Oreo modeling one of the galleys I received in the mail from Wiley yesterday.
A galley is an uncorrected proof of a book that’s sent to people for endorsements and other stuff. I’m not sure what the other stuff is. I’m new to all of this. I’ll let you know when I find out.
This particular galley has a first chapter that’s probably going to get chopped to hell and a few facts that were a bit off, including one that was about $160 billion off (oops!).
A few sights that have made me chuckle and smile in the past week:
1. On a steal horse he rides…
A guy in a cowboy hat driving a mini-van.
2. Farming with Dad
Two discarded kids’ bikes on a country road lying in the ditch, no kids in sight.
“Where are they?”
Out in the field I see a tractor lit by the red rays of a dusty sun, its cab crowded with little farmers.
Annie and I rode our bikes to Scotty’s Brewhouse yesterday. Scotty has a build-your-own-burger option where you can select the type of cheese, condiments, bun, and meat. For $6.75 you can order the groundchuck. For $9.75 you can order meat from grass-fed, free range, happy cows described as such:
half pound grass-fed, $9.75
usa born and raised product. strict animal welfare and animal care protocols. never confined to a feedlot. rather, they are in a “free range environment.” produced without the use of feed grade antibiotics, synthetic growth hormones, or animal byproducts. have never been fed corn or other grain at any time in their lives. packaged at plants that have a documented record in animal welfare, food safety and sanitation. higher in omega 3, CLA, vitamin e and other antioxidants when compared with grain fed beef.
I find this to be an interesting ethical decision. Is it worth paying $3 or 144% more for a clearer conscience? If not for a cow, how about a Fair Trade, ethically produced T-shirt?
Really, should I be seeking help?
I can remember the whole Where am I Wearing? part, but it’s the subtitle that always gets me. Let me look it up…
Oh, there it is…A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People that Make our Clothes
The problem I’m having is that we’ve (editor, editor’s assistant, Marketing gurus, Me) considered many different subtitles. The one I originally submitted was: A Global Quest to Meet the People who Made my Clothes. They thought Quest was a little too esoteric so we tried several others. Here’s just a few of the many, many variation of subtitles that were tossed around of the lists I submitted:
A Factory Tour to the Countries that Make America’s Clothes
A Global Quest to Meet the People that Make America’s Clothes
A Journey to the Countries that Make America’s Clothes
A Search for the People that Make America’s Clothes
A Search for the Factories & People that Make America’s Clothes.
Quest became Journey. Journey became Search. Search became Tour.
My Clothes became America’s Clothes, America’s Clothes became Our Clothes.
So, this is why I can’t remember the name of the book I’ve written. I suppose it still isn’t a very good excuse.
Indiana Jones had more than a little bit to do with my choosing Anthropology as a major in college.
I mentioned AA in the previous post and I write about them briefly in the book. I stumbled upon an excerpt from Rob Walkers soon-to-be-released book Buying In that features a profile of the company. Here’s some excerpts from the excerpt:
…At a moment when practically every clothes maker was offshoring to cut costs, American Apparel made its wares at a U.S. factory in which the average industrial worker (usually a Latino immigrant) was paid between $12 and $13 an hour and got medical benefits. The company had taken out ads in little arty magazines, noting that it was “sweatshop free.”…
…Another self-consciously ethical clothing brand, the union-friendly SweatX, had just gone out of business. The lesson of SweatX, Charney said, was that building a brand solely around a company’s ethical practices was not a good strategy for reaching masses of consumers…
…”That’s the problem with the anti-sweatshop movement. You’re not going to get customers walking into stores by asking for mercy and gratitude.” If you want to sell something, ethical or otherwise, he said, snapping the book closed, “appeal to people’s self-interest.”…
…The conversation paused when two designers working on men’s underwear appeared. They had just come from the factory floor, carrying several pairs of underwear that had been manufactured about 10 minutes earlier. Charney said they’d already gone through about 30 prototypes. “Imagine if we were outsourcing through China!”
He checked with me, then took off his pants and underwear and started trying on the samples. “I need a thin Sharpie,” he said, taking off one pair and putting on another. He wrote on the removed pair: Good but tighter. There was a great deal of chatter about the legs and the waist, about taking in a half-inch, about the fact that the factory shift was going to end soon. “This is a great pair that I have on right now,” Charney suddenly announced…
…It’s not that he cares less about treating his workers ethically, Charney insisted; it’s that he doesn’t think trumpeting work conditions will help him compete. Sure, he hoped quality or social consciousness or a distaste for logos would each attract some consumers. But he also hoped that selling a sexed-up version of youth culture to young people would attract others, and hopefully in greater numbers. If ethics draws in some consumers, great. But for others who respond to different rationales, he’ll provide those, too…
Walker’s book is released June 3rd. I wish it would have been out sooner because it looks like just the type of book I would have read to help me form ideas to write mine. I’ll still give it a read.
You can read a few chapters of Buying In.
The Made in USA label doesn’t always mean made under fair and legal labor conditions.
From Occupational Safety and Health Online:
The Labor and Workforce Development Agency announced that Economic Employment Enforcement Coalition (EEEC) investigators issued 42 citations for labor law violations with fines totaling $457,000 in a recent sweep of 22 garment manufacturers in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The coalition said its enforcement actions uncovered serious violations in the industry that included failure to register, pay the minimum wage, maintain worker’s comp insurance, pay overtime, provide itemized deductions to employees, and keep records and post labor notices as mandated by law. In addition, clothing was confiscated at six locations.
“Many of these garment manufacturers failed to comply with the law as we found multiple labor law violations at many locations,” said EEEC Director David Dorame. “Their illegal actions cannot be allowed to continue. By targeting enforcement against these illegal operators, we help level the playing field for law abiding businesses.”
I first learned about the industry in LA at the 2006 Sweat-Free conference in Minnesota. Making below minimum wage in LA is a level of poverty not so different from being paid $50 per month in Cambodia. An economist should compare the two.
The garments may not be exported, but the people who make them are often imported from China, Vietnam, Mexico, etc. Which is better, shipping products around the world or people?
Not all factories in LA are guilty of cutting corners. American Apparel, the largest US-based garment manufacturer, is widely praised for its good pay and benefits, so much in fact, that there is a year long waiting list to get a manufacturing job there.
I’ve been forgetting to link to my monthly Outdoors column in the Dayton City Paper. In this month’s column I return to Oxford, Ohio, home of Miami University where I attended school.
Here’s the intro:
“Should I be wearing a helmet?” I asked my friend Mike standing next to his fancy mountain bike with Rock Shox.
“You’ll be fine,” he said, as he tightened the chin strap on his own helmet, slipped into his gloves, popped in his mouth piece, and adjusted his nut cup.
Fifteen minutes went by as I watched him pad and protect his body. I was wearing shorts, tennis shoes, an unsure smile, and a shirt that was void of dirt, blood, and sap…for the moment. To the onlooker I was either some kind of mountain biking purist that didn’t believe in putting anything between myself and nature, or an idiot. And since this was my first time mountain biking, it wasn’t hard to differentiate.
That day I learned more about physics during a few hours of mountain biking in Hueston Woods, north of Oxford, than I ever learned at Oxford’s Miami University where I studied. Most notably: bodies in motion will stay in motion until they hit a tree.
There were bumps. There were bruises. There was blood.
The link will probably go dead in a week or so. If you missed it, sorry about your luck.
I did a little dance when THIS popped up in my Google update for “Where am I Wearing?”. I tried to leave an “I love it” five-star rating, but it doesn’t show up. I suppose that Amazon won’t let you rate a book before it’s been published. Currently, I’m the only one that knows it’s worthy of an “I love it”. Hopefully, my editor is too. I talk to him soon.
This is my life right now. And it’s why I haven’t posted the last few days.
Today, I spent 6 hours at a conference with people who have all been “screwed over” by the American worker - Lots of bitterness. I’ll post more about this soon.
I talk with my editor at Wiley soon. I’m excited and nervous to hear what he thinks.
hi@kelseytimmerman.com 
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