Thank You and Farewell, For Now

I've spent the last ten months traveling to six different regions of this country. I have struggled with myself for much of the trip. I have encountered personal battles that I have won and lost. And I have discovered first-hand the infinite possibilities and layers of the American landscape.

"The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem" -Walt Whitman.

With Boonville, I'm examining these six towns and the people that inhabit them as my way to investigate life and modernity in America: The typology, the people, the power, the corruption and the soil: All of this is my exploration of America's identity; through one lens, "one" town, and one collective ideology.

The first part of this project--the journey--is essentially over. Farewell, and thank you all. I have had the single greatest experience of my life. And without many of you (I began to make a list of names but stopped when it reached 200), it could not have been even remotely possible.

I would like to thank a few very special people: Laura Roemer, Spencer Chandler, George Rosa, Sandra Briner + Mike Zmuda, Skip + Dawn Briner, Karen + Charlie Roemer, Jason Covert and Andrew Dailinger. You were all instrumental in making this project come true. Thank you.

And thank you to every single Boonvillian and friend I have met along the way. You--individually and collectively--have given me more then I could have ever imagined.

This journal is not complete. Stay tuned for more, if you'd like.

In Search of America, Part 4.

Flags & Roses, Boonville, IN, 2008

Anyone else feel like sleeping till noon, and then taking a nap at three? You questioning your existence? NO? Me neither!

"I have been traveling lately trying to understand what it means to be American. I have been doing my best to become an American, I have been eating, driving, dressing, talking, etc like an American, watching how Americans talk to each other, how they think, how they react, what they say behind closed doors, etc. What does it mean to be American? What have we become? What is our future? Are we realizing that everything we have allowed ourselves to become in the past 30 years is going to slowly kill us? Have we dug our own grave and are we now polishing the casket?" - Will Steacy

vs.

"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the days and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations." -Walt Whitman