Announcements

8/18/08. Welcome to the new AmericanBackyard.org. We've overhauled nearly everything, including videos, road journals, and interviews, and added major new sections on the American Backyard book and American Backyard in the press. Enjoy!

10/30/05. A long-due, massive update: Videos are now streaming, and Interviews and Journals (Chris and Ted) have been updated

8/7/05. Shelton, CT: After 63 days and 14,000 miles, American Backyard has safely arrived home.

8/2/05. Omaha, NE: Journals (Josh) and Videos have been updated

7/29/05. Lander, WY: Journals (Chris, Brian and Ted) and Writing (Josh) have been updated

I thought of all my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing about.
--> Jack Kerouac



August 2008

In his essay America and Americans, John Steinbeck recalls a neighbor of his in New York City who would pursue her happiness every summer morning at about 9 o'clock. Outside of her small flat, she'd set up a canvas deck chair and beach umbrella beside a cocktail table, before unfurling a fake green lawn and placing on it two pots of red geraniums, an artificial palm, and a little cabinet with cold soft drinks. Then, as though relaxing on her country estate, she would sink luxuriously into the chair. "She nodded and smiled to everyone who went by," Steinbeck writes, "and somehow she conveyed her dream to everyone who saw her, and everyone who saw her was delighted with her." Once, in a fit of inspiration, Steinbeck waited for a moment when the porch was left unattended and contributed a potted fern and a bowl with two goldfish to her urban paradise. To his delight, the anonymous gifts became fixtures of her setting for the remainder of the summer...

--> continue reading

The intrepid adventurers: