Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.
Gertrude Stein

Our application for a Major Grant from the Maryland Humanities Council is officially submitted! After weeks of working on it and securing two scholars and a hospitality professional in Maryland for planned interviews, it is all done.

This is a huge step in getting our long list of State Humanities Council applications on their way. We've got fifteen to call tomorrow and if the phone calls are encouraging, we've got fifteen applications to do ASAP.

Looking at the calendar, we realized we're only nine weeks away from hitting the road! We've sent our prospectus out to family and friends, planned a fundraising party in Colorado, and we've got an e-mail campaign about to hit cyberspace that emphasizes the kindness of strangers -- as in, if 100 strangers each donate 100 dollars, we've raised $10,000 which is about half of our budget.

Thanks for reading, and spread the word! This blog will be especially vital this summer while we're on the road, when we'll be posting almost every day and uploading weekly videos of our progress -- the more followers we have now, the better!