WAIW at IUPUI

Tomorrow I’m doing a signing on the campus of IUPUI in Indianapolis at the University Barnes & Noble. It’s from 11-1.

Be there.

Where clothes.

Know where they were made.

Here’s a campus map if you need one.

How much will you give me for my son?

Just the other day I wrote about how travel makes the news more relevant: “If I have gained anything from my travels it’s not a well-traveled savviness, envied by others, but an increased caring.”

That being the case, when I read this story in the NY Times by on Chinese boys being bought, stolen, and sold, I couldn’t help but think of Dewan and Zhu Chun’s son Li Xin.

The crazy thing about this story is a man who bought a son didn’t think there was anything wrong with paying money for another human being until he learned that the child had been kidnapped. I try to look at the world with an open mind. My first reaction to this was repulsion, but then I try to be culturally sensitive: “I should respect different ways of thinking.” Before long I circle back around to repulsion.

(A big thanks to Larry at Wiley for pointing out this article)

Anyhow here are a few excerpts:

They dragged us by our hair and said, ‘How dare you question the government,’ ” said Peng Dongying, who lost her 4-year-old son. “I hate myself for my child’s disappearance, but I hate society more for not caring. All of us have this pain in common, and we will do anything to get back our children.”

In some cases, local officials may even encourage people desperate for a son to buy one. After their 3-month-old son died, Zhou Xiuqin said, the village family planning official went to her home and tried to comfort her and her husband, who was compelled to have a vasectomy after the birth of the boy, their second child. “He said, ‘Don’t cry, stop crying, you can always buy another one,’ ” Ms. Zhou recalled.

Their love for their new son was boundless. They bought him new clothing and had their daughter drop out of middle school to take care of him. They did not think much of the fact that Jiabao did not understand the dialect spoken in that part of Fujian and seemed indifferent to the local cuisine. Mr. Su insisted that he never imagined that the boy had been stolen.

Last August, Mr. Su learned the truth after the police in Sichuan Province arrested the man who had sold them the child. The man, part of a ring of seven people who had abducted 11 children, had sold four of them to families in their township. The man, according to the police, has since been given a 12-year sentence.

By the time the couple got home from work the day they got the news, their son and the three other stolen children in their village had already been taken away by the police. The couple was inconsolable. “We were lied to, we were swindled,” Mr. Su said as his wife’s eyes welled up.
There was, however, a small consolation. A sympathetic policeman in Sichuan, the province where the boy was stolen, helped put them in touch with his birth parents. The two couples have since been in frequent contact; Mr. Su said the real parents held no grudge, acknowledging that the family had cared for their son well.

The father was so grateful, he told Mr. Su he would be on the lookout for local families who had two sons but were too poor to care for them. “He said that way I don’t need to deal with child traffickers anymore,” Mr. Su said.

Li Xin and Me at his village near Chongqing:

Spirit of Soccer

After seeing Spirit of Soccer operate first hand in Cambodia, I’ve become a big fan of their work. Here’s their latest video:

Is America ready for Fair-Trade?

Starbucks is going Fair Trade in the UK, so is Cadbury. Their U.S. counterparts aren’t. What’s up with that?

This piece in CS Monitor by Eric Marx pretty much sums it up:

…more than 70 percent of the British populace recognize the fair-trade mark, whereas consumer recognition in the United States is only 28 percent, according to recent surveys.

And as I pointed out here, environmentalism and organics tend to trump fair-trade. The article confirms that:

TransFair USA, the nonprofit that licenses products to carry the fair-trade certified label on agricultural products, says it is looking into establishing standards for apparel. But fair-trade fashion faces significant hurdles in the US.

“It’s quite easy for the fiber industry to develop their own weak ecolabels in order to pull the wool over the eyes of consumers,” says Craig Minowa, an environmental scientist with the Organic Consumers Association.

American fair-trade fashion has already arrived, says Lynda Grose, a sustainable fashion design pioneer, although it’s not yet advertised as such. Companies like Eileen Fisher, Levi’s, and American Ap¬¬parel all incorporate elements of fair trade.

In the US, organic products crowd out the fair-trade message, but the biggest hurdle remains in making the link between individual purchases to development work and wages in far-off countries, says Carmen Iezzi of the Fair Trade Federation in Washington, D.C.

In one study, fewer than 6 percent of Americans could name a fair-trade organization unaided, according to a report last month by the federation.

We don’t follow the trends, we set them

Rocker Dave Grohl names his daughter Harper Willow.

Soon rockstars will be dressing like us!

We care about the footprint, let’s not forget the foot

Today my feet are nice and cozy in a pair of Merrell slippers. Like 90% of shoes, they were Made in China.

This is going to be a brief Where Am I Wearing Wednesday because today I want to talk about feet more than shoes.

The Shoe:

Merrell’s corporate code of conduct – I couldn’t find one on their site. Contact them and join me in asking them what’s up with that:

The environment and labor practices both factor into my shopping decisions. I scanned your website for your corporate code of conduct and couldn’t find one. Could you please direct me to it?

Thanks,

Kelsey Timmerman

Labor conditions in the shoe industry in China – Well, it is China. When I visited there in 2007, I met workers who put in nearly 100 hours per week, even though the Chinese labor law stated they weren’t to work more than 44 hours. The workers would clock out and then go back to work. As if making our shoes was a privilege.

Still, going barefoot sucks and non-Made in China shoe options are limited.

I was speaking to a group of Labor Studies faculty the other day and the subject of fair trade shoes came up. I stated that I haven’t seen a pair of fair trade shoes in which I would run a marathon (note: I don’t really want to run a marathon regardless of the type of shoe, but that’s beside the point). They found this remark distasteful, but because they couldn’t directly argue the matter, they said, “Maybe we need to change our lifestyle – stop running marathons.”

Now there is a campaign I wouldn’t want to touch: Stop Exercising! We Americans are tubby enough already.

The Foot:

Today is Earth Day and I haven’t stepped foot outside. I feel like I’ve been huffing exhaust from the world’s most fuel inefficient SUV – light headed, sore throat, and feverish. But I can’t turn on the news without hearing something about our carbon footprint. Even my favorite TV show, 24, has reduced their carbon footprint and now claims to be carbon neutral.

This is great. More and more corporations are jumping on board and offering environmentally-friendly products. I’ve seen shoes made from hemp, others glued with glue that does less harm to the environment, and shoes packed in boxes that are 100% post consumer recycled. As an engaged consumer, I’m happy to have these options. Still, I want more.

What about the feet? We care about our footprint on the world, but what about our impact on one another. Saving the environment is in style, but concern for the workers who make our shoes isn’t.

Don’t believe me? Call up any shoe company and ask them how they reduce their impact on the environment. They’ll likely have a long list of ways their trying to do this. Then ask them about what they are doing to ensure that the workers who make their shoes are being treated fairly. You’ll soon find yourself lost in the corporate phone chain.

This Earth Day, I’m glad to have the option of buying environmentally-friendly shoes, but what I’d really like to see is a pair of socially-conscious shoes.

Know of any?

My Bro’s Bite airing on the World Vision Report

My essay about my brother coming down with Malaria after our excursion into the Honduran jungle is airing on the World Vision Report this week. He’s fine now. I’m just glad that I could get a story out of his suffering.

One of the folks at WVR contacted me looking for a funny piece – I believe they said quirky – about malaria and wanted to know if I had anything. “Boy, do I,” I told her.

It’s not easy to do Malaria quirky, but it is easy to have fun at my brother’s expense.

The story is part of their Malaria special…

Malaria 2009: Countdown to Eradication

Malaria remains one of the world’s great killers. Every thirty seconds, a child under five dies from malaria. That contributes to more than a million deaths a year. Two million people a year suffer from the disease, which hampers economic advancement in affected countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

To mark World Malaria Day on April 25, the World Vision Report focuses this week entirely on malaria — its history, causes, treatments, and the campaign to wipe out the disease by the year 2015.

While listening to the show, be sure to visit our special Malaria resource page, full of videos, links, and more.
And also please provide your feedback and questions for our reporters on the form to be found at the end of each story!

The good folks at the Wandering Educators who reviewed WAIW? and named me as their photographer of the month in February are giving away boatloads of cool prizes today, including an autographed copy of Where Am I Wearing? Here’s all you have to do to enter:

1. Register at www.WanderingEducators.com - it’s free and easy and keeps our site spam-free.
2. On April 20, leave a comment on ANY article on our site - you’ll be automatically entered.
3. Check in every hour on April 20 for prize updates.
4. Use Twitter to retweet details (@WanderingEds) about our giveaway and you’ll be entered for special prizes.

For more details, go here.

I hope I win something, although not my own book, I’ve got plenty of those.

A book that has changed the way I buy mushrooms

I’m not quite done with “Poorly Made in China” by Paul Midler, but it has already changed my life, specifically what type of mushrooms I buy. Paul is kind of the “cultural grease” that smooths business relations between factories in China and international importers.

One of the projects he works on is a bottled soap that depending on its packaging is hand soap, body wash, or bubble bath (the contents are all the same). Anyhow, after Paul sees the lack of standards and corner cutting that goes on at the factory that makes the soap, he stops using soap when he showers.

Today while shopping for groceries, Annie sent me off to get canned mushrooms. Unfortunately, all the canned mushrooms were Made in China, begging me to ask, “What and Where the heck am I eating?” So it was off to the fresh produce for me.

I’ll wear Made in China, but after reading Midler’s book I’m going to do everything I can do avoid eating it!

Pentagon using Tactical Garbage in pursuit of alternative fuels

The way I see it there are 3 ways that technology rapidly advances:

1) Greed - Somebody is going to make oodles of money if…

2) Space - “How the heck are we gonna win this here space race?”

3) War - “How do we kill more of them and save more of us?”

Let’s think about this in terms of our quest for alternative fuels.

Since we’re not launching poop-powered rockets into space…yet. And the green revolution has yet to fully evolve. War might be our best hope. (That’s a sentence I never thought I’d ever write.)

Consider this piece in the Washington Post:

“Every time you bring a gallon of fuel forward, you have to send a convoy,” said Alan R. Shaffer, director of defense research and engineering at the Pentagon. “That puts people’s lives at risk.”

Spurred by this grim reality, the Pentagon, which traditionally has not made saving energy much of a priority, has launched initiatives to find alternative fuel sources. The goals include saving money, preserving dwindling natural resources and lessening U.S. dependence on foreign sources.

“The honest-to-God truth, the most compelling reason to do it is it saves lives,” said Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson, director of operations and logistics for the Army. “It takes drivers off the road.”

And because turning water to wine is so B.C…

Two prototypes — known as the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery — were deployed to Iraq in the summer and were initially successful, converting field waste — paper, plastic, cardboard and food slop — into biofuel to power a 60-kilowatt generator. “We were able to get oil out of trash,” Shaffer said.

Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery…Cool!