posted by Amy Hillier

on September 6, 2007

Honestly, we really have been too busy to blog. August involved all kinds of exciting developments:

1. Haftom and Malik have now interviewed 5 people for our documentary: Anthony Monteiro (Temple University, Du Bois scholar), V. Chapman-Smith (National Archives), Dana King (School District of Philadelphia), Jimmy Calnan (resident of the 7th Ward), and Carolyn Cannuscio (social epidemiologist at University of Pennsylvania). We have an interview with Michael Nutter, the presumed next mayor of Philadelphia, in October.

2. We have a first draft version of our game board, thanks to the hard and careful work of Erin Kinnevy. The game board blends data from Du Bois' original map with data from a Bromley fire insurance map. We have a handful of game cards ready (think Trivial Pursuits but different categories) and "Pinch," "Scrape" and "Frolic" cards that introduce fun twists to the game, thanks to the hard work of Marie Christmas and Brandon Gollotti.

3. We used our new color booklet with our tour of the Old 7th Ward last weekend. Marie Christmas researched many of the people and institutions of the Old Seventh Ward and we put this together with photographs in a little book. We'll make this available on the website shortly. Eventually, we'd like to allow our website visitors a change to customize their walking tour using online interactive mapping.

4. We have definitions of most of the illnesses/causes of death we encountered (thank you, Brandon) and the occupations of 7th ward residents (thank you, Kelly).

5. We have several year's worth of birth (Brandon), death (Eric) and hospital admissions (Brandon and Marie) records. We used funds from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health