Dear Karl, you’ve always been there in my life and I have nothing but the best memories of you and Anne. My summers in Wallkill are forever part of my blood & bone. Going to camp all the summers in the 70s and seeing your house across the lake. Your singing folks songs and your kind & gentle nature. It has had a lasting effect to this day. So thank you and please know how loved and appreciated you are and will always be.
From Rickey Kamen
Thank you for creating the page for Karl. He and your mother and all the people they surrounded me with at Camp Thoreau made me much of what I am today. I could never explain or thank them enough. Attached is a picture from my Bar Mitzvah (January 14, 1967). Note Karl & Ann in the background dancing the Hora with us. Happy birthday, Karl! I hope the day turns out to be really spectacular
Birthday Greetings From Us All
this is an open comment post – please leave your birthday greetings for Karl in the comments!
Happy 80th!!
You gave me the space to think larger and to embrace it all: from little kids sitting on bigger kids’ laps, to milking goats, to translucent baby pigs, to sliding naked into chilling water, to riding bareback on horses through the snow, to choosing a presidential candidate to support, to marching for that dream with jug band enthusiasm, to speaking the political imperatives at Ulster County Fair despite those who disagreed, to stopping wearing a bra at 12 as a feminist statement, to country dancing as camaraderie, to no color war but instead cooperation, to song and music always, to hearing my mother say “remember, this is not the real world” but wishing it was. Thank you for sending us all out into the real world to try to make it a little better.All my love, Amy
from Peter Coopersmith
Dear Karl,
Happy 80th Birthday!
As with everyone who has attended camp, I have amazing memories of experiences that certainly shaped how I look at the world. And for that…on your Birthday…I want to say ‘Thank you!’
So many things I learned at Thoreau, and so many experiences I cherish. But, when I look back, there is one thing I learned from camp (and really from you); I learned what it means to teach. We all talk about how Thoreau was a place where we could be ourselves without judgement. But the funny thing is, you never really said that. There was never discussion of “being yourself.” Or “finding yourself…” We were free; because the entire experience of camp was one of freedom. We were allowed to experience camp through our own eyes, minds, and hearts
When my two kids were born my asked me what I thought were the important things to teach our children. I said, “They learn what you live.” In part, I got that from you Karl; you taught by the way you lived. Respect for the environment, caring for animals, political awareness…etc… There is a long list. Camp was rich, every day, in values and awareness. It was organic, it was truthful, and it has stayed with me a life time.
To this day when I tell people that at the age of 13 I was in a co-ed bunk where we were in charge of milking the cows, feeding the pigs, and bring in the hay, they will say “what kind of a camp was this?” I usually just say “it was a great camp.” I know what they mean…and I know what they are asking. They don’t understand how such a place could exist, it sounds too good. It was too good, and we were all very lucky to have you and Ann as our guides.
My first year was the year the lean-to bunks were built. I clearly remember my mother asking me “Do you want to be part of a bunk that has to build their bunks in the middle of the woods?” Hell yeah I wanted to be part of that! When I got to camp on the first day, we all walked into the middle of the damp, soggy, woods which were filled with bugs, and with no clear place to sleep, let alone sit down—I thought “COULD THIS BE ANY COOLER!?”
My children went to their first year of sleep away camp last summer. I spent hours and hours trying to find the right camp. Every phone call was “what are you looking for.” Of course, the answer I couldn’t give was “Camp Thoreau.”
You are an explorer and camp was a place that was always waiting to be explored. The secret room in the barn covered by hay, the goats, the ponds, the hikes, the sleep outs, the shooting stars, the songs, the songs, the songs… Because you wanted us to learn, and because you wanted us to engage with the world around us!
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for that, there is no way you will ever know how much it meant to me!
Happy Birthday Karl!!! And many more!!!
One Third of The Milk Can Trio
Camp Thoreau. Wow. I took away a lot of memories. It was the simplicity of life, the day-to-day reality of ups and downs, handled preciously by the camp staff, that I will always remember. The counselors who taught us to swim, build a totem pole and sung us to sleep, will be my most precious of memories. Being part of the Milk Can Trio performing during hootenannies and playing third base during our no-hit victory over that “rich kid” camp (Pine Acres or something like that) were definitely high points for me personally. I made some great friends. I learned to love some great music. I hiked to Esther’s Candy Store then wrote and performed a song about it. And I hiked to Gertrude’s Nose! Thanks so much for providing me with the chance to have such experiences.
Happy Birthday Karl with lots of love,
Mike Walsh
Wallkill 1964-1968
From Jenny Stenzel
Happy Birthday Karl! This is Jenny Stenzel who was friends with Lisa Ziebel- we went to Thoreau in 1971 or something like that we both loved the animals- especially the horses. I have such wonderful memories of camp, and I sang the songs to my son Nathaniel when he was a baby (he’s almost 14 now). I especially loved the all-camp Capture the Flag games and the hike to Gertrude’s Nose and hanging out with my favorite counselor Liz Edmunds. Thank you so much and all best wishes on your Birthday!
From Karen Bloom
Karl,
Thank you for creating a place that brought some of the most wonderful people in the world into my life. Camp will always hold a special place in my heart.
Wishing you a wonderful birthday!
An excerpt from “East Towards Home” by Billy Yalowitz
Happy 80th, Karl!
These many decades later, I begin to understand the great
vision, generosity of spirit, humor, patience, and trust in humanity that underlay Camp Thoreau. You connected us as young people with so much
of what is good and hopeful about being human and on this planet.
Camp has inspired me ever since, and was a character in “East Towards Home”, a play I recently wrote and was performed in NYC, with lots of Thoreau folks in the audience — here’ s an excerpt posted.
Many thanks to you and Ann, and may you
continue to enjoy many more years of life and health.
with love and appreciation,
*****
…Now these camps had a certain lineage. The early ones, founded in the 20’s and 30’s, came straight out of the left-wing movement: Camp Kinderland, Unity, Nitgaidegeit – Camp “Not to Worry”. And my dad’s camp, Camp Wo-Chi-Ca. Now Wochica weren’t no phony Indian name, but an acronym for Workers Children’s Camp. WO – CHI – CA. They even put the camp in a Jersey town with a Jewish name, Port Murray. Camp was a training ground for the revolution, all the strands of the struggle were braided there into one strong rope, and we held that rope together in the tug of war with the capitalist bosses. On our side were the working people – immigrants and factory workers and farmers, young and old, Jews and Negroes. Wochica was integrated from its start in 1936. Paul Robeson’s visits were a highlight of the summer – he’d sing “Shenendoah”, and umpire the baseball game. You had leading artists of the era coming to camp to teach… Jacob Lawrence painting murals with the children, Pearl Primus teaching African and modern dance. My mom’s camp, Camp Woodland, was also a radical and integrated place, and with lots of Hudson River valley folklore — crafts, tall tales, banjos and agricultural implements. Wochica and Woodland begat the camps of my generation, including Camp Thoreau.
The camp buses empty out at the Ulster County Fair in a cloud of dust. Loads of children from various kinds of summer camps tear out over the mown hayfields toward the fairgrounds, me and my crew from Camp Thoreau among them. We run in a flock, a gaggle of young radicals, long hair and tie dyed shirts streaming behind us, and as our contemporaries from camps with names like Pine Bush and Gitcheegumee run toward the Ferris Wheel and the Whip. But we have bigger game in mind: we head straight toward the booth of the John Birch Society, where we know we will be able to get into heated arguments with real live Republicans, Conservatives, Reactionaries, Fascists, about Vietnam, Black Power, drugs, sex, skinny dipping, breakfast cereal, whatever we can think of. Later, back at Town Meeting Rock at camp, we covet boasting rights to pissing off the crew-cutted guys who manned those booths.
It was a new moment for our movement, progressing from the Old Left, to now. Left wing youth in training in the country, sharpening our revolutionary minds and class analysis. We avidly read the Black Panther newspaper and discussed the incarcerations of Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, and Huey P. Newton and the murder of Fred Hampton, learning to understand how opposing the imperialism of the Viet Nam war was part of the struggle for Black Power at home and an international Marxist revolution. We’d debate, we’d argue, we’d write political tracts about racism, labor, the budding women’s liberation movement for the camp newspaper, the Walden Ponderer.
And while the children from the other summer camps were singing the theme from the Mickey Mouse show
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
at Camp Thoreau hootenannies, we sang
M-A-O T-S-E dash T-U-N-G
Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh
Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh
Forever raise your red banners high
Now’s the time to say goodbye to all the bourgeoisie
M-A-O
O – ver throw the running dog lackeys of the ruling class
T-S-E
E – vict the capitalist bloodsuckers from their citadels of power
dash T-U-N-G
At camp life is different than in the city. Yeah, we take our baseball very seriously, locked in an ongoing sports war against the petty bourgeoisie of Camp Pine Bush. But on Friday evenings we move in another direction. First we gather at Tushy Rock for our weekly skinny dipping in the river, bathing in the rushing water with Dr. Bronners peppermint soap. Counselors and campers together, a ritual immersion, a left wing mivkeh.
Then in the evening the whole camp gathers on the lawn in front of the Barn for folkdancing.
We’d dress up, the boys in button down shirts, the girls in peasant blouses.
I fall in love with Marian Greenspan, the camp nurse’s daughter, who comes to folk dancing wearing a dashiki down to her knees. We would never have been caught dead doing this in the city. But on Friday night, there, on the field in front of the barn….
Everybody – the Troike…
the Virginia Reel…
Mizerlou…
The Salty Dog Rag…
Japanese Miner’s Dance
Mayim Mayim…
The body of the grapevine, the flying motion, the circling,
the reaping, the scything. The accordian’s reedy wail,
the chorus of Hungarian children on the terraced green hillside,
advancing through Marx’s stages of history
The agrarian reform, the feet on grass, heals upended,
Mayim mayim in the pouring down rain….
We lived for our summers. We’d been in exile all year long, fighting the good fight in our separate neighborhoods, “boring from within” in the public schools of New York City. Camp was a respite from all of that, a chance to be among our people, an in-gathering of left-wing youth from all over the City.
On the last night of camp one summer, the outer winds of a late August hurricane blew into the Shawangunk Valley, through the fields and woods of Camp Thoreau. The gales of wind thrill us in our cabins, the rain pours down, we howl with exhilaration all night and run wild in the fields, half-naked, a tribal ritual. In the morning of our departure back to the City, we wake up to a surreal landscape – rowboats floating out onto the baseball field, Town Meeting rock submerged to its waist, chickens and horses bewildered and wandering all over the lawn where we’d folk-danced the night before. It all felt strangely comforting — since I was about to be exiled from my village, extracted from Eden, let it all rip apart at the seams, a confirmation of my inner state.
Time to face the real world. Somehow, armed with the labor songs, the folk dances, the debates at Town Meeting Rock and the political tracts in the Walden Ponderer …. Somehow I have to figure out how to bring the revolution to the people, to organize the proletariat back in the city.
From Larry Sachs
A very Happy 80th BIrthday to you. Make it a great day of celelbration! I spent two winter camps 1973 and 1978 and six Julys (1973-78) at T.I,N.Y. I had a lot of good memories at Thoreau in that time. My memories of you, in addition to Anne in, your house over looking the lake, your kids, I was in the same bunk with Benji and a couple years Becky was in the upstiars cottage , is your banjo playing in 1975 announcing laundry day, mail call as well as other annoucmemts. Also during winter camp. . Again make it a very happy 80th!!!!
Larry Sachs
Karl Rodman 