Camp Life: Being in the Bubble

Being at OSRUI for 2 weeks is like living in a bubble.  I don't watch television nor read a newspaper; I don't really have that much free time.  I do peruse Facebook and twitter but this year our internet connection was not strong and some days I did not see what was going on in the world.  I have to say that it was a good 2 weeks not to be "in the know".

It was disturbing to come back to so many hateful and brutal stories.  I came home on Sunday July 17 and couldn't really believe that another shooting was happening in Baton Rouge as I hadn't processed the tragedy of the previous week.  As the world keeps spinning and I am back in the "real"
 world with access to television and newspapers I long to be back at camp in our bubble.  I was working with a younger eidah, unit, Tzofim.  I did not bring up the current events that filtered through to me.  There was no reason not to keep my chanichim, campers in the bubble of camp.

Actual OSRUI Camper in Actual Bubble

I know that kids feel comfortable at camp and can relax and let their hair down so to say.  They make new friends, try out new activities and sometimes reinvent themselves.  I am glad that no one, including our Madrichim, counselors asked me about the news while I was at camp.  Sometimes they wanted to know the sports news, the baseball statistics or news about the world cup but other than that chanichim, madrichim and even other faculty were happy to live without word from the outer world.

Coming home and listening to the news was not unlike coming out of a fog and being conditioned to once again hear bad news from sun up to sun down.  Although I know we need to address current events and everything that is happening in the news I don't even know where to begin: Race, violence, derech eretz (treating each other kindly) or just peace.  National and world events seem to explode before our very eyes.  When CNN first became  a 24 hour news station in June of 1980 who could have predicted the escalation of the news cycle, cell phone videos and making the world seem small would keep this news station afloat. 

I know that my colleagues at camp now are probably also happy for their respite of not being bombarded by news, twitter feeds or even newspapers.  I hope that as I ease back into life at home I will find a happy medium of keeping up with current events,  continued reading all of the books on my To Read list  and not getting too worked up over  news; political and otherwise.  When I find that happy medium by the way I will let you know and for now I am already thinking about OSRUI 2017.