This week for me was filled with small tasks and big thinking about our project. I’m working on the website draft which is a lot of small technical things to figure out but at the same time, a lot of thinking about the bigger issues of the project. Our project manager, Bianca brought up some “anxious” questions that have us thinking about our criteria for choosing rebuses, why we are even doing this in the first place, and will we be able to have enough examples on our websites to demonstrate the claims put forth in our proposal? Fortunately, I think we all felt better after Micki reassured us that it needs to be a work in progress. Rachel asked “why rebuses?” which has now become the start of every thought and task having to do with this project.

All the team members seem to be falling into position to tackle their roles and interests. I’m really happy that the project is going in directions that I would never have been able to do on my own like research into French rebuses and heraldry. Even though it broadens the initial idea, I’m confident the website will be a useful tool for learning about rebuses. I’m also confident that the website won’t be perfect and the research won’t be complete but it’s all good!

Lastly, I find myself needing more time – to research, gather, question, write, design, etc. Wouldn’t our projects turn out so much better if we could work on them full-time 🙂

Very short diary this week to say I am feeling a bit like a dead-weight! This is my last week of full time work during the semester, which has been a challenge in the way that wrapping up a DH project certainly will be in the near future (“how will I know when I’m ‘done?'”). There is much to be done and undone, and I am just at the acceptance phase where I understand that there is no way to possibly tie up *all* of the loose ends, try as I might – sound familiar? Adding to that dead-weight feeling –  I was not feeling at my best over the weekend and was not able to contribute or focus at my usual level, so I am happy to be over that hump too.

Regardless, I did manage to do some outreach last week and have started to do some of the related reading/notes for the essays I have tasked myself with. Bianca is wonderfully guiding us to ask “what’s the scholarly point” and I am starting to get into my happy place where the information we’ve been collecting starts to make more connective (and collective, I hope) sense. It has been helpful for me in really refining the inquiries we’re making beyond my current blob of a “collection of foreign and interesting rebuses from the 18th century.”

My goal for the upcoming week is to exhale a bit (work has been a lot for all of us, work at an early stage startup in a pandemic is too much for most humans who want to do much else, including myself), gather more notes on the ludic aspects of rebuses (while solving some more of our gathered french rebuses). I may also go spelunking for a few more rebuses in Wikimedia Commons, as they had many items tagged with the term (and I can get some wiki editing out of my system in the process, which just feels good to me!), but I cannot commit to this last bit this week. Next week will clarify a lot about my capacity in the weeks ahead, as we start writing and solving and putting the site together!

It has been really wonderful to learn about how these fridges operate and about the people who make them happen. While I love learning about these people and the communities they serve, I also find it disappointing that these fridges need to exist to feed people. The joy that I feel watching these people come together to serve and even create communities, is always matched with a feeling of profound sadness that in the wealthiest nation in the world (a place that produces so much food waste) so many people have to rely on these fridges. I hope that this archive and the community it serves continues to thrive past the pandemic, but also that this project becomes more about eliminating food waste than serving an active need from communities.

Last week I finally felt like I had a concrete picture of what our archive might look like for the first time and it was a great relief. I think I was more worried about arriving to a final ‘product’ than I realized. Now we can look forward to building on our vision and define how we approach the following steps. It is not easy to work on a project that involves diverse groups from the community and a diverse team of different backgrounds, skills, availability or commitment. I think we have fallen into some level of routine in accomplishing assignments and we have a shared vision. The next challenge might be for us to keep things simple and manageable when working with such a large and diverse group of participants. I am absolutely delighted that I got to design our logo and that I will be more involved with the design end of things once we have our site up and running.