Category: Health

Camp every day! Camp all year round!

Posted on by Suki

This is my seven-year-old’s mantra this summer: Camp every day! Camp all year round!

That girl is just so darn happy. And no wonder: In school, you have to conform. Camp is about expressing yourself. In school, they try to get rid of your bad habits. In camp, they put up with them or turn them into art projects. In school, they tell you what you’re learning will be useful someday. In camp, what you’re learning is useful right now!

She has had two great camp experiences this year, and I wanted to write about both of them because we have a whole month left of summer (those of us who don’t attend PVUSD), so don’t give up on camp yet.

When my son was six, I read about Renaissance Camp and talked to a very happy parent, and we decided to try it out. It was fabulous, and he went for two summers. Luckily, the very happy parent warned me about the waiting list. She said, “Call them and find out which day and time registrations open online. Then put that on your calendar and register right as soon as it opens because they always fill.”

Renaissance Camp is all about hands-on art and science. Younger campers are joined by camp alumni who work as teen counselors. The staff is fabulous and they take amazing fieldtrips. This summer my daughter went to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. My son’s group went to the Exploratorium. All expenses are included in the camp fees. You get a really great calendar each week telling you what they’re going to do. Your child comes home brimming with new ideas and insights. I have absolutely no complaints.

This year, however, things were different. The camp didn’t fill. The director was put on furlough so she couldn’t be there full-time. None of this affected the campers — they were happy as clams. But I noticed it. There was a sign up informing parents that there was space in all three sessions still. (The third session starts Monday, and I bet they still have room…) The staff seemed particularly interested in having us fill out evaluations — the County, of course, is looking for any way to cut funds, and a program for kids that didn’t fill this summer might look like an easy target.

After Renaissance Camp, we took some time off camp to travel and relax, then she was back at it with Santa Cruz Soccer Camp. Again, I have not one complaint to lodge. Like last year, the program was lovely, my daughter was very happy, and she learned a whole lot more than just soccer moves. I wrote an article about Santa Cruz Soccer last year and also blogged about it.

Like Renaissance Camp, Santa Cruz Soccer is also experiencing great declines in enrollment. It runs on a weekly program, with new sessions every week, so you can sign up anytime during the summer. Unlike Renaissance Camp, SC Soccer is not a County program. They can only function if they get enough money, and most of that comes from enrollment. And most of their enrollment comes from word of mouth (or in this case, fingers!).

It’s a hard time now for everyone, and one of the hardest things to judge is this thing they call “Consumer Confidence.” Even people who haven’t seen a decline in their income are starting to think twice about spending. The problem is, when confidence goes down we start to get a snowball effect: Those who have enough money start spending less, which results in fewer jobs and less tax revenue. In a county like ours, that means that services we have known and loved for years start to disappear. And once they disappear, they don’t necessarily just pop back into place when the economy starts up again.

In my own mind, I have to fight with this lack of confidence. When I spend the money on a camp, I remind myself that not only does it make my daughter extremely happy (camp all year round!) but it also supports our local economy and continues programs that I support. I’d hate to think that these wonderful experiences won’t be here for future Santa Cruz kids. The people providing these services lose their jobs, move on to something else, somewhere cheaper to live, and their accumulated experience can’t be replaced.

I’m fine with change, but not that kind of change!

So I guess my message for the day is this: If you have the money, camp is a great experience, and your choice of camps is out there this summer. These two camps are just two that I know have room, but I’m guessing most of them do. And many of them are probably offering discounts. And if you’re not in Santa Cruz, I’m sure this is happening communities across the country, too.

We’ve got one month left of time to offer your child the experience of taking joy in creation, movement, and invention.

As I told the owner of Santa Cruz Soccer, the most precious thing to me about the camp is that I see my daughter shining with success. She’s not always successful at other things she needs to do in life, but camp is all about success. And that’s a gift I’m happy to give her, each summer until the money dries up!

Getting rid of, the lime green sequel

Posted on by Suki

We knew we had a mold problem. Everyone who lives under redwood trees has a mold problem. At least it was better than when we moved in, and you could smell it on everything. Then, we replaced the heavy, soggy curtains with blinds, got rid of the mildewed wool carpeting, and lined the entire crawl space with heavy plastic.

But still, we had a mold problem. Years came and went, and shoes we didn’t wear would start to fuzz. We’d say, boy, we really should deal with that mold problem.

Back when no one yet knew what green would mean!
Suki/Siouxsie in her lime green skirt when no one yet knew what "green" would mean!

Then came the Summer of Getting Rid Of (which follows the Winter of Getting Rid Of). I called our friendly painter (shameless plug: T. Paul Sek and his wonderful wife Debbie, who do all the research we don’t have time to do, who tackle other people’s mold problems, their allergy problems, and their irritation with nasty-smelling paint with cheer and Certified Green weaponry). We set a date, we started to unload the closets. And unload. And unload.

The kids and I were about to take off on five days up in the Sierras with a friend, and so I demanded of my husband: Don’t put anything back in until we decide what to Get Rid Of! I returned to find the enormous pile intact. Secretly, I’d hoped that he or some kind faeries would have taken care of it, but no such luck.

The closets were gorgeously clean, and coated with some stuff that mold doesn’t like the feel of. It was almost a shame to put anything back into them, but we attacked the pile.

On top were the things that we knew we were probably going to keep. The everyday clothing that we’d been wearing regularly went back in, though I managed to grab some frayed, stained, and unwanted items as they made their way back into the closet. I was ruthless with my own stuff, removing all the socks I don’t really like, the t-shirts I really don’t wear anymore, the shorts I’d always hated. Goodbye, clothes, hello, Goodwill!

Then came the dressy clothing that we wouldn’t wear very much anyway, but you just don’t want to replace. My husband has fewer than one occasion per year to wear a suit, but who wants to buy a new one? Back in they went. I stopped a few pieces of my own nice clothing that I’d never really liked and put it into a separate pile for the Daisy Store. (Have you been there? Fabulous! Around the corner from OSH on 41st Ave., and all their proceeds go to the Family Services Agency.)

Then came the loads of clothing I was keeping for various reasons, all of them unrealistic and sentimental. Clothing that doesn’t fit me anymore and is already out-of-date. Even if I lost those inches around my middle, would I wear them? Clothing that I was saving for my daughter. I have fond memories of my older sister and me dressing in my mother’s old fancy party dresses from high school. We loved them so much — we felt like princesses in them. My daughter, however, has decided not to wear girls’ clothes at all, much less princess outfits. When she plays dress-up, it’s in knight gear and as a samurai warrior. Is she really going to wear that stuff? And then there were the pure sentimental items: the dress I was married in didn’t get sent to the Daisy Store pile, but that suede dress I’d never wear again did.

Years and years of stuff I was keeping because “you never know when you’ll need it” went straight into the Goodwill pile. That which had visible mold on it went straight to garbage.

The haul to the Goodwill was easy. There was nothing in there that I will remember enough to miss. The Daisy Store pile, however, is still tossed over the couch in our bedroom. I feel like there is a lot of my history in there. Can I really get rid of the lime green miniskirt that I used to perform in? I have a picture of me with my thick bangs and eyeliner performing outside the student union at Stanford wearing that skirt. It’s hard to give up pieces of my past that bring back such memories like nothing else.

On the other hand, someone else without a mold problem might actually wear it. I’d like to think of some other skinny teenage girl finding my lime green skirt and thinking, Wow, this would be perfect to perform in!

Then again, she’d probably look at it and laugh. This is one of those relics like my mom used to wear in those old photos of her in her college days…

But I won’t think of that. I’ll remember that I don’t need these things, and someone else might. Our closets are now airy and newly painted. We installed a better fan in the shower room, and the drolly named “Dri-Z-Air” in the wettest closet. I may be down one lime green skirt, but on my last visit to the Daisy Store, I found a fabulous, shimmery red dress to wear in the evenings when I go out…

…out with the lime green, in with the shimmery red! Now, that’s progress.

My edit for the day

Posted on by Suki

The thing about print media is that it’s absolute. This is something that I had trouble explaining to my clients in the early days of web design. “Print is static,” I’d explain. “The web is dynamic.”

They’d want to get their website “perfect” before it “went live.” I knew they’d be shocked at how often they’d want to change it, or their customers would want them to change it. I tried to warn them. Some of them got it.

Fast forward to these days, and print is positively last century. My husband and I did a lot of soul-searching before we canceled our newspaper, a huge deal for us. We love print. We love paper and ink and having books on our shelves.

But as a writer, I’m very happily in the digital age. Every time a piece comes into print, I start thinking about how I’d change it, what I’d add, what I’d leave out. But there it is, sitting in piles outside your favorite local kids’ clothing store. I have to let go, and let go I do.

But then again, I have a blog! I can fix things!

First up, my article about sunscreen in this month’s GUISC. Right after it went to print, I realized that I forgot The Whole Point that I should have been making. Oops. Sometimes we forget things.

It has to do with what was going on in my life three weeks in June: I sent my pale, obstinate, little wonder-child off to day camp. Pale: she needs sunscreen. Obstinate: she decides when she wants to do pretty much anything. Day camp: a place where they like to have fun and not be School, which is where they Make Kids Do Things.

Thus: I’m guessing your child’s camp is like my child’s camp. As I was writing the sunscreen article, and telling the world of Santa Cruz Parents how important it is to reapply it every two hours, it occurred to me that I’m a major offender in that category. I dropped her off one day and asked, “So, do you have a sunscreen reapplication time at noon, since you’re outside so much in the afternoon?” The camp leader looked at me thoughtfully, “Now that’s a good idea,” she said. “No, we don’t.”

I didn’t get the sense that today would be the day they’d start. Let’s face it, getting one obstinate child to apply her sunscreen sometimes ends in a battle of screaming, head-tossing, and occasional nasty language. Doing 30 of them? At summer camp? Gimme a break!

So here’s what I should have said in my article: It’s a great idea to ask your child’s camp whether they have sunscreen re-application time, and remind them that all sunscreens, regardless of variety, degrade in the sun and heat and need to be reapplied every two hours.

[Yes, the cynic in me is saying, Good idea: Fat chance!]

A few days later, a homeschooling friend sent a link to this blog about the various unknowns and partial-knowns about what a good sunscreen is and the possible dangers of ingredients in the sunscreens we use, and this website with recommendations of sunscreens that don’t have these possibly dangerous ingredients.

This is something I would have taken longer to decide whether to commit it to print. As you may have noticed, I don’t jump on every single bandwagon that rolls by. A lot of those bandwagons are driven by people who just love to drive bandwagons! They hear about a new supplement and they just want to be on that bandwagon! Then they hear about a dangerous pesticide and they want to be on that bandwagon!

Like anyone, I’d be pleased to have been in the right, say, when European doctors were prescribing thalidomide to pregnant women and American doctors said, Wait a second, we’re not so sure about this. But I also know that I didn’t jump on the bandwagon that was trumpeting a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism, which has now been soundly disproven. (This may be a cartoon, but this is the very best summary of the whole thing I’ve read.)

So, you may freak out when you read that an ingredient in sunscreen is suspected of encouraging certain cancers. I, the daughter of a scientist, am rather more cautious. So about that I would say: consider keeping current with the recommendations about the types of sunscreen to use. For now, the Skin Cancer Foundation knows more about it than you or I do, and they’re still saying sunscreen is safer than repeated, blistering burns.

Feels better, too.

I say this as a card-carrying member of the highest skin cancer risk group. Not only do I have pale skin that pretty much never tans, and I get freckles, and some of the freckles have become darker and raised up in recent years, but as a child I knew nothing about sunscreen. I lived in Michigan, where I felt victorious if I could get a sunburn after a whole day being outside in the sweltering heat “laying out” with my friends (who always got beautiful tans, of course!).

When I was in high school, I went on a school trip to Mexico. It was a mind-opening experience, and I loved it till our last stop: a beautiful island off the coast near Cancun. There I sat on the beach and giggled when a Mexican boy sat down next to me and said, “You and me? We kees?” and I smeared on a little of whatever cream someone in the group had brought.

That night I was in agony. The next day on the plane, I was ill. For the next week, my body was in revolt, not from Montezuma’s revenge but from the second degree burns all over my body. My mother, not usually squeamish, enlisted my older sister to peel the skin off me in sheets. I was left with a lot more freckles, and a new statistical likelihood in my future.

In other words: Protect your children. Keep a watchful eye on what comes next in sunscreen research, but until then, do what is better than letting them burn.

That’s my edit for the day.

Next week's buzz

Posted on by Suki

One of my favorite things to do with my kids is see people really at work on something they know a lot about. Museums are great, but just watching someone doing something that you’ve never done and asking a few questions can lead to a depth that just

Looking at the observation hive
Looking at the observation hive

looking at the results of the work can’t. Some recent trips we’ve taken in this vein was when we went to San Jose Tofu Company and also when my friend Daniella Woolf taught a class in encaustic. It’s one thing to eat the stuff or admire it; it’s another to see it being made and talk to the person who was making it.

Another local experience that I can’t recommend highly enough is Pacific Crest Apiaries’ Open House, which starts next week. The first learning opportunity for your kids comes with the name… do they raise apes? Nope — they are beekeepers, and their open house is a homegrown affair that’s really fun. Dana and Ed Mumm are infectious with their enthusiasm over their little charges, and they can answer pretty much any question you have.

Ed Mumm tending the bees
Ed Mumm tending the bees

At their open house, you get to see bee boxes up close to see how they work. You get to see the extraction machines. You can see the many displays that Dana has made over the years which explain bee anatomy, the social life of the hive, what honey is, and more. Outside, you can see their bees at work, and best of all, you can watch the bees in their observation hive, which has clear sides so you can watch them work.

Dana Mumm at work
Dana Mumm pouring candles

Dana paints the queen in the observation hive with a dot of color so that you can find her amidst all the busy work. Your kids will definitely get the meaning of “busy as a bee” watching the hive!

And yes, there will be opportunities to spend your money as well, though that’s not the focus of the event. Dana makes gorgeous beeswax candles, and sells them along with their honey, bee pollen, and other lovely items such as soaps and tea. So in one trip, you can see the tiny workers that start the product, the machines and processes that turn it into the raw materials, and the products themselves. And Dana and Ed will be there to answer your questions and show you around.

If you are looking for honeybee educational materials, here are a few:

The health of our children

Posted on by Suki

Science news is a little frustrating for parents to follow. Because of the nature of science, it’s always changing! If we were raising kids in the 80’s, we’d probably be dumping oat bran into everything they eat. Although this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea, it wouldn’t be the miracle cure some scientists believed it was then.

Sodas are a number one source of unnecessary calories. Banish them from your house except as a treat!
Sodas are a number one source of unnecessary calories. Banish them from your house except as a treat!

Many of those who are parents now were themselves raised by parents who had no idea of the harm that could come to their children from packaged and fast foods. When these foods started to gain popularity in the 50’s, it seemed the height of modern living to eat them. Why fuss over a pot of beans that takes three hours to cook when you can open a can?

So now we have a whole generation of parents who are completely removed from the process of cooking from basic ingredients. And their kids are suffering. The health news is full of it: obesity, dietary deficiencies, behavioral problems.

So if you’re one of those parents who was never taught how to cook from the raw ingredients, where do you start?

First of all, you’re going to have to get buy-in from your family. Kids who have been raised on the high-salt, high-sugar packaged foods that we’re faced with on TV and in the grocery store will be reluctant. Spouses might not want to change, either. Jane Nelson of Positive Discipline fame suggests weekly family meetings to cure all sort of family problems. I’d suggest you start now, and bring up the subject of health as a major issue of importance.

Second, most of my readers live in Santa Cruz County, and we are blessed here with the very best resource for healthy family living that I could imagine: Our farmers markets. We have one almost every day of the week in some part of the county. And the food you can find there is varied and healthy all year long. Take your kids along and make it a party. Try tastes of everything that is offered. Commit to buying one fresh vegetable that you’ve never tried to cook.

Third, take a look at the biggest offenders in your diet and get rid of them. I just wrote an article for Examiner.com about new research about high fructose corn syrup that has just come out. There’s been a fight about this for years: some health experts suspected HFCS as a contributing factor to our incredible rise in obesity. Others said that a sugar is a sugar: they are all processed exactly the same in our bodies. It’s looking more and more like HFCS is, in fact, a big offender. Similar to trans fats, which have been taken out of almost every packaged product out there at this point, I predict that HFCS will soon be a thing of the past. Yes, our food will be slightly more expensive, but we will all be healthier.

(Think you don’t have much HFCS in your diet? Look at all the non-sweet packaged foods in your cupboard for a shock: it’s in everything, including commercial bread!)

Another thing that has to happen is that your family will have to commit to more time focused on food. If your family is overweight, you probably think that’s a strange piece of advice, but a lot of bad nutrition comes from people just eating whatever is available rather than thinking about their food. Try to commit to eating at home, first of all. The more often you eat at home, the more often you control what goes into the meal. Think about creating a monthly menu so that shopping is easier.

If you’ve never done much cooking (I mean real cooking, not just heating things!), you could start easy and treat yourself to a bundle of meals at Fresh Prep Kitchens, where they will walk you through the steps of preparing healthy meals for your freezer. Or ask a friend who cooks to make some community meals for the two families so you can see someone who does it regularly in action. Or buy one of the many simple cooking cookbooks out there that will not only walk you simply through the steps, but even perhaps present you with menus and shopping lists.

If you do buy packaged foods, start looking at the labels. Be aware that if the label says “nutritious” and “low-fat” and “heathy,” your alarm bells should go off! There are lots of words that food packagers are allowed to use that have, shall we say, rather vague meanings. For example, you can load a food full of vitamin supplements, but if it’s still high in HFCS and fat, and low in fiber, protein, and all that other good stuff, then it’s still junk. Junk + vitamin supplements does not equal healthy!

Finally, don’t think that organic = healthy. There’s lot of organic junkfood on the market these days. It’s junkfood because your children won’t be getting nutrients to balance the calories, salt, and fat in the food, not because of pesticides. You’re probably better off in general shopping at a store that is committed to carrying healthy foods, but mindless consumers of organic packaged foods are simply paying higher prices if what they’re buying is junk.

There are a few online resources I think are good:

  • One site I like is KidsHealth.org. They have a site for parents and one for kids. You can get good information on the parents’ site, while your kids can learn about health, mental health, exercise, and the human body with engaging articles and videos.
  • KeepKidsHealthy.com has lots of information on how to read food labels and what the various nutrients do.
  • ParentsAgainstJunkFood.org presents tons of reasons to keep it out of your kids’ diets.
  • I love scanning ScienceDaily.com‘s nutrition news, personally, but if you get a headache from too much conflicting detail, stay away!

Note: I see that SantaCruzParent is offering a Parent Perk for: 8-Week Natural Chef Training, New Leaf Community Markets, Valid until 04/30/10. If you’re a member, just go to The Parent Perks page after logging in at the website. If you’re not a member, sign up to receive the newsletter and then you can go to that page!

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