Hello, Readers!

Many of you probably already know, today is Veterans Day. What is it that we’re celebrating on Veterans Day? We show our appreciation for those who have served their country in the armed services. We call those people veterans. Everything Summer Camp extends immense gratitude to those who have fought for our freedom.

Veterans Day, while an important holiday to celebrate, can be a difficult day to approach. It depends on whether you know any veterans, whether they’re still alive or not, who they are to you if you do know any. Based on those factors (and some others yet), you can decide what the best way for you and your family is to honor veterans on this day.

I’ve put together some tips and ideas of ways that you can honor veterans you know (or even ones that you don’t know) in case you could use some help.

1.) Wearing a remembrance poppy or a yellow ribbon is a simple, great way to quietly show your support for veterans. Whether you wear your remembrance piece at school, out around town, or at home, this is an excellent way to honor veterans.

2.) Arts and crafts are a great way to involve kids in activities for Veterans Day. A simple card that you and your kids constructed is more than enough to put a smile on a veteran’s face. If you’d like to try your hand at something a little more involved, you can find some good, patriotic ideas for crafts like a bald eagle wreath, or red, white, and blue paper candles.

3.) Get permission from your kid’s teacher at school to invite a veteran to be a guest speaker. This is easy if you know one, but, even if you don’t, you can find lots of veterans who work at VA facilities who would be glad to have the opportunity to talk to a classroom full of today’s youth.

4.) In general, be sure to honor veterans, not just today, but all throughout the year. You can thank them with a simple note, a tasty treat, or a warm hug.

Happy Veterans Day and thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Thanksgiving Fans!

We do a lot to celebrate this harvest holiday: from parades to parties, football games and feasts…. A holiday with so many traditions must have a lot of history to it as well! That’s why I put together a little Thanksgiving quiz to see how much you know about this day and the traditions we have to celebrate it. Here are a few bonus nuggets of information about our Thanksgiving Day celebrations.

Most of you already know that the Thanksgiving holiday celebrates the feast the Pilgrims enjoyed back in 1621 after they reaped the harvest that the Wampanoag Natives taught them to sow. However, few people know that it wasn’t originally called Thanksgiving.

In fact, to begin with, it wasn’t really called anything. Before that term referred to this one holiday that we all know and love, it was used to refer to multiple days throughout the year in which celebrations of thanks were held for successful crops, much-needed rainfall, the end of a harsh winter—anything, really.

Another point of interest is our bird of choice for our Thanksgiving feasts. Did you know that the Turkey was actually proposed by Mr. Benjamin Franklin to be our nation’s official bird. He was torn up about it when the Bald Eagle was declared the winner. He wrote to his daughter about the eagle’s “bad moral character” and probably would have preferred that the nation dined on Bald Eagle for this occasion.

Lastly, did you know that the word ‘turkey’ actually comes from the Indian word for peacock—‘tuka’. Just as the confused Christopher Columbus dubbed the Natives of America ‘Indians’ (because he thought he was in India), he referred to a turkey as a ‘tuka’. The name kind of stuck and then evolved into ‘turkey’.

Well, Blog Readers, hopefully you learned a thing or two or three from today’s Blog post and maybe even adopted Ben Franklin’s deep respect for the turkey. In any case, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Campers!

Did you know that, just like all of you crazy camp kids, a whole bunch of famous big-names (actors and actresses, musical artists, professional athletes) enjoyed the absolute FUN of summer camp when they were your age? Famous actor, Paul Adelstein—best known for his role as Agent Paul Kellerman in the television series “Prison Break”—attended summer camp as well.

He went to North Star Camp in Hayward where he didn’t just have a blast for a summer or two—he learned about life and what it is to live in the real world. North Star Camp sees summer camp as a preparatory opportunity to give kids a light education on life.

Paul was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was born to a Reform Jewish family and lived a fairly normal family life. He went to a progressive high school, Francis W. Parker School. And after that, he attended Bowdoin College where he graduated with a degree in English.

He first started his acting career working in the theatre with a company called New Crime Productions (a company which was founded by John Cusack, actually). Paul later came to work with the infamous Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

He made his way onto the big screen for the first time when he was 21 in the film, “The Grifters” and went on to play supporting roles in films like “Bedazzled,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and “Be Cool.” Paul made it even bigger in the world of television. There he appeared in shows like “ER,” “Without a Trace,” and “Scrubs.”

His real claim to fame was yet to come, however, as the role he is best known for became Agent Paul Kellerman from the TV series, “Prison Break” in 2005. He’s also known for his role in “Private Practice” as Cooper Freedman, pediatrician.

As always, thanks for reading, Campers!

- John

Hello again, Canine Lovers!

There’s a dog out there for everybody. We all love them and they certainly love us! We all know that dogs are extremely fascinating creatures. When we look into their eyes, we so often see a piece of ourselves. That’s probably why we have a month dedicated to the adoption of dogs in shelters.The beginning of November marks the end of National Adopt of Dog Month (a.k.a.—October). As I mentioned at the beginning of October, everyone here at Everything Summer Camp is a big fan of our canine companions who are already in our homes. And because we love our furry friends so much, we wanted to do something as a company to help spread awareness that October is Adopt a Dog Month.

I blogged about it, but—unfortunately—there aren’t a whole lot of people following a summer camp Blog site this time of year. We also made our ‘live love adopt’ T-shirt to sell and donate those proceeds to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), a non-profit organization which is dedicated to preventing cruelty toward animals.

We did not sell a crazy number of T-shirts. No, we sold six. And, while it may not be a lot, every little bit helps, so Everything Summer Camp wrote a check out to the ASPCA for $52.50 and got it in the mail this morning.  Since we didn’t sell nearly as many as we would have liked, we also donated 100 dog I.D. tags to a local dog shelter.

But just because October has ended and it’s no longer National Adopt a Dog Month, doesn’t mean that it’s too late for you to make some lucky dog’s dream come true by giving it the home it needs or by helping to create awareness. As always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Horrorheads!

Do you love the seasonal scare of Halloween and all its horrific elements? One fantastic element about getting into the Halloween spirit is being scared! That’s why people watch scary movies! We, here at Everything Summer Camp like to watch them too…well, MOST of us, anyway. I guess some of us might be too scared for a good horror flick *AHEM*—JULIANN!

I asked everyone about their favorite scary movies and most of them told me that they didn’t like scary movies. They then went on to share with me the one that they hated the most. I think that means it’s their favorite.

Naturally, I started with our President, Ed. He told me he didn’t really like scary movies. “The only good horror movie I’ve ever seen is ‘Silence of the Lambs’. They jumped the shark in the sequel, though.”

Next, I talked to our Vice President, Mark, who declared ‘Psycho’ as his favorite scary movie. “The original,” he clarified. “Give it to me in black and white with no special effects or gore—just a really creepy story to scare your pants off!”

Like Mark, our Operations Manager, Brian, had to clarify that his favorite scary movie is the original movie and not the remake. “’Let the Right One In’—NOT ‘Let Me In’! It’s not that the remake is bad, it’s just redundant and unnecessary,” he says.

Our receptionist, Tim, shared one of his favorites, ‘Event Horizon’, a sci-fi horror movie. Keisha, the Supervisor in the Call Center, gave me the zombie thriller ’28 Days Later’ for her favorite. And Matt, our Sales Director, said ‘Poltergeist’ always got to him.

Nate, Manager of our printshop at Screenprinting Direct, doesn’t really do scary movies, but he’s a big fan of Scooby Doo. I think that’s good enough.Out in the factory, Shirley, our Production Supervisor, says she’s a fan of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ and Teresa asked, “What about the ‘Saw’ movies?” Art, the maintenance/handyman around here threw out classics like ‘The Fly’, ‘Chucky’, and ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ before landing on the original ‘The Blob’ for his favorite.

Over in Shipping, Derek and Ryan both had a great time reminiscing about their old favorites. First, Derek said he liked those kinds of movies like ‘Halloween’ and ‘Friday the 13th’. His favorite, though, is ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’.

Ryan threw out ‘Halloween’, but then started speaking of another. “The one with the bees,” he said. After further investigation, he realized the movie was ‘Candyman’. “It looks stupid now,” he said after showing me the trailer. “But when I was nine, it scared me like crazy!”

As for myself, I like a story with some truth to it. Not just one of my favorite, scary movies, it’s one of my favorite movies—PERIOD—‘The Mothman Prophecies’ is a weird, crazy ride that really has you scratching your head and holding your breath!

So those are our favorites. WARNING: Some of these movies are rated R. If you watch these movies on channels like USA or TBS, you can watch them with the R-rated factor edited out. Of course, you should ask your parents’ permission to watch it as well. You don’t want to get nightmares, do you?! Happy Halloween, Scare Fans, and thanks for reading!

- John