Hey, Bookworms!

If you’re like me and you love to read, then today is right up your alley! Find your favorite place to read and plant your face in your favorite book because today is National Book Lovers Day! It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting under a shady tree or curled up in a nice, big chair—it’s what you’re reading that counts. After all, books offer a whole different world to which you can escape!

I remember when I was young. I’d make weekly trips to the library and come home with piles of new books. I’d climb high up the birch tree in the backyard bringing an apple and a book and stay up there for hours completely entranced in a fictional world.

People have enjoyed the written word since ancient times. But book manufacturing used to be much different and more difficult than it is today. The books that were made back then were typically printed on parchment paper or calf skin and bound between two pieces of leather-covered wood.

The Etruscan Gold Book is considered the oldest book in the world. 2,673 years old, this book consists of six, 24 carat gold sheets that are bound together with rings.

Books are cool. That’s for certain. So, whether it means enjoying an adventure with ‘Clifford the Big, Red Dog’ or cracking open Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’, today’s the perfect day for it! Discover the excitement waiting for you between those two, intriguing covers!

Even in today’s modern world of exponentially-advancing technology, the age-old skill of reading hasn’t budged. Challenged by television, movies, YouTube, and more, reading has only grown stronger in today’s day and age. With the advent of the e-book reader, such as a Reader, Nook, or Kindle, books have made quite an evolutionary step. At the same time, they haven’t really changed at all!

Whether you’re flipping pages like in the old days or scrolling on your e-book reader, enjoy National Book Lovers Day and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Blog Buddies!

It’s always good to be friends—but today it’s even better since it’s World Friendship Day! What fun is a trip to the movie theater when you’re going all by yourself? Isn’t a hike a lot more fun when there’s somebody else with you to share the experience? You can’t play Hide-and-Go-Seek without a friend!

Making friends comes as natural as your ABC’s. A couple months ago I posted a series on this Blog about the ease of making friends at summer camp. Whether you’re a little shy or dreadfully terrified of talking to others, once you’re there at camp, you don’t even think about it. You’ll naturally start talking to other kids and become fast friends with them.

It’s just a given. That’s what happens at camp.

But camp isn’t the only place where it’s easy to make friends! You can do it at school, at the beach, at the park, at your brother’s birthday party…the world is brimming with friendly, smiling faces, all ripe for the befriending.

Though the United Nations did not officially recognize World Friendship Day until 2011, the history of this day dates back all the way to 1919 when the greeting card company Hallmark first founded it. It wasn’t an international holiday at that point—just a day Hallmark invented. The day was meant for friends to send each other greeting cards noting the friendship between one another.

When World War II came, it extinguished the market and a little after 1940, the day had gone completely extinct!

It was over 50 years later in 1998 that the United Nations (very curiously) appointed Winnie the Pooh as the World’s Ambassador of Friendship. And by 2011, Friendship Day was resurrected now as an officially recognized international holiday.

Happy World Friendship Day to everyone and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey there, Moms and Dads!

Today is a very special day. What makes it so special, you ask? It’s special because it’s all about you! Happy Parents’ Day, Parents! Today celebrates you: that proud, loving, and often times very tired group—the parents of our world! Though it may be a little hard for some of us to admit it at times, at some point in our lives our parents were most likely the most important people in it.

You’d think this day has been celebrated all throughout history since moms and dad have been around since…FOREVER, but actually it came around in the much more recent past. Its interesting history goes back only to the 1920’s or so when one Ms. Sonora Smart Dodd from Spokane fought to make an equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents—Father’s Day.

As was covered on the previous Father’s Day post, most fathers confronted the idea of Father’s Day unfavorably, displeased with its celebration of a domesticated male figure being gifted with flowers and other frills. One response was a movement that lasted about a decade that tried to get rid of both Mother’s AND Father’s Day entirely to make just one, unified Parents’ Day.

Parents’ Day was fought for with the rationale that both parents should be respected and admired equally, however, the Great Depression put an end to the fight as retailers did their best to promote ‘manly’ gifts like neckties, hats, and golf clubs for Father’s Day. With that, Father’s Day won the battle.

It took nearly 65 years before anything happened with Parent’s Day, until 1994 when President Clinton noted that Mother’s Day landed on the second Sunday of May and Father’s Day on the third Sunday of July. So following suit, he decided that the fourth Sunday in July had ought to be Parents’ Day.

From everyone at Everything Summer Camp, happy Parents’ Day! As always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, History Fans!

Today is Amelia Earhart’s birthday; what better day to honor this adventurous American icon by discussing her life and the accomplishments that she made during a time when women typically weren’t as expressive and daring as she was.

For someone whose life is so well-documented, her death is shrouded in mystery. However, while the mystery of her disappearance is what gathers so much attention, her life was very interesting.

Amelia was born in 1897. She was full of life, a captivating person, and beautiful. She is portrayed in the bulk of her biographies as a tomboy in her younger days. Like usual children, Amelia and her younger sister, Pidge, would collect moths, toads, and katydids (also known as the Green Leaf Bug) as they would frequently go out on adventuresome hikes.

Amelia did a lot of the usual childhood things, but also did some things that most children wouldn’t dare…

Once when she was 7-years-old, Amelia (with the help of her uncle) made her own little home-style roller coaster. She fastened a ramp to the roof of her father’s toolshed and took it for a ride in a little wooden box. She crashed, broke the box, bruised her lip, and tore her dress. She didn’t once think to cry about it, though. Instead, she called to her sister, “Oh, Pidge. It’s just like flying!”

There was another side to Amelia than this spirited tomboy, though. She was a thinker as well as a writer. She enjoyed motivating people too. She once wrote, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”

With this rationale, Amelia became the first female aviator to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone. Three years later she crossed the Pacific on her own as well. Then she flew coast to coast across the United States. She helped to form the 99’s (an international organization of women pilots).

After all these accomplishments and many more, Amelia strived for one more. In 1937, she and her navigator tried to fly across the entire earth—heading east from Miami. She nearly made it the entire way around the planet, but disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean.

While myths and legends are still passed around today, the Crash and Sink Theory is the most widely accepted that the Electra (Amelia’s plane) ran out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific.

The world could learn a thing or two from Ms. Earhart, so don’t stop here. Look further into her life for your own fun and inspiration! And thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

It’s National Hot Dog Day. Standing tall alongside burgers and apple pie, hot dogs are one of the most iconic of American foods. Whether you’re having a simple cookout with the family or taking a trip out to the ballpark to catch a ballgame—hot dogs are an essential part of summer!

Wieners, Franks, Foot Longs, Dogs—no matter what you call them, they’re delicious! They’re traditionally served on a bun with ketchup and mustard on top, but the fun doesn’t have to end there. Like its cousin, the burger, there’s a whole slew of condiments you can use to dress up the hotdog.

Sprinkle some diced onion on there, decorate it with some tasty relish (hot giardiniera if you’re daring enough), then load it all with one more layer of chili! Now THAT’S a hotdog!

Hotdogs don’t NEED to go inside a bun either. You can get a corndog—a hotdog with a cornmeal coating, deep-fried, and served on a stick. Otherwise, cut some hotdogs into bite-sized pieces and put them in your Mac n’ Cheese—it’s great!

But really—even if you don’t have a single condiment or a bun to put it on—hotdogs are still beyond enjoyable. And since they’re so independently satisfying, they make for the number one most convenient camping food. All you need to do is find yourself a skewer (any ol’ stick will do) and roast it by a campfire. It’s that easy and dinner is served!

It was the 13th Century when pork sausages (essentially hotdogs) were first made in Frankfurt, Germany (you can take a wild guess at how the name frankfurter came along). But encased sausage and other meats have been made since at least 700 B.C.—it’s mentioned in Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’.

From grill outs to hotdog stands to eating contests, Americans consume somewhere around 20 billion hotdogs a year! That’s A LOT!

We’ll certainly be having our share of hotdogs today thanks to our employee grill out! I can smell it already! Mmmm. Happy Hotdog Day to everyone from Everything Summer Camp!

Eat up, Dog Lovers. And thanks for reading!

- John