Director’s Reports

A Fourth of July Bargain

July 4, 2026

A Fourth of July Bargain

9 AM

Yesterday was another beauty – the last of the serious heat wave. Sara’s entire album is dedicated to water activities. Enjoy.

Here’s the deal for today: July 4 is a great on-campus event that goes non-stop until after dark when our own fireworks display is done. The first block commences at 10 am and I will snap as many pix as I can and post them as soon as I am able to break away. I will also amend this newsletter every time I return to my desk with a fresh batch of photos. I took a few at breakfast as a warm up!

11 AM

Of course the boys want their candy and today they get it. Ten dollars worth, in Kingswood currency, is the precise limit which the cashiers enforce with conviction. One lad, just now, got an item for 4 K bucks instead of 5 and you would have thought he had won the lottery. His his mind, he did, likely.

Some clever sorts were making trades, as in “two of my candies for two of yours.” Future financiers I might surmise. Jacob Dalton always puts out some absurd item for the full $10 asking price. He may have had a taker for that blue vanilla frosting.

Another boy tried to hide a purchase from my lens. “My mother doesn’t like me eating this …” “It’s all yours today, fella” was my rejoinder.

I spent some quality time over at the Ameriflare (Ameriflair?) station where a team of Kingswood professional painters were taking requests. Juan was very proud of the perfect Spanish flag drawn on his back. There were many really good renderings and I can predict that Sara’s pix, coming much later on, will be terrific.

On the stage, Spanky and Swampy were offering karaoke tunes for the boys to perform. Some of the acts were hilarious and the camp movie-makers were on hand to record the live acts. My favorite was the batch of seniors who attempted to sing the Albanian national anthem. Nice tune, but they did not know any of the words!

I just heard the announcement for World Cup soccer players to report to the special pitch just outside my window here. Keep tuned for a couple more Right Now entries as the day wears on. Check my photos, too. Almost entirely unedited, they tell the story quite satisfactorily.

2 PM

We came together as a full camp down on Tramp Field after each of the three divisions had had its turn for the candy, face painting and singling arenas. What followed was one of the best hours I can remember at Kingswood.

Organized by Stephen Kyne, 4 teams of – what was it, 4 players – played a series of short field soccer games. Named “World Cup, of course, the contests were five minutes long and with less than one week to get to know the skill sets of the campers, Stephen produced amazingly capable players and even teams. From the photos I just added, you can see one counselor playing for each squad. They were not allowed to score but what great set-ups they gave to the campers!

Accordingly, the games were very fast-paced and held everyone’s full attention throughout. The championship game featured England versus Spain and both teams put forth dazzling performances. With regulation ending in a 1-1 tie, they went to “uncontested kicks,” length of the pitch shots on untended goals.

Spain prevailed and the large contingent of its supporters went wild.

Two pie-eating contests ended the morning agenda. Both favorites, Isiaha for the camper challenge and Josh, for the counselor team, prevailed – Josh for the fifth consecutive summer!

I’ll make one more addenda, probably after dinner.

6 PM

This afternoon gave the impression of being a normal afternoon of A Block and B Block activities. However, A game called Challenge was going on and boys visited as many as 8 venues to tackle whatever test the attending counselor had to offer. The prize for a successful challenge was a colored stamp on the arm. All eight spelled out AMERICA and you can check my photos to see if the arm of anybody you know is on display.

I am petty much out of gas for coming back to this blog and have decided to tell you the rest of the story in tomorrow’s normal blog.