Listening to America aims to “light out for the territories,” traveling less visited byways and taking time to see this immense, extraordinary country with fresh eyes while listening to the many voices of America’s past, present, and future.
We invite you to join us on this journey.
“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
Jack Kerouac
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot
“Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Hope, one feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood. . . . A journey, in fact, appeals to the Imagination, to Memory, to Hope—the three sister Graces of our moral being.”
Richard Francis Burton
Friends of LTA Quarterly Zoom
Wednesday, March 11, 2026 — evening
4:30 Pacific / 5:30 Mountain / 6:30 Central / 7:30 Eastern
Friends of LTA Book Club
Tuesday, March 17, 2026 — evening
4:30 Pacific / 5:30 Mountain / 6:30 Central / 7:30 Eastern
March 18, 2026: Virtual Event: The Ten Greatest Westerns
Online / Zoom
March 26, 2026: Vail Symposium: Education in America: Standards, Access and Outcomes
Online / Vail, Colo.
March 27, 2026: Vail Symposium: What is the U.S. Constitution?
Online / Avon, Colo.
July 25-August 3, 2026: Cultural Tour: Lewis & Clark Trail
September 13-19, 2026: Cultural Tour: Monumental Decisions: Antiquities Act of 1906
September 20-October 2, 2026: Cultural Tour: Jefferson's France
Now Open for Registration!
January 3–8, 2027: Winter Retreat: The Beatles in Four Albums
January 10–15, 2027: Winter Retreat: Thoreau and the American Dream
January 17–22, 2027: Winter Retreat: The Novels of Jane Austen
April 11–May 2: The Logistics of a Constitutional Convention
May 23–June 13: Rewriting the Constitution: A More Perfect Union
When the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to craft a new constitution, they worked strenuously to cage the “dogs of See more
On this week's podcast guest host Russ Eagle interviews Clay about his ambitious downsizing project. For several decades, Clay has explored the world of Thoreau’s See more
America’s Founding Fathers drew heavily on the last years of the Roman Republic in crafting our nation’s founding documents, foreseeing both the promise and the See more
