Wellness for Seniors

The elder support organization DOROT offers inexpensive wellness classes for seniors on the Upper West Side. This May and June, they will be holding regular sessions as well as one-time workshops to promote mental and physical health. On Tuesdays from 10–11 a.m., a licensed social worker facilitates a group chat to discuss memories and life experiences; from 12:15–2 p.m. on Tuesdays there is a “senior café” with coffee, tea and cookies on the 7th floor. On Tuesdays and Fridays from 11:30 a.m.–12:10 p.m., a martial arts instructor leads gentle exercise classes that focus on increasing immunity and spinal flexibility. There are also tai chi, stretching, Zumba chair and yoga classes available on a weekly basis. Other sessions and workshop topics include singing, meditation, movement, comedy, heart health, gardening and chats with doctors from Weill Cornell Medical Center. The wellness classes are $5 per class, with scholarships available. Participants should arrive 15 minutes before class starts and wear sneakers or flat rubber-soled shoes. All sessions take place at 171 W. 85th St., second floor. For more information and a complete schedule, call Katie Girardi at 917-441-3743. Homebound seniors can participate in many classes via phone.

West Side School Gets Grant for Arts

The Adolph Ochs School, P.S. 111M, was recently awarded a $50,000 grant to establish an educational theater and literacy program. The school, on West 53rd Street, is a federally designated Title I school, and 91 percent of the students’ families live below the poverty line. The grant from the Leonore Annenberg School Fund for Children will be used to implement a theater curriculum and drama studies in the early grades, in collaboration with the group Story Pirates, which uses kids’ ideas to create and perform skits and plays. The school is committed to using drama education to strengthen literacy and engagement in the classroom.

UWS Graduate on Olympic Team

Last month, the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team announced its new lineup, and a recent graduate of the Dwight School on the Upper West Side was among them. Race Imboden, who graduated in 2011 and took a year off to focus on fencing before attending Notre Dame, will be joining the team for the 2012 Summer Games in London. He qualified for the team after his fourth World Cup event in the Men’s Foil division. Imboden began fencing at age 9, after a stranger saw him playing with toy swords in the park and suggested the sport to his parents. He qualified for his first major international team by age 16 and earned a bronze medal in the 2012 Cadet World Championships. He’s won many competitions since, and earlier this year he was one of the youngest competitors to medal in the Senior World Cup competition. Imboden said that he’s thrilled to compete in England, his mother’s home country, and credits his parents’ support and sacrifice as well as The Dwight School’s flexibility for helping him achieve his Olympic dream.

Local School Fair

P.S. 9, at 100 W. 84th St. between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, will be holding its annual Spring Fair on Saturday, May 19, from 11 a.m.–4 p.m. There will be rides and games for kids, crafts, science activities and a variety of food for sale. Proceeds from the fair support school programs.

Pesky Insects Topic of Town Hall

In some pockets of the Upper West Side, residents have been plagued by mosquito infestations in recent years, despite the city’s attempts to eradicate the populations by flushing the sewers and encouraging landlords to eliminate sources of standing water. Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, who said that she hears about this issue continuously from her constituents, will be hosting a town hall meeting on Thursday, May 17, from 7–9 p.m. at the Goddard Riverside Community Center, at 593 Columbus Ave., to address this problem as mosquito breeding season approaches. Pest management specialists and representatives from city and state agencies will be available to answer questions and share what they are doing as well as how residents can combat the itch-inducing insects. For more information, call Rosenthal’s office 212-873-6368 or email rosenthall@assembly.state.ny.us.

Brewer Intros Safety and Transit Bills

Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer introduced three new bills to the council last week, all focused on public safety and transportation. Addressing the recently renewed concern for the safety of hotel staff members, one bill would require hotel owners and proprietors to equip their staff with silent alarms. The two other bills are aimed at accommodating electric vehicles: One would make the installation of electric charging stands eligible for revocable consent from the city, intended to streamline the process and encourage investment in these structures; and the other would establish a pilot program to install 10 vehicle charging stations throughout the city. This would be followed by an analysis of their use to determine whether more charging stations would be utilized.

But today’s kids, with their jam-packed schedules, often can’t sacrifice two months for sleepaway camp. And so more and more camps have accommodated families by offering two- and four-week options.

“There was a time that you went to camp, camp ran the schedule, that was kind of it. Today, kids have so many choices,” said Renee Flax, director of program services at American Camp Association, New York.

But the mini-sessions, still part of the full-summer schedule, can cause anxiety for some campers. Those who attend only the first four weeks can lack closure, while those who arrive four weeks into the summer can have trouble fitting in.

The shorter four-week summer camp schedule minimizes repetition, keeping things fresh.

So in the late 1980s and early 1990s, American camps began creating two distinct four-week sessions in order to consolidate the full-summer experience into one month. The program has proven very popular among American families. “The key is that all the campers arrive together and go home together,” said Jennifer DeSpagna, director of Timber Lake West, a sleepaway camp in the Catskills. Timber Lake West, one of the first four-week camps on the market, switched to the four-week program in 1988.

The agenda of the four-week session is similar to that of the summer-long camp: both consist of opening campfires, closing banquets and a full lineup of sports, arts and other activities.

The shorter schedule minimizes repetition, keeping things fresh.

“It doesn’t really get stale or tired. There is always life to the four-week program,” said Justin Dockswell, director of Camp Wicosuta, a girls’ camp that overlooks Newfound Lake in New Hampshire.

Nowadays, parents often organize multiple plans for their children during summer break. Rather than view the shorter session as a stepping stone for a longer session elsewhere, families tend to choose the short option so that they can devote the rest of the summer to specialty camps, day camps or pre-season sports training. Kids visit grandparents, spend time at family vacation homes or travel; children of divorced parents spend time with the parent they don’t live with.

For some families, four weeks is an appropriate break from their children’s year-round itinerary of school, athletics and family time. Amy Simon’s 12-year-old son Matt and her 9-year-old daughter Kate attend three-and-a-half-week sessions at Camps Cobbossee and Kippewa, brother-sister camps in southern Maine. The family didn’t consider full-summer session camps, instead allotting part of the summer for family getaways to national parks or sports.

“They also like being home,” away from the structured setting of school or camp, Simon said. “It gives them a chance to have some down time.”

Simon herself attended eight-week sessions as a child.

“It wasn’t a choice for me,” she said, explaining how her parents regarded summer camp as a form of childcare while they were at work. “Parenting was not as hands-on as it is today.”

For parents who themselves didn’t experience camp as children, sending their youngsters away for four weeks is just long enough to stomach.

“Some families think of seven weeks as a prison sentence,” said Josh Cohen, director of Camp Cobbossee. Cobbossee, once an eight-week program with a four-week option, discontinued the longer season in 2007 when attendance declined.

“There was a lot of pressure on the first-session boys to stay on because they felt they would miss something by not staying for second session,” Cohen said, which can cause tension between parent and child. “With our current program, that doesn’t happen.”

Other families choose the four-week over the eight-week sessions to trim expenses, as the shorter sessions usually cost around 40 percent less.

“Some think of it as money they can spend on a family vacation,” Cohen said.

For counselors, saying goodbye to campers four weeks into summer can
be difficult.

“The biggest guys that never thought they’d get emotional would cry,” Cohen said.

But a break midway through the summer can also rejuvenate the staff.

“It gives them the chance to be mentally prepared for the next group coming in,” said Ginger Clare, Camp Kippewa’s co-director.

In 2008, Clare and her husband and co-director, Steve Clare, transformed the traditional seven-week program of Kippewa into two distinct periods.

“The three-and-a-half-week sessions give kids time to do other things in the summer that’ll look good on their college application,” Clare said. “It’s the best of both worlds.”

Though month-long camps are the trend among families these days, Flax anticipates that there will always be a demand for full-summer sessions.

“The parents who’ve experienced them themselves will keep these eight-week camps alive,” she said.