Observations about camp and England

Written August 12th

I am back up at camp, after being at home for five days, during which time I did a bunch of laundry, visited with family and friends, attended a wedding, and shuttled John to a soccer practice and game.  It was pretty busy, and I felt somewhat scattered, as I had so many little details to deal with. 

But now, back at camp, I sit under a tree by the trailer: watching the boys play in a large sand pit; listening to people chat on the dining hall deck; observing a group of dancers.  Owen is checking out his hands.  For a few moments, there is calm.

There is something peculiar about being away for a week, away from everything, and then returning.  The last time we were away for a weekend, Amy Winehouse died and the Norway attacks occurred.  This time, we returned to the ongoing but somewhat resolved debt crisis, super duper stock market fluctuations, and riots in England.  Wow, and weren’t those quite the riots in England???  There certainly is a large group of people – hmmmmm……perhaps we could call them the working class – who are pretty pissed off. 

I can’t help but contrast another big news event from England, from earlier in the year – the wedding hoopla of William and Kate.  What a media frenzy! 

We are making a big deal out events that lack substance (the royal wedding, the subsequent royal tour of Canada, the Stanley Cup) to sidetrack us from what is really important (poverty, economic crisis, climate change, peak oil).  My theory is that the people of England, after the wedding hoopla had subsided, realized that they were still unemployed, or underemployed, or struggling to survive, and that watching two rich privileged people get married didn’t change their lives.

And they were pretty angry about that.