2010 October | Kelsey Timmerman

Oct
26

Donate to your local NPR station

By Kelsey

I feel for Juan Williams, I really do. The dude should not have been fired, especially in the manner that he was. A phone call! They could’ve at least had Carl Kassle call him and leave a message on his voicemail.

But even more than that I feel for NPR. NPR is getting hammered in the press for being this liberal conspiracy to take over the world. (Full Disclosure: I would totally vote Tom and Ray of Car Talk into the White House. There is all of this talk of which party, the Democrats or the Republicans, drove the bus into the ditch and who is going to drive us out. Well, at least with Tom and Ray they can figure out what the hell is wrong with our bus and have a good time doing so.)

I find it more than ironic that NPR, which is largely listener supported, is being criticized for having an agenda by media outlets owned by major corporations with interests across the map. NBC, FOX, and CNN can’t scratch their butts without wondering how it is going to affect the sales of their sister company’s hemorrhoid cream.

The timing of the Juan Williams thing is like a perfect storm because many of the affiliates like the one here in Muncie are in the middle of their fall fund-raising campaign. Speaking of perfect storms, the station here in Muncie had their transponder taken out for a large portion of the day by high winds. Depending on what ridiculous position you are taking on the Williams firing, you might think that it is God’s or Allah’s will. Call me reasonable, but I think it was just a damn low-pressure system.

I love NPR. My goal in life is to be interviewed by Terry Gross. I met Garrison Keillor in an elevator, I listen regularly to On Point out of Boston and even had my call taken by the show one time, and like every writer in America I want to record a piece for This American Life and try on Ira Glass’s glasses. That’s why this Tuesday I’m donating $20 as part of my $10 for Tuesday project. Yes, I realize that the math doesn’t really work out. Get your own project. You know every time I get on a plane and see someone with a scientific calculator who looks like they have a handle on calculus, I get a little nervous.)

Giving Back, ten4tues

Oct
25

Work for Darth Vader, change the Galaxy

By Kelsey

photo from flickr creative commons by bixentro

I was on one side of the room. My head full of stories of the garment workers I met around the world and ideas about how students can make a difference in their lives.

On the other side of the room were two recruiters from Marlboro. Their heads filled with information on who their customers are and ideas of how to get more.

Between us sat 150 business students. The battle for their souls began.

Okay, it wasn’t quite that dramatic. I wasn’t the angel on one shoulder and the Marlboro men weren’t the devil on the other. They were actually really cool guys — really cool guys that market products that gave my grandma emphysema, but still really cool guys.

Our guest appearances in the class just happened to coincide. One of the Marlboro men was a former student of the professor. After the first class, the professor told his former student that he would never work for Marlboro, but felt like it wasn’t his duty to tell students what they should or should not do. The former student just sort of stood there speechless.

After one of the classes, I was chatting with the Marlboro men, when the professor of the next class asked us to leave so his class could begin. When we left, he said something like, “I would never invite Marlboro into my class.” A few of the students applauded.

Since I was chatting with them, the students probably thought I was a Marlboro man too. Maybe they were able to discern that I wasn’t since my business casual was a pair of blue jeans with a whole in the knee – much different than their business casual. Still, this really got me thinking about the career choice of the Marlboro men.

They are both brand managers at a brand that has a giant warning label on the side of their ads and products that they deform unborn babies and cause cancer and death. That has to be challenging. One of the students asked them about that and their answer was pretty much this: “We’re not encouraging people to smoke. We’re providing a product for those who do.”

What happens when good guys work for bad companies? (I know that bad is relative here. I mean bad in the since that their products or the manufacturing of their products harm the world and people around them.)

What if you were a good guy on a planet where the only good job was with the Empire? Ever since you were a kid you thought it would be cool to wear one of those paunch-hiding, waist-slimming, Storm Trooper shells of body armor. You worked your way up through the ranks and eventually won your way onto Darth Vader’s entourage. Could you have a bigger impact on the battle for good and evil?

Let’s say Darth Vader is giving the invisible death grip to someone who really doesn’t deserve it. You could lean over and whisper into his helmet, “Lord Vader, sir, Jim is a good guy who was up with his kid all night. So he pressed the wrong button and that little bastard of yours got away with the lady with the funny hair and Harrison Ford? That kind of stuff happens to the best of us. How about you let him live so he can keep up on taking care of his family?”

What if you could whisper in Darth Vader’s ear? What if you could help give a company a conscience?

Some people are quick to write off the apparel industry as an evil empire, but I’m always excited to have the opportunity to chat with someone on the inside or students who might be on the inside. I think they can do the most good, even more so than the Rebel Alliance.

Pressure to change might come from outside, but real change comes from within.

May the Force be with you.

Mad World

Oct
22

What if the garment industry was part of the solution?

By Kelsey

I usually wrap up my presentations talking about how sweatshops and child labor are all symptoms of poverty and that the garment industry done right should be part of the solution.

This is what I mean…

The Alta Gracia workers in the Dominican Republic get their first paychecks – 300% more than what other workers in the Dominican Republic get:

Read about the factory in the NY Times.

Engaged Consumer

Oct
12

Giving $10 to 3 Cups

By Kelsey

Tonight I have the honor of speaking at the Columbus (IN) Library. The community selected Three Cups of Tea for their community reading program and since they apparently couldn’t get Greg Mortensen himself, they contacted me. I’m super pumped. I love the book and every time I read about Mortenson I’m amazed by his psycho-like dedication to his cause and all the positive change he is bringing into our world.

I’ll be talking about the Girl Effect, the importance of educating and employing women, and up and coming Greg Mortensons like Jake Harriman of NURU who I’ve had the pleasure to meet.

Here’s the official description of my chat:

Common Threads: Exploring Poverty One Story at a Time presented by Kelsey Timmerman
October 12, 7:00 pm, Bartholomew County Public Library, Red Room

Kelsey Timmerman, author of “Where Am I Wearing? A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories and People That Make Our Clothes,” has traveled extensively in the developing world. In Bangladesh he saw how extending micro-credit to women changes lives. In Kenya he met a former US Special Forces soldier fighting terrorism by fighting extreme poverty. Kelsey will share stories about people that he’s met on his travels as he touches on the themes of extreme poverty and the importance of educating girls that Mortenson writes about in “Three Cups of Tea.” He will also introduce dedicated individuals who, like Mortenson, are impacting the world in very big ways and discuss how each of us can impact it as well. Kelsey believes that if we reduce global issues to the stories of individual people, we can better see ourselves, our parents, our sons and daughters, and our hopes and struggles in one another.

In honor of Mortenson’s amazing book, I’m giving my $10 this Tuesday to his organization the Central Asia Institute.

Giving Back, ten4tues

Oct
8

Kids’ Coffin Maker in the slums

By Kelsey

Kibera slums (Nairobi, Kenya)

A Thousand Words

Oct
7

Have we forgotten the struggles for our rights?

By Kelsey

“How’d he get on the Daily Show?”

I often ask myself this. No matter how much I try to pretend there isn’t, there is some bitterness in the thought. Some, “I wrote a book that’s serious and funny about a subject very relevant to now, and I didn’t get on the Daily Show.” Hrmph!

Last night Philip Dray was on the Daily Show talking about his 784-page book on the fight for worker’s rights: There is Power in a Union. Last night during the show I checked Amazon. The book was ranked 35,000-something. This morning it is in the hundreds. After my five-second pity party about “that shoulda been me” I got to thinking about this.

Is a book on unions good for ratings? Probably not.

Wouldn’t it be great if more folks with a spotlight like or brighter than Stewart’s actually made an effort to focus on a subject, not because of the ratings it might gain, but its importance?

Back when GM was getting bailed out from the government, union bashing was all the rage. It still is. And maybe there was a point from which unions went from getting an inch to taking a mile. On Tuesday, the Daily Show did a feature on Waiting for Superman which largely condemns the teacher’s unions for the current state (near the bottom of a list of 30 developed countries) of our educational system. I think the selection of Dray’s book was meant to balance the views and remind us of all the things that we take for granted that unions gave us.

Here’s an edited Monty Python clip responding to “What did unions ever give us?”

And here’s the Dray interview.

Philip Dray – There is Power in a Union
- Watch more Funny Videos at Vodpod.

Videos at Vodpod.

Mad World

Oct
5

Lawyer accused of smuggling briefs into Gitmo

By Kelsey

A big thanks to John at Provocate for passing along this underwear related news item to me. It’s only with the help of friends like John that I maintain my ranking as one of the top 10 living underwear journalists in the state of Indiana.

(From the New York Review of Books):

A Guantánamo commander has accused British lawyer Clive smith of smuggling Under Armour Briefs and a Speedo swimsuit to two prisoners he represents. Smith denied the claim and responded in a letter:

It seems obvious that the same people delivered these items to both men, and it does not take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that members of your staff…did it…. I have done a little research to help you in your investigations.

I had never heard of “Under Armor briefs” until you mentioned them, and my internet research has advanced my knowledge in two ways—first, Under Armour apparently sports a “u” in its name, which is significant only because it helps with the research.

Second, and rather more important, this line of underpants are very popular among the military…. It would be worth checking whether this lingerie was purchased from the NEX there in GTMO….

Tom Byrne, Under Armour‘s director of new business development, told Army Times that “The product has done very well in PXes across the country….”

On the issue of the Speedo swimming trunks,…I cannot imagine who would want to give my client Speedos, or why. Mr. Aamer is hardly in a position to go swimming, since the only available water is the toilet in his cell.

Snap!

For more, I’m sure, far less mockable accounts from Gitmo read The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law (affiliate link below).

Mad World

Oct
4

Judging my book by its (biceps) cover

By Kelsey

I’m not sure about the cover of my book.

Lately, since I’ve been visiting universities where the students have been assigned the book, I’ve been getting, “I got your book and I was like…man…this book looks really boring,” or something along those lines. Thankfully this is usually followed up with “…and I really liked it.” Of course the folks who don’t like it probably rushed out of the room after my talk. Because what kind of jackass waits in line to tell an author that his book sucked?

I’ve had several professors tell me that for many of their students this is the first book that they’ve really dug into. Essentially, the students have never met a book they liked regardless of the cover. Still, I’m not sure about it. A bookseller once told me that it looked very YA.

I can be unsure about the cover and not be badmouthing my publisher or the designer who did it because the cover was my idea. Some authors go rounds with their publishers over the cover and even try to get some type of cover leverage built into their contract.

The story of my cover goes something like this:

Publisher: Kelsey, do you have any ideas for the cover?

Me: How about a dude standing there with arrows pointing to his clothes noting the countries they were made in?

Publisher: How about this?

Me: Red shag carpet? Button fly pants? Camo-shirt?

Publisher: I thought the same thing. How about this? (The actual cover of the book)

Me: I like it. Plus anyone that mistakes the guy on the cover for me will think I’m totally ripped!

If I had a dollar for every time someone (usually a female) has asked me if that was me on the cover, I would have enough money to buy a lifetime gym membership. It’s pretty obvious from my lack of guns that the dude on the cover isn’t me. Still, when I tell them they are deflated. Lately I’ve been toying with the idea of saying, “Yep, that’s me. Unfortunately after that photo was taken I jumped into a crocodile-infested river to save a puppy and came down with a rare jungle illness that robber me of my muscle mass.”

So who is the dude on the cover? And how do I thank him for doing a thousand arm curls a day?

Well, I want to find out. Today I’m launching Operation Guns Are Real?: The Search for the man on the cover of my book. My goal is to find him and interview him and give his biceps a virtual squeeze.

I’ll keep you posted.

This Writer’s Life