As I have begun to make plans to exhibit work in Boston and to move to California, it has become more real that I won’t be working at Julie’s for too much longer. This time is both exciting and sad for me.

It is exciting to begin planning how to share the portraits and narratives with the community, and I have been energized by the enthusiasm around this exhibition. It is also neat to think about how much I have grown through the fellowship experience so far. The sadness is rooted in the fact that I will miss the people, the community, and the work here. I will miss them because they are special.

I am currently pursuing a position as an upper-level math teacher in an urban school in Los Angeles. While I don’t know exactly which school I will take a job with or what the school leader will be like, I am fairly certain he or she will not follow each check-in with a hug, kiss on the cheek, and “I love you” like Sister Louise does.

While I am not quite ready to write a “good-bye” themed entry, thoughts of leaving have been on my mind as people at Julie’s have started thinking about it too. Yesterday Lauretta asked me if I would write letters and invite her to my wedding one day.

I don’t want my fellowship to end too soon because it will be hard to say good-bye and also because there is still a great deal of work to do to finish my project properly. Over the last couple weeks there have been many developments in terms of the production of my project.

First, I must tell the story of Trish and the scanning. I was planning to have my 4x5 negatives scanned using a flatbed scanner for a price of about $4 per negative. I called Alex about some technical questions regarding scanning, and he suggested that I try to have the negative scans done locally with an Imacon scanner.

I went straight to Google, and found a number that didn’t work. I then googled the street address, found a number for someone in the same building, called, and said what it was I needed done. The man referred me to Jim and gave me a cell phone number.

I left a message with Jim, and he called me back several minutes later. He said that scans would cost either $35 or $45 per negative. I was shocked but tried to mask it through a polite “Oh, no thank you.” For the next hour or so I went on emailing other leads when I got an email from Trish, the woman who lets me rent darkroom space.

She asked if I called Jim about scanning 4x5 negatives. I emailed back, confused, but staying that I did. She then emailed me saying that she was having lunch with him when I called, and she had thought it might be me. He is one or her biggest freelance clients, and she had asked him if she could scan my stuff for free on the weekend. He had agreed.

I was so touched because we don’t know one another hardly well enough for such a gesture to be expected. It wasn’t even as though I asked her. She went out of her way to see if I could benefit from a service she could provide.

In May I will be traveling to Durham to print the portraits. After the display copy, which I hope will be relatively large, is matted, I plan to have the mom’s writing on the mat board. I have been doing interviews of the moms and have also been gathering the writing they have done for The Write Stuff, the literary journal of Julie’s Members.

I have been pulling key thoughts or expressions from these sources. It has been easy to identify what I am looking for when I hear it but hard to describe how it happens or what it is that makes them stand out. I think this format makes sense because I don’t want the mom’s words to be lost in the small print of a caption. I also want there to be a oneness between the mom’s words - the reflection on her journey as a mother - and the image I made of the family.

The next stage of the project - the exhibition phase - still needs to be worked out exactly. I met with Bob and Ann on Tuesday and Sister Louise yesterday to discuss these plans, and these meetings were helpful and energizing.

Ideally, we would like to have an opening reception somewhere like City Hall. At this event we would want to first and foremost celebrate the moms. We also talked about having food, drinks, and a small speaking line-up. This would probably take place in the beginning of June, and from there we are talking about ways to make the portraits local for a week or two by dispersing the collection and hanging them in local coffee shops, banks, and libraries.

Bob will do much of the work in terms of getting in touch with people about opportunities for showing the portraits, and so for now I am just trying to finish collecting materials and maintaining other projects.

Earlier this week I was asked to help with the brochure for the Annual Fund campaign. I wrote three of the four blurbs about the families that are being highlighted. The development office was also able to use photographs I took of the families to give the brochure a personal feel. I am glad that my work is useful to the organization and also glad that I am given responsibilities such as this.

I have also been busy taking digital pictures with the Nikon D50 my brother lent me. I have been photographing events, such as Easter celebrations and yesterday’s snake show. I now take pictures of families with the digital camera when I make the black and white portraits, and some moms, many of whom I photographed earlier for the Portrait Project, have asked me to take more pictures of them now that the weather is nice outside.

The weather has shaped my experience and project more than I imagined it would. It often made portrait appointments nearly impossible for moms to keep. When I come to work, particularly of days of freezing rain, which were still going on a week ago, I sometimes find myself letting out a sigh and thinking “Ahh, the weather and a place to live.” The Weather and a Place to Live is actually a book that won a book prize at the Center for Documentary Studies when I was a student there.

I think of those words when I think about weather as a powerful force on shaping the experience of a place. However, it is funny since I don’t even own the book. It represents only a tiny sliver of my Duke experience, yet I recall it. I wonder what similar slivers of experience will run around my mind after I leave Julie’s. I have ideas, but I guess I can’t really know quite yet.