John Klomp’s 2010 HeART of the Community artwork titled Wave Progression will be auctioned at the LottoHEART Game Show on July 3 at the Rehbooth Beach Convention Center.
The Next Wave
Consider the waves. A walk on any beach will reveal their rhythm and their ability to create a new and fresh beach as each one passes. Generations are like that: each one rolling in on a wave of change, fresh and new. Our community here in Rehoboth Beach depends on that generational change to keep our town exciting and energized.
AARP may have named our town a top spot to retire, but a large number of our retirees began their Rehoboth experience as young people in the beach house scene.
Over the last couple of summers we’ve seen the next wave rolling in as new, young beach households spring up all over town. Recently, Chris Beagle and I sat down in the CAMP Courtyard with several members of those households to brainstorm some ideas for Summer CAMP. I walked away from that discussion with a light heart and a new sense of hope for the future of both our town and CAMP Rehoboth. Jake, Jordon, Brian, Ray, and Josh inspired me with their amazing energy and smart creativity. I look forward to seeing what mark they, and the rest of their generation, will leave on Rehoboth and on our world. I expect great things!
I’m not a surfer, but I do remember how much fun I used to have bodysurfing. Let’s go “ride the waves” my brothers and sister would shout, and off we’d go. For real surfers and for those of us just playing at it, the principle is the same: you have to catch the wave at just the right time in order to have a good run.
Generational waves, political waves, or cultural waves also have to be caught at just the right time in order to have a good run. Try to catch a wave too soon and it washes over us; try to catch a wave too late, and all the momentum has passed us by. Great art, great TV, the hottest music and fashion, the next big thing: all happen in the moment—in that perfect moment—when rider and wave leap forward and move as one.
Right now, the world watches in horror the heartbreaking images of oily waves spreading across the Gulf of Mexico—and as I write, the news just arrived that the “top kill” solution was not going to work. We can only hope that the worldwide reaction to this disaster will be so strong, that a new wave of environmental changes will find the momentum needed to carry us into a much greener future. Sometimes it takes a disaster—no, most of the time it takes a disaster—to shake us out of our complacent attitudes, not just on environmental issues, but in all areas of our lives.
The struggle for LGBT rights has come in a series of waves over the past few decades. So has its opposition, and the result has sometimes been a whole lot of whitewater froth and not much change in direction. Slowly, however, the momentum builds as each small wave piles up against the dam of cultural resistance.
Here in Rehoboth, we take acceptance for granted, but we are still not accorded the same civil rights given to married couples. In Delaware it’s against the law (not that we expect it will be enforced) to recognize same sex marriages from another state. Just remember how long it took to add sexual orientation to the state’s non-discrimination laws—dedicated activists rode out that wave for eleven years.
What excites me about CAMP Rehoboth these days is my growing conviction that a new wave of change and support is building. In the last two years, new leaders have been rising up from the community and bringing with them a fresh passion and strong conviction for CAMP Rehoboth and the work it does in this community.
CAMP Rehoboth is celebrating its 20th anniversary in a much altered world from the one it started in all those years ago. In some ways, living through it all has made it seem like one long wave to me, and the changes are barely perceptible. The reality is that change has come in wave after wave—sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes we’ve missed the wave and sometimes it almost drowned us.
Still, this is good run—a great run, really—and I look forward to catching the next wave rising on the horizon. Our new summer CAMPers are riding in on a new wave of communication, of technology, and a great sense of connection to the world around them. They have a different attitude about what it means to be gay and about their role in the world. There presence is critical to shaping the path that CAMP Rehoboth will take in the future—and in shaping the world around us.
I’m optimistic about the future—let’s go ride some waves!
Murray Archibald, Founder and President of the Board of Directors of CAMP Rehoboth, is an artist in Rehoboth Beach.