Now that we’re getting closer to the end of the semester, it’s really starting to feel like “go time” with our project site.

Rosanna and I finished our timeline over spring break. Gathering the photos for that made me realize how I might be able to think more creatively about visuals and media to add to our website as we go along with our project. For example, I found a really great YouTube video that discusses approaches to teaching The Bluest Eye in a classroom. I got really giddy and messaged Rosanna right away to tell her that we simply must put it up on our project site. I think that more ideas are going to pop up as we add more content to our pages.

Speaking of which, I finally found what I feel is a sufficient stockpile of general photos we can use for our project site. It should give us a good place to start. I yielded more fruitful results from Flickr than anywhere else. I’m just not quite happy with what I was able to pull for photos relating to Buncombe County. I’ve found a lot of photos of the Biltmore Estate and Downtown Asheville. I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for other than something of the outside of North Buncombe High School. Maybe Ramsey Library has something. Or I could always just snap a photo myself if nothing else works for me.

We have almost all of our interviews finished. Rosanna and I spoke to each other on the phone during spring break to go over interview questions to ask Lisa Baldwin. I might not always be able to meet Rosanna in person, but I feel like we make a really great team. Our strengths tend to compliment each other. We do whatever we can to work around our schedules and make sure that we get done with what we need to do each week. I could not have asked for a better partner to do this project with.

I definitely want to start adding more content to our website, so I’m really excited for me and Rosanna to have our regular class times on Wednesdays free to collaborate with each other. That’s going to help so much. I think that one thing I need to do before we meet up next time is to go back on the Trello and make a list of all of the pages we need to finish. Yes, we have the Coggle, and it’s color-coded, but I tend to work better with lists.

I think I need to print out a copy of our contract to keep for more immediate reference. It’s a little disorienting to have so many different deadlines floating around cyberspace. I’m really learning a lot about how I best operate while going about projects like this. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s nice to figure these things out about myself now.

I need to email interviewees to get biographies from them that we can put on our website tomorrow.

Also, I see why people hire personal assistants now. Does anyone want a part-time, remote job that pays in kind words and cookies? I’m only halfway joking. I really dread email correspondence and setting appointments on Google Calendar these days. Maybe when I’m rich and famous. (Let’s all take a moment to laugh at that one together.)

Rosanna has done a great job with transcribing interviews. I’m going to be flexing my English major muscles all through the morning to provide proofreading and editing assistance before we put the transcriptions up on our project sites.

I still haven’t heard anything back from the Tim Cooleys I messaged. So, at this point, I’m not sure if we’ll be interviewing him at all, but I’m still trying to be persistent.

I’ve been trying to think harder and deeper about adding a historical context to our case. I did find a website called The State of Black Asheville and think it could provide some great insight into the state of race (for lack of a better phrase) in Buncombe County. I realize that the challenge was made on the grounds of sexual content, but I just can’t let go of the fact that there was an attempt to censor perhaps the most prominent black author of our time within a predominantly white community.

The Bluest Eye