3rd and 4th Quarter Report, 2005
for Jay Ruby's Oak Park Research

Mea Culpa!

As I started to wotk on the fourth quarter progress report, I suddenly realised that I had not written a third quarter report. This is the first and hopefully last time I will miss a report. As I find the discipline of having to account for what progress I have made every three months, the oversight undoubtedly bothers me more than any of you.

Oak Park Stories Abroad

In September I was invited to do a presentation of the two released Oak Park Stories. At the Royal Anthropological Institute's Film Festival, I gave a master class at Oxford University and at Joensuu, Finland, I presented the work at the Festival of Visual Culture. This was the first time I discussed these works in public. I found the events useful in that I got some interesting feedback that enabled me to see how what I was doing - a multimedia ethnography on CD-ROM - was different from Peter Biella's Yanomamo CD which is the cultural analysis of the film - The Ax Fight. Here is a link to the text I presented.

Warren Trezevant and Pixar

Warren Trezevant, Robert and Katherine's son, is an animator at Pixar. Recently he has been involved in the production of an amazing Zoetrope for an exhibition, Pixar: 20 Years of Animation at New York's Museum of Modern Art (link to description of the show). My wife and I went to New York for the opening with Robert and his daughter, Sue. Spending time with Bob and some members of his extended family further aided in my completion of the next Oak Park Story and took the reflexivity of this effort to another level.

Chronicling a Changed Hometown

On November 22, 2005, The Wednesday Journal published an article by Ken Trainor about my research and the publication of two CD-ROM ethnographies. Here is a link to the article.

Oak Park Library has my CDs

Oak Parkers can now check out both of the Oak Park Stories - The Taylor Family and Rebekah & Sophie from the library. The call number is 307.74 RUB.

As always your comments, suggestions and criticisms are most welcome. Email me at ethnographic@earthlink.net.