Our Week is Winding Down and the Camp Goes On.

Hello Troops,
I have a moment to enjoy my office chair, kick my shoes off, put on my headphones and update The Troubadour's readers with news, chills and thrills (without putting too fine a point on it).

This week started with an Overnight Camp and is ending with an EdVenture Camp. Sandwiched between are layers upon layers of private missions. The Overnight Camp went as expected - uneventful. Uneventful is a camp director's dream. Not so for the working staff and volunteers. They like things smelling out of the ordinary. The difference is responsibility. I'm responsible for everything that happens and they're not. They can afford to let their hair down. On the other hand, I do everything I can to keep mine from falling out!

So, what's happening right now as I type?

• Our 45 campers are in their class session with Mrs. Remy, Mrs. Houston and Julie Ann doing something with forensic science and astronomy and other things pulled from our curriculum's Cupboard of Wonders.
  
• Several of our staff are in the cafeteria, in costume and memorizing their parts as they film scenes for the upcoming Leadership Camp. There are backdrops and special lighting and props. It is quite the production. The camp is expected to be amazing. Five of them just rushed frantically by my desk looking for costumes for another scene. I'm tucked safely away in my corner of the office and far from the maddening crowd.
  
• Aleta just left with the Space Education Center's credit card to pick up our standing order of chow mien and rice from American Fork's Whistle Wok where she is affectionately known as 'the space lady'.

Dinner will be served at 7:00 P.M. At 7:40 P.M. I blow my Shrieker 2000 whistle to call the campers in from the playground. They will change and get ready for swimming. I'll walk them to the pool for one hour of water entertainments. We walk back to the school at 9:30 P.M. They change, then a video then bed. Most of them will be too tired to talk - something we count on so we can get a bit more sleep. Now be honest, don't you wish you were here? I can smell the jealousy from here.

Have you missed your regular updates from the Imaginarium? Let's take a moment and step outside to see what there is to see.


Our first stop, the subway. And who should we meet but Walter Wimple Jones, director of the Imaginarium's Office of Pseudoscience. Apparently he lost a bet with his undersecretary concerning the correct method to plant an inspiration into the mind of a physicist concerning the bridge between time and space in relation to strings on the quantum level. I'm amazed I got the words typed, let alone understand them.

Walter's consequence for losing the bet is to ride the subway from the Wonderland Station to its terminus then back again. Sitting in a far corner out of everyone's way was Walter's misunderstaning of the penalty. The truth of the matter is evident in the photograph above. Walter stands in the doorway greeting everyone as they enter and bidding farewell to those exiting. Poor Walter.



This sign is all well and good on your door but much more frightening if hung around your mind.


Peter Piper Patch has spent the best part of an hour staring at the reflection in the large mirror in the west corner of his school's music room. He is convinced the boy staring back isn't him. He knows there is another Peter Piper Patch beyond the looking glass and he is determined to prove it.

Peter Piper Patch is one of the Imaginarium's active files. The reflection we provide is perfect in every way - programmed to reflect his every move, gesture and twitch except every third viewing at exactly 24 minutes 6 seconds into the stare. At that exact moment the reflection's eyes will hesitate for 1/2 a second in a matching gesture.

"I knew it! I knew It!" Peter always shouts. "I know you're not me. Who are you and where do you live?"

Peter's questions are never answered directly - instead his imagination ponders all the possibilities. It is the magic of life, courtesy of the Imaginarium.


And finally a new piece of art recently painted by the proud parent of two teenagers. This piece sits in the Imaginarium's north lobby. It is titled, "The Mind of Your Teenager. Resistance is Futile. Understanding is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated".

I use this painting as my guide to understanding the teenagers that work and volunteer for me at the Space Education Center. It speaks volumes.

Have a Great Weekend Troops!

Mr. W.