Camp Brosius, 2024 (Part 1)

Camping is nature’s way of promoting the motel business. ~ Dave Barry

It’s time, once again, for summer camp. Camp Brosius is an Indiana University (IU) alumni camp in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. For eight weeks every summer, 100 new campers check in weekly for fun in the sun. Above is grandson Tom and his significant other Celia – they graduated together from Purdue in 2016 with degrees in computer graphics technology. They now live and work in Denver. Tom was a Camp Brosius staff member (summer job for college students) 10 years ago. Ruthie and her sister Rita are IU alums. Ruthie and I have been coming to camp most years since 1992 – we believe Rita may be approaching 40 years of attendance. (Photo credit to nephew Chris from San Diego). ~ Me

July 26

I married a woman who loves to camp, and I am what you would call indoorsy… My wife always brings up, ‘Camping’s a tradition in my family.’ Hey, it was a tradition in everyone’s family ’til we came up with the house. ~ Jim Gaffigan

[Ruthie and I were on the road for less than two hours when debris hit the windshield near Maple Grove, MN . . . ]

When I graduated from the University of Wisconsin, I was highly encouraged to move to Boston to train as a hopeful for the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games. ~ Hilary Knight

[Photo taken in Wisconsin often through the years, when we remember – for our friend Crazy Dave “Owen.” This year I advised him that we think we found his truck . . . ]

Whether the Sikhs want to worship in Wisconsin or the Christians want to worship in Texas or the Jews want to worship in New York, we’re living under the magnificent umbrella of a Constitution that says we can. ~ Marianne Williamson

[For several years now, we spend a night in Sheboygan before moving on to Elkhart Lake the next day . . . ]

I love Wisconsin. It’s a great place. ~ Donald Trump

[Several family members scour the Sheboygan waterfront ISO a place to dine . . . ]

I’m a Wisconsin kid, so I like brats and burgers and stuff like that. Cheese curds. ~ J. J. Watt

[Ruthie, Rita (from Nashville, IN), the aforementioned Celia and Tom, and Beth (Rita’s daughter and thus our niece, from San Diego) . . . ]

I believe in science. We’re going to bring back science to the state of Wisconsin. ~ Tony Evers

[The canal outlet to Lake Michigan, a pretty great lake . . . ]

I’m a normal kid from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. ~ Hornswoggle

[Oh boy, we found a place with food!]

I actually thought about some other schools, and I was interested in Nebraska. But they kind of backed off recruiting me. I think it was because of my name. They just assumed a Watt would go to Wisconsin. ~ T. J. Watt

[Tom trying to save Celia from the octopus eye on the playground adjacent to our hotel in downtown Sheboygan (Ruthie photo) . . . ]

A lot of parents pack up their troubles and send them off to summer camp. ~ Raymond Duncan

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

My first few films were institutional comedies, and you’re on pretty safe ground when you’re dealing with an institution that vast numbers of people have experienced: college, summer camp, the military, the country club. ~ Harold Ramis

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

The first rule of monsters is that you have to go find them. You have to make a conscious choice to go to the swamp or the desert or the abandoned summer camp. ~ Mel Brooks

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

I always try to describe making movies like summer camp, or some holiday where you spend all day, every day with a new group of people whom you kind of love and then never see again. ~ Eddie Redmayne

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

The whole experience on ‘Grown Ups 2’ was like going to adult summer camp. ~ Halston Sage

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

June 27

My first joke that ever aired on ‘Late Night’ was for a list of ‘Top 10 Least Popular Summer Camps.’ My contribution – ‘Camp Tick in beautiful Lyme, Connecticut’ – squeaked in at No. 10. Like a trip to Camp Tick, my time at ‘Late Night’ faded into memory like a short session at a dicey summer camp. ~ Nell Scovell

[Food market in Fountain Park, across the street from our Sheboygan motel (Ruthie photo) . . . ]

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch. ~ Orson Welles (from Kenosha)

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. ~ Orson Welles

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends. ~ Orson Welles

[Scenic Shore Bike Tour for the cure, with up to 1,500 riders on a variety of routes including 25-miles, 75-miles, 100-miles and the traditional two day 150-mile (75-mile each day) routes (Ruthie photo) . . . ]

I spent 15 years on the road between touring and recording and I never saw anything. I want to enjoy life. ~ Gloria Estefan

[Where we did split tours – Celia, Tom, and Ruthie went to the lake shore, here standing on a breakwater (Ruthie photo) . . . ]

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age. ~ Orson Welles

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment. ~ Orson Welles

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

Gluttony is not a secret vice. ~ Orson Welles

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you? ~ Orson Welles

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

I have an unfortunate personality. ~ Orson Welles

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. ~ Orson Welles

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There’s a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don’t reconcile the poles. You just recognize them. ~ Orson Welles

[It appears to have been kite day (Ruthie photo) . . . ]

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate. ~ Orson Welles

[Ruthie photo . . . ]

Weirdness is not my game. I’m just a square boy from Wisconsin. ~ Willem Dafoe (from Appleton)

[Rita, Beth, and I went north out of Sheboygan for our daily excursion . . . ]

Wisconsin’s a special place. ~ Brett Favre

[The recently completed mural of Ruth West in downtown Manitowoc is a colorful and meaningful tribute to an avid gardener, patron of the arts and a beloved humanitarian (manitowoccountyhistory.org).] 

 So what do I do in Wisconsin? I don’t know. I just slug through it. ~ Jane Hamilton

I really like Wisconsin. I enjoy it. I enjoy the people. I enjoy the fact that it’s not L.A. or New York. And there’s some sense of normalcy here – people having children in homes they can somewhat afford to live in. ~ Michael Feldman

[The beaches of Manitowoc . . . ]

I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time. ~ Orson Welles

[A garden of Ruth West?]

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. ~ Twyla Tharp

[Restroom sign #1 . . . ]

A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires. ~ Hedy Lamarr

[Restroom sign #2 . . . ]

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts. ~ Orson Welles

I have a great deal of respect for Wisconsin workers. ~ Ron Johnson

I’m a lifelong Vikings and Packers fan because I lived in both Minnesota and Wisconsin as a kid. ~ Mark Batterson

I prefer the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford. ~ Orson Welles

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

If you’re looking for can-do, earthy-crunchy attitude then you’ve got to go to Wisconsin. ~ Dar Williams

Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling? ~ M. C. Escher

[Rita and Beth at a classic soda shop . . . ]

We heat our home with wood so the fireplace is always going and it’s pretty cozy in here, which is good because we have long winters in Wisconsin. ~ Rachel Campos-Duffy

[SS Badger is a passenger and vehicle ferry in the United States that has been in service on Lake Michigan since 1953. Currently, the ship shuttles between Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, a distance of 62 miles (100 km), connecting U. S. Highway 10 between those two cities. She is the last coal-fired passenger vessel operating on the Great Lakes, and was designated a National Historic Historic Landmark on January 20, 2016 (Wikipedia).]

It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells… to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin. ~ Dave Barry

[With a shout out to Pequot Lakes . . . ]

In the state of Wisconsin it’s mandated that teachers in the social sciences and hard sciences have to start giving environmental education by the first grade, through high school. ~ Gaylord Nelson

I’m one of nine sisters. My parents were dairy farmers in Wisconsin. My father didn’t believe in girls doing farm work. Girls did housework, and he hired young men to do farm work. I would have preferred to be outside. ~ Diane Hendricks

[I’m not sure if anybody knows or not, but Wisconsin is famous for cheese . . . ]

I didn’t expect to pursue acting at all, let alone TV and film, let alone New York or L.A. I was quite content doing Shakespeare out in Wisconsin. ~ Carrie Coon

[Part of the aforementioned Scenic Shore Bike Tour . . . ]

Northern Wisconsin, where I’m from, is so ridiculously rural. ~ Trixie Mattel

In Wisconsin, style-wise, it was all about bundling up, maybe wearing a hat and forgetting about your hair. ~ J. J. Watt

I get a lot – a lot – of requests to make things that are like Lady Gaga. Like, ‘I’m a 9-year-old girl in Wisconsin. Please dress me like Lady Gaga. How much would this cost?’ ~ Chris March

[All men my age who are in a car with a woman will not be the driver. Beth is at the helm here as we cruise along a lakeshore drive . . . ]

My mama is African American and from Wisconsin. My baba was born in Iran. My parents have stressed the idea of creating your own path, and creating your own identity is part of that. That’s why embracing these two cultures is important to me. ~ Yara Shahidi

In Wisconsin, style-wise, it was all about bundling up, maybe wearing a hat and forgetting about your hair. ~ J. J. Watt

Full disclosure: the Russians did not tell Hillary Clinton, ‘Don’t go to Wisconsin.’ ~ Ed Schultz

My father had season tickets to the Packer games, and I have several of those. I have a lot of family that still lives in the Bay Area and in Wisconsin, too. And so, I like to get back as often as I can. ~ Tony Shalhoub

There was a point in time in Wisconsin football when people used to just go to watch the band. ~ Bret Bielema

July 28

When you take over at Wisconsin, nobody’s ever won there, nobody expects you to win and that’s when it’s really hard to do. And Bo Ryan won there, consistently. ~ Jim Boeheim

[Packed up, leaving Sheboygan for camp in Elkhart Lake . . . ]

This world is but a canvas to our imagination. ~ Henry David Thoreau

[A now annual occurrence, a stop at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan on our way to Elkhart Lake . . . ]

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. ~ Pablo Picasso

[The participants here in random order are Chris and Beth, Tom and Celia, Rita, Ruthie, and me, Emily (Chris’s sister) and Shane and their kids Henry and Charley from Cambridge, England . . . ]

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. ~ Ansel Adams

[The “art” greeter at the entry . . . ]

If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. ~ Jonathan Swift

[As always, the museum tour begins in the entry restrooms . . . ]

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for. ~ Georgia O’Keefe

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

[“The Blob”?]

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. ~ Michelangelo

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. ~ Scott Adams

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. ~ Walt Whitman

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. ~ Leo Tolstoy

[If it’s Kohler, it’s bathrooms . . . ]

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. ~ Dorothea Lange

[I’d like to challenge the art department’s choice of the male model in this instance . . . ]

Art is too serious to be taken seriously. ~ Ad Reinhardt

[The epitome of civilization . . . ]

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. ~ Stephen Sondheim

[Reminds my of my stellar work as a geography major at the University of Minnesota . . . ]

Art is not a thing; it is a way. ~ Elbert Hubbard

[A modern American Gothic . . . ]

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning. ~ Miguel de Unamuno

[Restroom as playroom . . . ]

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts. ~ Joshua Reynolds

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left. ~ Alexander Pope

All art is but imitation of nature. ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[This is either a cooling system for a 1952 Studebaker or a Vulcan mind meld of saxophones . . . ]

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it. ~ Paul Valery

[A piano bird or a bird piano?]

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. ~ James Whistler

[The next 4 pieces are certainly eligible to interpretation . . . ]

One eye sees, the other feels. ~ Paul Klee

Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal. ~ Egon Schiele

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. ~ Francis Bacon

I cried all the way to the bank. ~ Liberace (from West Allis)

[This is our forever first stop in Elkhart Lake, the Tiki Bar on the far side of the lake from Camp Brosius. Check in at camp isn’t until 1:00 pm so we while away to the time here until then. This year it a got a little drizzly so have no photos – so here’s our Tika Bar photo from 2015 . . . ]

Prayer and dependence on God has been our history. How unfortunate it is now that an unaccountable and unelected and misguided judge from Wisconsin, Judge Barbara Crabb, has declared National Days of Prayer – established by the Congress – to be unconstitutional. ~ James Dobson

[My golf cart ferry for the week, with Ruthie and Rita as my chauffeurs. Oy!!]

I hate camping, but I love summer camp. ~ Zooey Deschanel

[The lakefront dining room, with the rumored anticipation of new tables next year . . . ]

The coolest things I know how to do – I learned to do at camp. ~ Julia Roberts.

[Celia entering the camp scene . . . ]

What’s more important than a summer of fun? More important than making new friends? More important than sharing? ~ Addams Family Values

Queen is my all-time favorite band in history. I was an obsessive growing up after I discovered them at 10 at summer camp. ~ Adam F. Goldberg (or possibly Ruthie?)

I try to sign for as many kids as possible. Kids come first, and I’ll always sign for a kid before an adult. It’s funny, because I was never big into autographs as a kid. The only player who I ever wanted an autograph from was Dave Winfield. ~ Derek Jeter

Up Next: Part 2 . . .