Dear Beloved Family,

Well, week four has drawn to a strange close here at Camp. 

The camp theme for this week was “design” and we asked all of our campers to go on Design Safaris, as they searched the world around them for examples of different elements of design. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to complete my design safari due to another incident that I was embroiled in. 

About a week ago, I borrowed a camp camera to document some events here. To my surprise, the person who had last used it had been a bad digital citizen and had NOT cleared his old photos off of the device. I couldn’t help but look at what was there, and I found a set of strange, inscrutable shots of a grown man gleefully going down a small child’s slide. Who was this man? Why was he so joyful about sliding? Was there some hidden agenda at play? WERE THESE PICTURES LEFT HERE FOR A REASON FOR ME TO FIND THEM?!?!

In order to better understand the situation, I tried to reconstruct the original incident: 

I wish I could say the exercice helped, but it really just left me with more questions about this mysterious character. I nicknamed him Slide Guy! and decided I needed to do more to understand him. 

I created a new assignment in the DS106 assignment repository (did you know anyone could do that!!??), and asked others to help me spot this man and solve the mystery of his affection for sliding. So far, over 23 other Slide Guy! incidents have been identified. And, let me tell you, Slide Guy! has gotten around. Jim Groom spotted him going over a huge waterfall! Andy Rush discovered that he once starred in a movie! Mike Berta saw him in a bunch of places, including a jar of fermenting yogurt! 

But then things got REALLY weird, when Slide Guy! was spotted IN CAMP. I don’t know how to feel about this. I mean, we try to be very open and welcoming at CMM, but we do have rules, you know?! No one fitting Slide Guy!’s description has officially registered here at Camp. Is he crashing? Does he have some underhanded intentions? Will he end up threatening us all with power tools and locking us in hidey holes underground?!?! 

ANY WHO, in other news, we had our first campfire meeting around the actual camp fire this week.  I took some shots of the event so that you could see just how magical this place is (and how strange some of our campers look). We were joined at this delightful event by the one-and-only Cheryl Colan (aka Doo Wop Girl), who is a designer herself. She gave lots of good advice and we had a fun and free-ranging conversation about design, in general. 

Over the course of the week, I really tried to keep up with my own design assignments, and I’m quite pleased with my work. I think the one I’m most proud of is my reimagining of the cover of The Girl Who Played with Fire: 

I think it turned out well, and it captures a certain VIBE that we have going at Camp this week. 

But, really, the biggest turn-of-events was what happened on Saturday! I was all set to sit down and spend the weekend continuing to build duPont Hall at the camp site. (It’s coming along very nicely, as you can see below): 

But then I received an unexpected memo from the head of CVI (Camp Magic MacGuffin’s holding company), telling me they had three new campers that were going to be arriving that evening, whom I needed to devote special time and attention to. 

I was okay with that, of course! After all, welcoming people to Camp is my job! And I love nothing more than orienting newcomers to the magic and light that is MacGuffin. But the three campers that arrived at my doorstep, were NOT what I expected. The oldest is only eight years old! The youngest is three! 

I think this is a bit young for MacGuffin campers, don’t you? Does this symbolize some new business venture of CVI? Why are they recruiting such young members? 

As you can imagine, my hands were full entertaining, feeding, bathing, and tending to these three new arrivals. Right now, I just put a film on to keep them occupied so that I could get this letter written! I’m not even sure how I’m going to record the weekly video with Alan later today (he, by the way, has gone MISSING AGAIN!!! On Twitter he just tells me his sharing his “voice” up “north.” Whatever THAT means.) 

Anyway, here’s a picture of our newcomers entranced by Peter Pan. I’m taking them off campgrounds later this afternoon for chicken nuggets and french fries (not sure how CVI will feel about that, but I’m all out of PB&J in the cabin). But after that, I’m going to make them start creating animated gifs. Nobody gets a pass at Camp Magic MacGuffin. NOBODY. 

Til next week,

Your Beloved Martha