan Becerra
6th Grade Campers: Louie Bader, Ronen Brandler, William Brandler, Ben Brotchner, Zach Brotchner, Levi Budin, Ethan Cardenas, Grant Cowens, Nate Feldman, Grant Hall, David Levick, Alex Lyons, Ethan Mack, Mason Marek, Brandon Pineda, Leo Seidman, Bryce Shepherd, Henry Sonneland, Rafi Thacker, Jonah Tone, Mekhi Vante, Emmitt Polonsky
