When I walked into this class in September, I was entirely unfamiliar with both the historical background of Chicana feminism and the methods for collecting oral histories and developing this project. Now, just a few months later, I cannot believe how far I have come. This class is so unlike any class I have ever taken before. As a pre-med student, I am used to big lecture halls and long exams. A class of only seven people working on an archive about a topic I knew nothing about actually seemed quite scary to me because I had no idea what to expect.

Over the course of the semester, learning about Chicano activism opened my eyes to the way history is portrayed in the mainstream. I had never heard of things like the blowouts or the Denver Youth Conferences before. Throughout middle and high school, textbooks never mention these monumental events, and this is entirely unfair to young students. They are taught to see a certain side of history as the truth instead of molding together multiple stories to create an inclusive and more accurate history. Based on the lack of Chicanas in the textbooks I grew up reading, it appears that Chicanas have rarely, if ever, done anything of historical significance. It is obvious that this is not true, but without learning about them in history classes, many young students would never know the differences that they have made in society. Marie and Lizette discussed during our last class period how the lack of narratives of Chicanas leaves young girls without any role models. Often times, people do not realize what they have the power to do if they do not see examples of it. Chicana Por Mi Raza has the ability to inspire people to make changes in society. The public website is available to anyone to learn about influential women whom they’ve probably never heard of before. It is so important for people to have resources like this to see that it is not just white people or men who have made lasting impacts on society.

This course also taught me more than I ever thought I’d know about the process of archiving materials and recording history. I had never even visited an archive until we went to the Bentley, and I definitely had never filmed a person’s oral history before. At first, it was really hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that we were going to look at boxes of a woman’s collection, decide what was important enough to save, upload it to a digital archive, and display parts of it on a public website along with a short description of the woman’s life that we would create. To me, this huge responsibility seemed overwhelming. How was I at all qualified to decide what of this woman’s belongings was relevant to a movement I’d never heard of? How was I qualified to write another person’s biography? Fortunately, as we worked through the semester, I found that I was gaining enough knowledge about the movement to be comfortable doing these things.

When the time came for our mid-semester biocuration assignment, I realized that writing a short biography wasn’t that scary, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed the responsibility. I only watched seven clips, each about ten or fifteen minutes long, but I felt like I knew a lot about Gloria Arellanes, the woman whose CPMR page I was assigned to work on. She was sharing intimate details of her life and telling funny or shocking stories that I wouldn’t soon forget. Writing her biography made me feel connected to her even though I had not and probably never would meet her. As a group of both undergraduate and graduate students from diverse backgrounds and with very different life experiences, I think we were each drawn to a different person for this assignment. I chose to watch Gloria’s oral history and write her biography because we had learned that she was involved in a free clinic in Los Angeles. As someone who is very interested in medicine and public health, I found it inspiring to see how Gloria, a woman without any background in the medical field, helped her community gain access to better health care and became very respected by the larger public health facilities and hospitals. Gloria’s achievements go far beyond El Barrio Free Clinic, and I am honored that I got to share part of her life story on a public platform so that she may inspire others and get some of the recognition that she deserves.

Eventually, after all the training with the camera equipment and Final Cut Pro, I felt prepared to conduct Juana Gonzales’s oral history with Shirley and Katelynn. This was a difficult interview, and the process was truly a team effort. We were also in a bit of a time crunch because Juana wanted to finish the interview by three o’clock, and she had a lot of material to scan and take pictures of. Despite the difficulty of the interview, I am grateful that Juana invited us into her home to share parts of her life. The experience showed me that conducting an oral history will never be exactly what you expect. Everyone reacts differently to being filmed, and it can be a lot of work to make someone comfortable talking about themselves in front of a camera.

At the beginning of the year, I could not envision exactly what people would do with our work. I knew that scholars would use the archive for their research, but I wasn’t sure who would be looking at our public website. As I learned more about the project, it was exciting to see how the website would allow anyone to learn about these women’s contributions to the Chicano movement and their work toward women’s equality. I had not realized that this material could also be used in art until Maria told us that one of her students created a play based on women featured in the archive. There are so many different ways that the archive and website can aid others in their studies, their art, and filling gaps in history. I’m so glad I got to be a part of this unique experience because I got to contribute to the historical narrative of our country.

Blake Ebright Reflection #2

A few semesters ago, I took a course about the Global Feminisms Project. The Global Feminisms Project (GFP) is an archive of oral histories about Indian, Nicaraguan, Polish, Chinese, Mexican, and American women in activism and scholarship. As I said in my previous blog post, that course left me with little to no experience with the actual archive itself or with archival processes. Knowing what I know now about Chicana por mi Raza, I would compare the two sites as “New Age Archives,” or as Professor Cotera has called Chicana por mi Raza (CPMR), a Digital Memory Collective. I think CPMR is a little more accessible because it has actual archival documents on the bibliography pages of the women whose oral histories we’ve provided. However, CPMR is limited to a specific part of the globe and does not provide the full interviews the way GFP does.

I am walking away from this course with two pretty important, but unintended, consequences. I’ve learned more about film production than I had ever imagined I would in my time as an undergraduate. I’ve taken this information multiple times this semester and I’ve applied it to my honors thesis in Psychology (in my experiment, I am showing subjects a recording of a research assistant pretending to be a subject in a study, then figuring out whether the subjects empathize with the research assistant based on the difficulty of the task). I’ve also learned a great deal about archiving. Not only have I gained an understanding of the process and the concept of an archive, but I’ve also gained an appreciation for the importance of the archives themselves and respect for the archivists working on them.

Speaking of the time we spent learning about archives, I believe our first theoretical discussion about why archives are necessary, what makes an archive, and whether CPMR is an archive happened in the Bentley. I have to admit, I was excited and simultaneously wary of the course up until that point. Since then, I’ve loved incorporating abstract thought into our learning about the concrete (and in the case of the website, the non-concrete).  This brings me back to another point from my first post; the practice of oral history as a marginalized form of knowledge. The Feminist Thought and Latina Oral History curricula both spoke to the idea of “capital H” History and the history of great men. This kind of history perpetuates the marginalization of those already disregarded by those in power while their histories are still being written.

On a seemingly unrelated note, we used Paris is Burning in Feminist Thought to discuss the repercussions of making marginalized groups more visible. For our Chicanas in the 21^st century, I think it isn’t something that we should necessarily worry about, but something we should be conscientious of as a fact of the past. Within two years of the release of Paris is Burning, all but one of the featured characters in the documentary about Harlem drag balls had been killed in a hate crime or died of an AIDS-related illness.

Returning to the topic of incorporating abstract theory into our learning about archives, I felt as though the class had been properly capped off by our discussion and readings for the last week of class, in which we discussed the legacy and purpose of archives. The free-write was especially helpful in creating our own conceptualization of the issues at hand. Are our histories more protected once they’re actually created? We’re not writing histories of great men, which undoubtedly makes the collection of the history harder, but who does this serve and when do we know we’ve made an important offering? Can we reasonably fly under the radar and get away with saying what we want to say, the “lowercase t” truth? These micro histories concern the patriarchy and the oppressed groups’ advances not only in spite of it, but also their advances against it. Thus, this is the most precarious kind of history to create and back up.

By asking for the memories of the oppressed, those who have been silenced for such a long time, we’re serving the agents of change – be it those who critically witness and work on the histories and then are inspired to do something more in realms of embodied practice, be it the agents who have already attempted change so many years ago (regardless of their success) or maybe just people watching our (published) product. By lending agency to the agents of change-to-be and the agents of the past, does that automatically give them authority? Who can claim authority or shared authority and at what point? If the “archive” is only the process of making the archive, then the ultimate product doesn’t matter anymore – is that ok? We shift the idea of the archive to make the experience of the creator-interpreter the most important thing. Once the experience of creating the archive is the most important thing, is the archive done serving? What more can we ask of it?

On the flip side of archives serving as inspiration tools, I wonder if the archive can be trusted as more than just the enlightening process itself. If history is interpretation of memory, where does that leave us, the creator-interpreters with oral history? Our act of creating a collection and deciding what to archive is inherently an interpretation of the original space. Why are we allowed to put ourselves on a non-interpreter, non-great men, non-etc. pedestal when we, backed by the “great men,” given our authority by working within the oppressive regime, come into a space and create the illusion that we’re letting memories run wild, regardless of their historical accuracy?

We go back to the lab and fix what has been said, present what we want to present, and interpret it through tags and collections and digging through our own lenses. Even with training against bias and against specific lens-using, we are subjects of the history of great men and the society built around them. Is that ok? It’s the best we can do. Are we historian non-historians who add the experience of the archive as our two cents to the interpretation of the item presented? Regardless, we can only do all of this under the auspices of great men, however passive their support is. That is to say, whether it’s financial backing or simply turning a blind eye, if the patriarchy did not want these oral histories reported, they would not be reported. Does that silent acceptance protect us from repercussions of the more indignant great men? Might the great men now claim the history that we uncovered in spite of them, the way they have so many times before? Maybe we should let them claim the history – that may protect the project from invisibility.

I’d like to end on a less cynical note. I’ve talked before about whether it’s important for the archive of the archive to be removed from the archival materials. From what I’ve seen, and written above, this can’t be too important. Like I said, we’re constantly affecting and interpreting the original memories, which turns it all into the “history” of “oral history” (as opposed to just oral memories). It’s exciting, though, that it isn’t its own. It’s exciting that it’s malleable, impermanent, and that everyone can take from it what they will, what they need, and what they can. I concluded my first post with the “hope to be further inspired and prepared to make my own oral history project, perhaps related to the local LGBTQ community.” While I find myself no more, and no less, inspired to take on that daunting task, I’m as inspired as ever to have these theories inform my practice of feminism and to, in turn, allow my practices to inform my theory: a feminist praxis.

Marie Dillivan - Reflection 2

           

            This semester in Latina Oral Histories, I have learned about many different topics that somehow all related together in the Chicana por mi Raza project. To sort through everything that we’ve done this semester, I’m going to start with the beginning. The most important thing that I learned at the beginning of this course was about archives which had been something that I had previously never really thought about. Archives are a part of the history that we learn that is almost invisible to students throughout most of their education, but the important thing that I learned about archives is that they are not unbiased or untouched representations of history. What goes into an archive is chosen and it is chosen from a specific set of people. Therefore, many important parts of our history are not included in an archive and this is where public projects to collect oral histories like CPMR come into the picture. What I learned about oral histories is that they have the potential to provide a picture of a part of history that has not been sorted through or edited by an archivist, but rather this picture is provided by an individual who participated in the history. Although this picture is still biased and based on the experience of one person, the oral history gives that one person the authority to tell their history in their own way, which I think is something that cannot be achieved through most conventional history-telling methods. Finally, what I learned about “History” is that it is chosen and it is chosen by those in a position of power to reflect what they wish to show about history. I have thought about this before, but I hadn’t thought about it very much in regards to the histories of social movements.

            Next in this class, I learned so much about Chicana feminism, and feminism in general which was one of my hopes for this class since I have never taken another women’s studies class. One of the most important things that I learned from our discussions of history and Chicana feminism is that it is barely present in the literature and materials about mainstream feminism. Before this class, I could have watched the Maker’s documentary from PBS and not thought too much about the question, “Where are the women of color?” because the documentary does briefly address the activities of colored women related to the movement. The fact that the documentary addresses women of color in the way that it does may lead a viewer to believe that that’s the whole story; that’s all there is to women of color feminism. However, we know that this is not true, and histories told in this way erase the activities of Chicana feminism. I enjoyed learning about the Chicana feminists in our class and how they sought to carve out a position for themselves when a space didn’t exist for them in the Chicano movement or in the mainstream feminist movement. I also enjoyed looking at how these women related to one another as they dealt with challenges from the men in their culture, the women in the mainstream movement, and the rest of the oppressive forces as well. I particularly enjoyed learning about Carmen Tafolla in her oral history interview and from her archive. She was an amazing young and she is still amazing today. She is someone that I will always remember as working hard and finding success while fighting against the forces that tried to hold her back.

            Another important part of this class that I enjoyed was the working with the woman who we interviewed, Ana Luisa Cardona, and her materials. The experience of going to Ana’s house and interviewing her was very special and I think that I learned a lot about what truly goes into an oral history and how to conduct one. It was a truly enjoyable experience, and I’m really happy with how her oral history turned out and her archive on Medici is looking great. This also makes me excited to keep working with her materials next semester and keep adding to her archive. This experience provides real life examples to the things that you always hear: that everything doesn’t go as planned and you have to be flexible.

            This class also made me think about and be more critical of all types of histories and made me appreciate the work that goes into trying to remedy the errors of “History”. There is an incredible amount of work that could be done in this area with many types of people and groups that are traditionally left out of history, and I think that any work toward allowing those people to tell their history is valuable. The experience of collecting a history and incorporating it into a space that can make it accessible to others is very unusual since we don’t usually think of history as happening in this way. When we grow up we don’t think of ourselves as being a part of history or a part of forming history, but we can do that. That’s the importance of the process of this project. We can be a part of it, and it is important work. To me, one of the most important parts of this project in general is just expanding the potential for access to those who are interested to learn about these women and this movement that is not well documented in traditional “History” sources. It is important to me that someday young people could look up “chicana feminists” and they could find this website where they can see all of these women and their accomplishments and contributions in a way that they otherwise may have not been able to.

            About myself, I have learned that I should always be more critical and that I’m interested in the potential of projects like Chicana por mi Raza both in regards to the product that they create and its value for others but also for the experience that students can get from this type of project, which I know is an important component. I’m interested in increasing access to stories like these which doesn’t surprise me but what surprised me was that I feel that this somehow relates to my one of my other serious interests which is increasing health equity and access to health care for Latinos and other groups. Increasing access to a group’s history I feel is an important component for overall wellbeing. For groups that have been historically marginalized, being able to see their history told in this way could be a very important positive influence. I see an important relationship here, and that is a very important thing that I learned through this experience.

Katelynn Dreeze - Reflection # 2

This semester, AMC 498 has been a light of salvation for me in a semester otherwise filled with disappointing or extremely difficult courses in the School of Information. I am beyond thrilled that I chose this particular course for my cognate requirement for the School of Information’s Master’s degree. I genuinely looked forward to this class every week and I enjoyed working with both Taylor and Shirley during this semester as well. While the workload for this class seemed daunting at first, creating and developing Juana Gonzales’s oral history and online collection has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had.

In previous courses I have taken at the School of Information, I have developed different types of archival collections. For my Web Archiving class, I, along with my group members, created a web archive of Michigan Folktales. While developing this web archive was interesting and I learned a lot about the methodologies of creating an archive, it was nowhere near the level of detail that I learned while creating and developing Juana’s oral history and collection. When developing the Michigan Folktales web archive, my group and I used web spiders to crawl a list of websites that we had found and appraised as relevant enough to be included in our archive. When creating Juana’s collection, I felt that I was more intimately involved with developing her collection because I was actually generating a majority of her collection as opposed to just searching through a collection. Needless to say, creating a collection is a lot more difficult than sending web spiders out to crawl a collection and gather all the parts that you want.

During AMC 498, I learned just how tedious the nature of developing an online archival collection and oral history is. I learned that one cannot just jump into developing a collection and expect to know all the materials they are collecting. Instead, it takes prior research and knowledge to discern what materials are relevant to include in a collection. I also learned both the awesomeness of having almost complete control over what is included in a collection, and the anxiety that this control can cause. When developing our collection, it was awesome to know that this was our archive and to be able to control what goes into it and what does not. At the same time though, this control personally gave me anxiety because I hoped that what my group and I made represented Juana’s life in an accurate manner and reflected the mission and scope of the Chicana por mi Raza website.

During my time at University of Michigan’s School of Information, I have learned all about the benefits and pitfalls of group projects and working in “real world” situations. I even successfully survived one of the School of Information’s foundation courses, SI 501: Contextual Inquiry and Project Management, where I worked in a group for the entire semester in order to assist a “real world” client with a “real world” problem they were experiencing in their work place. This semester, AMC 498 did teach me a little bit more about the complexities of working in a group and working in a “real world” situation. As previously mentioned, I enjoyed working with Taylor and Shirley. But, these two were not my initial partners for this assignment. They were not even my second or third set of partners. AMC 498 taught me how to be more flexible and accommodating when it comes to working in a group that I did not get to choose nor did I have any control over. I admit that I was a little frustrated when my group for the practicum assignment appeared to change every other day. But, I realized that I had to be adaptable during this situation and accept my group regardless of the situation.

AMC 498 also taught me how to work in a “real world” situation on a more personal level. In SI 501, my group’s client was the Ann Arbor Rotary Club. I learned how to deal with the club’s “real world” problem on a professional level because the problem the club was experiencing was situated in a professional context. I learned how to interact with our client in a professional manner that included formal memos, formal meetings, and planned in-depth interviews. In AMC 498, I learned how to work in a “real world” situation on a more personal level because obviously Juana Gonzales’s collection is very personal to her. I learned how this “real world” situation was much more intimate and involved us using discretion because this was personal experience not only for Juana, but for all of us involved. We wanted to develop a professional collection, but from a very personal source. I gained a deeper understanding of what it is like to create something professional from a personal source and this insight contributed to my desire to produce a collection that accurately reflects Juana’s life and her experiences.

I think that the most important aspect that I learned about Chicana feminism in AMC 498 is how Juana defined Chicana feminism in her oral history. Juana states in her interview that, “Chicana feminism is to be yourself.” Juana’s definition resonates with me because even though it is such a simple phrase, it says so much. I love how this definition says so much about Juana and her personality and beliefs. I also love how this definition is something I can take away from this class, reflect on, act on, and easily remember for the rest of my life.

 I think that the most important thing that I learned about myself from this class is how I can better relate to and understand my mom and her experiences growing up as a migrant worker and the discrimination she faced for being a young Hispanic woman. One story that Juana told in her oral history that brought upon this realization was when Juana discussed how she would hide eating a tortilla at lunch because she did not want people to look down on her for eating Mexican food. I remember my mom telling me a similar story about how she was embarrassed to eat Mexican food during lunch and how much she yearned to just eat a bologna sandwich like the other kids. I feel like now, as a result of taking this course, I can better understand why my mom felt this way. I can understand why she was so embarrassed, and why she wanted so much to have a bologna sandwich and to fit in in a world where she was different. 

Juana Gonzales Oral History

Interview with Juana Gonzales

November 21, 2015

East Lansing, Michigan

Chicana Por Mi Raza

We interviewed Juana Gonzales on Saturday, November 21, 2015. Upon arriving and unloading groceries, Juana offered her husband’s help to us while making breakfast and exclaimed, “This is definitely not a macho home!” At this point, we knew that Juana was someone with intense feminist ideals. Juana and her husband, Jesse, were excited to show us everything they owned related to the Chicana and Chicano movement. We were really surprised to find that Jesse was a collector of Chicano items such as movie posters, photographs, books, and pins. Jesse, like his wife Juana, was heavily involved in the movement and they actually met through Juana’s sister and their involvement with the movement.

Setting up for the interview seemed daunting at first, but Juana had a living space that was practically perfect for our interview. A sectional couch offered a spot for Juana to sit and a spot for Professor Cotera to be able to face her perfectly. Setting up the camera and lights went smoothly, although we had to face the light towards the ceiling so that it was not blinding Juana and not as reflective. We were having complications understanding whether or not the Zoom Recorder was recording properly. After fiddling with it, we thought we had it figured out. However, it appears that the Zoom did not save the sound files from the interview.

Juana is the second oldest of eleven children in a strictly Catholic family. She moved to Michigan in her twenties to help look after two of her siblings who started college at Western Michigan University. Prior to moving to Michigan permanently, Juana and some of her siblings lived in different parts of Michigan and Wisconsin as migrant workers. Juana became very involved with groups in Kalamazoo, including Planned Parenthood and a Chicana feminist group. It was apparent to us that Juana has always been very open about identifying as a feminist, unlike many of the other Chicanas that we have learned about. She remained very involved in organizing and fighting for equality until the end of her career as an elementary school teacher. We were surprised to hear some of her stories about the discrimination she faced throughout her lifetime. One particular story that stuck out was about her and other Chicanos and Chicanas taking over the president’s house at the University of Michigan to demand he address the treatment of minorities. He laughed at them and asked them to clean while they were there!

While Maria, Shirley, and Taylor interviewed Juana in the living room, Katelynn was busy scanning items from Juana’s archive in a separate room. Juana’s husband was even kind enough to put on the Michigan football game against Penn State. Juana and her husband had an impressive collection of buttons from various political and social movements that we scanned and added to our collection. Katelynn also scanned several pictures from Juana’s collection that included photographs from Juana’s childhood, her wedding to Jesse, and her days as a teacher. We also scanned several documents from Juana’s collection including love letters between her and her husband, Juana’s voting card from a women’s organization she was a member of, and an excerpt from a book that included all the organizations Juana was a member of in the 1970s.

After the interview was over, clean up did not take too long. We were able to successfully transfer all the images we took from our interview with Juana to our team’s hard drive, but as previously noted, we had issues with the Zoom Recorder.  We also made sure to get a team picture with Juana. At around 4:30 we departed from Juana’s house. Little did we know that the most intense and terrifying part of our oral history was about to begin. The weather and road conditions were absolutely horrible for our ride back to Ann Arbor. What was supposed to be an hour ride home, turned into a two hour long ordeal of navigating the white out conditions on the road and counting how many cars had skidded to either the median or side of the highway. Needless to say that our group would not have survived without the cool calm nerves of Shirley Rivas behind the wheel as she fearlessly navigated through the snowy apocalypse.

Our group is excited to have finally filmed our oral history, but we know a lot more work needs to be done. In the upcoming weeks we plan on editing the film or our interview into 10 minutes sections, developing Juana’s collection catalog, and writing her final biography for the Chicana Por Mi Raza website.

We had some issues uploading a video clip to YouTube for our blog post, but the videos do exist on our team's hard drive and Taylor's computer.

Angela Reyes's Oral History

Interview with Angela Reyes

November 8, 2015

Detroit, MI

Chicana Por Mi Raza

"I really did not come up with any issues with scanning and taking notes. The notes part was easy. Ramiro synched the timer on his phone with every take, so the notes could have a correct time next to them. I would def recommend trying it. As for the scanner, it was fairly easy to scan all the documents, except we did come up with some issues when documents were awkwardly sized. There were a few documents that we came across that were too long or wide for the scanner. Maria brought with her a clear plastic film that we used to place over the documents (in this case a newspaper article) and we took a picture of it with one of our phones. We also scanned the item in chunks for safe measure. The images we scanned in chunks will have to be stitched together at some point, so for clarity, we used the same item number for each piece (when naming the document to be saved). For multiple images for one document, we named them as follows AR2015_A001, AR2015_B001, AR2015C001, etc. (this is just an example, not an accurate document title but you get the idea). Overall I really enjoyed the interview, it was not only very informative but also emotional and empowering."

Lizette Esquivel, Data Wrangler/Co-Event Recorder

"Organizing for our interview was pretty seamless. I prepared all necessary documentation, made sure all film equipment was rented, and re-read the research our group had organized a week prior on Angela Reyes and DHDC. While we were always a little past the scheduled time to begin, our whole time there ended right when we said it would; some things took longer than expected (such as finding a space to film) while others took less time than I had scheduled (setting up lighting and camera). I love how our group blurred the lines of roles and assisted one another with filming, planning, and scanning. That way we each got a taste of what each of us was responsible for.Filming at DHDC was a brilliant idea on Angie’s part. She was able to give us a tour, which is part of her oral history actually, and just hearing about how the idea for DHDC came to be while being in the building was very essential to the way we’d like to curate Angie’s biopage. I was delighted when Angie extended an invitation to return for a dinner sponsored by DHDC. There was definitely a connection made between a Southwest Detroit elder and three young students from Southwest Detroit, which was more than I expected to experience. Angie even gifted me some white sage when I told her that I also smudge for clarity. How amazing and generous is that? As an event recorder, however, I failed to actually take pictures! I plan on using the tour footage to extract some stills as there were shots where we were in the frame along with Angie. It is important to note that we kept remembering and vocalizing that we needed to take pictures, but because we were stationed in one room and filming in another, I think photos kept getting pushed to the end until it was time to go. So, word of advice: write out exactly what needs to be done at the interview and cross it off as you go along."

Ramiro Alvarez, Production Manager/Co-Event Recorder

Ana Luisa Cardona

Interview with Ana Luisa Cardona

October 24, 2015

East Lansing, Michigan

Chicana por mi Raza

We interviewed Ana Luisa Cardona on Saturday, October 24, 2015. To start, parking was an ordeal, but we managed to fit four cars in a driveway made for two! We began with a tour of the house, then set up our continental breakfast.

Maria and Ana went to the basement to look at Ana’s archive while we set up the cameras and the lighting in a very small space. Our first issue was working around where Ana would be comfortable, but making sure it wasn’t too comfortable. We also had the opportunity to look at the archive downstairs, but just briefly. After breakfast and adjusting the lighting several times (and downgrading from three-point to one-point lighting), we started the interview.

The two of us were seated on a tiny (noisy) couch, and we couldn’t actually completely see Ana during the interview because of the tight space and set-up. Blake, as the person in charge of the tape log, had to have a second timer running on his slate app because the tight quarters didn’t allow him to see the timestamp on the video. The time passed really quickly and we got a little over two and a half hours of film.

During the interview, Ana made reference to many people with whom we were not familiar. We figured out most of them throughout the interview but it was difficult with all of the names (sometimes just first names) that she was throwing out. She was very interesting and fun to listen to, and when it was all over she said that she was glad that we had done the interview - she’s hoping that once this is out there, grad students won’t barge in asking for follow-up interviews!

After we finished the interview, it only took us about 20 minutes or so to clean up except for the lighting because it had to cool down. We had a late lunch and got to hear some more stories from Ana. After we straightened up and returned everything that we had moved in her house we packed up the cars and left. It was supposed to rain all day, but it held off until we had to carry the archive outside, then it really started to pour - just our luck! Fortunately, Professor Cotera did the hard work of keeping the box safely preserved in transit.

Back in Ann Arbor, we had to transfer the media from the camera’s SD card to a computer and to the external hard drive. This is the scary part, but luckily ours had sound and looked good. Unfortunately, we didn’t set up the zoom recorder correctly so we actually don’t have the backup sound. We’ll explain to everyone how to avoid this mistake!

Also, we would recommend using your own SD card so you don’t have to worry about taking it back to the ISS within the three day period where they will immediately erase everything on it. Also, know that it is not physically possible for one person to pick up the camera equipment and the lighting; you need two people to split up the load.

We’re looking forward to editing the video down into more manageable pieces. And we still have to go through and scan all of Ana’s archive, upload to medici, and tag everything. That will be interesting! The clip below is not an edited portion, just a random piece of the interview taken out to upload to youtube and give you all a preview.