SC'96: Successful Summer Camp

Given that some stayed for a day or two and others for the entire period, there were, on average, between twenty five and forty people in attendance at any given moment. All-in-all eighty five participated this year.

The speakers were excellent. Featured, were Stan Dale of the Human Awareness Institute, whose words of love and transparency are well known by most of us, Bruce Lipton, Micro-Biologist and lecturer, who, in his relatively technical way, described the exciting relationship of the microcosm of the cell to the macrocosm of the world community, Geoph Kozeny, President of the FIC, whose constant moving from one intentional community to another has allowed him to create a slide show of those communities, and the Naumers, lecturers and relationship workshop leaders, a husband and wife team who gave us a new outlook on "one-to-one" personal relationships, to mention a few.

The vegetarian cuisine proved to be ample and delicious, due to the hard work of volunteers both from the local groups and those gentle souls who signed up at the last minute from other parts of the network.

There were representatives from all age groups and it is this writer's opinion a good time was had by all. There were complaints about such things as scheduling of events. Some would have liked more workshops in the early part of the day and evenings more open to impromptu activities. Others extolled the advantages of forum in the evenings.

Internal problems made for anxious moments among the creators of the event. Problems such as who should be doing (or not doing) what and when and how. There were family squabbles and group disagreements that might be found in any "disorganization" attempting new culture processes. Along with the squabbling came feelings of guilt and anger that live on to this day. The committee is taking steps to heal and to discover its potentials

We will hear stories, criticisms and accusations for some time about those internal problems and lets hope that we accept the idea in this attempt at new culture that the answers to those problems begin with the self and that outside of the self there are only observations from various points of view (such as the one you are reading).

We look forward to Summer Camp 97 and wish to see Summer Camp 96 as another successful Network for New Culture relationship, regardless of its organizational difficulties.

--Bill Hardwick and Apollo Class (Portland Group Committee Members)