Bangladesh garment workers want wages to rise with soaring costs of food

15,000 workers go on strike. When you earn $25/month and rice is 25 cents a pound, something has gotta give.

Erma Bombeck writers’ conference

I’m not sure I’ve made it as a writer yet. Such things are like knowing whether or not a country is in a recession – only hindsight can tell. But I owe much of what success I have had to the Erma Bombeck conference in Dayton, Ohio.

It was there, in 2006, that I met an editor at the Christian Science Monitor who gave me my first big boy clip, which led to an editor at the World Vision Report radio program contacting me to record some essays for them. One thing led to another and by 2007 I had enough clips to be taken seriously by editors of books and magazines.

This year, the director of the conference mentioned me in his opening address. He mentioned my small victories, my underwear wall of fame (which I forgot I even had), and the fact that I spent a month in Bangladesh because that’s where my underwear were made. I was “the underwear guy” the rest of the weekend. Garrison Keillor even signed his latest book Pontoon, “For Kelsey, the underwear guy.”

Garrison Keillor’s speech was awesome. Connie Schultz, Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist and author of And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man, gave a hilarious and touching speech. She was a single mother and feminist that ended up marrying Sherrod Brown shortly before his campaign to become an Ohio Senator. I was lucky enough to meet both Keillor and Schultz and her husband.

I had never met a Senator before. I was excited to meet Senator Brown because I voted for him in 2006 and he has worked a lot on trade laws. He helped introduce the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act in 2007, known by some as the “Anti-sweatshop” bill, and even wrote a book on trade. I have a bazillion and one questions for the Senator. When I told him about my book he was very interested, promised to send me one his book, and told me that he would give me a call. I think he might even have mentioned the possibility of contributing a blurb. I’m not sure about this; I was a little busy trying not to look like a stuttering idiot. The strange part is that he was on my short list of people to ask for blurbs. So was Nicholas Kristof who I met a few months ago. I would have never dreamed I would be lucky enough to meet them both.

Of course the most exciting part is meeting other writers. I had the pleasure of celebrating literary victories and consoling one another in our literary defeats with Dave Fox, Bobby White, Seth Brown, Lizzy Miles, DC Stanfa, Jenn Dlugos, Danny Gallagher, Norm Cowie, and Joanne Brokaw.

All-in-all a pretty successful and enjoyable conference. I’m sure I’ll be at the next one.

Today’s sign I need to grow up

It’s my first conversation with my editor at Wiley and he’s giving me lots of great ideas of how to structure the book and, in general, the direction I should take it. He’s scanning through the chapters, which are named “My (insert article of clothing.”

He says: I’m looking at My Underwear…

I say: (irrepressible school girl giggle)…sorry.

The NLC would like to slap you in the face

This video produced by the National Labor Committee has some pretty powerful images, including young Bangladeshi women sleeping with their faces smooshed against the side of their sewing machines.

I’m all for people knowing where and who make their clothes, but I think this video has some faults. The narration is a bit extreme and completely dismisses the context in which the workers live.

The narrator says that the factories reach 100-degrees in the summertime and that the worker’s clothes are covered in sweat as if the workers have a place to escape the heat. They don’t. If they weren’t at the factory, they would be sitting in 100-degree heat in their home. Granted, workers coloring cloth, using irons, or presses work in areas painfully hot year-round.

Is a woman who is allowed eight seconds to sew on a button, and who does this time and time again, any different than any factory worker anywhere in the world that puts the same widget in the same place day-in and day-out? A factory is a factory. Doing a repetitive job efficiently is factory work. I know people in Ohio who have spent most of their lives doing the same thing.

The narrator also mentions that the workers don’t have pensions or health care plans. Few people do in Bangladesh. To say it as if the workers don’t get it like everybody else in the country is misleading.

The narrator makes broad generalizations as if all of the women workers’ families are falling apart and all the supervisors beat the workers.

Without a doubt the video is shocking – somewhat misleading but shocking. Maybe that’s what people need. Personally, I want the whole story and this video is not the whole story. But maybe I saw a video like this years ago and it planted the idea for this quest. This video could be the that kernel for someone else.

Maybe we need a little slap in the face before we actually think about something.

Where am I wearing? The ultimate slideshow

I raided my photo archive from the WAIW? trip and set it to Gary Jules’ Mad World and U2’s Yahweh. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get either one of them to play for me so I had to do it myself. Don’t worry, I don’t sing. This is more of a beginner guitar player’s shot at spoken word.

This will permanently live in the “About Where am I wearing?” section to the right.

A thousand words

How exciting is this…?

I described my individual items of clothing to Geoff Hassing and he brought them to life. He came up with the idea of doing the the circles that zoomed in on the tags.

Thanks Geoff. You rock!

An excerpt on my underwear

If I was a OneDerWear wearer, I would have never created such a strong bond with my favorite pair of underwear. Here is a passage on them in my sample chapter on Bangladesh:

Multi-colored Christmas ornaments are printed on the boxers and the phrase “Jingle These” runs around the waist band. Eighty-three percent of people in Bangladesh are Muslim so Christmas isn’t celebrated, but its products are exported.

If you look closely, MADE IN BANGLADESH can still be read on the faded tag. I got the underwear as a gift years ago and, ever since, they’ve maintained a regular place in my underwear rotation regardless of the time of year or holiday season.

I wore them my freshman year of college when I rolled out of my dorm bed to bark at my roommates who were having an overly raucous game of Madden football at 3:00 a.m. It’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re wearing Christmas underwear in April.

I wore them when I took the GRE. I remember because they were on backwards, which I took to be a bad omen of my performance on the test. After all, how can you expect to get a score that will impress grad schools when you can’t even put your underwear on properly?

OneDerWear disposable underwear

Some people just don’t have any sentimental attachment to their underwear. These are the sort of people that would actually wear OneDerWear disposable underwear.

Google ads are often ridiculous. If I could choose, I would disable them, but the BootsnAll gang has gotta make some money some how and I’m cool with that. Anyhow, I was checking the site yesterday and glanced at the auto-generated ads. That’s where I first heard about OneDerWear.

Here’s some marketing mumbo jumbo:

OneDerWear is an ultra-light disposable underwear created for traveling. Designed to provide the utmost comfort and convenience, OneDerWear disposable underwear is 100% cotton and ideally packaged for maximum space efficiency. Each package contains five compact pairs of individually wrapped disposable underwear that can fit in the palm of your hand. With OneDerWear, you simply wear and toss! By the end of your trip, you’ll be surprised to find plenty of luggage space for gifts and souvenirs.

I have considered the space efficiency of my underwear while packing for a long trip, but only in the quantity I take. I’ve never thought to myself, “Boy, if only there was underwear that would fit in the palm of my hand.” Let’s say I was going on a trip for 10 days. Normally, I would take three or four pair of underwear and wash them as I go. But if you decided OneDerWear was for you, you’d have to take ten pairs or more. It wouldn’t be until day six or seven that you were carrying as little underwear as me.

How comfortable can OneDerWear be? Sure they fit in the palm of your hand, but do they ride up your crack?

From the site’s “USAGE” section:

Exercising
After an extensive workout at the gym, do you really want to put on your sweaty underwear after showering? Just throw some OneDerWear in your gym bag, and you will never have to wear sweaty underwear again!

Or you could actually take a pair of clean underwear in that gym bag you’re carrying around!

Camping/Adventure Traveling
OneDerWear disposable undergarment products are perfect for camping because you don’t have to use limited backpack space with re-packing dirty underwear (peeeewww!). With OneDerWear, you can just Wear and Toss! Also, OneDerWear is friendly to the environment.

How in the world is wearing a pair of underwear once and then tossing them into the woods environmentally friendly? The saying goes, “Take only pictures, leave only footprints,” not, “…leave only footprints and OneDerWear.”

Also, who is the marketing genius that wrote, “…re-packing dirty underwear (peeeewww!)”?

Government Use
OneDerWear is also great for troops whose military stay requires them to reside in areas where access to washing facilities may be inconvenient or impossible. With OneDerWear there is no need to wash! Just Wear and Toss!

“Sir, we’re under attack!”

“How did they ever find us, private?”

“Sir, I think they may have followed our trail of OneDerWear.”

“Aggghhhhh! OneDerWEARRRRR!….I’m hit private.”

“Sir, you’ll be fine.”

“I’m dying. Tell my wife I love her. If you look in my duffel, you’ll find a few souvenirs I picked up for her. Please, give them to her. I had a little extra space thanks to OneDerWear. And they seemed like such a good idea at the…..”

College Students
With the busy schedule of college students, who has time to wash clothes. OneDerWear disposable undergarment products are great for college students and their busy lifestyles.

I’ve never had more free-time than when I was in college.

I OneDerWear they came up with such a dumb idea?

Hands of Labor

These are the hands that make our blue jeans, underwear, flip flops, and about everything else we wear or use. I suppose today is a good day to thank them for their work.

Thoughts on my WV interview

First off, if you haven’t listened to my interview, you stink.

Now that we have that out of the way…my thoughts on the interview:

The interview lasted about 40 minutes and they cut it to about six, which I’m fine with. It’s not like it’s the Kelsey Show or anything.

They did a great job making me not sound like an idiot.

I would believe anything that Peggy, the host, tells me – there’s just something about her voice. So, by association you should believe everything I tell you.

The interview was the most difficult one of the three because the connection was so bad. There was a major delay and it was hard to banter back and forth with Peggy. Editing took care of this awkwardness.

They had to cut parts on Fantasy Kingdom and my perceived interest in women’s panties.

The next one about my all-American Cambodian blue jeans should air in about a month.