Globe Corner Blogs

Insiders' Guide to St. Louis

My family and I took a trip to St. Louis to spend Christmas with my brother and his family.  This was our second Christmas in a row in which we managed the daring thousand mile drive.  It was brutal: the first three hours of the trip we drove through a treacherous snowstorm where the average speed on the highway was 20 mph.  Not to mention three backseat drivers that were of minimal use.  Eventually we made it and the 19 hour car ride was topped off with a beer at two am with my brother.

We spent the week at his house relaxing and driving the kids crazy with the pending arrival of the mysterious Santa.  The food was delicious and St. Louis was fun.  I was finally able to catch up on some long-awaited reading and movie watching.  Then disaster struck…

There I was on Christmas Eve at about ten o’clock at night.  All was going great and my brother’s kids were about to go to bed.  Continue Reading »

Lonely Planet Greenland & The Arctic

**The GCB recently coerced Santa (with the help of cookies and plenty of egg nog) to write a guest post for our blog**

In less than a week, I will be loading up my sleigh for my annual trip around the globe. Millions of little minds all over the world are wondering not only, “what will I get this year?!” but also, “how does he do it?” Well, my tiny tots, there is no GPS system in Santa’s ride. All year long I pore over world maps, country maps, city street maps until I’m sure I have the best route down. This is not to say I don’t keep a few in the mitten compartment. (Always make a wrong turn at Albuquerque…) Of course, the magic reindeer help out too.

Now, I come visit each of you once a year–it’s time for you to come visit me up in the North Pole! Maybe this year I’ll leave some brightly wrapped books on the Arctic region under your Christmas tree. Or perhaps I’ll just leave you a guide to the Arctic–or how about a guide to the animals here? It’s not just reindeer and snowmen, you know; there are even polar bears up here!

Things are pretty busy in the ol’ workshop these days, though, so hold off on your trip till after Christmas – and after Santa’s winter vacation in Cancun… As for now, just snuggle up in your PJs with some hot cocoa and make sure the grown-ups clean out the chimney.

Birdscapes -by Miyoko Chu

Past a certain age, pop-up books no longer seem like an appropriate style of book to have prominently displayed on the bookshelf or laying out on the coffee table. Most would probably choose a leather-bound world atlas or a lovely photography book of, say, Paris, over any pop-up book. After all, pop-up books are always for kids, right? Well, as you may have guessed, there are adult-friendly pop-up books too! And we have two of them: Birdscapes, A Pop-Up Celebration of Bird Songs in Stereo Sound and Modern Architecture Pop-Up.

These two books are carefully designed and crafted by “paper engineers” (yes, that is the proper title for pop-up artists) whose attention to detail proves that pop-ups can be truly complex and artistic.

Continue Reading »

Ohio woods in winter -photo by Llalan

In one week I will be on the road again (or in the air again, technically). It’s been a while since I’ve traveled, but it’s not a bite from the travel bug that has prompted this trip. Nor am I headed to some posh hotel on a business trip. And I’m certainly not headed to any exotic locale. Yet I’m more excited about this trip than any I’ve been on in a long time. I’m going home.

It’s been quite a while since I spent any significant amount of time back home in Ohio. Though the forests have been stripped bare of leaves and the green fields have turned to a collage of browns, it’s still beautiful to me.

Continue Reading »

I have hit a Christmas present-buying road block. My father officially has everything he will ever need that concerns golf. He neither needs nor wants anything else except for his grandson to become the next Tiger Woods. This has become a problem for me, because I have faithfully given him some golf related gift since I was an infant.

So, I have to move on to another one of his obsessions: Boeing and airplanes. I recently gave him the book Ask the Pilot: Everything you Need to Know About Air Travel. Patrick Smith, an airline pilot explains all the secrets and mysteries of commercial flights. My dad’s review was “I’ll be darned! I never knew that in the 1950s a Boeing 707 was intentionally flown upside down! How did I miss that!?” If you knew my dad, you would be impressed. He is a man of few words.

Continue Reading »