Third Quarterly report, 2004
Jay Ruby's Oak Park Research

Sophie, Rebekah, Ben and Ariel

A Family Portrait of Rebekah and Sophie

I have completed almost all of the work in this CD. I sent the video clips to Rebekah and Sophie for their review. I will go to Oak Park and film their response to the videos and do some updating about their lives on November 1st. The edited porions of the shoot will become the Epilogue. The final version will be sent to my distributor (See below) by the end of November. Some of the text has been read by Rebekah and others in Oak Park this summer. Their comments and suggestions were incorporated into the final version.

A Distributor, at last

Documentary Educational Resources (DER) of Watertown, MA has agreed to distribute the Oak Park Stories. Up to this point DER has been exclusively a distributor of documentary and ethnographic films and is the home of John Marshall and Tim Asch's work. Oak Park Stories unfortunately falls into a crack between academic books and films. There is no history of how these CDs will sell. DER is taking a chance and hopefully for all concerned it is one that will work out. We are still in the process of nailing down the details. Their intention is to sell it as inexpensively as possible. I would assume that an official announcement will occur before the end of this calender year. Watch for details in my next quarterly report or on VISCOM. I cannot tell you how delighted I am to have this problem solved. I'm certain DER will do a grand job.

Helena McCullough and some of her family on her 95th Birthday

Helena's Story

I now am working on the next family porrtait about Helena McCullough, her daughter Katherine Trezevant and her son-in-law, Robert Trezevant. At present I am transcribing the audio from the video interviews. I find that doing them myself makes it easier to edit as a know the interviews so well. This portrait will be an interesting one for me on several fronts. My wife, Janis and I have become closee friends with Bob and Katherine. When we are in Oak Park for the summer, we often go out to eat, go to various cultural events and have each other over for dinner. I consider Bob to be one of my closest friends. Transforming the Trezevants and Helena into "ethno-persons" will be an excelllent test of my ideas about "shared anthropology." I have had many conversations with Bob about the other family portraits and he has read much of the texts for both portraits and commented upon them. From the beginning Bob has beern a constant source of ideas and contacts. In addition, Helena's Story is about a family who have been in Oak Park for generations and represent the transition from "Old" to "New" Oak Park. In that sense, this portrait will be the most autobiographical.

As always your comments, criticisms and sugguestions are most welcome - ruby@temple.edu.