by Brad Herzog
The following has been updated from a Keylog story from 2010. But of course, sermonettes are eternal…
It is a small, metal note card file that appears to date from the Truman Administration. Rusting and slightly warped from the years, it is an eminently unassuming container. But open it, and it is like an antidote to Pandora’s box, releasing wit and wisdom, exhortation and epiphany, life lessons and clever turns of phrase. As the fading letters on the top of the box tell us, these are SERMONETTES – part, as Jessie Stein Diamond well puts it, of the “transmission of values… built into so many rituals at camp.” And as Nebagamon traditions go, few are as entrenched as this pithy pre-meal practice.
Yet it is also a box full of mystery, its origins largely lost in the Nebagahaze over the decades. Joe Hirschhorn once recalled that when he started at camp in 1940 sermonettes were usually given by Muggs Lorber himself. Now, of course, an ever-changing parade of campers reminds their peers that “nothing is harder on your laurels than resting on them” or that “the largest room in the world is the room for improvement” or that “the size of a man is not found by measuring his feet, but by measuring his footsteps.”
Where do the sermonettes come from? Considering the diversity of the note cards themselves – white cards, yellow cards, pink cards, most typed, some written, from a vast spectrum of sources – the genesis of each is a tale of its own. Back in the day, it wasn’t unusual for staff or older campers to offer Muggs sayings that they found meaningful. Roger Wallenstein used to lift clever adages from his datebook and type them onto note cards using an old IBM Selectric. Steph Hanson has come across quotable quotations while surfing the Internet. As a teenager, Jane Stein Kerr stumbled upon a catalog of inspirational posters – “the kind,” she says, “that now make me groan but to an adolescent seemed profound.” She added a handful of them to the box, including a well-known classic concerning lemons and lemonade.
That particular note card is well-worn, missing a chunk, clearly a favorite among the mini-sermonizers. In fact, a trip through that sermonette box offers hints at preferences and quirks. Some oft-repeated cards are wrinkled and stained. Others appear crisp and new – not-yet-noticed bits of wisdom. On a few occasions, the same sermonette can be found on two different cards, as if discovered by two different generations. Often, the cards have been revised in an attempt to be non-gender specific – “man” and “him” having been changed to “person” and “them.”
Often, too, the sermonette sources are given credit on the cards themselves. Packed tightly into that box are a collection of writers (Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry David Thoreau, Elie Wiesel), philosophers (Nietzsche, Voltaire, Spinoza), presidents (Lincoln, Wilson, Eisenhower, Carter) and various icons (Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart). That 11-year-old relating words of wisdom to his peers just may be quoting Somerset Maugham or Margaret Mead or Oliver Wendell Holmes.
More interesting than the expected sources – the likes of Shakespeare and Einstein and Churchill – are the more obscure ones that have inhabited that metal container over the years. British Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell? Mid-20th century romance novelist Faith Baldwin? Celebrity columnist Lloyd Shearer? The list ranges from Reverend R. Inman to Rabbi Morris Adler to agnostic icon Robert Ingersoll to Yiddish humorist Leo Rosten.
Indeed, humor is a sermonette staple. Sometimes it comes in the form of accidental irony. For instance, Ben Franklin is credited with saying, “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” However, on the note card it is spelled “Frenklin.” So much for knowledge. Usually, the comedy is intentional, often begging for a rim shot (“If someone is talking behind your back, then you’re probably heading in the right direction.”) Roger Wallenstein once contributed a line from Groucho Marx: “These are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others.” But to his chagrin, it remained largely unread. “I hope the card remains in the metal box,” he says.
But it may not, and that fluidity is another fascinating aspect of the sermonette box. While some join the club, others are edited for space. The Steins recall one autumn vacation in the 1960s when a drive to Chicago with relatives became a laugh-a-mile riot as they sorted through the box, separating the keepers from the rejects, some of which were staff or camper pranks. One of the discarded: “Boys are more in need of models than words.”
Still, some peculiarities remain. Like this one: “Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.” And this one: “Any time you think you have influence, try ordering around someone else’s dog.”
Yes, some sermonettes can be an acquired taste. But Sally Stein has a decent explanation. “One man’s pithy saying,” she says, “is another’s puzzlement.”
Be seated.
