Constitutional Tales became a website in February of this year.
Thousands of visits to the site are recorded.
Presentations continued this year. With more than 30 performances across the state since its inception, hundreds of people have seen some version of the Tales.
In March, we gave our second full production with actors at the State Capitol.
This Spring also marked the first time of sharing it outside of the state with a presentation at the annual conference of the American Education Research Association.
The Tales now enjoy a non-profit status through its affiliation with the Resource Center for Women & Ministry in the South (RCWMS), allowing it to receive tax-deductible donations and to be eligible to apply for organizational grants.
So what’s next?
It is time to begin writing the Tales in earnest.
I have six boxes of research and many times that amount in computer files.
My bookshelves are crammed with an assortment of books I never would have imagined owning – Abebooks.com has become my most frequented website even over my personal favorites of Amazon and Title Nine (not a legal website).
I am reestablishing my pattern with my family of being gone on Monday and Tuesday. This time, instead of teaching at UNC Charlotte at the beginning of each week as I did for seven years, I will use our home at High Rock Lake as my residency for writing. Not bad duty.
I hope to use the blog to introduce portions of what I’m writing. The challenge with the Tales is to weave the historical and legal analysis in a way that maintains a sense of a story while explaining enough of the legal significance of events and documents to convey the importance of what transpired. For those familiar with writing terms, I’m planning to take a postmodernistic approach to historical creative non-fiction. For those with no reason to be acquainted with these categorizations, it means that I will tell a story using a structure that accommodates the fragmentation of working with historical records and that explores the lives of those understudied in official histories. This approach also assumes that I will not be uncovering the one correct interpretation of these events, but rather that I will offer a perspective in order to engage the reader in considering the significance of the events and the North Carolina Constitution for him or herself.
So feel free to check out the blog this Fall. Input is welcomed.
Ann McColl
August 24, 2010
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