Midwest Guest

Where’s George?

George gets around.

In the past ten days, I’ve seen reports placing George in Michigan, as well as Illinois, Connecticut, Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Texas, California and Indiana.

Over the past three years, my Georges logged nearly 750,000 travel miles and visited nearly every state in the Union—although George is still trying to make it to Alaska last I heard. During the same three years, George visited Canada, Honduras, Mexico, Bahamas, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. George also reported back from Germany and the United Kingdom.

I can only wish that I traveled as much as George!

How do I know what George is up to these days? I vicariously enjoy George’s travels and track them via the Where’s George Web site.

I suppose it may sound geeky to some folks, but I enjoy seeing where my bills go, tracking their progress with a series of maps and reading some of the funky user notes people leave for me as they report on George’s travels.

Where’s George, a currency tracking system devised and developed by a Massachusetts man, Hank Eskin, tracks user-entered bills by serial numbers and year issued. Eskin became intrigued with the natural and geographic way currency circulated and developed a sophisticated database and site to track the currency he had in his pockets. He launched Where’s George in late 1998.

Celebrating a decade in existence this month, the site allows people curious about where their money actually goes when it leaves their pocket, wallet or purse to track its travels. Users have entered more than 140,000,000 bills totaling more than $750,000,000 into the site in hopes of hearing from their George (Tom, Abe, Alex, Andy, Uly or Ben) as it travels.

I love traveling. But if I can’t be on the road, I always enjoy seeing where George turns up next!

It usually takes at least a few months and a thousand or so bills to start seeing your Georges travel a little distance, but it quickly becomes an absorbing hobby for many people.

Most Georgers seem to enter bills for the fun of a hobby. Others have more serious purposes in mind, like homeschooling parents who use the site to develop their own lesson plans involving subjects like geography or math.

Most notably on the serious side, the site attracted attention of researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization. Those researchers saw the currency circulation tracking system as a possible means to help predict how a virus spreads from human to human.  Reasoning that people take money from place to place, and that viruses travel in much the same way, researchers monitored the movement of bills and published their conclusions in the Nature journal.

The site has an extensive network of discussion forums that range from topics strictly related to currency tracking to a wide range of social networking, games and threads covering a host of non-Georging subjects.

Because the site draws a wide range of folks of all ages and from all over the U.S., Canada and even from outside of North America, it’s possible to find others interested almost any topic imaginable. I’ve found advice about geocaching, chat with other hockey fans, a few fellow bloggers and support dealing with difficult situations. When one Georger died suddenly in a job-related accident earlier this year, his fellow Georgers from around the country quickly raised money to seed an account to send his youngest child to college after the kid finishes high school.

Georgers also use the forums to organize local gatherings like one I attended this week with about a dozen other Georgers from Michigan and Ohio.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to hearing where George turns up next. Will one of my bills turn up in a vending machine in Wisconsin? Will one of my bills attend a big hockey tournament or football contest? Will one of my bills reportedly turn up in a strip bar? Will someone report back that George is sunning himself on a sunny beach in the tropics? And will one of my bills finally make it to Alaska?

© Dominique King 2008

Photo Friday

Regular readers of Midwest Guest may remember one of my first blog posts about spending a sunny summer afternoon at Ohio’s Marblehead Lighthouse and climbing the long spiral staircase to the top of the tower.

We recently revisited Marblehead on the way home from a trip to Cleveland. The day was cold, but clear and sunny, making it perfect for snapping a few photos of the light in its holiday finery.

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

Tree recalls travel memories

I love decorating our Christmas tree every year.

We crank up the holiday tunes, bring up the boxes stuffed with ornaments from their basement storage closet and undo the knot of ornament hooks as we survey the ornament collection I began as a young kid.

Some of our favorite ornaments evoke memories of our travels over the years, because holiday ornaments are often the souvenirs I bring back from a trip.

We usually treat ourselves to a lobster dinner on Christmas Eve, ordering steamed lobsters from our local fish market and bringing them home to enjoy by the lights of our tree. So, when I spotted a lobster ornament in Newport, Rhode Island earlier this summer, I knew I had to bring it home to hang on our tree this year.

Northern Michigan is one of our favorite destinations, and I love visiting the Gwen Frostic store in Benzonia for “Up North” themed cards, wrapping paper, woodblock prints and other gifts featuring the late artist’s woodland-inspired work. When I spotted a glass disc ornament featuring a favorite Frostic chickadee motif, it ended up in my shopping basket and coming home with me to hang on our tree every year.

Lighthouses are favorite photography subjects for us, and northern Minnesota’s Split Rock light, perched high on a cliff overlooking Lake Superior, is one of the more beautiful lights we’ve visited. So the miniature yellow, white and black ceramic version of the Split Rock Light was another ornament that I had to have for our Christmas tree.

Little llama ornaments made from sheared llama hair recall a pleasant afternoon we spent at a Llama Festival while visiting Vermont a few years ago. I feel the soft fur and remember a “llama trek” we took the same year where our llama companions Tumbleweed and Toro accompanied us on a walk through Vermont woods culminated by a gourmet picnic lunch in a meadow as our llamas grazed nearby.

A miniature sock monkey reminds me of the Thanksgiving we spent on the road, searching for an open restaurant as we returned from a trip to South Carolina. We finally found an open Cracker Barrel along the highway in North Carolina, where we had a turkey dinner. I always wanted a sock monkey, so when I found a pair of cute sock monkey ornaments in the Cracker Barrel store, they came home with us to hang on our tree.

I think about last year’s trip to the wide open land of Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas when I hang several copper cut-outs of sheep, horses and buffaloes on my tree.

And I wonder where the wide-open road will take us next.

Here’s wishing you and yours a glorious and blessed holiday season and the happiest of New Years!

© Dominique King 2008

Drop the puck!

Joe College dons his graduation cap and gown, as well as a hockey mask and skates, and prepares to take the ice at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena each year between Christmas and New Years Day.

No, this isn’t some sort of bizarre hockey school graduation ceremony! But it probably is a dream come true for many young hockey players as they prepare to play on the same ice known as home to many Detroit Red Wing hockey heroes and as home to the annual Great Lakes Invitational (GLI) College Hockey Tournament.

Arena mascot Joe College is just one of the traditions associated with this venerable college hockey tournament. The two-day tournament, conceived as a showcase to promote the sport and encourage interest in playing hockey among American-born athletes, began in 1965 at the old Olympia Stadium in Detroit. When the Detroit Red Wings moved from Olympia to their new Joe Louis Arena in 1979, the GLI moved to the Joe as well.

We’ve attended nearly every GLI since the tourney’s debut at the Joe because we enjoy the skilled level of play and find tourney tickets more accessible and affordable than going to pro hockey games. It’s also interesting when players we followed during their college careers make it to the pros, and we can tell people we remember seeing them play in the GLI at the Joe.

Michigan Tech and the University of Michigan teams serve as the official tournament hosts, with Michigan State University as a traditional third tournament participant. The fourth tournament team comes from among one of the other top men’s college hockey teams in the nation, with the Fighting Sioux from the University of North Dakota filling the fourth tourney berth for 2008.

Even though the Joe is a big-city arena, hosting the college tournament brings some of the more quirky features of a collegiate contest to the pro arena. Michigan Tech accounts for some of the most colorful customs with the DaWGs Pep Band clad in yellow-and-black striped overalls playing their live rendition of “No Beer!” and mascot Blizzard T. Husky taking the ice with Joe College to skate and toss T-shirts into the crowd between periods.

The teams quickly get down to some serious hockey once the whistle blows, though.

Two games played during the GLI’s first day determine the line up for Day Two’s consolation game and final championship game to determine which team raises their banner to hang in the Joe’s rafters until the next Great Lakes Invitational.

The GLI is definitely one of our favorite holiday traditions!

© Dominique King 2008

Passports with Purpose

I enjoy decorating our Christmas tree and enjoying the tree, with its special ornaments and twinkling lights, in the warmth of my home. It’s a tradition that brings a lot of joy to me during the season.

I’m also overjoyed to participate in a new tradition aimed at sharing the joy of the season and the gift of giving with others—Passports with Purpose, a travelbloggers’ fundraising effort to benefit Heifer International.

Passports with Purpose is nearing its goal of raising $5,000 to benefit Heifer International as I write this, but there is still a week left to get in on the action and help us meet and surpass our goal!

Check out the Passports with Purpose prize page for information about prizes, including an opportunity to whet your appetite for travel with my book package:

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 (prize #B01) 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 number of 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.

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

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

© Dominique King 2008

Photo Friday

Everyone loves a parade!

I always like lounging around home on Thanksgiving morning, turning on the television, watching the holiday parades and waiting for Santa to ride into town to kick off the Christmas season. Never mind that mall stores are pushing the holiday shopping season ever closer to Halloween, the season doesn’t really start in my mind until Santa arrives, greets the crowd and receives the keys to the city.

Visiting Chicago a few years ago, we ventured out of the warm cocoon of our hotel room on a briskly cold Thanksgiving morning to catch some of the city’s parade preparations and huddle on a crowded street corner to watch some of our favorite parade balloons pass by.

Ah, but if Chicago only had a Super Grover balloon!

Flying Muppet! Red nose! Is Rudolph still working with the reindeer, or does Santa need a new guide for his sleigh team?

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

Touro and Trinity in Newport

Rhode Island’s history as an early refuge for those seeking religious freedom resulted in some of the state’s towns developing a bit differently from the tradition New England model of a community centered by one church that served the religious needs of most, if not all, of the area’s residents.

Newport is a good example of a city where many different congregations established churches that enveloped the city’s core in a comforting web of faith represented by numerous houses of worship scattered throughout the downtown area.

We visited the homes of two of Newport’s oldest and most notable congregations while staying in the city earlier this year.

Newport seemed to us an unlikely home for the oldest synagogue in the United States, but it really does stand to reason that Rhode Island’s reputation as a haven of religious tolerance would attract a congregation that established Touro Synagogue.

Touro Synagogue, dedicated in 1763, owes its respectful melding of majestic Georgian architecture and the traditions of Sephardic Jews to the design of well-known Newport architect Peter Harrison and the guidance of Isaac Touro, the congregation’s spiritual leader at the time.

Paying the small fee to take the synagogue tour was definitely worthwhile, although we were surprised to find we seemed to be the only non-Jewish folks in our tour group. Tour guides take small groups of 10 or 12 people into the synagogue for a tour, a short talk about the site’s history and to answer questions.

When our tour guide pointed out an elaborate chandelier as a feature that created a good bit of controversy for the 1760s era congregation, we were the only ones in our group who couldn’t correctly guess why. Our tour guide explained that the fixture in question featured images of human heads, viewed as a form of idolatry by strict members of the faith. The chandelier, a gift from the people of Newport, was a meant as a welcoming gesture. Touro’s congregation eventually accepted the kind gesture represented by the gift, and it remains a prominent feature in the synagogue today.

The chandelier was one of a group of metal artifacts undergoing a restoration in 2005-2006. Check out a detailed report of that project with some great before and after photos here.

Our guide also said that architect Harrison, unfamiliar with Jewish faith and traditions, expressed initial reluctance about designing Touro Synagogue. He eventually agreed to accept the commission to design the building, now a National Historic Site and one of the elite group of sites named to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The historic 1726 Trinity Episcopal Church, a National Historic Landmark modeled after Boston’s famous Old North Church, is a short walk from Touro Synagogue.

Trinity regularly welcomes visitors to tour the church. Box pews, beautiful stained glass windows (many of them picturing famous parishioners and benefactors from Trinity’s history), a massive pipe organ in the church balcony, and the sole center-aisle, triple-deck, freestanding pulpit left in America today, make it an unusual and interesting sanctuary.

A small graveyard surrounding the church featuring some headstones dating back to the early years of the church’s history also make for some interesting browsing. It is fun to imagine the lives of the people behind the names and the sometimes funky graphic images carved into the stones.

The day we visited, we listened in on a lecture given to a small class of local college students visiting the church with their professor.

Visiting both Trinity Episcopal Church and Touro Synagogue offered an intriguing look at just two of the historic congregations that contributed to Newport, Rhode Island’s vibrant and diverse religious community.

© Dominique King 2008

Christkindlmarket in Chicago

Unpacking our Christmas decorations and bringing them up from their basement storage closet usually brings back memories of some of our most enjoyable trips. I often bring some sort of holiday ornament or decoration back from our travels, and two of the nutcrackers I unpacked and brought upstairs this past weekend to display by my tree brought back memories of a trip to Chicago and a visit to that city’s Christkindlmarket.

The Christkindlmarket established in Nuremburg, Germany in 1545 served as an inspiration to Chicago’s German-theme, open-air Christmas market. The Nuremburg market is one of Germany’s oldest Christmas fairs, and the tradition continues today with approximately 200 vendors selling traditional German foods, drink and holiday decorations from the Friday before the first Sunday of Advent through Christmas Eve on December 24.

Chicago’s version of Christkindlmarket plays host to 40 to 50 vendors offering a festive taste of German food, music and culture in shadow of a unique Picasso sculpture in the city’s Daley Plaza. Established in 1996, Chicago’s Christkindlmarket started as an effort by the city’s German American Chamber of Commerce to promote trade between the United States and Germany.  The Chicago market moved to Daley Plaza in 1997 and grew into a holiday tradition in the city. Chicago’s Christkindlmarket now draws more than 500,000 visitors each year during the four-week long event, which runs from Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve.

We discovered the market one afternoon as we explored the city on foot, taking the opportunity to scout out some of the vendor booths and snap a few photos. One of my favorite booths was the canvas and wood-trimmed store that housed some of the most beautiful nutcrackers, smokers and ornaments from the Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas Shop.

We made it a point to return later in the evening to enjoy the German music, jovial crowds, beautiful holiday lights and, of course, a little shopping!

The Chicago Christkindlmarket bills itself as a change of pace from commercial shopping districts like the city’s Magnificent Mile and State Street.  Savory Old World treats like potato pancakes, hot spiced wine or German sausages tempt shoppers as they stroll among the lighted holiday decorations, listen to carolers and shop for unique gifts.

I spent most of my time in the Käthe Wohlfahrt booth that evening, finally deciding to purchase a rosy-cheeked snowman nutcracker and a small Santa nutcracker equipped with a tiny hammer, paint can and other tools needed to create his holiday toys.

I look at my two nutcrackers and remember spending a crisp winter evening enjoying the sights, smells and sounds of a traditional German-style Christmas and hoping it won’t be too long before we can make a return trip to Chicago and its beautiful Christkindlmarket.

© Dominique King 2008

Passports with Purpose

We fell in love with Basque cuisine when we visited Basque Country during a walking tour of the area several years ago.

Great food was everywhere we traveled in the Basque region. We even stopped at a highway truck stop where a long line of cured hams hung drying over the coffee counter as travelers enjoyed a quick roadside meal.

Reading Mario Batali’s descriptions of visiting the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim art museum in Bilbao, sampling pintxos (the Basque word for tapas) mid-afternoon at a busy pintxos counter and enjoying hake fish prepared with a pil-pil sauce brought back some nice memories of our trip to the Basque Country. You can check out Batali’s Basque adventures, and exploration of other regions of a country with a fascinating cultural and culinary history, in his book Spain: A Culinary Road Trip, a companion volume to his Public Broadcasting System television series of the same name.

This book is just one in a package of food and travel books donated by Midwest Guest to the travelblogger Passports with Purpose fundraiser benefiting Heifer International.

Check out the Passports with Purpose prize page for information about prizes, including an opportunity to whet your appetite for travel with my book package:

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 number of 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.

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

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

© Dominique King 2008

Photo Friday

I recently ran across these photos from a trip we took out to Chicago several years ago.

I always love visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, primarily because of their excellent collection of Impressionist-era paintings.

Seeing the big lions out front, decked out in their holiday finery, is also always fun to see.

I remember one year when we visited the museum the day after Thanksgiving. A long line of people queued up at the front of the building, waiting for it to open for the day.

Chicago has a weekly news magazine called Streetwise. The publication employs vendors who are currently homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless, to sell newspapers on city streets and create at least a small opportunity for them to earn income.

A Streetwise vendor hawked papers in front of the museum that day with the promise that he’d tell museum visitors the location of the entrance with no lines to get in with their paper purchase.

Most folks ignored him.

Now, I like reading local publications, so I usually will purchase local papers or pick up the freebies.

I’d heard about this paper and its sales system. Plus, it was a cold day and even as the museum was set to open within minutes, standing around in a long outside line to get in didn’t sound like a lot of fun.

So, I bought a paper.

Soon we were around on the back side of the museum and walking into the warm building, while the folks out front were still freezing in line waiting to get inside.

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