Tag: Nebraska

Why Summer Camp Matters, Even In Winter, Part Two—The Memoir Continues

Posted on by Barbara Fischkin

by Barbara Fischkin

The place where I learned the most about diversity, equity and inclusion was not at my liberal summer camp in New York’s Catskills mountains—but at a pig farm in northern Kansas. To be fair, if it wasn’t for camp, I never would have pitched a tent under the big sky of the Jensby farm.

A dining hall at a Web-Met Camp
A dining hall at a Wel-Met Camp.

I was there because, as my last chapter noted, Wel-Met, my summer sleep away camp, had a free-range philosophy. Campers planned their own activities, hiked into the woods for sleepovers and—when older—lived in tents rather than bunks. This was a preparation for the next step: Cross-country camping trips. Wel-Met ran six of these each summer and in the 1960s they all stopped at the farm of Clarence and Florence Jensby. The Jensbys welcomed all with open arms—campers and returning counselors alike. (I arrived three times). On the surface, we could not have been more different. Or in today’s lingo, more diverse. Most of us were Jewish New Yorkers. The Jensbys were Christian midwesterners.

It did not matter. With great panache, the Jensbys introduced us to their operation and their pigs who, well, smelled like pigs. This came as a surprise to the city slickers. Mrs. Jensby demonstrated, with schoolteacher-like skills, how to prepare a live chicken for dinner. Trip after trip, year after year, she showed city kids how she would break the chicken’s neck, pluck the feathers, yank out the guts and prepare it for cooking. Some campers were horrified. I saw her humanity. I saw her as a farmer who worked quickly to minimize suffering. Today, when I view pictures of chickens raised in crowded coops, not free-range—or hormone or antibiotic free—I think of how Mrs. Jensby did it better.

I also have a memory of Mrs. Jensby dressed up, wearing her good shoes and leaving the farm—perhaps for church. I wondered how she did this without stepping on any animal droppings. I wondered how she had transformed herself so quickly from farm wife in a blood-stained apron to a “proper” lady. A lifelong lesson: there is more to a person than you see at first. Read more »

Monday, August 24, 2015

The Donald Is Coming! The Donald Is Coming!

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

by Akim Reinhardt

Donald Trump, image from Salon dot comI've lost track already. During the past month, too many people to keep count of, each with a look of bemused panic in their eye, has asked me if I think Donald Trump has a chance. Knocked back on their heels by the frenzy surrounding Trump's recent surge, they implore me to tell them what I think.

Is it possible that this crude, bombastic display of runaway hair known as The Donald will actually succeed Barack Obama in the White House?

Alas, it's hard to blame these worry warts. Of late, the press marvels at Trump's soaring poll numbers, and ruminates endlessly on his success in spite of his obvious shortcomings and endless string of outrages, and what it says about American society and its broken political system.

From NPR to Ezra Klein, there's no shortage of media mavens trumpeting Trump and theorizing what his success means. Everyone seems to have an opinion. Or if they don't, they're desperate to find one. Confused by it all, The Atlantic went so far as to simply ask people why, oh why, do you support this man? Then, sans analysis, the magazine simply threw up its hands and published the responses.

Why, oh why indeed. Why is this barbarian at the gate? Why is this roaring, fatuous pig of a man on the verge of undressing our republic and claiming its highest office?

In looking for an answer, I believe we should not dig too deep. After all, Donald Trump doesn't seem to over think much, so we probably shouldn't over think him.

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Monday, March 10, 2014

Remembering Winter

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

by Akim Reinhardt

Tapping a Maple TreeIn an early episdoe of Mad Men, a character named Ken Cosgrove publishes a short story in the Atlantic Monthly. It'sentitled:

“Tapping a Maple on a Cold Vermont Morning.”

That's just about pitch perfect for the American literary scene circa 1960. The coating of influential New England literati is so thick on the young author, you can practically see it glisten.

But the reason I recently remembered “Tapping a Maple on a Cold Vermont Morning” had nothing to do with Mad Men or literature. Rather, it's because of late I've been remembering winter.

For much of the United States, including here in Maryland, it has been a particularly fierce winter. Not the snowiest necessarily, though there has certainly been snow. But long and cold.

This is my 13th consecutive winter in Maryland, and it's the first one that harkens back to my experience of onerous winters in harsher climes.

From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, I toughed it out, spending the better part of seven winters in southeastern Michigan and another five in eastern Nebraska. These are serious winter places. They're not Siberia or Winnipeg, but they will punch you in the face, and you need to come to terms with that if you live there.

Southern Michigan winters, first and foremost, are just plain long. Snow usually begins falling in November and never quite goes away. Just when you think it might all melt off, boom! Another half foot covers everything. None of this March goes out like a lamb stuff. Every bit of March is winter. So is a chunk of April.

When will it end? you find yourself pleading aloud to no one in particular. It just goes and goes and goes. It grinds you down and forces you to get back up again. Every year you know what you're in for. Body blow after body blow. And you wonder to yourself how the people from northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, the ones who mock you for your soft, southern winters, how do they do it?

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