What's New?

Every second is new.
Explore each one.

As I add to and change this site, I'll try to list the changes on this page so you can see quickly what has changed. When it is reasonable, I'll include a link to the change or new page.

09 Aug 18 - The family has donated funds to maintain Mike's website for a while.

26 Jun 18 - Mike Metras passed away. Rest in Peace Mike

10 Jan 2018 – Modified kite picture on The Kite page.

23 Dec 2017 – Added notification and a link for our 2018 Calendar.

26 Oct 17 – Removed all functionality Products page replacing it with following four changes.

26 Oct 17 – Moved order point for Ethiopia: Travels of a Youth from Products page to Ethiopia: Travels of a Youth page.

26 Oct 17 – Moved order point for Money Meanderings from Products page to Money Meanderings page.

26 Oct 17 – Moved order point for Axum: Coins and Places from Products page to Axum: Coins and Places page.

26 Oct 17 – Moved order point for Sicily's Historic Coasts from Products page to Sicily's Historic Coasts page.

15 Oct 17 – Added a 2016 and a 2017 picture to the Who’s Mike, Some pictures page.

24 July 17 – Removed the form from the Our contact info page because it no longer functioned correctly and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

10 May 17 – Changed the price of Sicily’s Historic Coasts on the Brouse and Purchase our books page and changed the announcements and some text on the Home page.

22 Jan 17 – Added notification and a link for our 2017 Calendar.

11 Sept 16 – I changed the menu system for the entire site. Instead of the former outline style menu, it is now a slide out menu, imitating the menus of our sister site WalkingWithAwareness.com, though this one comes out from the left side rather than down from the top. It is pretty much in place now though I may be doing a bit of tweeking in the future. I uploaded 66 files in this process.

11 Sept 16 – As I went from file to file making the menu changes mentioned above, I also made several minor changes to the files where I found errors or just something I wanted to be different. I made no attempt to track all those little changes.

10 May 17 – Changed the price of Sicily’s Historic Coasts on theBrouse and Purchase our books page and changed the announcements and some text on the Home page.

10 Sept 16 – Made minor text changes on the Coins page where it points to the Ethiopian items.

27 Aug 16 – Added a link on the Photography page inder Personal to long-existing blind page of our Kisslegg, Germany home.

21 July 16 – Added Ethiopia's Money page, a minor rewrite of the chapter of the same title in my book Ethiopia: Travels of a Youth. A link on the Coins page points to the Ethiopia's Money page.

21 July 16 – Modified the Ethiopian, Eritrean, and East African currency page, adding Eritrean notes and making minor changes. A link on the Coins page points to the Ethiopian, Eritrean, and East African currency page.

21 July 16 – Added five pages of Ethiopian stamps of the Haile Selassie era. This link goes to the first page. Links on the Coins page and on each stamp page point to the Ethiopian Stamps pages.

21 July 16 – Added an announcements box to the Home page to highlight recent changes and other important messages. This uses a script file announcementswaw.js.

10 July 16 – Modified the Home page adding links to missing books we have written and published. Did same for Products page.

23 Jun 16 – I added text to indicate I am selling again on eBay and updated links to my eBay auctions on the Home page and the Coins page.

2 Mar 16 – Added Christmas 2015 pictures to the Elgin Coin Club Home and Pictures pages.

14 Jan 16 – Added new president’s name and change of meeting address back to the VFW to the Elgin Coin Club Home page and made necessary changes of text and map to reflect same.

8 Jan 16 – Modified the Home page adding, modifying, and rearranging text.

8 Jan 16 – On the Writings page I added a links to What is a Pilgrim? - a pamphlet on pilgrimage in India by Swami Veda. It is located on PilgrimageCreations.com.

8 Jan 16 – Updated Who’s Mike? Some pictures page – the rogues gallery of pictures of Mike through his life. Added recent picture and changed 3/12 picture.

11 Dec 15 – Removed the link to book Do you have a Match? Camino Musings on the home page. We removed the book from the public domain.

30 Nov 15 – Added link to a new book Mike's Morgan's on the home page.

22 Nov 15 – Updated Contact us page to reflect Luminate address change (behind the scenes).

29 Sept 2015 – Added a What's new page for the Hillside Coin Club to record changes I make to that site. I will not record them here; as if I were doing it anyway.

17 Sept 2015 – Updated introduction to Trains on Currency and Stock Certificates page to make instructions relevant to modern browsers.

26 Dec 2014 – Added picture to Who's Mike – Some Pictures page.

26 Dec 2014 – Changed title line on Home page and removed eBay icon because I am not currently selling there.

20 Dec 2014 – Added link and icon on Home page to Our India writings on Pilgrimage Creations site.

16 Dec 2014 – Changed the look of the table on the Home page and removed inactive Walking with Awareness workshop link.

28 Nov 2014 – Added 2008 revisited page. It’s a bit late, but it has been sitting around on the computer partially done for years. Now it is there, still undone.

28 Nov 2014 – Changed the fonts of the entire site to sans serif adding code and using a CSS stylesheet. I also made several minor cosmetic changes as I went through the pages. This site needs some major redesign. I am not ready to do that.

24 Oct 2014 – Added search fields on the Connections page.

24 Oct 2014 – Added search field on the Elgin Coin Club page.

23 Oct 2014 – Added Elgin Coin Club 1994 and 1995 newsletters to the ECC page and added links to them on the Newsletter index page. I also add notes about indexes on the same page.

11 Oct 2014 – Added links to a new book Do you have a Match? Camino Musings

27 July 2014 – Added two 2013 Pictures to Who's Mike? Some pictures page.

27 July 2014 – Modified the Writings page to include writings on India.

27 July 2014 – Modified the Home page to update it to current state of things.

27 July 2014 – Modified the Where am I page to say where I am today.

27 June 2014 – Modified the Steps poem page to include a link to the original poem Stufen bu Herman Hesse.

6 Sept 2013 – changed delivery format of Ethiopia: Travels of a Youth and Money Meanderings from CD-ROM to download ZIP format and Axum: Coins and Places from VHS tapes to video file in download ZIP format. I also changed the Products page to reflect the changes and return you to a download page after you pay PayPal for the products.

1 May 2013 – changed the search engine to Google. One can search from the top of the home page for anything on the site. If you want an advanced search, use the Google Advanced Search when you get there.

30 April 2013 – I added a link to the Camino de Levante photos and cleaned up the wording on the Photography page a bit.

26 April 2013 – Some of the Ethiopia: Travels of a Youth demo pages had the incorrect cost for the CD. I changed them to $13.95, the correct price.

26 April 2013 – Added 87 color pictures of Sicily. These include all from the book Sicily's Historic Coasts and a few extras to fill in. I also added an introductory page to the four files these pictures are in. I added links and reorganized the Photography page to accommodate the new photos. Finally, I added words and a link to the pictures on the Sicily's Historic Coasts page.

19 Jan 2013 - updated the META description and TITLE tags for index and for book pages.

15 Sept 2012 - updated Where am I? page available from Home page text.
11 Sept 2012 (Ethiopian New Year's day 2005) - I changed the menu structure and made it uniform across the entire site. I also cleaned up links and made sure they all work (with luck at least 98% should be good now. In the process I eliminated the old Links page in favor of the one Connections and Resources page where I added several new links and then reorganized the page.

9 Sept 2012 - Moved Search box on opening page to upper right.

23 Aug 2012 - Changed Our Books page and host it now on WalkingWithAwareness.com.

8 Aug 2012 - Added a quick form to the Contact us page.

29 Jun 2012 - updated links on the home page. Removed Waliking Life from the Products page. I'm processing sales from it's main page now.

7 Feb 2012 - added pictures of our new Santa Fe, NM home.

14 Oct 08 - Added a link to the Germany to Rome in 44 days book on the Product Sales page.
14 Oct 08 - Also added a link to WalkingEast.com, our web journal (blog) for the walk.
14 Oct 08 - Added a link on the home page to our We're walking east from California to Jerusalem page on Walking With Awareness.
14 Oct 08 - Removed banner headline announcing coin sales and replaced it with a headline announcing the Walking East page.
12 Oct 08 - Restructured pricing on Product Sales to make all pricing postage paid.
20 Sept 08 - Added Do it Now a short essay with pictures.
5 Sept 08 - Changed banner selling Walking Life to banner calling all to Browse my books. The banner is now on the top of this page too.
5 Sept 08 - Added Germany to Rome in 64 days: Our Pilgrimage book to list of books on Books by Mike page and made other minor changes to support this one.
3 Sept 08 - Added a book sale to reduce inventory of books.
21 July 08 - Added Elgin coin show poster to Elgin Coin Club home page.
3 July 08 - I reopened the coin store and added the Coin and currency sales and Ethiopian currency pages.
1 April 08 - Added Notes 1, an experiment, an attempt to report little things that just don't seem to warrant a full page but for some reason seem significant enough to be written up on this site. Check it out.
1 April 08 - Split Works and Words and Walking with Awareness (formerly Pilgrimage of Life) into two separate entities today. Look for some rough edges for the first few days.
30 March 08 - Added a page of Pilgrimage Links to the Walking with Awareness side of this site.
30 March 08 - we are in the process of renaming the Pilgrimage of Life side of this site Walking with Awareness. We will ultimeatly split it off into a separate site. In the meantime you may see some mixed references. Please bear with us go through these changes. Thanks.
30 March 08 - Added a page with the photos in Money Meanderings.
30 March 08 - Added a rogues gallery of pictures of me.
4 March 08 - Added Walking with awareness walking workshop classes to Pilgrimage of life.
4 Feb 08 - Added a page of many of the images that are in Money Meanderings. It is accessable from both the Money Meanderings page and the Photpgraphy page.

31 Jan 08 - made many more changes to several pages including the home page to continue the update that will eventually end with Pilgrimage of Life and Works and Words being on separate sites.
26 Jan 08 - made many changes to the Pilgrimage of Life side of this web site including adding several new slide shows and workshop pages and restructuring the menu system to put all pilgrimage pages under a Pilgrimage of Life structure rather than Works and Words. I also basically abandoned the PM TravelWorks overstructure that was once on Works and Words. Its guts were taken away to Pilgrimage of Life.

15 Jan 08 - added San Luis Obispo Mission slide show to Slide shows page.
15 Jan 08 - added many more changes to Pilgrimage of life page and related pages, moving several from Works and Words domain area.
9 Jan 08 - added a page listing the Books I have written.
9 Jan 08 - added Pilgrimage of Life icon to home page.
9 Jan 08 - added much depth to Pilgrimage of life page and began to segrigate it and its pages into a separate entity. Eventually we'll establish it as a separate site. In the meantime it and all pilgrimage pages will look more and more like they are not part of Works and Words.

23 Dec 07 - I added a personal greeting page for 2007 holiday season. I give no public link to it. But if I forgot to send you a notice about where to look for it, send me an email at Our contact info.
23 Dec 07 - I changed the name of the Ask Mike page to Our contact info and added Petra's email address along with our cell phone number.
30 Aug 07 - I removed our Kisslegg phone number from all WaW pages because we are on the move to California. Currently we have no phone.
30 Aug 07 - Added Pilgrimage of Life home page as a beginning of a new site for our Pilgrimage of life seminars and slide shows in California.
15 Aug 07 - Updated the Jakobsweg (Pilgrimage begins in the heart) pages on our seminars and slide shows to show that we are moving to the US and no longer giving the shows here in Germany for now. I also updated the Show and Seminar History page and its German counterpart.
15 Aug 07 - Changed shipping prices on the Products page to reflect our moving from Europe back to the US. European prices are moved to world prices because we can no longer ship from Europe. Also added a Priority shipping option for world shipping.
9 Aug 07 - Added an album of 2007 Camino pictures.
9 Aug 07 - Added Black Hills Scrapbook download page with links from the photo album and the 2007 camino pages.
31 July 07 - Added a link on the Some Camino de Santiago Insights page to a video rendition of the page by Mikael Hoffmann on YouTube.com.
31 July 07 - Added a link on the Walking Life page to a review of it by Mikael Hoffmann on YouTube.com.
24 July 07 - Added A different way of life, an essey on the differences between living in a German and an American small town. This is the seed of a future book.
24 July 07 - Added statistics about the Sicily book.
19 July 07 - Added notes on the Sicily's Historic Coasts and Walking Life pages directing those who do not want to pay over the internet to email me for regular mail delivery.
19 July 07 - Added links and words to the Writings page. Edited some too. Did a lot of general maintainence, clean up, and tweeking of many other pages.
17 July 07 - Corrected links on several pages accessed by the Palermo photo galery page. They were not returning to the correct location when I clicked the return button.
17 July 07 - Added links to lulu.com on the Sicily's Historic Coasts page now that the book is available.
6 July 07 - Changed the layout of the home page.
6 July 07 - Added Dinges zuverkauf in Kisslegg.
20 June 07 - Replaced Coins of the Philippines and Steel cents example pages into Money Meanderings examples because they get a lot of traffic and maybe someday they will generate a sale or two.
19 June 07 - Added a page of updates to the Camino de Santiago including notes on my walk with my brother, Marty.
23 May 07 - Added an introduction to Discovering Sicily's Historic Coasts, a book about Sicily and its history.
15 May 07 - Removed completed seminar from Seminare über den Jakobsweg page and added it to the Was war? and History pages.
7 May 07 - Added mini-seminares to Seminare über den Jakobsweg page.
7 May 07 - Added Google tracking code to several pages to help track users looking at Jakobsweg and Walking Life pages.
1 May 07 - Changed Walking Life book's page content and keywords to improve performance and increase sales. Also 29 Apr began a campaign of search-engine advertising for book and Jakobsweg seminars.
23 March 07 - Changed icon positions on home page and added slide shows to slide show history page.
6 March 07 - Added 11. to 13. May seminar to the Seminar announcement page.
4 March 07 - Finished the Via Francigena stage two pages. All is out there now and I can go ahead with other work.
24 Feb 07 - Added some beginning pictures to the Via Francigena stage two page. Also split it into several smaller pages. It was just too big as it was.
24 Feb 07 - Added a Pilgrimage writings overview page to organize the various pilgrimage pages unter a single heading and made menu changes to reflect that change.
11 Feb 07 - Added updates to the Pilgrimage to Rome group of pages including a journal of the third phase of the pilgrimage, San Gimignano to Rome.
11 Feb 07 - Added updates to the Pilgrimage to Rome page to tell that we have completed the walk and are in the process of adding notes for the final leg.
16 Jan 07 - Updated scheduled slide shows and seminars on the Jakobsweg pages.
10 Jan 07 - Changed look of Ethiopia: Travels of a Youth page and remodeled the entire preview structure.
9 Jan 07 - Changed look of Money Meanderings: An Introduction to Numismatics page and remodeled the entire preview structure.
8 Jan 07 - Changed look of Product sales page.
4 Jan 07 - Added icon announcers for Walking Live to many pages.
28 and 31 Dec 06 and 4 Jan 7 - Added more detail and pictures to description of Via Francigena two-week walk.
20 Dec 06 - Added beginning description of Via Francigena two-week walk.
20 Dec 06 - Added Sicily in 2000 page of descriptions of Sicily trip
20 Dec 06 - Added updates to the 2006 walk to Rome page to reflect our just completed two weeks on the road.
2 Dec 06 - Added estimated schedule for continuing Rome Pilgrimage.
30 Nov 06 - Today I am announcing the release of Walking Life: Meditations on the Pilgrimage of Life - a book about walking our life path.
16 Nov 06 - Made cosmetic changes to Procuct Sales page and mail order form.
8 Nov 06 - Made some advance changes in preparation to release of Walking Life: Meditations on the Pilgrimage of Life - a book about walking our life path.
1 Nov 06 - Added Trains on Currency and Stock Certificates, a picture essey.
26 Oct 06 - Removed the FAQ page because it was a useless appendix, there because there was "supposed to" be one. But it never had any meaningful content.
26 Oct 06 - Made many cosmetic and word changes to many pages to support these other changes on the 26th.
26 Oct 06 - I used to offer our services to create web pages, to create newsletters, to do technical writing, and to convert your books to HTML for viewing on your browser. We have not received any requests for those services in a significant time so I have removed them from this site. If you are interested in any of these services contact me.
26 Oct 06 - Completely rewrote the Writings page. It now lists all significant writings on the site.
16 Oct 06 - Added a set of English pages for the pilgrimage ways seminars, slide shows, and guided walks. Also made a lot of minor changes to other pages to support this.
10 Oct 06 - Added two March 2007 Seminars to Jakobsweg Seminare Site.
29 Sept 06 - Updated Coins and Coin Clubs page to include link to connections page.
29 Sept 06 - Updated Connections page to bring it more in line with entire site and change its look a bit.
18 Sept 06 - Updated Rome Stops table to include all the stops through Fidenza.
17 Sept 06 - Added Lessons from the walk to Fidenza to the Pome pilgrimage pages.
31 July 06 - Modified look of Home page and added Thought for the Day to Home page along withinformation about Thoughts for the Day from new Walking Life book and online book.
31 July 06 - Added 25 November diavortrag (slideshow) to diashow list.
16 July 06 - Changed the look of the Home page.
16 July 06 - Added History page to DerJakobsweg pages.
13 July 06 - Added three pages to detail our walk to Rome later this summer.
2 July 06 - Changed banner pictures here and on the home page.
30 June 06 - Added a blog page for our upcoming pilgrimage walk to Rome.
17 June 06 - Moved the entire site to a new server on Yahoo for more space and less cost.
31 May 06 - The Axum: Coins and Places video is now available on CD-ROM.
31 May 06 - Adjusted cost plus shipping prices for my products on the Products page to reflect cost changes. This includes a decrease in costs to European destinations since we can now ship from Germany in addition to from the US.
11 Apr 06 - Added dates to Der Jakobsweg site.
11 Apr 06 - Reorganized the home page of my 2003 Camino de Santiago walk adding a clickable image for navigating through the pages. Also added several new images to the story. This is a significant update.
9 Apr 06 - Reorganized Der Jakobsweg site splitting it into three pages.
5 Apr 06 - Changed poster sales pictures on Travel page.
8 Mar 06 - Removed announcement of Feb seminar.
February 14, 2006 - Updated German Jakobsweg Seminars and Slide Show pages. This page is also accessable now from the new http://www.derjakobsweg.com domain.
February 6, 2006 - Added www.derjakobsweg.com page.
February 1, 2006 - Added German Jakobsweg Seminars and Slide Show pages.
January 20, 2006 - Updated navagation through 2003 Camino narration pages.
January 19, 2006 - Finally updated Santiago page for Camino comentary.
January 6, 2006 - Updated several menus in Writings and Photographs and balanced view Wind Turbines page.
December 16, 2005 - Removed Kagnew letters because we have gone back to hard format letters due to popular demand.
November 30, 2005 - Reformatted home page and remade site map.
November 29, 2005 - Removed some names from Kagnew Letters. This page will be closing in a couple weeks.
November 19, 2005 - Ongoing misc. reformatting of menus and cleaning up contents.
October 20, 2005 - Removed the Fox Valley Coin Club home page. With the passing of Clayton Hageman last sping, the Fox Valley Coin Club has come to an end. Clay was the principal driving force for this Yorkville, Illinois, club that had only a few members at its end. No one chose to take over and continue the club.
September 29, 2005 - Added September and October 2005 Elgin Coin Club newsletters along with changes to the newsletter index. Also updated Chicago area coin show list for October.
September 22, 2005 - Removed Guestbook and referrences to it from this site because it was seldem used by others than spammers.
August 31, 2005 - Removed direct references to worksandwords email addresses in all Elgin Coin Club newsletter pages to try and prevent junk mail programs from getting my address so easily. Use Ask Mike to contact me.
August 26, 2005 - Changed menus on Coins, MMeandering, and Axum: Coins and Places, and Writings. In the process I see there is need for major redesign of the Writings page and have started that.
August 26, 2005 - Removed many of the pictures from Money Meanderings to encourage readers to buy the CD.
August 24, 2005 - Removed several direct references to my email addresses to try and prevent junk mail programs from getting my address so easily. Use Ask Mike on most menus on this site to contact me.
July 16, 2005 - Made many minor format changes praticularly with menus.
June 6, 2005 - Removed 3/9/2005 pilgrimage pages and graphics.
March 12, 2005 - Added a German version of the pilgrimage pages along with navigation links from the first page of the English version.
March 4, 2005 - Updated home page to reflect the reorganization of this site into four departments from the original organization that had everything more of less at the same level.
March 4, 2005 - Added PM Travel World department and placed the original pages on travels, writings, and photography into this category.
February 25, 2005 - Split this file into two sections.
February 25, 2005 - Because all services offered are writing services, I renamed Services to Writing Services and Writing Services to Technical Writing to more clearly describe what I have available.
February 24, 2005 - consolidation continues with Coins and coin club page and removing coin clubs from main menu. Also changed Recent Events page to Where am I and moved reference to it down to bottom of home page.
February 23, 2005 - began process of consolidating site into three or four areas. Today I consolidated Services and removed menu from this What's New page. I will replace it later by a abbreviated version. In the meantime use your Back key to return to the page you came from if it was not home.
February 12, 2005 - added a Santiago de Compostela home page to serve as a home to the ever expanding camino pages and references. I used the HTML file name that used to be on the Spain 2003 page so all existing references to my Santiago camino pages would come to this new page. Changed internal link references on pages so they return to correct pages.
January 31, 2005 - Removed reference to the coin store in several places since the coin store is no more. Also removed reference to scanning services.
January 31, 2005 - Added printable version of our pilgrimage brochure available from the pilgrimage More information page.
January 23, 2005 - Completely updated September 3, 2005, Pilgrimage site for the pilgrimage we are conducting this year. A little work remains to be done.
December 19, 2004 - Removed Axum: Coins and Places from product listing because I have no more copies.
December 16, 2004 - Updated the Camino intro and From Melide page. Also added references to the map of the Camino to all Camino pages posted during the walk.
December 7, 2004 - Updated the Camino intro and created From Molinaseca page by splitting Malide page into two. The latter will be updated soon.
December 4, 2004 - Updated the Camino intro and some of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela pages and added a map of the Camino.
November 7, 2004 - Updated the Camino intro and some of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela pages.
October 8, 2004 - Updated Who's Mike page to tell what I have been doing and to change the picture to one more faithful to my current look.

Click here to see earlier changes.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please Contact us on most menus of this website.