We’re headed to Maine for the 33rd year of visiting the St. Croix River Valley and, specifically, the Village of Grand Lake Stream, ME. (https://grandlakestream.org) The village itself has about a 100 year-round population. It has one store. No traffic lights. And to quote the singer, writer and famous fishing guide, Randy Spencer, “There is one road in and one road out.”
At first the annual gathering was just a few guys going fishing and talking about the world. All that changed after 9/11 when a few colleagues of mine started to ask me again about Grand Lake Stream. We had all survived the attack on the World Trade Center and were in a post-event reunion and the subject of my fishing trip came up. Over the following two years the group grew to about 20. Folks who never were outdoors oriented came and liked it. The conversation became more organized. Then a journalist, Jon Hilsenrath, (then with the Wall St. Journal) nicknamed us the “Shadow Kansas City Fed Retreat.” The name didn’t last long.
The next morning, I was standing on the deck outside the fishing lodge, being interviewed by Steve Liesman. Steve is a fly fisherman and we had fished together. CNBC went to a commercial break. We didn’t have a monitor on the deck, so we had no idea what the viewers were seeing. Remote broadcasts were via “live trucks” in those days. We were just talking to each other on camera with earpieces when someone in the CNBC control room put up a banner that said “Camp Kotok.” When we were back on-air, Becky Quick asked, “How are things at Camp Kotok?” We laughed and joked for a few seconds and then continued the interview about the markets and economic outlook. Little did we know that the banner was running across the bottom of the CNBC viewers’ TV screens.
That’s how “Camp Kotok” got its name.
Over the years our Maine gathering has had various guests with official titles like "governor," "senator," "congressman," or "Federal Reserve Bank president." Many other attendees are well known in the financial services arena worldwide. The gathering has had media coverage in nearly every major English language publication, and there have been translations and quotations in other languages distributed in all continents but Antarctica. We expect the coverage to continue in 2023. This year the roster includes many who will report, tweet, quote, publish to YouTube, and use social media of all types. Some of our sessions will be public and the group will share their comments. Others may be under the Chatham House rule so that folks can speak more freely. That rule allows the group takeaway to be quoted but speakers cannot be identified without advance permission.
Our group is quite diverse when it comes to political views. The debates about policy can be robust. They’re always polite and civil. This year’s presidential primary season offers a first-time event for the group. One of our previous campers is now running for president in the Republican primary. He is the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez. When he was with us last year, he agreed to waive the Chatham House rule and held a full scale “scrum” as a fireside chat. We will showcase the YouTube video of that session below.
There are some powerful panels and discussions scheduled for this year, and there is a special event in week two when a number of American veterans who are amputees are joining us to help the region with its mitigation efforts against milfoil infestation. (The milfoil plant is not native to the area and chokes out other aquatic life.) These are men and women who served the United States, lost a limb, and have adapted with prosthetic devices, going on to learn to scuba dive with great skill. Some of this group already work to save coral reefs in Florida’s offshore, where many reefs are experiencing heat damage and dying. In Maine the focus will be milfoil removal, and the organization joining us is Combat Wounded Veterans Challenge (www.combatwounded.org).
We’ll have more from Camp Kotok over the next several weeks.
Here’s the YouTube video from last year’s discussion with Mayor Suarez.
Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez is introduced by David R. Kotok in the Leen's Lodge Tannery Room where he shares his thoughts on a range of subjects and takes questions from "campers" in this Fireside Chat from August 2022.
What is the mayor doing to make Florida and Miami another Silicon Valley? The mayor explains his three main policy points that have been fundamental in Miami's acceleration toward world class status for quality of life and business climate. He also gives a shout-out to Walter Isaacson's books, Einstein: His Life and Universe and Steve Jobs, and mentioned that Benjamin Franklin: An American Life was going to be a future read. He also devoted a fair amount of time to discussing China, Bitcoin, and other digital/crypto currencies.
