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Top 10 Highlights Of Camp Lebanon 2012

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

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Rose’s zip line ride: see number 5, below…

Every year for the past five or so, Jodi and I and the kids have joined 30 or so families from St. Michael’s and St. Albert’s parishes at a camp near Upsala, Minnesota, called Camp Lebanon. The first year I didn’t want to go, a) because with a dining hall, water toys, and showers, it wasn’t really camping; b) because I was going to be surrounded by kids not my own; and c) because I didn’t feel like I knew enough people and wasn’t looking forward to being “on” all weekend.

All true observations…none of which had any impact on my actual enjoyment of the weekend. We’ve been going back ever since, and even organized it a couple of years.

No time to do a complete recap of the weekend, but here are the Top 10 Highlights:

10. Not My Job! I had hoped to be done with my work early on Friday so we could be on the road by 3 p.m. or so. Not even close, and when 4 p.m. rolled around and I was still packing, my blood pressure started to rise.

Then I remembered: We’re not running things this year. We can get up there any time before tomorrow, and it’s all good.

Turns out we made it in plenty of time for Friday evening activities — and with Lily this year, it’s a good thing we weren’t the organizers! Kudos to Sustaceks, Duerrs, and Fredricksons for a great weekend!

9. New Faces. We missed a number of dear friends who weren’t there…but there were so many new families, too, that you couldn’t help but make new connections. I met potential homebrewers, Axis and Allies enthusiasts, future KCs, and just all-around good guys — hopefully next year the old and the new will all show up, and then some!

8. Albany Invasion. Albany, Minnesota, is the last stop for food on the way to the camp. A gas station just off the freeway houses A&W, Subway, Godfather’s Pizza, Taco John’s, and Chester’s Fried Chicken counters under one roof — and Friday afternoon, it hosted nearly every family bound for Camp Lebanon in constant rotation. I’m sure the locals had to be wondering about the volume of strangers greeting each other with hugs and handshakes.

7. Has Anyone Seen… Once we settle in at camp, the kids are off and running with their friends. Jodi and I ate with grown-ups and Lily, and generally soaked up the weekend, only rousing ourselves occasionally to ask around, “Has anyone seen [CHILD’S NAME HERE]?” And we were hardly the only ones.

6. Holy Spirit at Work. More than once, someone stopped to share that the weekend itself, or something someone did or said, was just what they needed — that the Holy Spirit was at work last weekend. But the most striking example came on Sunday morning, when one of my own overextended children decided to disobey Jodi and run off to play with friends. I confronted the child and had a long talk about the responsibilities that come with being family — and I thought it sunk in. Only a few minutes later, a local seminarian, Paul, offered a scripture reflection in which he talked about how family is diminished when one person acts selfishly — and I looked over to see wide, staring, glassy eyes. I asked about it later, and was told, “I heard him and I was like, “Seriously?!” Wow.

5. Zip Line! I watched two grown men race over a wooded ravine, brazen in their talk but white in their knuckles. I watched our priest and seminarian zip through the tree tops — Father was pounding his chest; Paul was all smiles and thumbs up. But best of all, I watched Emma nervously strap up after watching the men, whimpering and sighing a bit under her breath; watched her set out across the ravine tentatively, and watched her slide back over, screaming and giggling, barely able to speak “That was awesome!” to the camera. She is the only Thorp to have done it so far. She deserves applause.

4. Dating Survey. A few friends began asking an unofficial survey question of the couples at camp: “Do you and your spouse go on dates?” Jodi said, “Not really.” I said, “Occasionally.” Then we both said, “Unless running errands or getting groceries alone together count.” The ruling came back: if we are specifically going together and leaving the kids behind, it counts. Oh, yes, we are still romantic!

3. Early Morning Run. Brendan rose at 6:45 a.m. on a Saturday to go running with a few of the guys from school — and a few girls. I rose a little after 7, and when I emerged from the bathhouse, they were coming the hill from the lake: four or five girls, graceful and light on their feet, and two clomping boys bringing up the rear. Turns out the girls were all cross-country runners, and the two wrestlers were the only boys motivated enough to get up that early. What motivated them to keep pace with the fleet-footed young ladies over two or three miles? I’m going with sheer stubborn pride…though at that age, who can guess? (For an alternative explanation, see the video below…)

2. Family Prayer. Family rosaries each night, and Saturday evening mass with sunbaked parents and waterlogged kids doing their best to be reverent. Families praying together with families. There’s nothing better, except…

1. Serenading Lily. Every year we listen to The White Stripes on the way to the camp. This year Lily was fussing until the guitars and drums kicked in, and, to a person, all four of her siblings began to sing to her.

Wish I could’ve recorded them doing it — leaning over her car seat, almost in harmony, and her grinning, gasping, laughing face. She’s pretty good-looking (for a girl).

Waugh, or Three Things to Love About Brideshead Revisited

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Blogger’s Note: Four summers ago, I agreed to my friend Jacqui’s challenge to read 15 Classics in 15 Weeks. I continue to press forward, this being number 11 of 15, and at this point 15 Classics in 15 Years seems quite doable…

Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited was the wildcard in my list of 15 classics, replacing Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian on the original list. I was trying to buy all 15 books used, and couldn’t find McCarthy; one previous spring I picked up Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and thought, “What the heck; I’ll read that instead.” — then my friend Fr. Tyler recommended Brideshead. He has proven to be a reliable recommender of books (especially East of Eden), so I added it to the mix.

This is not a book I would’ve chosen without recommendation. An impenetrable title by an author with whom I was not familiar (a man, as it turns out), which, as I flipped through it, skimming pages, seemed another novel about shallow, wealthy people indulging in food, wine, and art and mocking the less sophisticated and the pious. If not for Father Tyler, I might have set it aside, guessing it similar to The Picture of Dorian Gray — which it is not so much. And so…Three Things to Love About Brideshead Revisited:

  • People Change: As in Dorian Gray and The Brothers Karamazov, most of the characters in Brideshead begin as superficial, hedonistic, and not particularly likable, however, through chance and tragedy, as these characters collide and intermingle again and again, they grow deeper and more complex. This is not a story in which the weakness of characters lead them to an inescapable end. These people struggle. They learn from their mistakes (however slowly). They change over time, and emerge different people at the end.
  • The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: One recurring theme in the book is that of a tiny part of a man, pretending to be whole. These upper-crust Brits lead lives of leisure — they have time on their hands and passions and vices they indulge, ignoring transcendental truths, scoffing at faith and virtue and love, and pretending to live. They become artists, politicians, alcoholics, trophy wives, adulterers and mistresses, but can’t figure out to be whole or happy. How many people have we seen like that?
  • All Roads Lead Home: The deeper theme of the book, it seems to me, is that all roads lead to Truth and God — you are never so far away that you cannot get back, and although we may choose to resist, when we do not, He draws us inexorably to Him, with grace and mercy we do not merit. It is, in the end, a very hopeful book.
A side note: I have said numerous time in this journey through 15 classics that it is remarkable how timeless these books are — how the characters are relatable and the themes common to our time. I finished this book yesterday, even as I started a new book for work called Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Out Futures & What We Can Do About It. (Sounds like a page-turner, doesn’t it?) 

Brideshead was published in 1944 and is set between the World Wars; Pinched opens with a 1914 quote from writer and journalist Walter Lippmann: “We are unsettled to the very roots of our being. There isn’t a human relation, whether of parent and child, husband and wife, worker and employer, that doesn’t move in a strange situation….There are no precedents to guide us, no wisdom that wasn’t made for a simpler age. We have changes our environment more quickly that we know how to change ourselves.”
Sound familiar? It is ironic to me that a book published just this year should open with a quote from 1914, claiming there are no precedents to guide us. We’ve been down the path of “unprecedented change” repeatedly* — apparently in 1914, for example. Waugh’s great novel, to me, insists that the wisdom “made for a simpler age” is unchanging, still relevant, and even necessary. We are simply slow to learn.

—–

*If change wasn’t unprecedented, it wouldn’t really be change, would it?

If It Doesn’t Help, It Hinders

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Following a session on social media at last week’s retreat at work, I decided today to re-open a Twitter account. Approximately five minutes ago, I closed it again.

I had been reading (for work) that classic of business management literature Good To Great, navigating two or three chapters devoted to the importance of an organization identifying that one thing at which they reasonably, realistically become the best, and then, with equal discipline, eliminating all those opportunities and activities, however valuable, that distract from that one thing.

It through me into a personal tailspin, and I posted a question to Facebook: “at am I going to stop doing that is keeping me from writing fiction?”

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

  • Twitter (completely re-eliminated), as well as much of my daily Facebook, blog, and general internet surfing (I’m thinking 30 minutes maximum across all platforms, and I have a timer. I post things quickly…but then  I let myself get sucked in.).
  • My fledgling sourdough baking habit. Brewing takes precedence; it is becoming a communal activity with friends and fellow parishioners.
  • Leisurely mornings,  snooze alarms, and any notion I can afford to sleep past 6 a.m.
  • New volunteer commitments, and any old ones I can reasonably abandon.

I also need to make the most of my work hours, to get my 40 hours in each week in as close to 40 hours as possible. I need to devote at least two hours a day to creative writing and the reading and research that will support it. And of course, regular prayer and exercise will help me stay the course, but that takes time, too. I need to cultivate these habits before the new wee one arrives in December. Wish me luck!

The Second Third, Week 36: Cultivating Patience

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments


Well, you’re in your little room
and you’re working on something good,
but if it’s really good,
you’re gonna need a bigger room.
And when you’re in the bigger room,
you might not know what to do —
you might have to think of
how you got started
sitting in your little room.
— The White Stripes, “Little Room”

I tend to obsess a bit once I get an idea in my head. It’s frustrating at times to both Jodi and me, because I find it difficult to concentrate on other things, and the more I dwell on the object of my obsession, the less inclined I am to wait for a pay-off.

I’ve been this way forever, I think, but first recognized it clearly around 2002, when the band The White Stripes released their recording White Blod Cells. I caught them accidentally on Saturday Night Live, liked what I saw, and went to a local CD store to pick up the disk. I had heard they had release a limited edition disk with a bonus CD-DVD that included a couple extra tracks and music videos, so I figured I’d pick that version up. I guessed it would be about $15, maybe $20 with the DVD.

I got to the store over lunch, I think, after stewing all day on the prospect of new music. I didn’t have a lot of time, and the store didn’t have the limited edition with the bonus disk. Furthermore, they were asking $20 plus tax for just the regular CD. I knew I could get it cheaper at another place, but didn’t have time to run there. I wanted that disk. I needed that disk.

I bought that disk.

I loved the music, but now began to obsess over the missing bonus CD-DVD. A day or so later I passed a display in a different store: The White Stripes Limited Edition White Blood Cells CD plus bonus CD-DVD, only $17 (or something like that). My heart sank. I couldn’t justify spending money on the package just to get the bonus disk. I should’ve waited.

Some weeks (months?) later, I found the bonus disk for sale, by itself, on eBay. I bought it; with shipping it probably cost $10. $30-plus for something I could’ve had for $17 plus tax. And the bonus disk wasn’t that great.

There is a point: Now, as I’m working from home on longer writing projects and trying to finish a novel, I’m again obsessing over ideas and wanting to rush headlong toward the finish. On the University side, I’m wading through reams of detailed background material right now, and I’m not writing, even though I very much want to. I keep thinking, “I know this material!” and wanting to shove it aside and type away, but I’m forcing myself not to. The reason? I tend to write my first drafts in close to final form, so that I have a cohesive, easy-to-read whole at the end. That’s wonderful, but it makes it more difficult to revise and add material later, because it leaves few openings (and often I’m wedded to the words already on the page).

Similarly, the novel I’ve been working on for 15 years now has stagnated because when I started it, I rushed headlong forward, improvising on a very general idea of where I wanted the story to go. Now what I have are several tightly drafted sections that hint at a great story, but they need fleshing out and more direction. So at this late date, I’m finally taking a big step back and patiently sketching (with words) whose story this is, who the characters are, what they care about, what they want to achieve. I want to ditch this step and just write, because for the first time in a long time, I’m getting excited again…but I know I need to plot it out a bit more carefully if I want to make sustained progress toward a completed book. And you know what? I’m getting to know things about my characters that I hadn’t guessed before!

Fruits that are allowed to ripen are sweetest and juiciest just before they spoil. Patience and careful attention to what I’ve set out to do, I think, will be more important than ever in my Second Third if I hope to enjoy the full flavor of the things I love.

The Second Third, Week 30: Male Bonding

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

I’ve written a number of Second Third posts about the reasons I need to scale back my work hours and volunteer commitments, but this week drove it home, and gave me a new reason to seek better balance. The past few weeks have been intense at work — a number of major and important projects to bring to a close, a handful of goodbyes to colleagues leaving for new jobs in this time of transition, plus those of us accompanying my boss on his next adventure were supposed to be packing our offices for the move.

Add to that the start of soccer for two of our children, and of daily weightlifting for a third. Then layer on Albertville Friendly City Days this weekend — our KC council sponsors the softball tourney, the beer tent and the pedal-power tractor pull, and appears in the parade. (I have direct involvement with two of these events and at least some vested interest in the success of all of them.) Plus we are trying to organize the annual parish-wide weekend at Camp Lebanon and need to meet with our co-chairs. It’s no wonder I’ve come down with shingles (seriously).

I need to scale back for my family, for the new baby, for my bride, and for my future as a writer. And now I need to do it for my health. But last night, I realized I have yet another reason. I swung by a friend’s place to discuss the fact that I probably didn’t have time to hit the shooting range with him this weekend (and to ask if his family wanted to hand out candy in the parade). He was enjoying the Twins game in his garage, sipping a Summit India Pale Ale. He offered me one, but I was too tired already and had to be up early. We talked about shooting (no), retrieving a deer stand at his brother-in-law’s this weekend (maybe), and other things we ought to get on top of this summer. I told him something I’ve said many times over the past year: “We’re overcommitted. We’ve said ‘yes’ too much.”

“I know,” he said. “You do a lot. It’s good…and it’s bad.”

“It’s bad,” I said.

“You’re needed,” he said.

I don’t know for sure what he meant: needed by the people and organizations we work with and for, or needed by our friends we don’t see. But I know how I took it.

I’ve never had a lot of close male friends, because I’m not a sports nut or a partier; I don’t tell dirty jokes or golf; I don’t build much or have a motorcycle or anything. I love being married, dig my kids, and enjoy reading, writing, music, and faith.

Only now, living in “The Bubble,” I have men around be to whom I can relate, who are walking the same road with the same end in mind. And they like to hunt and fish and enjoy a good beer (and maybe even brew one). They love their wives and balance doting and discipline with their kids. I like these guys. And they deserve more than me swinging by their garage to say I can’t go shooting this weekend.

A while back, another friend was asked by a third if he had seen me around lately. “Nah, I haven’t seen him,” he said. “He’s probably at the church. They volunteer for everything.” That’s gotta change.