Comments and suggestions welcome!

We would greatly appreciate hearing your comments and suggestions about our blog, our web site (which we encourage you to visit at earthen-vessels.org), and, more broadly, our work with inner-city youth, both at camp in Vermont and in our school-year tutoring and mentoring program in Boston. Posting of comments has been simplified. Please add yours!

Family Camp ends the season in style

We spent a delightful weekend to close the camp season with former counselors and tutors and their children. The weather was ideal and we were able to do a myriad of outdoor activities: various community games like Signal or Sharks and Minnows, swimming in the Mad River, some great volleyball games, archery, walks along the headwaters of the White River just down the hill from camp... Diana and Jaime, with assorted other members of the 'cooking team,' put together a delicious cookout Saturday with tilapia, salmon, burgers and hotdogs, roasted vegetables and corn on the cob, followed by a campfire and the roasting of marshmallows. We also played some inside games like chess, ping-pong, and 'Saint Pete-Saint Paul'—which we learned from campers way back in 1980 and have played ever since—and sang favorite camp songs to the excellent guitar accompaniment of Eric and Dan, longtime counselors. On Sunday we managed to put tents away, pack up equipment, and pretty much put the camp to bed for the winter. It was a wonderful end to an exceptionally good camping season.

Second camp session of fun and personal growth

We have just finished the two-week camp with a great bunch of kids 12-14 years old. We had some wonderful weather which permitted mountain hikes up Mt. Hunger and Camel's Hump, the most beautiful mountain in Vermont. In-camp activities included volleyball, soccer, archery, theatre improv, chess, community games, swimming in a spring-fed pond or—on hike days—the Mad River, "serious workshops" on issues like grief, anger management, conflict resolution, sexuality and relationships, and a lot of singing and sharing in the evening. Though they normally listen to hip-hop, the kids became enthusiastic about singing "Take me Home, Country Roads," "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," and "Leaving on a Jet Plane," among many others. A terrific group of counselors, several of whom have also been tutors in our Tutoring/Mentoring Program, helped the youngsters on many levels, and we all formed a real family where the kids felt at home, comfortable with one another and with the staff, and able to share even painful events or experiences from their personal life and help one another come to terms with them. As one camper observed, "I learned how to make friends."