I may not ever get a Pulitzer (you don’t get those for magazines anyway, I realize), but these Peep portraits are now apparently part of my journalistic legacy. Our second annual Peeps in Places contest went off with a little less fanfare than last year (apparently you just don’t book the Today Show and Good Morning America on the same day two years in a row). But plugs from ABC News, NPR, Jezebel, Black Book and a few other places doesn’t hurt. Dear god they’re cute.

Photo: Leslie Kuba

My first feature in Traveler came out this week, and believe me, it looks even more spectacular in print.

Be sure to check out all of the online coverage as well, including more of Krista Rossow’s fabulous photos, and Susanne Hackett’s video of Mardi Gras morning.

As a journalist, I don’t typically blink at the opportunity to talk to high-profile types. I’ve done the party reporting thing, and my old gig often meant dealing with the hassle of tracking down disinterested PR-types to wrangle five minutes of their time. But finding out that I could chat with Tom Hanks, and that everything was being arranged without issue? Well that was a gift. And truly, Hanks is as nice as he seems. We spoke for 15 minutes on the phone about Beyond All Boundaries, the film he produced for the new theater at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, which just opened this month. And he was gracious, charming, funny, and passionate about the work he’s done to tell the story of the war. Here’s one excerpt about how he’s visited Normandy and why it’s important to revisit the sites where history happened.

I’ve actually gone through the footsteps of individual battles we brought to life in Band of Brothers, the piece we did for HBO. You walk through a farmer’s field and they say, “we dug a trench here.” And you know what’s there? A trench. It’s still an impression in the farmland—it never goes away. It brings a human dimension to the people who were walking a really long way when they were very tired on a day when their job was to kill people on the other side. That to me just takes it out of any mythical storytelling atmosphere and turns it into a human one. Of human beings doing things one step at a time, one day at a time, one damn thing at a time. That’s the type of connection that it brings to you and that makes me think that’s what 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old kids are doing today in places like Afghanistan.

[Tom Hanks and Beyond All Boundaries]

I’m turning 29 in Alaska this week…here’s a preview of my trip.

I didn’t know much about my grandfather’s tour of duty in World War II until I arrived at his wake. Until then, he had summed up his time in the service with a laugh and a joke: After enlisting in the Army Air Corps, he was stationed in Alaska’s southwest islands… on a boat. But it wasn’t until I saw the photos of his time there that I became intrigued with the place.

The grainy images depicted a remote, mysterious landscape, one so far removed from his hometown in New York where he spent the remainder of his life. I learned that as a member of the 11th Air Force, his boat duties were more significant than he let on; he was rescuing downed pilots who were engaged in an offensive against the Japanese to reclaim the two islands, Attu and Kiska, which they had invaded and occupied in 1942. My grandfather had only 15 minutes to get to the soldiers whose planes had fallen before they’d freeze to death in the Bering Sea.  Today, my grandmother’s fading memory can recall only a few details from my grandfather’s time there, and as man of few words, she doesn’t have many to choose from. “He said it was beautiful but cold,” she recapped for me recently. Not surprisingly, I wanted to know more.

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My article in this month’s issue of Traveler deals with using Twitter to meet all your traveling needs. (And yes, I do Twitter myself: @Janelle_IT_Blog should you find my musings interesting…)

Things happen in threes right? This is the only way to explain why I not only broke into radio this week, but managed to do three interviews in two days. The first was with KOA Radio in Denver, Colorado, where I had the chance to chat about my Boulder article in this month’s issue of Traveler. Then I had was asked to take part in Mediabistro’s Morning Media Menu with Jason Boog and Matt Van Hoven. It was a blast, and it created a mini-blitz on their respective blogs, and a flood of emails in my inbox. You can listen here:

Then, finally, I managed to do the final interview, which was with the wonderful Boyd Matson of National Geographic Weekend. That interview airs next week, and hopefully, I’ll be doing more soon.

At long last, my article on Boulder, “This City is Better Than Yours” is out this month in Traveler (PDF to come, don’t worry). The online version went up today, complete with its very own slideshow, and this is my favorite photo. Excellent work done by Joanna Pinneo, who shot the piece.

Boulder is a fantastic town, and yes, it’s very easy to imagine packing your bags and living there (the girl who fact-checked this piece literally did just that as we closed the issue). At the risk of quoting myself, here’s the intro:

It’s been called the smartest city in America, the thinnest city in America, the best place for a runner or an überjock, and the top green and clean city in the United States. You have to wonder: Where is this perfect place? To find it, head about an hour’s drive outside Denver to Boulder, Colorado, a city of 100,000 people and a university town at the foot of the Rockies’ Front Range. “You’ve got 45,000 acres of open space and a hell of a natural park,” says Jim Philips, a naturalist for the city of Boulder, explaining its charms. But that’s not all: “It’s the air and the mountains—it’s everything.”

Really though, the moment I knew this city was kind of “perfectville” was at brunch one morning at the Dushanbe Teahouse. A 10-year-old sitting across from me was wearing a medal and had numbers written down his leg. After I finished my yummy meal, I congratulated the kid on his medal and asked what he’d done. “Swim, bike, run,” he said nonchalantly. Apparently it was not his first triathalon.

Update: See the full piece after the jump….

Photo: Joanna Pinneo

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Some nice news came out last week from the folks at Lonely Planet: Intelligent Travel won the best consumer travel blog award! In a somewhat intricate process that involved both public voting and judging by the Lonely Planet staffers, we came out ahead against some incredibly stiff competition. And me and my colleagues were obviously quite pleased with the outcome.

I admit it. I’m still on my Mardi Gras high, and currently listening to WWOZ as I’m writing up my notes from my visit. So I was thrilled to get an email from Danielle King, the woman I stumbled upon while parading with the Societé de Sainte Anne, sending me the link to her photos. Costumed as Irrational Geographic photographer, shooting both wildlife and wild life, she and her friend collaborated to get some amazing portraits, many which could easily have been emblazoned with the yellow border. (Plus there’s one of yours truly, bottom, second from right.)  I love the concept, and it’s a fabulous way to celebrate the brand.

[Link to Flickr Set]