Disney would like to Welcome you to these United States

Welcome to the USA, where, according to this bit of propaganda commissioned by the State Department and produced by Disney, everybody smiles. But really, what’s wrong with that?

I’ve heard more negative comments about this video than good ones.

The main issue tends to be that Horseshoe Falls of Niagara Falls, which appears for about a second, is pictured and it belongs to Canada. The shot is from the Canadian side overlooking the falls with the USA in the background. The only thing more ridiculous than owning a waterfall is owning half a waterfall.

Yes, the particular half pictured is owned by Canada, but seeing how this is Tourist propaganda and Niagara Falls is a popular destination for tourists in the USA, what’s the big deal? Somewhere in the falls is an imaginary political line. Don’t you see it? What if the film showed a fella jet-skiing on Lake Erie and the shot just happened to be taken as he crossed the imaginary political divide between Canada’s Lake Erie and the USA’s Lake Erie? The only difference there would be that nobody would be pitchin’ a fit.

Like a commercial or advertorial, this is propaganda. “Show the real America!” say the opponents of the video. I suppose they want pictures of our homeless, dead beat dads and abusive moms, of our military invading and bombing places, of politicians stripping civil liberties, of race riots, of slavery, Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, etc.

Again, this is a tourist video. Settle down. What’s wrong with showing smiling Americans? What’s wrong with being proud of what’s great about our country? Life in the USA is not perfect, but we’ve got it pretty darn good compared to a lot of places. We’ve got a lot to smile about. And, if you are sitting in your apartment/home/dorm, viewing this YouTube video and you aren’t worrying about where your next meal is going to come from or if the water you just drank will give you a lethal case of diarrhea, you probably should just shut up.

I was ready to view this video with cynicism, but it won me over. The diversity of our people, landscape, and culture is almost untouched. Our politics, people, and history aren’t perfect, but it sure looks like a nice place to visit.

I hear Canada is lovely, too.

Will Run for Orphans

Don’t know about you, but I would pay NOT to run a marathon. I got an email the other day from a fella that’s running the NYC marathon while collecting money for one of my favorite charities, Casa Guatemala. (Note: If donating to orphans doesn’t do it for you, support this guy for his name alone – Egbert. How cool is that? It’s as if he finally escaped Dilbert’s strip and Dogbert’s rule. Keep on running Egbert. Keep on running.)

Dear friends,

What do the New York City Marathon and Casa Guatemala have in common? Well, they’re both sponsored by ING (my employer). About 4 years ago ING granted me a sabbatical to volunteer in Casa Guatemala, an orphanage located on the banks of the Río Dulce near the Caribbean coast. Casa Guatemala was founded about 25 years ago by Angie Galdamez who has grown the organization to what it is today. It started out as a small orphanage for babies in Guatemala City and now entails the orphanage in Río Dulce that cares for the health, nutrition and education of 250 children. Please visit www.casa-guatemala.org for much more on the activities of the Casa and to get a visual impression of what the Casa looks like.

I worked as an ‘Orientador’ , or caretaker, and together with two other volunteers I was responsible for a group of up to 25 boys between the age of 5-10 years old. We would wake the children up in the morning (5am !), get them ready for breakfast and then school, be there for them during the school breaks and after school. Help them out with any homework and read them bed time stories before going to sleep at around 8pm. One of us would always spend the night in the dorm with the boys in case one of them would have to go the toilet or have the occasional nightmare (no electricity after 8.30pm, so pitch dark!). Not always easy to divide your attention over so many kids at the same time. At times it has been challenging, but ultimately a very rewarding and unforgettable experience. See https://picasaweb.google.com/egbert.voerman/CasaGuatemala for some pics of my time in the Casa.

On November 4th I will be participating in the New York Marathon for the third time and of course I will try to beat my time of last year. However my main goal this year is to raise money for Casa Guatemala. Together with 10 colleagues (from 6 different countries) who are also running in the NYC Marathon we are aiming to raise enough money to cover one year of school supplies, textbooks and other educational materials. Your tax deductible donation*, be it $10 or $1,000, will go a long way against that goal. And the fact that ING will match the first $2,000 raised be each runner** will make your donation all the more effective.

Making a donation is easy. Just visit https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=21070 . The donation form is pretty self explanatory, it even allows you to allocate your donation to more than one runner. You can also donate on behalf of somebody else (for example your company) Please note that we have partnered with Groundspring.org, a non-profit organization facilitating on-line donations with any of the major credit cards using a secured connection, so your online donation will be save ! The campaign runs until Monday November 12th,

Do you want to know how I am doing during the marathon or if and in what time I make it to the finish line? Athlete Alert will send email or sms alerts to the first 5 persons donating $50 or more !

Thanks very much in advance for considering making a donation towards the education of the Children of Casa Guatemala.

Best, Egbert

*for tax residents in the US, Canada, UK and Spain
**matching policy differs per location

A thousand words

Today seems like the first day of fall. The breeze is cool and the leaves seemed to have turned color overnight. I wish I was hiking! I wish I was here…

Believe it or not: A hitchhiker in Indiana

My hitchhiker’s karma is drastically unbalanced. I’ve received somewhere between 80-100 rides and I’ve given three, counting the one I gave yesterday.

Normally the hitchhikers we get in these parts of the world look like they’ve been thumbing rides since Vietnam. This fella didn’t. He had a laptop bag, wheeled-luggage, and was wearing an aircast.

I drove by amazed that there was someone standing beside the road to Farmland. That’s right – the city is named Farmland. You might catch a friendly farmer on the way to look at his crops, but chances are you’re not going to get a ride of any distance. It’s a doldrums for hitchin’.

I thought about all of the times I stood alongside a road – mostly in New Zealand, but other times in Hawaii, Australia, Romania, and Bosnia – in the rain and watched car after car pass. It’s the kind of thing that can really make a day crummy and have you lose faith in humanity.

I stopped.

Kenneth is from Alaska. He was visiting his brother in Greenville, Ohio. His brother’s wife is a nut and stole his pain pills he was taking for his torn ACL (tore it working on his bro’s roof). Once the pain pills were done, she stole his wallet. He had enough and was off to Minnesota via Chicago – penniless. A buddy he made in Iraq that saved his life lives in Chicago.

Kenneth has had some bad luck. He drove over an IED in Iraq. He lost a kidney and several feet of intestines. He doesn’t approve of the war in Iraq, but thinks our fight in Afghanistan is worthwhile. I tell him I’m a writer and he tells me he’s thinking about making his journal from Iraq into a book.

Kenneth has had some good luck. His brother – the good one, not the one in Greenville – is a procrastinator. In 2001, he made Kenneth’s family late to the airport. They were off to Cancun, but missed their flight. United 93. Kenneth says that every person on that flight was a hero. That plane was heading for the Whitehouse.

In Minnesota, Kenneth will get his long-time girlfriend and mother of his twin girls and head back to Cordova, Alaska, where he has a home with a back porch overlooking the ocean 50 feet below.

Kenneth says that in Alaska if a police officer sees three cars pass a hitchhiker, the fourth car will get a ticket. The elements and the wildlife of Alaska can be lethal.

Speaking of wildlife, Kenneth has had some close calls.

There are two pods of Orca near where he lives. Kenneth has known the dominant male of the “M-pod” since the whale was not much bigger than my truck. This particular killer whale has swum close enough for Kenneth to pet him from his kayak.

One time Kenneth was riding his motorbike down the highway when a moose stepped out. He drove right between the moose’s legs. The moose’s belly scraped some paint off of his helmet. He was riding one of those low profile “crotch rockets.”

Kenneth makes a living long line fishing. He knows the names of glaciers and has seen them recede some 30 miles. He thinks Hong Kong is a fun city and Japan is a good time, too. When I tell him that I taught SCUBA in Key West for awhile he tell me he has a relative that teaches SCUBA on Marathon Key. When I tell him I did a lot of hitchhiking in New Zealand he tells me that he has family there.

He might rejoin the military. After all, he does have one kidney left.

I buy him a taquito at Taco Bell and leave him at a truck stop. Maybe he can catch a ride to Ft. Wayne or, if he’s lucky, all the way to Chicago. The truckers might take some convincing: A hitchhiker in rural Indiana?

It’s almost unbelievable.

Note: “Sorry I’m late, honey, I picked up a hitchhiker” is not a good excuse to be late for dinner.

Kelsay scores touchdown for Bills

If you are watching Monday Night Football on ESPN, you saw the Bills defensive lineman Kelsay intercept a pass and score a touchdown. Annie and I saw the Bills’ throwback jersey he is wearing being made during our factory visit in Perry.

During the tour I was secretly hoping they would give me a Kelsay jersey because it was manly and almost had my name on it. See, most of the things that have, or almost have, my name on them are usually pink. In fact, sometimes I even get registered for conferences as Countess Kelsey.

Go Bills! I’m sure the citizens of Perry are rooting for you. And if you could please double up Terrell Owens because if he scores over 19 fantasy points “The Gods of War” my fantasy team will drop to 2-2 on the season.

In the Perry Herald

Travelin’ Light Writer Tours ACO
By Lorraine Sturm (Perry Herald)

Travel writer Kelsey Timmerman of Ohio will feature American Classic Outfitters in his upcoming book, “Where Am I Wearing?” and related articles. ACO was the last stop on a world round tour Timmerman made in search of the people who made some of his favorite articles of clothing. The story idea came to Timmerman, 28, when he looked at a pile of his laundry. He considers himself an All-American boy yet his clothes are made far away.

(more…)

MADE IN AMERICA

“ACO Welcomes Kelsey and Annie Timmerman”

The sign is weird. It’s the first time we’ve seen Annie’s new name.

We’re greeted by a reporter from the local newspaper. Lorraine is excited that we came all the way to Perry, New York, to see where my shorts were made. She doesn’t act like this is a weird thing to be doing at all. She thinks it’s neat. I like Lorraine.

Lorraine describes Perry as such: “I always tell people that the south side of town smells like cookies and the north like manure.”

The cookie smell comes from the Archway factory and the manure smell comes from the surrounding dairy farms. Archway cookies remind me of visiting my grandma Timmerman. I’m not sure if the woman ever baked a single cookie in her life, but she always had a pack of unopened Archway oatmeal cookies and a can of Hawaiian punch at the ready for snack time. The manure reminds me of playing basketball in my buddy Adam’s barn. At times the ball would roll out of the hay mow down to where the cows were. We took turns retrieving the ball. You were unlucky if it landed on a pattie when it was your turn.

Both of us born and raised in rural Ohio, Annie and I can relate to life in Perry. The people are the kind of nice that city slickers don’t know – small-town nice. But like many small towns, Perry has lost jobs to conglomerations, cut backs, and cheaper labor overseas. Champion, who made my shorts, once employed over 850 people in Perry. In 2002, they up and left, a major blow to the town of 7,000.

ACO was born from the ashes of Champion. The company founded by Sam who owns the furniture store on Main Street, started with eleven people working in the factory Champion abandoned. The eleven employees worked in a small lighted corner, leaving tens of thousands of square-feet in darkness.
When Ed the CEO lost his battle with cancer, their future was uncertain. They called Mark, a former Champion manager, who had moved south with the industry.

“That thing about not being able to go home again isn’t true,” Marks tells me. “When I came to visit for the day and saw the same people I worked with in the same office I had worked in…that’s what did it for me. I came back for the people. Definitely, not the weather.”

A year ago ACO employed 30 people. Today, after landing a big contract with Adidas who owns Reebok, ACO has 120 employees and looking for more. They custom make uniforms for half of the NBA teams, 3 NFL teams, and over 70 colleges. During our tour we see a lady sewing Jason Kidd’s name onto his Jersey.

The factory isn’t that different from the factories I’ve seen all over the world, but the work environment is. Employees listen to iPods, they have family photos at their workstations, and they smile at us. This is the biggest difference. At the factories in Asia, I tried not to look at the workers for fear that my tour guide would question my interest in their products and cut the tour short. In Perry, Mark greets each employee by name. In Perry, each employee seems to be an individual piece of something that’s growing, something that’s exciting. In Asia, each worker is a set of hands.

Donna, Maxine, Sue, and many of the other workers at ACO remember my 1992 Dream Team shorts. They tell me about how they were made and what their part in making them was. Many of the employees at ACO worked for Champion. Some of them have 20 to 30 years of experience making apparel, and a few over 40 years.

New sewers start out at $8.50/hour. They make more in one hour than many of the workers I met abroad make in a week.

Lorraine leaves us as we chat with Mark in his office. She has other stories to cover. Apparently a cow gave birth to triplets and a local girl won Grand Champion at the fair. It’s good to know that there are bigger stories in Wyoming County, New York, than newlyweds visiting a factory.

A big thanks to the kind people of Perry. I look forward to writing about their town and ACO. It should be a nice upbeat last chapter, a great way to wrap up my quest, and hopefully, a great way to end a book.

One Wedding, One Honeymoon, One pair of shorts

Saturday Annie and I tie the knot in my parents’ backyard in front of 300 family and friends.

On Sunday the quest/honeymoon continues. It’s kind of like the two threads of my life will be pulled together. There’s the travel-around-the-globe-chasing-my-clothes thread and there’s the Annie-girlfriend-fiance-wife thread.

First we’re heading to Put-in-Bay, the Key West of the North, and then we’re off to Perry, New York, home of the Grand Canyon of the East. (You always have to question the legitimacy of a destination when the locals sell it as a more accessible, less touristy version of an actual destination.) And then were off to Niagara Falls, which I like to refer to as the Victoria Falls of North America.

Perry is where my all-time favorite item of clothing, 1992 Dream Team basketball shorts, was made. I’ve been in touch with a factory that custom makes sports uniforms. Many of its employees worked for Champion back in the day when there was an American Apparel industry and I hope to meet some that may have made my shorts. Everyone I’ve talked to in Perry seems nice and very small townish, which means they’re our kind of people. The local newspaper even wants to do a story on us.

Yeah, this doesn’t sound terribly romantic, but I hope to dedicate only part of one day to tracking down my shorts and the people who made them. Annie is cool with it. Plus, how many people get to write-off their honeymoons? Granted, if I spend much more than part of one day, Annie might start thumping on me.

I’m really looking forward to the trip – a chance to decompress following all of the wedding madness. We don’t have much of a plan, only to go with the flow of our road trip and get used to being the Timmermans.

I won’t be posting daily (because the whole Annie thumping me thing), but I’m sure I’ll still get in a post here and there when she’s not looking or when she’s in the shower. I might even get a pic or two up from the wedding.

The Grand prize winner…Batman!

Some of you may remember that Kyle won the ultimate super-spectacular grand prize from the Create Your Own NGO contest, which was a personal visit from yours truly. Besides the big winner, Kyle is also my brother who graduated with PhD while I was in Cambodia. I missed his graduation party, but sent this slide show message.

Anyhow, I spent 5-days with Kyle on his new home, the island of Galveston, Texas, which Kyle, now after having his bike stolen, affectionately calls Galvatraz.

Galveston is a strange place. In places it’s Key West, in others it’s the hood. We rode bikes around, tossed the football on the beach, sweated our butts off, and ate lots of good food, including apple pie ice cream. It’s about time someone came up with this flavor.

Kyle bought a new bike, a green hooptie named Moon Dog, but could be referred to as the Green Machine, the Green Hornet, or Green McGreeny Greenerson – it’s that green; it’s that sweet. I’ll post a pic of Kyle on his new bike when he sends me one. Until then I’ll post the photo below that I like to call “Limp Batman.”

Aboard the Pirate Master ship

Last year I went on the Picton Castle for a story for the short-lived Glucose Magazine. This summer the ship starred in the CBS-flop Pirate Master. It only aired for a few weeks. Don’t blame the PC’s crew or the PC because, for the most part, they rock. I expect if they show would have featured the crew instead of nut-case, attention-starved contestants producers find to be on reality shows, it would have been a success.

I viewed an episode online and at first I didn’t recognize her very much. She’s got a new, meaner looking Black-Pearl-like paint job and the decks been outfitted to appear more pirate-y.

Read the feature, Before & After the Mast, I wrote on a week on the Picton Castle in the Great Lakes or (warning cheesy pirate cliché) walk the PLANK!