Play Again.

I haven't had a chance to actually see this film (we don't get too many movies with indie cred out here in the rural Hill Country!) but it seems to pose some very good questions. Camp answers a lot of the need for urban children to experience the outdoors, but in our case, only for a week at a time. What does it take to keep the Nintendo DS and the Xbox off after camp? Is it even worth it?

It's interesting to think about yourself, or your child, in a similar situation to the children above. There are certainly a set of traits, interests, and strengths that emerge when a person is taken out of modern society and given more rudimentary tools of survival. We aren't a bare-bones minimalist camp, but simple acts like powering down the computer, pulling the earbuds out of your ears, and spending hangout time under the stars instead of the mall shift a person's focus and open their awareness to the rest of the world and people both alike and dissimilar to themselves. Camp is so valuable for that reason, and many of the awesome memories made there are so awesome precisely because the environment is so different than what we are used to as a first-world culture.

Anyone had a chance to see "Play Again?" I'm looking forward to finding it on Netflix in a few months.

(And P.S.. 70 days 'til camp! Woohoo!)