Kelsey Timmerman's Blog

1) I'm speaking at Manchester College in West Manchester, Indiana, Thursday in the Wine Recital room at 7:00 PM.  I'll be visiting a few classes during the day. (here's a list of other places I'll be in the near future).

2) Philadelphia's libraries are staying open! I hope other struggling libraries around the country can say the same thing.

3) Harper bit me in the back.

4) If you'd be interested in having me speak at your school, church, organization, business, or cult, I made this handy page

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Do you ever feel like a dog in your indecision?  You know those times when you are trying to convince your dog to do something new and they start to whimper and walk circles.  That's how I felt yesterday.

I was driving and listening to one of my favorite talk shows on NPR "On Point".  There are bigger and more popular shows on the radio, but there are few hosts I would rather sit down and chat with than Tom.  I sent Tom a copy of "Where Am I Wearing?" with a note expressing how much I enjoy...

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I thought I was a pretty cool little boy growing up.

I was tough. I jumped off the high dive at the pool when I was five.

I could take a hit. I beat up a girl on the bus. This might sound lame until I tell you that the girl was in third grade and I was in second and everybody knows that a third grade girl is like double the size of a second grade boy.

I learned to cuss at an early age, which of course strikes fear into the hearts of sissies and forces adults to suppress laughter and feign...

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(This weekend I got into a conversation on Twitter with @sloane about microfinance. The Grameen Bank is a shining example of how giving women access to credit can lift families out of poverty. Here are a few photos I took when I visited the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 2007 . Below that is an excerpt from "Where Am I Wearing? about the experience. )

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammad Yunnus believes in Bangladesh, too. He formed the Grameen Bank, which gives microcredit loans to people who...

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From a distance my trophy shelf might've looked impressive. Unfortunately there was no distance to put between you and the shelf in my small childhood bedroom.

You wouldn't be impressed by the gold and silver trophies of varying height. None were that big, but some were embarrassingly small. Half of the trophies were from Spelling Bees. From 5th-7th grade I dominated the Mississinawa Valley Spelling Bee. The entire middle school would assemble to watch their peers spell words. How awful. As...

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I heard primatologist Jane Goodall, Champion of the Chimps, on the Diane Rehm show today.  She's been fighting for our closest primate cousins for decades.  She said something that really resonated with me.

"You've got to find a way to get into somebody's heart. And just shouting at them and telling them they're doing bad things and blinding them with numbers and statistics…you'll never get anyone to change."

She was referring to environmentalists who take more aggressive and political...

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What a craptastic day to be a worker. The rest of the world celebrates Labor Day May 1st, but like football and our refusal of the metric system, we like to do things different (If you're curious why, here's last year's Labor Day post).

Unemployment is pushing double digits in the U.S. And here are a few more depressing stats from the wounded U.S. economy (via the Economic Institute ):

• New jobs needed per month to keep up with population growth: 127,000

• Jobs lost in August 2009: 216,000

•...

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My in-laws match.

Their shorts are different patterns of the same four colors. Their leather sandals are the same shade of brown. Their shirts are His and Her polos.

No one wants to think about their in-laws underwear, but if I was a betting man, I'd bet on theirs matching.

Gloria, my mother-in-law, deserves most of the credit (or blame; it depends on your perspective) for this. Jim, my father-in-law, could care less. Jim and I have this in common and it's why I have a purple shirt.

I also have

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To learn about why I'm running the NYC marathon and how you can help visit http://whereamiwearing.com/…

Click here to view the embedded video.

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I heard about the documentary "Which way is home?" on NPR this morning. It follows kids leaving their homes in Central America and sneaking across borders on their way to the United States. Just another reminder of the desperation that exists in our world and the risks people will take to overcome it.

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