"Fellow Traveler" doesn't, fortunately, carry the political coloration that it did önce. I crossed travels with two of the coauthors, and there are untold stories (as yet) that go with our occasional trail crossings. As a start tovvards recall of these and like traveler stories, I agreed to vvrite a brief introduction to this book.

With me it began in my Havvaii home with jars full of foreign coins. These were unselectively collected from various postings and pass-throughs in 20 years of overseas employment. The coins couldn't be exchanged, and I forgot vvhere I put them vvhenever I thought about packing them for circulation on return to their original stamping ground. Like the authors who passionately believe in historical perspective, I had similarly been fascinated by the idea of spreading and upgrading geographical knovvledge.

With jars of coins secured in the back of my vvagon, I began tours of schools offering to give school classes and teacher vvorkshops featuring multiple country coin packs and geography lesson plans for grades 1 to 6. Each member of participating classes got a coin and a challenge to locate its place of origin on a world map. in exchange for collecting information and outlining a story set in the country of coinage, they kept the coins and told the stories.

The coins came to be seen as small chests bearing imaginative but geographically grounded stories as well as vehicles for acquiring and sharing geographical knovvledge. So popular did these sessions become with the participants' parents that they began to send to schools their own back dravver collections of travel remaindered coins. Soon I had more coins than I started trying to usefully get rid of.