Message in a bottle

i was skimming through some of the vanilla blogs i read.. and came across one where the chap was writing about Where’s George which is the American version of Where’s Willy .

These are both sites where folks are encouraged to write their city on a dollar bill (in the case of Canadians it would have to be on a five dollar bill) and then log into the appropriate web site and register the bill. You can then check back days - weeks - later and see if / or where your bill is. i never had any success... i did it for a month or two a few summers back.. but despite putting the web site on each bill AND the city of origin... my bills never turned up again. (i understand though many do have success and get to watch their bills travel around the country)

The chap i was reading this morning said it reminded him of the old "message in a bottle"... and i agreed with him........ it would be fun to see where one's money travels.

Many years ago .. for Remembrance Day (Veteran's day in the States) every child in our school wrote a message of peace and all the messages were attached to helium balloons with pleas to email the school, phone the school, or snail mail the school to let us know where our balloons had traveled to. We even had a big map up in the foyer that was all prepared for the brightly coloured flags we were going to stick to the map to indicate all the places our balloons had travelled. Well needless to say .. that project fell flat.. i believe we only received 2 or 3 responses (which was VERY disappointing to our kiddies) but one i remember came from south of the border and the gentleman who found the balloon wrote a very nice letter to the kids of the school commending them on their effort to seek peace.

The blogs we write are a little bit like the original message in the bottle idea..
We write messages and send them off into the great void that is the net.. hoping that someone may read them and learn a little bit about us..... maybe even send back a little message.

i am so fascinated by the idea of folks reading my humble words and wondering where they are ... and who they are etc.. that i have even put up a map (see map on right side) that logs in the visits to my blog by where in the world they originate from........ sort of my own Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago (ok ok most of you probably aren't old enough to remember that old computer game)

i have no idea what spurs us on to do these things.... is it a sense of adventure or curiosity?? Is it a need to feel connected to the big world around us?? Whatever the reason, it would seem there will always be some form of the original "message in a bottle".