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Day 236: most memorable summer?
Jul. 17th, 2012 11:50 amUsually I say the summer after I graduated high school, because that's when I won an Alliance Française scholarship to Paris, went to a revolutionary youth summer camp in the Black Forest, and went on the Bases Tour, an anti-nuclear weapons Youth CND march of two weeks and several hundred miles, in Britain, the summer of 1984.
But another summer stands out just as strongly -- the summer after I graduated (promoted, they say now) from 8th grade. That summer, the summer of 1980, I: did the first half of a summer program on archaeology, via classes with Dr. L.* at the posh Roycemore School; went to a two-week Girl Scout camp in northern Wisconsin near Wild Rose, called Camp Windego where I met my best friend through high school, K.; then, as a graduation present, my parents sent me on a train from New York, where my mother, my sister, and I were on our first post-divorce summer vacation, to Montreal, to stay with adult friends of theirs. It was a life-changing experience in all kinds of ways, from cementing my love of the French language, to giving me an opportunity to develop my own socialist politics, away from my parents' more familiar Socialist Workers Party opposition, to a crush which lasted for YEARS, to more independence, etc. I came back to Evanston only reluctantly, several Quebecois folk records in hand, a copy of Trotsky's collected Documents of the Fourth International, which I read on the bus down through Detroit to Chicago, and some cidre sec, which was incredible.
And the summer still wasn't over: I finished by going to a different SECOND half of the archaeology summer school -- the camp part, in Southern Illinois, in Kampsville, on the Illinois River, where we excavated along with Northwestern University students, and had more classes in field techniques, Native American history, anthropology, and so on. I met Dr. L's son, D., and we became friends and kibbitzers. Or something. Some kind of friendship that involved arguing and teasing, which continued through high school.
It was an amazing summer, is what I am saying.
*This is the Dr. L. who was employed by my school district to dress up in different historical costumes and travel around to schools doing Living History of a sort, who I publicly insulted when he came to Nichols Middle School as a Soviet Commissar, badmouthing the Soviet Union while I stewed in the audience. His speech was "Freedom From versus Freedom To", and I denounced his fake smarminess from the audience, which mortified and infuriated my social studies teacher. When I realized that he was the head of the archaeology summer program, I was sure he'd refuse to accept me. But he didn't. That was a big summer of atheism, too -- lots of arguments about it between thirteen and fourteen year olds. During the first half, with one group of kids, we were all about the science and agreed that atheism was the only thing that made sense. During the second part, with a different group of kids (because I'd interrupted my summer with GS camp and Montreal) there was a Catholic kid who I baited every single day, who turned out to be the son of the biggest anti-abortion activist in Illinois, Joseph Scheidler. Yikes.
But another summer stands out just as strongly -- the summer after I graduated (promoted, they say now) from 8th grade. That summer, the summer of 1980, I: did the first half of a summer program on archaeology, via classes with Dr. L.* at the posh Roycemore School; went to a two-week Girl Scout camp in northern Wisconsin near Wild Rose, called Camp Windego where I met my best friend through high school, K.; then, as a graduation present, my parents sent me on a train from New York, where my mother, my sister, and I were on our first post-divorce summer vacation, to Montreal, to stay with adult friends of theirs. It was a life-changing experience in all kinds of ways, from cementing my love of the French language, to giving me an opportunity to develop my own socialist politics, away from my parents' more familiar Socialist Workers Party opposition, to a crush which lasted for YEARS, to more independence, etc. I came back to Evanston only reluctantly, several Quebecois folk records in hand, a copy of Trotsky's collected Documents of the Fourth International, which I read on the bus down through Detroit to Chicago, and some cidre sec, which was incredible.
And the summer still wasn't over: I finished by going to a different SECOND half of the archaeology summer school -- the camp part, in Southern Illinois, in Kampsville, on the Illinois River, where we excavated along with Northwestern University students, and had more classes in field techniques, Native American history, anthropology, and so on. I met Dr. L's son, D., and we became friends and kibbitzers. Or something. Some kind of friendship that involved arguing and teasing, which continued through high school.
It was an amazing summer, is what I am saying.
*This is the Dr. L. who was employed by my school district to dress up in different historical costumes and travel around to schools doing Living History of a sort, who I publicly insulted when he came to Nichols Middle School as a Soviet Commissar, badmouthing the Soviet Union while I stewed in the audience. His speech was "Freedom From versus Freedom To", and I denounced his fake smarminess from the audience, which mortified and infuriated my social studies teacher. When I realized that he was the head of the archaeology summer program, I was sure he'd refuse to accept me. But he didn't. That was a big summer of atheism, too -- lots of arguments about it between thirteen and fourteen year olds. During the first half, with one group of kids, we were all about the science and agreed that atheism was the only thing that made sense. During the second part, with a different group of kids (because I'd interrupted my summer with GS camp and Montreal) there was a Catholic kid who I baited every single day, who turned out to be the son of the biggest anti-abortion activist in Illinois, Joseph Scheidler. Yikes.