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Car Camping Pack List
Looking back on the history of this site, there sure are a lot of posts about packing and unpacking. I don’t really like packing very much, but it is a necessary part of life. That said, if you’re going to pack, the best way to make it low-friction is to have a quality packing list. Here’s the one we just used for a summer trip to Cape Cod.
Camping List
Site
- ☐ UV Tent / Sun-Shelter / Bug-low oasis: Cover your meal-prep and/or picnic table with this and keep it as sealed as possible. This was a game-changer for us!
- ☐ Warm light, high-output lantern: our lighting rig was based on LEDs that, while bright, didn’t create or exude that warm incandescent glow. This meant that the shelter in the dark was nice, but not homey
- ☐ Tree-mounted water jug: We did a number of water-hauls to get water. One larger dispenser, mounted to a tree would have made tasks like cleanup much handier for not much more weight.
- ☐ Bug Spray / DEET / Whatever: Keep handy for immediate application at site
- ☐ Cortisone: For when then bug spray fails
- ☐ Sunscreen: You’re going to be outside a lot, don’t fall risk to complacency. Apply often.
The Life and Times of Schoolgirl Maud Fenstermaker
Out on a sparsely populated prairie, there once was a girl called herself “Maud Fenstermaker.” The daughter of Germanic immigrants, she grew up in Basil, Ohio, a village that no longer exists. As a girl, she studied grammar from Reed & Kellogg’s Graded Lessons in English Grammar. One day, perhaps idly passing a dull school-day, she recalled a bit of a verse from a poem from an annual reader for children called “Chatterbox.” In pencil, she wrote down a couplet, misremembered as a quatrain, onto the flyleaf of her grammar book. On another Fall day, she wrote out her name and the date in confident Copperplate strokes, recording her name and the date: October 14th 1891. On another day, with another ink, she seems to have revisited her signature and made a few delicate adjustments.
One hundred-and-twenty-five years later, I bought her grammar book and began pulling at the thread of this life that ended before my own began. I’d like to share what I know about Maud(e) or Mathilda thanks to the internet. In her story I found a story of America and Americanness.
Note: Storytelling based on genealogy is a series of likely guesses. Is it possible the writing was done by Maud’s mother, sibling, or teacher? Possibly. Was it possible her name was Maude versus Maud? Possible as well. Spellings, especially in immigrant communities, were famously changeable as literacy and Americanization worked their effects. Accept this as a work of speculative historical fiction.
This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. — Yaa Gyasi
Teatro Nuovo at the Church of the Heavenly Rest
Last week our neighbor invited Lauren and I to attend a performance by Teatro Nuovo at the fabulous Gothic, Episcopal Church of The Heavenly Rest on 5th of a restoration of a symphony by Donizetti and Rossini’s “Stabat Mater” (“The mother was standing”).
It had been a hot day so it was wonderful to arrive at the church and be welcomed into cool shade. We were lucky to hear introductory remarks by Mr. Gabriel Dotto, a scholar of Italian opera.
I was unacquainted with Donizetti, but found this symphonic piece to be very compelling and remarkably well-done. The fourth movement had not had its orchestration completed and, as part of the revival, was restored by scholar and our maestro, Will Crutchfield.