A few nights ago the big white wedding tent came alive with the sounds of the summer’s first talent show. This one showcased some of our musically minded campers and staff – click on the picture for a fuller view:
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We’re going to shower you with Week 2 Domain Photos soon. Hopefully this will tide you over til then.

BEAST FEAST:

LIMBS AMONG US:

ZEN GARDEN:

SOUND MONSTERS:

CREATING A VISUAL LANGUAGE:

COUNTERFEIT:

DANCE:

CRYPTOZOOLOGY:

Possible evidence of Big Foot poo.

And now a lunchtime exclusive with the Zen Monkeys, the youngest of the female Beamers, who are determined to ignore age and gender gaps to forge an alliance with their Dude Zoo counterparts:

Interviewer: So, you’ve all been here for almost a week. Why don’t we go around the table and everybody say her favorite thing about Beam so far?

Eve: Well, there’s Rest & Reading, and sleeping, and swimming… and Tire!!! (hee hee hee hee hee!)

Interviewer: Tire?

All (simultaneously): Our friend! His name is Tore, but we call him Tire!!! (hee hee hee hee hee!)

Eve: We’re trying to turn Tore into a tire!

Phoebe D: And Misha is Mushroom!

Asha: Don’t forget Grandma! I don’t know his real name. (points?)

Interviewer: You call Dexter ‘Grandma’?

All (simultaneously):Hee hee hee hee hee!

Interviewer: What’s the origin of that one?

All: We don’t know!

Faith: You guys! Let’s shout “Let’s thank the Chef!” but instead let’s thank Tire!

All: LET’S THANK TIRE!!!! (slapping table) HUHHH!!!!

Faith: Now let’s do “Tire, we salute you!”

All: TIRE WE SALUTE YOU!!! (hee hee hee hee hee!!!_

Lorelei: Now let’s thank Mushroom!

Interviewer: I think you’d better save that one for another day. Give another table a chance to shout something, you know?

All: ooooo-kay.

Lorelei: Hey! There’s little pieces of Ritz Cracker in my Mac n’ Cheese!

Interviewer: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Lorelei: It’s good.

Interviewer: So, getting back to our favorite things at camp…

Eve: Eating…

Diana: We have pulleys all over our cabin.

Asha: This morning me and Lorelei had a chat with the pulleys. Like during Rest & Reading, we want to talk, but we’re not allowed, so we send notes by pulley.

Asha: Faith’s making vines with furry string, so that when we walk to our bunks we’ll walk through the string and feel the furries.

Lorelei: There’s breakfast, dinner, and dessert…hey! I think Tire goes to my school. He’s ticklish!

Eve: And my brother’s as tall as him.

Phoebe: Jake calls me Vicious.

Interviewer: Why?

Phoebe: I don’t know.

Interviewer: Are you?

Phoebe: Maybe! Hee hee hee hee hee!

Lorelei: I don’t know who…I don’t know their name but they call me Troublemaker?

Interviewer: In a nice way?

Lorelei: Yes. I told them they could. Because I am a troublemaker. My mom won’t be surprised.

(Unbelievably, all fall quiet simultaneously)

Iris: Hmm… moment of silence.

All: Hee hee hee hee hee!!!

Phoebe: I like 5:35, and Periods 1 & 2…

Asha: I don’t have a favorite because everything’s really fun.

Interviewer: I notice that you guys talked about the guys in Dude Zoo, and I was wondering if you have much interaction with teenage boys outside of camp, or if this is something new.

Iris: A lot of my cousins are teenagers and they’re boys. Also girls.

All: (simultaneously) We should have an evening activity with Dude Zoo!!! We should have a campfire! We should go swimming with Dude Zoo!!!

Phoebe: No! They’ll just go in the Bass section*.
(* campers receive different fish-themed designations following their swim tests. The highest rank a Zen Monkey can be assigned to, as a Junior Camper, is Trout)

Lorelei: Tell them the Bass section is broken!

Asha: Tell them they’ve all been moved down to Sunfish!

Iris: Tell them they’ve turned into Juniors…

Lorelei: We could have an evening activity in the field.

Faith: Girls against boys in Tag, and girls go first!

…

A couple of nights after this conversation, the Zen Monkeys dream became a reality when Dude Zoo joined them for an evening of handicrafts in the Art Barn. Our interviewer caught up with some members of Dude Zoo to see how this odd pairing went from their perspective:

Misha: I don’t know why they call me Mushroom. I cannot even begin to fathom what it could possibly mean.

Eli: We made Exquisite Corpses with them, and buttons, and they made us give them piggyback rides. They all want piggyback rides. We had piggyback races. I raced with Faith.

Interviewer: Did you win?

Eli: We lost.

Interviewer: Is she heavy?

Eli: She’s not heavy.

Interviewer: Does it give you an interest in babysitting?

Eli: No.

Interviewer: (to counselor) Dean, what about you?

Dean: Well, I had a great time.

Interviewer: And the rest of the dudes?

Dean: The ones who were into it participated and those who weren’t made buttons.

Interviewer: Lucas, what did you do?

Lucas: I made buttons.

Interviewer: Misha, can you sum up the evening for us?

Misha: There was a whole lot of piggyback riding, racing, drawing, fighting, a lot of semantics with Sharpies. We said, “Go get Sharpies” and they brought us X-acto knives.

Confidential to Mama Accardi:

He swears his mother gave him the greenlight for a haircut…