Keep it in Lombard

On the way home from bowling, I had what I think is the greatest idea I've had in a long while.

Remember that "Where's George" site? A reminder: it asks people to enter their dollar bill's serial number on the site, stating where they got it. Then those people are asked to spend it, but not without writing "Where's George" on the bill itself.

The site's goal is to have people see all the places where the bill got spent. It is amazing to see how far a dollar bill travels, often hopping through a handful of states. It also makes me wonder where the black holes are. By "black holes," I mean the places where that currency never leaves. Is it in someone's spare change jar? Is it swapped back and forth at a friendly poker game? Or is the giant black hole somewhere outside our borders?

(I suppose people don't take the piece of paper itself and move it to an off-shore bank account. But the value inherent in the bill is often taken far away from its original location, and when it leaves, it hardly ever returns.

Contrast this notion with my desire to urge Lombardians of the value of their money, and how it continues to help the community if it stays in the community.

So I give you the following site: Keep It In Lombard dot org. I'm not sold on the site's name - perhaps it should be "spent it here dot org" or "keep it here dot com," with a /IL/lombard after it, just in case this idea really takes off.

Or not. Just go with a personalized URL. I doubt I could ever make any money off this idea; it appears that the "Where's George" site only makes enough to keep the site afloat.

My goal is for every Lombardian to get a dollar bill with "Keep It In Lombard" written on it, and to either visit the website and see my plea for taking care of their own town, or to think about where in Lombard they could spend it. But the goal is not to just hold onto it; it is to spend it locally, helping those around us. Of course, a great many of the bills will leave town, likely to never return. But if I can keep some of them around for one more in-town exchange, or perhaps a couple of exchanges, my town will continue to benefit from its wealth.

There are questions. What bills should I use? Obviously, one-dollar bills are easier for me to use, as I have limited funds. (Being unemployed, they're more limited than ever.) But the higher the denomination of the bill, the greater its impact when it stays here. (Then again, if someone's dropping a twenty and getting seventeen dollars back, it really doesn't have that much more of a value than a dollar bill.

Maybe I can ask those who like the idea to come to the site and enter where they're spending their money. They can get some exposure as a Lombard supporter. (Gotta come up with a catchier name.) Heck, if they also enter the bill's serial number, we can start figuring out which business are keeping the money in the Lombard circuit! (And which business are essentially starving Lombard dry.) Wow, this could rock.

What I really need is to have a Webmaster. I have very little knowledge of constructing a site. Apart from tedfromaccounting.org, I know nothing about site construction and usefulness. This would require a big accessible database.

I know that media coverage of the site shouldn't be a problem. I can also discuss it on Hello Lombard dot com, where I'm starting to get more involved.

This is great. Ideas don't come as often to me anymore, but still they come and it makes me feel alive when they do. (I'm writing this on the Internet to serve as intellectual property. If it can't construe as such a thing, and someone beats me to the punch, I sure hope it helps my hometown just the same.)