Our Project
The Book:
Now a single version, a collection of our narratives along with some personal reflections and insights.
We hope to be able to print enough copies for all of the public libraries in Vermont.
American Narratives has been a two year project to capture the stories of ordinary folks doing extraordinary things all across our country. We planned on sharing the stories of these Americans with as many people as possible by using their words and some great images blended with our own photography.
We have finished our travels and unfortunately America changed right before our eyes. While we had some challenges connecting with folks we could write about during our early trips, after November 2024, we had no luck at all. It became increasingly difficult to find any potential narratives at all as people stopped being willing to mention others. And when we did find a potential narrative, they were not interested in sharing their stories with us, most unsure of what doing so might bring for attention and others wanting to save their story to monetize it in the future.
It was our hope that the deeds and accomplishments told through these ordinary citizen narratives might bring us all closer together. And we still hope that will happen even though was have about 40% of the narratives we had hoped to have for our book. And a book is still in the works, despite limited content and limited resources. More on that this effort this fall.
Our Funding
The source of funding for all of our American Narratives travels were our own resources, used to purchase needed our camper and gear, and to pay for the gas for the 59,000 miles traveled, groceries from scores of stores, and more than 220 nights in our camper, Jaybird
We had applied for funding from several grants including National Geographic, National Parks Service, National Parks Conservation Association, and the National Endowment for the Arts. We were denied on all of them and now such funding is almost non-existent.
A major source of funding for the book will be from individual donations. If you support our efforts and wish to assist us in providing worthwhile information to be shared with our readers and followers, please consider making a donation.
Your donations will go to support our efforts in the Fall of 2025 to provide a free copy of our book to every one of the 12,000 public library in the country, starting with Vermont first. As we raise more money, we will provide copies for other states, working across New England to start with.
You can donate to our efforts through our donation site (the button at the bottom of each page). If you download a digital photo or two from our SmugMug albums, linked through the Our Photos link, please consider making a small donation for that photo.
Thank you for reading about and supporting our efforts to tell these important stories of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. American Narratives is an unincorporated non-profit with a 509(a)2 designation (a subcategory of 501(c)3) and thus all of your donations are tax deductible.