Hey, Hatters!

From functionality to status symbol to simple style, everyone’s worn a hat at some point in their lives whether it be for one reason or another. We wear them to shield our eyes from sunlight as well as sweat or to protect ourselves against the cold. They’re a part of many people’s uniforms. And some just look good sitting on your head! Today is National Hat Day.

People have been wearing hats for thousands of years—five thousand to be specific. They’ve been around a long time and there’s a lot to discover about them. This isn’t the first time we’ve acknowledged National Hat Day here on the Everything Summer Camp Blog. Check out this previous post to brush up on your hat history.

It’s the middle of January, so if you’re in a colder climate like we are here at Everything Summer Camp in Northwestern Wisconsin, chances are the only hats you’re wearing lately are nice, warm winter beanies and stocking hats. We offer some on our online store along with all our other baseball caps. Select your camp when you click here to see if your camp offers any hats through our store.

Our camp hats actually contribute a new purpose to hat-wearing since they sport the name of the summer camp front and center. This way you can literally wear your camp pride! Let everyone know where your home-away-from-home is when you order one of your camp baseball caps, stocking hat, or beanie.

It only makes sense to celebrate National Hat Day by wearing your favorite hat! If you don’t have a favorite hat in your home, order your summer camp hat here at Everything Summer Camp so you can be prepared for next year! Happy Hat Day, Everybody. And, as always, thanks for reading!

- John   

Hey, Weaver Readers!

Clothing and other fabrics are a huge part of our lives. I don’t know about you, but I wear clothes every day. People have worn things for a long, long time—long before we even developed our ability to construct fabric. Before clothing existed, people would drape or tie natural elements around their bodies such as animal skins, fur, grass, leaves, bones, shells, and anything else handy that worked.

It was about 8,000 years ago that people first started producing textile fabrics—material made by creating an interlocking network of yarns or threads. Methods of textile construction are knitting, crocheting, felting, braiding, and weaving.

Weaving in itself, however, goes back even further than textiles, back another 4,000 years (altogether, 12,000 years ago) to the Neolithic Era, also known as The Stone Age. The art of weaving is actually thought to be one of the oldest crafts still utilized today. The basic idea of weaving even preceded the actual discovery of the process. People naturally made woven baskets, shelters, even fences, and more by simply interlacing tree branches and twigs.

Weaving is great for imparting skills and other benefits to anyone who decides to try their hand at the process. It’ll help you in areas like:

• Hand-eye Coordination
• Concentration
• Problem-solving (as you can encounter plenty of problems in the process)
• Pattern-understanding and Sequencing
• Creativity and Relaxation (as the process is quiet and calming—a great space for creativity to bloom)

Along with these benefits, weaving also teaches kids about recycling and reusing materials. From sticks to paper or yarn—if it’s long enough and flexible enough for your purposes, you can weave it. A great activity for cold or rainy days, give weaving a try sometime and look into whether your camp offers this powerful, primitive, tried-and-true tradition. Enjoy the process, Everybody. And, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Camp Folks!

Nowadays we can communicate with folks across the state, the country, and even the world. We can do it in a variety of different methods and we don’t think twice about it. But there was a time before immediate long-distance communication wasn’t possible. Let’s turn back the clock before the advent of the Internet and before the invention of the telephone.

More than 30 years prior to the telephone in the 1830’s, Samuel Morse was coming up with a way to communicate rapidly over long distances. He was developing a binary code that consisted of dots and dashes. Such a simple code could travel across telegraph wires. They ran a telegraph line from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland.

Today is Write Your Name in Morse Code Day!

While the US Navy and Coast Guard still use signal lamps for communication by Morse Code as well as individuals who aren’t able to communicate due to stroke, paralysis, or many other reasons, Morse Code has mostly been forgotten by the modern world. The world of summer camp, however, is one that always harkens back to a more primitive time.

Today was made Write Your Name in Morse Code Day to generate some interest in this dying code. Don’t let it totally disappear and share Morse Code with your friends. It can certainly be a valuable means of communication when you want to keep things secret!

And remember—Morse Code was made for audio communication, but it can be used for written communication as well or even visual communication such as the US Navy and Coast Guard signal lamps. You could do something similar with a flashlight, clicking it on and off in short bursts for dots and longer ones for dashes!

I’ve included a Morse Code key with today’s post so that you all can spell your own names in dashes and dots. For example, here’s Everything Summer Camp spelled out in this code:

. ...- . .-. -.-- - .... .. -. --. / ... ..- -- -- . .-. / -.-. .- -- .--.

Have fun with it, folks! And, as always, thanks for reading! 

- John

Hey, Camp Folks!

People keep collections of all sorts of things! Collecting can be a childhood hobby for some, while it’s a lifelong passion for others. Most people have kept a collection of something at some point in their lives, whether it’s just a simple movie or music collection or something more specific that might hold a little more meaning for you (like my sister’s Milwaukee Brewer bobbleheads).

It’s been a lot of years since I’ve added anything to it, but I still hang onto my collection of Star Wars figurines I amassed throughout my childhood.

One of Wisconsin’s big draws for touring is the House on the Rock in Spring Green. A great museum established by one Alex Jordan Junior, it features his astounding collections including self-playing instruments, model ships, dollhouses, and much more. Located atop a column of rock named Deer Shelter Rock, the original house from 1953 now stands with its additional buildings in a nearby forest. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in the neighborhood!

So! What is it that you collect?

If you have a collection that you’re proud of, we’d love to know about it! We’ll share it on our Blog, so be sure to include pictures and as much detail as possible! Let us know how long you’ve been building your collection and what inspired you to start accumulating. Do you have a favorite piece?

Just upload your files right here and we’ll take care of the rest!

We’re all eager here at Everything Summer Camp to see what kind of collections all you crazy cool campers are keeping. And maybe you’ll inspire somebody else as they peruse the Blog to start a collection of their own. Let us see what you got! And, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John

Hey, Camp Folks!

An interesting thing about language is its natural lean to adopt common phrases and expressions that are eventually so sewn into the fabric of our everyday speech that we use them without even realizing it. Today, I’m launching a new Blog category that investigates the origins of those handy, little turns of phrases that we know so well. Sayings like these are more specifically referred to as idioms or adages.

For our first adage, let’s look at the phrase ‘Fly off the Handle’.

When somebody is said to fly off the handle, it means that they suddenly lost their temper and exploded in anger. They may apologize for it afterward by saying, “Sorry I flew off the handle before.” It’s not something anybody really likes to be present for. It’s intense and potentially dangerous. But what handle are we talking about here and what’s flying off of it?

This phrase started in the lumber camps during the frontier days of America. Lumberjacks would find themselves in cold climates that would force wood to contract and shrink. They’d be out chopping away at a tree with an axe. And when the wooden handle shrunk just enough to no longer keep the snug fit within the axe head, the metal blade would go flying off.

It would happen very quickly, creating a rather intense and dangerous situation. This terrifying part of those long days of work as a lumberjack has been borrowed and used metaphorically to illustrate somebody’s explosion, coining the phrase ‘fly off the handle’.   

The first written mention with the quote “He flies right off the handle for nothing,” is found in Sam Slick—the works of a Canadian judge named Thomas C. Haliburton in 1843.

So, in closing, try not to fly off the handle on anybody in your life and be careful swinging those axes! As always, thanks for reading, Folks!

- John