Hey guys, sorry I’m late in this discussion – I just got back from MA, but thought I’d contibute some thoughts.
Lindsay, as we talked about in class, I think that the idea of a finished product tying everything together is perfect. A published book (something like the StoryCorps model) would be really great, but perhaps a map-based visual would be even more powerful. I found it interesting that when we went to visit Starksboro for the first time, they whipped out three maps. I think that people identify strongly with geographic and topographic location in Starksboro, and giving them something that feeds off of those ideas would be meaningful.

That said, I’m not sure how our skills and timeframe work into producing something like the Proctor map that we were shown. We should definitely have all of our stories linked onto a digital map like Diane showed us, but I’m trying to think up some other manifestations of that.

The first thing I thought of was the 1871 map that has been shown us several times. That’s the map that has the school districts marked on it, and all of the name-labelled homesites from that time period. Using this map as a base layer might be really intriguing, especially if we have some communicating interviews with one room schoolhouse attendees all the way through to the modern educational system. I am totally on board with pursuing the education thread, and feel that it’s a truly universal thread in the town; everyone went to school at some point.

That said, schools obviously won’t cover everything that we want to work on, and another sort of map might be required. Chester, I know that you are a geography whiz, and would know much more about this type of thing than I. How possible would it be for each separate project group to make a map layer describing their interviews (linked interviews as well as information about location, history, etc), then incorporate all of these on top of a standard topo or something of the sort. Maybe you’d have a map describing property lines and farms, one showing school districts, one showing sugaring, one showing population centers, etc. This might be a silly idea, but it sounds okay – we would then be able to give the town a digital version of this map, and perhaps some physical acetate layers to display somewhere…?

I think that after all of the interviewing is done and we’re finishing up our individual projects, it’d be interesting to compile a minute or so of sound from each project. These voices could then all be incorporated into an audio overview of Starksboro as we’ve discovered it – 5 minutes interspersed with music, maybe, a la the Deer Stories tape.

See you guys all tomorrow morning!

Christian