Please welcome Lilian, Adriana, Ayelén, Alex and Ine as new correspondents to our Journal. Lilian will be writing about American movies. Adriana will be writing about her native Bolivia, in particular, La Paz.

Ayelén will share her thoughts on early American ways of life and their relevance for our current time through the prism of her extensive knowledge of ancient Andean culture.

Alex and Ine are writing a series of Journal entries based on their travels during the Rodando Cine project. (See our Projects page.) They are presenting a "Then" and "Now" perspective on the places and people they encountered during their 10 month trip through 15 nations over 10 months from Argentina to Mexico.

Look for a continuing flow of new and fascinating articles in the coming weeks, and please share your ideas and feedback with us. You can also follow us on Twitter!

ALASKA
With the help of our friends at Circumpolar Expeditions, our Alaska expedition continues to take shape. We have a very ambitious agenda that may ultimately require more than one trip!

We estimate 5 to 6 weeks for the entire expedition, but the weather, which is notoriously difficult to predict in Alaska, will be a major factor in determining what we can and cannot do. This becomes even more pronounced if we have to start or finish in winter rather than the end of this summer. Something as simple as an unexpected storm could easily leave us trapped in a single location for a week or more. We will often be flying on local mail or supply planes, so this is not a matter of catching the next commercial flight out!

Our search for new ways of thinking about America will take us first to the Russian province of Chukotka in the Beringia Ethnic Preserve. This preserve, which extends into the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in Alaska, is the result of a unique partnership with the Russian government and the U.S. National Park Service to study and preserve as much as possible of the languages and ways of living practiced by the nomadic people of ancient Beringia, the first migrants into America.

July 4, 1776 - U.S. Declaration of Independence on the inalienable rights of man announced.
July 4, 2009 - U.S. news media dominated by Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin.