It’s been two weeks since my last report, and one week since our conversation (thanks very much for the email regarding zooming in and out of photos). Forgive the negativity here, and please take it with a grain of salt. I am having fun trawling through my endless photos for good material to post. But I face three challenges at present, the first of which is familiar: the continued hunt for Western material. It’s fitting, given our readings for Module 7, that my bugaboo is Google. My front organizations produced publications, and libraries have collections of them. Try as I might, though, I cannot find Google images of them. I do have Seventeen magazine to fall back on, as you rightly pointed out. But the site is dedicated to Cold War front organizations, and as yet, I’m relying chiefly on grainy photos either from the archives, or from a few scattered eBay sellers.
The second challenge is Omeka’s; or rather, reflects my ignorance thereof. I have spent the past 36 hours trying to figure out why it is that when I upload an image as an “item,” what I get is a thumbnail that winds up showing just two-thirds of the original. Thus, when I settle on a magazine cover from one of the few Western publications I’ve dredged up, visitors see only the center of it. Omeka Forum is a hampered not just by overtaxed responders, but also by the awkwardness of articulating in writing what the problem is. It reminds me of the difficulty we have describing smells–the vocabulary just isn’t there. In Omeka-world, the talk is there, I just haven’t learned it.
The final concern is that we’ve been planning for weeks to head up to my hometown in New Hampshire for ten days, where I plan to polish off a prototype for the July 11th class. Then, yesterday, it occurred to me: the internet up there runs like molasses. Added to this the fact that there will be six adults plus three kids on devices, plus that the local college library is closed, and I’m in for late nights or recourse to public hotspots. Which reminds me of what a disadvantage the present crisis puts people at who have poor or no internet coverage at home. I say this not to generate sympathy or as an excuse for incomplete work come July 11. Lord knows we’ve had plenty of time to prepare!
