Celeb spotting in…. Ann Arbor?

by Grant Martin on

Desperate to restart it’s economy, Michigan has been floundering around for the past few years trying to find something to replace the dying automotive and pharmaceutical industries that made the state what it was. The politicians’ solution? Siphon off parts of the film industry and plant it in Michigan — a variety of landscapes, bus loads of workers and inexpensive goods await any producer willing to set up camp in The Great Lakes State.

As an added incentive, Michigan is offering substantial rebates to any filmmaker ready to invest in the local economy, so much that the residents are virtually paying the expenses for the entire shoot. With a deal that they essentially can’t refuse, Hollywood studios are flocking to the shores of Lake Michigan, sand dunes of Traverse City and quaint streets of Ann Arbor to shoot films, surprising residents with closed streets, car chases and celebrities wandering through their bars and restaurants.

Just last month I ran into actor Jonathan B. Wright on a flight to New York, who is in the process of filming Youth in Revolt with Ray Liotta and Michael Cera (think Superbad) in downtown Ann Arbor. he told me that over forty films were scheduled to shoot in Michigan this summer. Drew Barrymore apparently just bought a house near the city while Madonna is currently runnning around at the Traverse City Film Fest.

So next time you want to head out on a celebrity spotting mission, scrap your plans for Mulholland drive and Santa Monica. Book a ticket to Detroit instead and hit the bars in Royal Oak and Ann Arbor friday and saturday nights — you’re sure to run into someone famous in no time.

Great American Road Trip: Travel books for the road. 1 of 4: Sun After Dark

by Jamie Rhein on

I’m one of those people who haul books when I travel. I am ambitious, imagining hours of page turning. Usually, though, I barely crack a book. One advantage of riding in a car across a good portion of the United States, as I have recently experienced on my family’s road trip to Montana, is the hours for reading.

There are miles and miles and miles between Ohio and Montana, particularly if you head north to take in North Dakota.

On the way back, Iowa can feel endless. Indiana–dreadful. (Not to put down those lovely states, but at the end of a trip, even with stops, they seem bigger than they are.) As wonderful as scenery is, a book helps move the pavement along, particularly if the book is written by a person who is also on a journey. I brought four such books on my cross-country jaunt and recommend each of them. In the next three days, I’ll be posting on each one.

Here is the first one. I read this one through Minnesota and North Dakota.

Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign—Pico Iyer

An excerpt: “We travel most, I mean to say, when we stumble, and we stumble most when we come to a place of poverty and need (like Haiti, perhaps, or Cambodia): and what we find in such confounding places, often, is that it is the sadness that makes the sunshine more involving or, as often, that it is the spirit and optimism of the place that make the difficulties more haunting.”

Pico Iyer is one of my favorite travel writers and this book of essays does not disappoint. As he explains in the first essay, “The Place Across the Mountains,” the book is a result of his desire to travel to some of the poorest corners in the world in order to shed light on their importance and as well as add to the understanding about what poverty means.

Lest you think that this is a depressing missive that will leave you weeping over your backpack or pull-behind suitcase, chastising yourself for the delight you feel about your own travels when parts of the world have such problems, this is not the case. Iyer’s lyric quality is luminous in its prose and if nothing else, gives the awareness to the reader that hope prevails.

Sun After Dark makes a worthy book for the road because each essay is a stand alone piece. This means that if you put it down for a few days, you won’t feel lost when you pick it up again. The culmination of the essays as a group offers a variety of Iyer’s experiences that range from the fantastic to the simple.

It’s also a good book to share. Once on our trip, my husband didn’t have the books he was reading with him. I handed him this one because he could read an essay or two and it wouldn’t interrupt the flow of the other books he wanted to finish before embarking on another one.

One of the sections that hit a high mark on the unusual travel experiences spectrum is Iyer’s account of his visit to a Bolivian prison. Since Iyer had seen all that he had set out to see, more or less, the prison was at the tail end of his trip. This was one of those ideas that after wards makes one think, “What was I thinking?”

Also enjoyable are Iyer’s in depth accounts of his visit with the Dalai Lama and his time at the same Zen retreat center as Leonard Cohen. Along with the descriptions of the settings are insights into the workings of these men and Iyer’s own musings about how he fits into the scheme of existence.

As usual, no matter where Iyer goes, he sees the wonder and the beauty of humanity, even in those places that are troubling. This is a book to read if you like to think about where you are traveling, as well as, the mysteries and nuances of life.

Butter cows and other butter sculptures

by Jamie Rhein on

Intelligent Travel recently posted about the Iowa State Fair’s tradition of the butter cow. This is not the only state to boast a life-size cow sculpted out of pounds and pounds of butter. Other fairs have cow and other objects done up in butter as part of their fair traditions.

The Ohio State Fair jumped on the butter cow bandwagon awhile back and has added other butter sculptures to the dairy wow factor. This year, displayed in the same case as the cow and her calf, is Ohio’s version of Mt. Rushmore–the faces of the eight U.S. presidents who were born in Ohio.

I was fortunate enough to visit the display this past Friday. There is a voice recording that blares out butter sculpture facts so that any one within yards of the building can get the scoop on exactly what’s involved in such an endeavor.

I also found the facts in this post by Kathy Lynn Gray who is blogging on the Ohio State Fair. It takes two tons of butter to sculpt 8 presidents and 2 cows. In stick numbers, that’s 8,000 sticks of butter.

If you’d like to try sculpting butter yourself, you’ll need a dairy case that is kept at 46 degrees in which to work, but work fast. You’ll only be able to work in increments of 40 minutes because you’ll get too cold and need to take a break.

In the same building that houses the butter sculptures at the Ohio State Fair, you can buy ice-cream, butter-milk and milk. The milk was a bargain at $1 for a 1/2 pint. If you happen to want ice-cream, the line moves fairly quickly. There are only four flavors: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and mint chocolate chip. My son shared.

A friend of mine wants to know what happens to the butter after the fair. I’m not sure I’d want to eat any of that butter on toast, even if it is kept cold. For more butter sculpture info, click here.

The best Russian-language author you’ve (probably) never heard of

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Before I’d ever heard of Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), Russia was just a big country on the other side of the world known for its uncanny ability to produce vodka and hockey players with impossibly long surnames. As soon as I read a story or two of Gogol’s, I wanted to find out as much as I could about Russia, the setting for most of Gogol’s short stories and his masterpiece, a novel called Dead Souls.

I first read Gogol about five years ago, and I’ve had a bad case of Russophilia ever since.

So why do I think all you travelers out there in Gadlingland will fall in love with this old Russian geezer from the early 19th Century? Quite simply, because of his novel Dead Souls, a hilarious account of a swindler’s journey through provincial Russia. In between humorous yet scathing criticisms of the Russian ruling class and meditations on the essence of the Russian character, Gogol discusses the healing, restorative power of travel. When one character, suffering from malaise and stagnation, seeks the advice of a friend, his friend responds:

“I am beginning to think that a journey might shake you up. Your trouble is a sleepy soul. You have quite simply fallen asleep– and you have fallen asleep not out of any satiety or weariness, but from the lack of any vivid impressions or sensations.”

In other words, seeing somewhere new wakes you up to the joys of life. Isn’t that why we all travel?

Gogol wrote mostly short stories, and one of his most well-known is “The Nose,” in which a Russian official’s nose disappears from his face and reappears in a neighbor’s loaf of bread. Eventually, the nose is seen walking around the streets of St. Petersburg, and finally, for no apparent reason, the nose reappears back on the man’s face.

Gogol ends the story by chiding the narrator for telling such an absurd tale: “But what is stranger, what is more incomprehensible than anything is that authors can choose such subjects. I confess that it is quite beyond my grasp, it really is… It is absolutely without profit to our country.” Finally, Gogol admits that maybe the story had a point after all: “And yet, in spite of it all… are there not absurd things everywhere? When you think it over, there really is something in it. Despite what anyone may say, such things do happen– not often, but they do happen.”

Some of Gogol’s other well-known works are a play called The Government Inspector, and “The Overcoat,” a short story. In fact, Dostoyevsky once famously praised Gogol, saying that later Russian writers “all came out from under Gogol’s Overcoat.”

Gogol, in my opinion, is a criminally underrated author, and I strongly recommend him to Russophiles such as myself, and to all those interested in Russia. His writing is always perceptive, often hilarious, and never dull.

Largest indoor train display in the world at new train lovers’ attraction

by Jamie Rhein on

Train-love runs deep in Ohio, there are scenic railroads, train stores, train societies, clubs of train watchers and old railroad station restaurants. Here is another example.

Friday, August 1 was the grand opening of EnterTRAINment Junction, a train attraction that is being billed as “the only train-themed family entertainment center in the world.” Located 30 miles north of Cincinnati, not far from Kings Island amusement park, makes this a place to pair with other family fun type ventures.

Geared to folks of all ages, EnterTRAINment Junction, boasts five separate sections. One of them houses the largest indoor train display in the world. What makes it the largest? There are 90 different trains that run on several different tracks through a variety of scenes and at various heights. Remember that’s just one section.

Another section houses the American Railroading Museum. Here, the history of railroading in the United States is traced.

Specifically designed to grab kids’ attention, the section Imagination Junction has interactive displays to keep kids busy and teach them about trains in the process.

Seasonal Junction, also interactive, is geared for both adults and children. This is a walk through type experience that will change throughout the year.

The last section is the Train Expo where train enthusiasts can show off their stuff and gather more information. Rotating trains exhibits, a library and artifacts are part of the offerings.

As mega attractions go, the cost for admission is not bad. Right now, everyone can get in for $9.95, except kids under 3 are free.