Report

BEING BACK IN OAK PARK

We returned to Oak Park during the third week in May and will return to Pennsylvania during the third week in August. I am not here to do more fieldwork but to be in the location of my research. Living in the place of my analysis provides me with a constant reminder of its reality. I attend a few meetings and talk informally to a few people but right now I do not need more data. I volunteer on Monday mornings as the receptionist at the Housing Center again to remind myself of its day-to-day function. Oak Park is a very civilized place to be and we have the huge advantage of a large air-conditioned house to live in that is centrally located. I am hoping by the end of the summer to have a rough cut of the video portion of my portrait of the Taylor family to show them and others.

RESEARCH PROGRESS

I have tired with some success to organize my days about four tasks: 1. Transcribing video interviews, 2. Video editing the material I shot about the Taylor family, 3. writing drafts of the modules that will accompany the Taylor video clips. Some of these like the “Introduction to the Project” will used with other sections of the work, and 4. exploring possible delivery systems and software.

Transcribing. I am currently transcribing interviews with landlords and other people involved in the managed integration policies and programs in the village. I moved to these interviews after I completed all of the Taylor interviews. I am getting faster and more efficient with the transcriptions but I will still facing another 12 months plus of transcribing. I could get someone else to do it but I think I am better off doing it myself as I think about what people are saying as I transcribe.

Video Editing. I have assembled all of the Yolanda Taylor footage together with other relevant footage and am on my way to a rough cut. Next week I will begin the same process for the Craig Taylor footage. In addition, I created a short Powerpoint introduction to the Taylor family portrait and a 10 minute piece of the Taylors talking about some of their family snapshots. I need to end up with a total of less than 90 minutes of video as a DVD will accept only 120 minutes total and I need to add the modules. I have not yet decided if the Taylor video will run continuously like a film or be broken into several shorter slips with text between clips.

Module Making. As to the modules, I conceive of them as providing contextual information for the video clips. I hope to design the modules with a “one screen” summary of the topic for those mildly interested in the topic and then links to more detailed information and suggested readings. Each module will contain still photographs and text with links to video clips, other modules and perhaps to some web sites. On the broadest level, they will introduce the project and provide an overview, a description and history of the community, explain its anthropological relevance, provide a sufficient amount of reflexive background so that viewer/readers can understand how I fit in the community and the study. These modules will appear in each of the sections of the work. In addition, there are modules that pertain only to the “Oak Park Story” about the Taylor family. Among them are modules on African-Americans in Chicago – a very brief history, African-Americans in Oak Park, Middle-class Black culture, and a historical survey of the civil rights movement in Oak Park. These are all designed to contextualize issues raised in the video clips. In some cases, I will use title cards to help people immediately understand something and then link to the module. For example, Yolanda Taylor grew up on the Westside of Chicago in a place that forms the eastern border of Oak Park called Austin – a community of fundamental importance to Oak Park’s integration policies. I explain that on a title card and then will reference a module that talks about the relevance of the Westside of Chicago to Oak Park. Writing is very seductive. I have been doing it most of my professional life. I would easily get trapped into writing more than I need to in order to avoid the more problematic exercise of video editing - a skill I am still acquiring.

Software and Delivery Systems. I am having a hard time discovering how to organize this material and place it in a form that can be read/viewed on a computer. The vast majority of things written about DVD pertains to films/videos. I finally discovered that what I want to do is called a “hybrid DVD” that is, video and “data” – stills and text. The manual for DVDStudioPro, the logical program to burn a DVD, does not discuss hybrids at all. I am slowly finding others working in this manner. I did explore the possibility of using the VideoCD format but it only permits 70 minutes of video and the quality of the image is not good. So it looks as it I will use Dreamweaver to produce html versions of the modules and “menus” for video and text and provide a way to integrate them. As I am just beginning to learn Dreamweaver how I will accomplish that is a mystery.

First Article. Evan MacKenzie, a political scientist from the University of Illinois, Chicago and Oak Park resident, and I are close to finishing a draft of an article about the complex of Oak Park’s integration policies, programs and agencies. We are hoping to submit it to a academic journal before the summer is out. When it is published it will be the first publication to come out of this work. Others are in press. If possible I will attach the manuscript to the next quarterly report.

As always your comments, suggestions, corrections and criticisms are most welcome. My email address is ruby@ascworld.net. have a great summer!

Jay Ruby's Oak Park Research Project Progress Report for Second Quarter, 2002 Our summer residence - 141 So. Scoville. Bobbie Raymond Larson and Richard Larson's house.
BEING BACK IN OAK PARK We returned to Oak Park during the third week in May and will return to Pennsylvania during the third week in August. I am not here to do more fieldwork but to be in the location of my research. Living in the place of my analysis provides me with a constant reminder of its reality. I attend a few meetings and talk informally to a few people but right now I do not need more data. I volunteer on Monday mornings as the receptionist at the Housing Center again to remind myself of its day-to-day function. Oak Park is a very civilized place to be and we have the huge advantage of a large air-conditioned house to live in that is centrally located. I am hoping by the end of the summer to have a rough cut of the video portion of my portrait of the Taylor family to show them and others. RESEARCH PROGRESS I have tired with some success to organize my days about four tasks: 1. Transcribing video interviews, 2. Video editing the material I shot about the Taylor family, 3. writing drafts of the modules that will accompany the Taylor video clips. Some of these like the “Introduction to the Project” will used with other sections of the work, and 4. exploring possible delivery systems and software. Transcribing. I am currently transcribing interviews with landlords and other people involved in the managed integration policies and programs in the village. I moved to these interviews after I completed all of the Taylor interviews. I am getting faster and more efficient with the transcriptions but I will still facing another 12 months plus of transcribing. I could get someone else to do it but I think I am better off doing it myself as I think about what people are saying as I transcribe. Video Editing. I have assembled all of the Yolanda Taylor footage together with other relevant footage and am on my way to a rough cut. Next week I will begin the same process for the Craig Taylor footage. In addition, I created a short Powerpoint introduction to the Taylor family portrait and a 10 minute piece of the Taylors talking about some of their family snapshots. I need to end up with a total of less than 90 minutes of video as a DVD will accept only 120 minutes total and I need to add the modules. I have not yet decided if the Taylor video will run continuously like a film or be broken into several shorter slips with text between clips. Module Making. As to the modules, I conceive of them as providing contextual information for the video clips. I hope to design the modules with a “one screen” summary of the topic for those mildly interested in the topic and then links to more detailed information and suggested readings. Each module will contain still photographs and text with links to video clips, other modules and perhaps to some web sites. On the broadest level, they will introduce the project and provide an overview, a description and history of the community, explain its anthropological relevance, provide a sufficient amount of reflexive background so that viewer/readers can understand how I fit in the community and the study. These modules will appear in each of the sections of the work. In addition, there are modules that pertain only to the “Oak Park Story” about the Taylor family. Among them are modules on African-Americans in Chicago – a very brief history, African-Americans in Oak Park, Middle-class Black culture, and a historical survey of the civil rights movement in Oak Park. These are all designed to contextualize issues raised in the video clips. In some cases, I will use title cards to help people immediately understand something and then link to the module. For example, Yolanda Taylor grew up on the Westside of Chicago in a place that forms the eastern border of Oak Park called Austin – a community of fundamental importance to Oak Park’s integration policies. I explain that on a title card and then will reference a module that talks about the relevance of the Westside of Chicago to Oak Park. Writing is very seductive. I have been doing it most of my professional life. I would easily get trapped into writing more than I need to in order to avoid the more problematic exercise of video editing - a skill I am still acquiring. Software and Delivery Systems. I am having a hard time discovering how to organize this material and place it in a form that can be read/viewed on a computer. The vast majority of things written about DVD pertains to films/videos. I finally discovered that what I want to do is called a “hybrid DVD” that is, video and “data” – stills and text. The manual for DVDStudioPro, the logical program to burn a DVD, does not discuss hybrids at all. I am slowly finding others working in this manner. I did explore the possibility of using the VideoCD format but it only permits 70 minutes of video and the quality of the image is not good. So it looks as it I will use Dreamweaver to produce html versions of the modules and “menus” for video and text and provide a way to integrate them. As I am just beginning to learn Dreamweaver how I will accomplish that is a mystery. First Article. Evan MacKenzie, a political scientist from the University of Illinois, Chicago and Oak Park resident, and I are close to finishing a draft of an article about the complex of Oak Park’s integration policies, programs and agencies. We are hoping to submit it to a academic journal before the summer is out. When it is published it will be the first publication to come out of this work. Others are in press. If possible I will attach the manuscript to the next quarterly report. As always your comments, suggestions, corrections and criticisms are most welcome. My email address is ruby@ascworld.net. have a great summer!