Midwest Guest

Passports with Purpose

December brings holiday cheer for so many of us as we enjoy time with our families and friends and as we share many of our celebrations over fabulous meals with a menu that includes some of our favorite foods.

Others in the world may not be as fortunate, but I’m proud to be part of an exciting effort by our travelblogging community to help address the issues of lingering hunger and poverty around the globe—Passports with Purpose.

Travelbloggers everywhere quickly sprung into action when a call went out from the Passports with Purpose team asking us to round up a prize to raffle off, with the proceeds going directly to Heifer International. Heifer International is a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating hunger and poverty around the globe by providing families with the tools, skills and livestock to create the opportunity to build their own lasting self-sufficiency. Recipients of the organization’s animals pledge to pass on the offspring of gift animals to others in their community, creating a chain of partners working to improve the lives of their entire community.

Learn more about Heifer International and its good work here.

Want to help?

The Passports with Purpose crew set up a site to organize the fundraiser, showcase the prize collection and facilitate donations through First Giving.

Check out the Passports with Purpose prize page for information about prizes, including an opportunity to whet your appetite for travel with a collection of books about traveling and culinary adventures offered by Midwest Guest:

Spain: A Culinary Road Trip by Mario Batali w/Gwyneth Paltrow
1,000 Places to See Before You Die-by Patricia Schultz
Immersion Travel USA-by Sheryl Kayne
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives-by Guy Fieri
Frommer's 500 Places to See Before They Disappear-by Holly Hughes

(Books shipped to a winner in the United States or Canada)

My book bundle is just one of the prizes offered in the Passports with Purpose effort. So, before you make your donation, be sure to check out all of the great prizes you could win.

Select the prizes you’d love to win, and go to the Passports with Purpose First Giving link to make your donation. For each ten dollar donation you make, Passports with Purpose enters you into the raffle for your prize of choice. Make sure you enter your email address and the prize you want to win in the comments field, so the Passports with Purpose crew can notify you if you win! Passports with Purpose promises not to use your email for any other purpose than to notify you if you win a prize. There is more information on the First Giving page.

Passports with Purpose founders will pull winners and notify them via email on December 30, 2008.

Want to learn more?

Visit Passports with Purpose here.

Help us help others, and maybe find some great travelblogs you’ll continue to enjoy year round in the process!

Meanwhile, best wishes for you and yours this holiday season!

© Dominique King 2008

Photo Friday

Here are a couple of photos for those who complain that the stores and malls immediately jump from Halloween displays to the excessive store displays often associated with Christmas.

Several touristy gift shops along the waterfront in Plymouth, Massachusetts have plenty of Thanksgiving holiday tchotchkes, trinkets, knickknacks and whatever on display. We saw this when we visited one hot and humid day at the end of the summer and stepped inside one of the stores to enjoy the air conditioning. You can certainly get your fill of ceramic Pilgrims and plastic Mayflower ships here!

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2008

Living history at Plimoth Plantation

One woman busily husked corn in the bright sunshine at the village center as another woman carefully crafted a bowl under the sheltering trees near a cooking fire at her home just a few minutes’ walk away from the cornhusker.

The common threads of caring for family ran through both vignettes, but the scenes at Plimoth Plantation were worlds apart in many other ways.

Plimoth Plantation presents a respectful representation of life in two distinctly different cultures. Modern Wampanoag and other Native Americans represent the Wampanoag living and working in Patuxet, while a cast of interpretive role players represent life in a neighboring 1627 colonial village populated by English settlers near the area now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts.

We left our car in Plimoth Plantation’s huge parking lot and took a short walk back in time to the wooded Wampanoag homesite. Signs along the trail urged visitors to ask questions and interact with the Wampanoag. The signs also gently reminded visitors to avoid culturally insensitive questions and stereotyping. This struck me as a slightly disturbing comment on the depth of the differences and misunderstanding existing between differing cultures, but these are differences that Plimoth Plantation strives to respect as the site educates visitors about the Native Americans and English settlers working and living there in the 1620s.

The wooded site and quiet industry of the Wampanoag as they worked in their home and gardens lent the site a sense of serenity, while the starkly sunlit colonial village and more vocally businesslike manner of the Pilgrims seemed to lend the village a more relentlessly bustling character. The contrasting character of each community only served to highlight a common strength of character that allowed both communities to carve homes out of a harsh land and climate.

Dusty trails led uphill to a fort that served as a defense for the colonial village, as well as hosting community meetings and worship. The village buzzed with activity as settlers prepared the harvest for use, maybe to cook in one of the settlement’s outdoor community ovens, and for preservation to last the harsh Plimoth winter.

Villagers acknowledged us and genially wished us “good morrow” as they continued their constant labor. Each thatch-roofed home in the village bid us to enter through open doors and see where the early Pilgrims spent time with their families, slept and arose to another work-filled day.

The Plimoth Plantation guidebook I purchased at the site’s gift store (yes, there’s always a gift store at these places, and I always end up with at least one book when I visit!) explained the site’s name. The spelling of P-l-i-m-o-t-h comes from a spelling used by early Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford in a history about the area. Seventeenth-century English people commonly used “plantation” to describe new colonies, or places they planted with people.

And it’s the people that make Plimoth Plantation come alive for modern visitors. Spending a pleasant day strolling through the 1627 village and returning the cheerful greetings of the industrious Pilgrims, or spending time with a Native American woman who showed me the soup she was preparing for her family and explained how she carefully maintained her cooking fire, gave me a new respect for the hard work required of each community to carve a decent life for their families out of the 1620s wilderness.

Postscript:

The Mayflower II is part of Plimoth Plantation, and you can read about our visit to the ship here.

The main Plimoth Plantation complex also includes a Crafts Center and a few conventional indoor museum exhibits in the Visitor Center near the entrance.

Museum visitors learn that the “first Thanksgiving” was really a harvest celebration, coupled with military exercises and diplomatic events during a three-day meeting between the Wampanoag and English colonists in 1621. It wasn’t until much later, in 1863, that President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday for expressing gratitude.

In any case, if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving this week, enjoy!

And thanks to everyone visiting Midwest Guest!

© Dominique King 2008

Aboard the Mayflower II

A queue dutifully formed in front of a small construction project enclosure along the waterfront in Plymouth, Massachusetts as tourists, eager to see the Plymouth Rock many of them learned about in elementary school, waited to see the famous boulder.

Work to update the display area to better preserve the surprisingly small rock meant that the partial glimpse people could catch of Plymouth Rock through a small window in the enclosure was unsatisfying and offered no photo opportunity to document their visit on a stifling hot day this past September.

A better and more interesting opportunity to learn more about the Pilgrims and their landing in the New World was just a short walk down the street where the Mayflower II stood ready to receive visitors.

Many of us believe we know the story of the Pilgrims, their crossing and their subsequent relationship with Native Americans as they settled into their new home, but the story told to young school children often suffered from a certain tinge of myth and misinformation. Efforts to present a more accurate version of events continue at interpretive sites like the Mayflower II and nearby Plimoth Plantation.

Research failed to find pictures of the original Mayflower, so the Mayflower II is a meticulous representation of the original ship based on specifications common to ships of the same time period. There are a few concessions like a staircase, instead of a ladder, leading below deck and electric lighting in particularly dim portions of the ship designed to accommodate modern visitors and their ability to more readily tour the ship.

Warwick Charlton, a veteran of World War II from England, envisioned a recreated Mayflower as a way to celebrate the close cooperation enjoyed between his country and the United States during WWII. Charlton’s search for a home for Project Mayflower led to approaching Plimoth Plantation, the interpretive museum dedicated to the colonial and Native communities in Massachusetts during the 1600s. Museum officials agreed to maintain and exhibit the Mayflower II in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Construction of the recreated vessel began in 1955, using period-specific materials. Upon completion, the ship launched under her own power in 1957 and made the crossing to a new home in America. The ship visited several U.S. ports before setting in Plymouth under the auspices and ownership of Plimoth Plantation.

Stepping aboard the Mayflower II gives you a relatively realistic idea of the cramped conditions endured by the Pilgrims as they journeyed overseas. When you learn that 102 passengers made the trip, and one baby was born during the passage, you gain an even better understanding of their hardships during the voyage.

Guides stationed throughout the Mayflower II explain many of the ship’s features. One of our guides explained how ship’s deck prisms inlaid into the deck allowed light below deck. I’d seen these conical pieces of glass sold as paperweights in various museum gift stores without ever knowing their true use as safe alternatives to candlelight or other dangerously flammable lighting options.

Costumed interpretive role players lent an extra touch of authenticity to our visit. We talked to the man immersed in the role of a ship’s master, who confided in us about his concerns over the large expense involved in keeping his ship afloat.

Role players undergo extensive training. Costuming and a dedication to recreating the dialect and attitudes contemporary to the 1620s are key components in recreating a character that enriches visitors’ understanding of the true story of the times and people who sailed aboard the original Mayflower.

© Dominique King 2008

Photo Friday

It took me a while to figure out how to deal with posting photos here. I ended up with thumbnail versions of my photos in the first few posts where I used them, and viewers could see a larger version of the photo by clicking on those thumbnails.

Still, one of my readers asked me if it was possible to post the photos in a larger size. I eventually figured out how to post photos that would display in a larger size, but I’ve yet to change my original posts to the larger photos.

So, this week’s Photo Friday post contains a few photos from one of my early blogs about visiting the National Arab American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The interior of the museum has a beautiful domed ceiling, intricate tile work and a lovely atrium with a small fountain in it. I was pleased with these photos, and I’m happy to finally share them with everyone in the larger display size.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2008

Midland’s Trademark Tridge

“What’s a tridge?”

It was a question that occurred to me only after seeing a small road sign pointing to “tridge” in downtown Midland, Michigan one late winter day.

Some of the best and most interesting stops we’ve found in our travels occurred when we’ve spotted a roadside sign that caused us to veer off of the main roads and do a little exploring. Finding Midland’s trademark tridge made for an intriguing photo opportunity, especially given my fascination with bridges and odd or unusual structures.

We quickly turned in the direction of where the sign pointed us and soon saw the city’s most iconic and identifying image.

Midland’s tridge is, just as you might guess from looking at the word, a three-way footbridge spanning the Tittabawassee and Chippewa rivers in the city’s Chippewassee Park. The unusual structure sits at the juncture of the two rivers and serves as a central meeting place in the city.

Concerts, family festivals like the annual three-day River Days event, political rallies, fundraisers and other events often occur at the Tridge. Groups like the Midland County Convention and Visitors Bureau use the Tridge as part of their logo, and “The Tridge” also lends its name to a monthly publication covering area politics, music, culture, fiction and poetry.

Built in 1981, the Tridge cost $732,000 and 6,400 hours to build. From the ground, the Tridge is imposing enough, and you can definitely see the Tridge’s “Y” formation when viewing an aerial photo of the structure.

The Tridge sits near a farmers market, the Trilogy Skate Park for skateboarders and the trailhead of the Pere Marquette Rail-Trail, a 30-mile trail for walking, bicycling and other non-motorized traffic that runs from downtown Midland to the city of Clare, Michigan.

The weather was a little cold when we were there, so the park and iconic Tridge were empty and quiet. We spent quite some time exploring the site and scouting the area out for a possible return in warmer weather for bicycling along the trail or geocaching in and around the park.

An interest in architecture initially brought us to Midland for that weekend.

We drove to the city, a few hours north of our home, to see an exhibit about the work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright at the Midland Center for the Arts. The center’s show also included exhibits detailing the work of one of Wright’s well-known apprentices, and Midland’s own, architect Alden B. Dow. Midland is home to Dow’s home and studio, as well as many Dow-designed buildings.

So, I guess it’s particularly appropriate that we should discover one of Midland’s architectural landmarks during our visit to the city. We’re looking forward to returning to Midland to learn more about Alden B. Dow and other cool Midland architectural landmarks.

© Dominique King 2008

Detroit’s largest art object recalls Art Deco’s gilded glory

Staking a claim as “Detroit’s largest art object” in the text of a state historical marker in the Fisher Building’s lobby may seem like audacious hyperbole, but exploring the beauty of the city’s best-known Art Deco gem lends credence to the statement.

I’d last visited the building many years ago when I attended a musical at the Fisher Theater before my most recent visit on a weekday afternoon. A banner announcing the building’s 80^th anniversary and a few vintage photographs showing businesses like a dress store and florist that originally occupied the building were the only signs of the prior day’s celebration of the milestone. But it was back to business as usual this weekday at the Fisher as theater patrons visited the box office, business people with briefcases and laptops scurried through the building and a few visitors shopped or enjoyed a cup of coffee in the building’s main arcade.

Built in 1928 and designed for the automotive pioneering Fisher family by the firm of the renowned architect Albert Kahn, with Joseph Nathaniel French as the chief architect, original plans for the project included a three-building complex with several towers. The stock market crash of 1929 and resulting Great Depression meant scaling back the project to a smaller building with just one tower, but the resulting structure stands today as an opulent monument to the gilded glories of Art Deco style.

The original three-building plan carried a projected tab of $35 million dollars. The scaled down version of the project eventually executed still cost $10 million dollars, with a quarter of that amount going into artwork and many of the luxurious trims still evident throughout the building.

Ornate grillwork and wall sconces, massive pendant lamps, colorfully hand-painted ceilings, gold leaf and marble throughout the building, intricate banisters and stairway handrails, a main arcade with soaring three-story barrel vault ceilings, along with carved interior and exterior stonework and bronze work are just a few of the luxurious touches that continue to maintain the Fisher’s status as a Detroit landmark.

The State of Michigan recognized the Fisher Building’s unique status by recognizing it as a Michigan Historical Landmark in 1978. The building became a National Historic Landmark in 1989.

The Fisher Building is home to WJR-AM radio, broadcasting for many years from atop the Fisher’s tall tower.

Today, other local radio stations join WJR in broadcasting from the Fisher and the building bustles with businesses ranging from Pure Detroit, which sells logo and other Detroit-oriented merchandise in a small store on the first floor, to assorted professional offices occupying the upper floors of the building.

The original plans for the Fisher represented an optimistic vision for Detroit’s future. The Fisher’s continuing beauty and service as a commercial center serves not only as a nod to Detroit’s past glories, but as testament to the city’s heart and continued perseverance in an admittedly challenging economic climate.

© Dominique King 2008

Photo Friday

Here are a few photos that didn’t fit into my earlier blog post about Point Betsie Lighthouse and its restoration.

These photos are a couple of views of the lighthouse late in its most recent restoration, plus a view from inside the lighthouse tower.

Check out the photos included with my earlier post to see a pre-restoration photo (where the top of the tower is white with a red roof, rather than the post-restoration color scheme of a black tower top), several views of the lighthouse mid-restoration and an alternate view of the beach looking the other way out of the tower.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2008

Detroit Symphony Orchestra stays in tune with the times

What does a world music festival featuring a global stew of rock, folk, hip-hop, reggae and other music genres have in common with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra?

Plenty it seems, as Detroit’s popular Concert of Colors annual diversity music festival and the city’s venerable symphony successfully joined forces to help both organizations thrive and, hopefully, grow stronger by feeding off of each other’s individual strengths.

The DSO’s readiness to host the four-day Concert of Colors when the festival was unable to continue at the city’s riverfront Chene Park location in 2006, brought a whole new audience into the symphony’s beautiful Orchestra Hall and Max M. Fisher Music Center—many who heard the symphony for the first time as the group played as one of the festival acts.

Partnering with the Concert of Colors, a newly tricked-out Web site and a new 37/11 program that offers affordable symphony ticket prices for younger patrons are but only a few ways the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is aggressively reaching out to a younger and more diverse potential audience.

Reports in recent years about the financial difficulties of other Midwestern symphony orchestras, like those in the Ohio cities of Cincinnati and Columbus, plus a challenging financial climate in the Motor City itself, makes the DSO’s success as a viable and well-regarded symphony even more impressive.

Excitement is especially evident these days as the DSO celebrates the beginning of “the Slatkin era”. Leonard Slatkin recently ended a 12-year tenure as Music Director of The National Symphony Orchestra and brings his international reputation and talent to Detroit this year as our new symphony director. Slatkin’s personable manner, and his emphasis on music education and advocacy, makes him a perfect fit with the DSO as they continue their efforts to broaden their appeal and survive as their core audience ages.

The DSO partnership with the Concert of Colors originally drew us as symphony subscribers. We attended the diversity festival several times at their Chene Park location and followed the festival when it relocated to the DSO’s venue. We loved Orchestra Hall, with its beautiful auditorium and perfect acoustics, and enjoyed hearing the symphony play during the festival’s first night in 2006. A look at the DSO schedule intrigued us enough to sign up for seven-concert series of tickets, and we’ve continued to enjoy both the symphony and the Concert of Colors at The Max.

While the symphony schedule offers plenty of Mozart, Beethoven and other classical music greats, we’ve also enjoyed several of the orchestra’s more adventurous offerings and the occasional concert from their Pops, Jazz or other special concert series.

One of my favorite classical shows included tap dancer Savion Glover as a featured soloist where the sounds of his tapping feet served as a sort of instrumental accompaniment to a performance of Duke Ellington’s classical symphony, “The River”. We’ve also enjoyed seeing acts like Celtic fiddler and step dancer Natalie McMaster, as well as jazz trumpeter Bryon Stripling playing New Orleans and Louis Armstrong classics.

Featuring contemporary talent and music, a continuing dedication to traditional classical music and a commitment to making music accessible to all audiences, are key ingredients in the DSO’s effort to continue to thrive and stay in tune with the times.  

© Dominique King 2008

Aisle Seat

I love movies, but the whole experience of watching a so-so flick at a crowded and pricey megaplex theater leaves me cold. So, I’m especially grateful for the Detroit Film Theater (DFT) at the Detroit Institute of Arts, which shows an eclectic schedule of films you just won’t find at the local megaplex.

I started going to movies at the DFT many years ago when I managed to talk Tim and another friend into going to see a film called “Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey”. If you’ve ever watched a cheesy 1950s sci-fi flick, you’ve probably hear the spooky strains of the theremin’s electronic music, but this movie about the instrument’s inventor Leon Theremin contains more intrigue than many of today’s biggest blockbusters. Still, it’s the kind of movie you’d never see at your local megaplex.

Consider “Cold Fever”, an Icelandic-Japanese movie about a young Japanese businessman who cancels a Hawaiian vacation to undertake an odyssey that takes him to Iceland in order to perform a traditional Japanese ritual to honor his parents. The movie features stunning Icelandic scenery and the fascinating story of a spiritual quest. You would probably never see this movie playing at most local theaters, either.

Getting caught up in a 1927 silent movie about pioneering farmers during the early 1900s in Siam (present-day Thailand) and their dramatic battle against marauding “chang” (the Siamese word for elephant) that threaten to destroy their village and harm their families would be a unique experience in any movie theater. That experience is even more unique and exciting when watching “Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness”, accompanied by a soundtrack composed and performed live by the Alloy Orchestra.

I’m a real fan of documentaries, and the DFT offered a series of films from documentarian Errol Morris several years ago. Morris is perhaps best known for films like “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons Learned from the Life of Robert S. McNamara” and “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control”, which features several folks with obsessively odd occupations.

However, the DFT series offered fans a chance to see some of Morris’ earlier and lesser known work like “Gates of Heaven”, a strange documentary centering on two pet cemeteries in California. Then again, most of Morris’ work is strange, which is a large part of its charm for me.

I’ve seen these movies, and many others, in the DFT’s majestic 1920s theater. The 1,200-seat theater, designed by architects Paul Philippe Cret and Detroiter C. Howard Crane, features all of the sumptuous gilding, grillwork and Art Deco-style touches so common in some of the 1920s most beautiful movie theater houses. Crane also designed Detroit’s Fox Theater, a stunning late-1920s movie house, restored in the late 1980s and still in operation today.

The DFT fields a schedule of films that runs Thursday through Sunday most weeks of the year. Films include documentaries, foreign films from around the globe and restored classics ranging from popular silent films to more recent films like the stunning wide-screen showing of “The Graduate” we saw that commemorated the 40^th anniversary of that film a couple of years ago.

Next up for us? We’re planning to see “Patti Smith: Dream of Life”, a film about Detroit poet, political activist and priestess of punk, playing at the DFT this weekend.

Look for me in the aisle seat!

© Dominique King 2008