Kelsey Timmerman's Blog, page 25

Dear “World Travelers,” stop counting countries

There’s no good way to quantify travel. I wish folks would stop trying.

International travel has been part of my life and my career for the past 13 years. I started traveling right out of college. I did the 6-month backpacking thing through Hawaii, Australia, Thailand, Nepal, and zipped through Europe. The next year I went to New Zealand on the last leg of an around-the-world ticket I had purchased in Australia. There were other trips to Eastern Europe, Central America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Western Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and beyond.

I’ve written two books about my travels. One to meet the folks who made my favorite items of clothing, and one to meet the farmers and fishermen responsible for much of the food imported into the United States.

I’ve shared my stories from stages around the United States, and I’m often introduced as a “world traveler.” After my talk in which I share stories of things like near death snake experiences, slavery, and the global connection we have with factory workers and farmers, one question always pops up in the Q&A:

How many countries have you been to?

I don’t like this question. Partly because I don’t have an answer. I’ve probably been to more countries than you, but that doesn’t make me more worldly or more of a savvy traveler than you. That probably just means I’ve been lost more than you. At my core, I will always be a touron (a well-meaning moron + tourist).

I have never counted how many countries I’ve been to, and I never will.

Do I count Germany? I arrived in Frankfurt late at night by train. At least I think it was Frankfurt. Because of train delays I had to wait to catch another train onward to Switzerland. I was traveling on a budget, and it didn’t make sense to get a hotel for a few hours, so I spent the night in the subway with the homeless and a few fellow travelers in a similar situation to my own.

Do I count Japan? I’ve been through the airport in Tokyo a few times.

Do I count Morrocco? I had a 12-hour layover on my way to West Africa. I caught a cab from the airport and spent most of my layover seeing the sites and eating the food in Casablanca. (Look! I misspelled Morocco! If you can’t spell the country, I definitely don’t think you should count it!)

I spent more than a month in Bangladesh where I went undercover as an underwear buyer and met the people who work in garment factories. I spent three weeks in Ivory Coast visiting cocoa farmers.

So if we’re just counting countries, my travels in Bangladesh and Ivory Coast each count as one country, as do my few hours in Casablanca. That doesn’t seem right.

Some go by how many stamps they have in their passport, as if a passport is a scoresheet or a merit badge sash (I’m a former Eagle scout). But traveling in Europe from one country to another doesn’t even earn you a stamp. What about that time I traveled from Serbia to the then “semi-autonomous nation” of Kosovo? Kosovo was sort of a country then and there was sort of a border, but I don’t think they even stamped my passport.

To me, counting countries is like a basketball player being measured only by how many games they played, ignoring how many minutes they played, how many points, rebounds, assists, and steals they had.

I just don’t see the point. Country counting simply measures one’s capability to afford transportation to a foreign land and one’s ability to sit on his or her ass for extended periods of time on that transportation. Neither one of these things is worth bragging about.

You could tally up a visit to every country in the world by flying first class and staying a single night in the local Hilton. If that’s your goal, fine, but you wouldn’t have experienced any of the magic of travel: the cultural exchanges, getting lost, haggling with a street vendor, practicing the local language with school children, celebrating a wedding or a holiday, eating a home cooked meal, trying your best to separate politics from people,  and learning about a different worldview that changes your own.

Country counting ignores all the qualities that make travel meaningful. It assigns a meaningless number and a hierarchy to travel and travelers.

If you have traveled to a country and want to say “I’ve been there,” but you can’t name one person in that country other than someone who is a cab driver or works at a hotel, you are doing it wrong.

I’m not in favor of any metric to measure travel, but maybe that’s it. If you really must quantify your travels you can only count a country if you can name someone you met in that country.

As travel writer Tim Cahill wrote: “A journey is best measured in friends, not miles.”

Wherever you are traveling to next, I hope it is filled with too many meaningful experiences to count.

Two thoughts on parenting…

These aren’t parenting strategies.  Parenting strategies to me are like fad-diets.  Raise your kids like Europeans! Raise your kids like Chinese! Raise your kids like cavemen!  However you raise your kids, you will succeed and fail. Just love them and stop telling everyone else how to raise their kids.

Anyhow, I’ve been a parent now for 5 1/2 years, so this isn’t to say that I know much of anything about parenting at this point.  Years from now, we’ll let the therapists decide that.  These are more my thoughts on how I feel as a parent:

#1 Kids give you less time to change the world, but more of a reason.

I’m fortunate that my work reaches people and hopefully changes the way they see and interact with the world in a positive way.  Every so often a bold audience member at one of my talks asks if my work has improved the lives of the folks I write about.  I think I surprise them when I say, “No.”

To my knowledge, none of the farmers or factory workers have seen their lives improve because they shared their stories with me.  My hope is that the world their children grow up in will be a little more fair and filled with a little more opportunity, and it would be wonderful if my work played a part in that.  And maybe their kids and mine will live in a world that is more connected and conscious of the lives on the other side of the world that each of theirs impacts.

So I write. I tell stories. And at night when I put the pajamas on my kids after bed time, we look at the labels on their clothes and talk about the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, and beyond.

#2 My kids make me believe in magic. (Of course they also make me believe in demonic possession.)

This weekend we visited Annie’s grandma, who hasn’t been doing the best lately, in a nursing home.  We can never be sure how our son Griffin, who is three and on the autism spectrum, will act in a new place filled with strangers. He constantly surprises us, though.  When we entered the visiting room at the nursing home, Griffin went right up to his great-grandma Betty, said “Hi!” and leaned in for a hug and kiss.  And then leaned in for more.  For a little dude who isn’t the best with eye contact, he continually looked her in the eye and gave her hugs.

I have never seen him shower someone with so much affection.

Betty is 93, and at that age you can never be sure how long she’ll be with us.  Griffin, apparently, wanted to soak up every moment with her. It was pure magic.

So there are moments like that. But there are also moments when the kids sprout horns and conspire to thwart our parenting efforts, and inspire us to research child-proof, padded cages, and toddler exorcists.

 

Ball State Sophomores, You should enter this contest!

Ball State University, in my hometown of Muncie, used WEARING as a freshman read last year, and this year they are using EATING. They are having a whole host of EATING related events, and on April 16th I’ll be on campus to speak at Pruis Hall.

 

WIN $500

 

In conjunction with all of these events, the Freshman Connections program is hosting an essay and video competition for sophomores. Here are all the details:

Description:

This contest is designed to provide students a platform to use creative video to demonstrate this year’s Freshman Connections theme, The Difference You Make, and the themes of the book Where Am I Eating? By Kelsey Timmerman, who will be visiting Ball State April 16, Pruis Hall, 7:30pm.

The short film and/ or essay should be representative of a theme in the book and illustrate a social change that you can initiate because of what you have learned.

Short Film and Essay Contest Rules:

1. For Ball State Sophomores only. Individual and group entries are welcome.

2. Contest begins Sunday, March 2nd. All entries must be posted by midnight Monday, April 14th.

3. Videos limited to 5 minutes maximum. Essays limited to 4-6 pages maximum, 12 point font, double spaced.

4. Contest entries must represent Ball State University in a positive way. “Obscene speech, materials or activity is not protected by the constitution of the United States or the State of Indiana and is prohibited by University policy”http://cms.bsu.edu/about/administrati....

FOR FILM SUBMISSIONS:

Each video should be uploaded to YouTube.com using the following naming convention: BallState_[Where Am I Eating]_[name of entry].”

Instructions for posting:

• YouTube videos must be linked to the Ball State Freshman Connections Facebook page. Contestants must ‘Like’ the Facebook page in order to post videos to it.

• In order to create a YouTube video, contestants must create a YouTube account. Videos can then be uploaded through this account.

• Once the video has been uploaded, copy the URL link of your video and paste the link in a post on the Freshman Connections Facebook page and submit.

FOR ESSAY SUBMISSIONS:

“Each essay should saved as and emailed using the following naming convention:

BallState_[Where Am I Eating]_[name of entry].”

• Contestants must ‘Like’ the Facebook page

• Email essay as a PDF file to mmessine@bsu.edu

Contest Prizes:

1st place – $500 Book Voucher to Barnes and Nobles at Ball State

2nd place – $300 Book Voucher to Barnes and Nobles at Ball State

3rd place – $200 Book Voucher to Barnes and Nobles at Ball State

*Only one prize will be awarded despite group submissions, team leader will be awarded prize*

*There will be prizes given to the top three winners of the short film contest and the essay contest!*

Judging:

The three criteria for judging the YouTube contest entries and Essay submissions will be:

Effective communication of the theme

Creativity

Originality

Winners will be announce during Kelsey Timmerman’s presentation on April 16th. The event starts at 7:30pm in Pruis Hall.

Remember: There will be prizes given to both the top three winners of the short film contest and the essay contest!

As a note: You are not required to create your own music for the Youtube video. You are allowed to use any music.

In which I tell NPR listeners I am not naked

Do you ever listen to the radio and wonder if the person speaking is naked?

Well, apparently I do because I went out of my way to tell the listeners of this hour-long interview on Lehigh Valley’s NPR station that I was, in fact, not naked.

Do you ever say dumb things? I do…like constantly.

For the most part, I managed to not make a complete fool of myself. Regardless, I’m really looking forward to speaking, on stage, wearing clothes, at NCC’s 4th Annual Peace & Justice Conference next week.

Caffeine: Made in China?

Think your Coca-Cola is America’s nectar? Wrong!

I never really thought where caffeine came from (and I think about where stuff comes from a lot) until I heard Murray Carpenter on NPR this morning discussing his new book Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts and Hooks Us.

Caffeine comes from plants and acts as an insecticide. So it can be natural, but most of the caffeine in soft drinks is produced in a factory, and the largest caffeine factory in the world is in…. China.

Carpenter described the factory he “got close to one”:

It was sketchy. It was not what I expected. It was sort of a run down industrial park.

I’m drinking caffeine right now, and you probably are too. Carpenter’s interview is worth a listen to learn more about your daily ritual.

My Snatch (it’s a CrossFit thing, sicko!)

I’ve been working out at The Arsenal, Muncie’s only CrossFit gym. since July. After nine months this is my snatch lift (wide grip, from ground to overhead). It’s come along way, but still has a lot of work. I bend my elbows too early, and I don’t get under the bar enough.

This morning, starting at 6 AM, we completed 6 rounds of 2 reps. I matched my personal record of 105 lbs. I was hoping for 115 lbs. This is what I like about CrossFit. Your technique and strengths are measurable. In that way it’s not like writing at all. I can’t quantify my writing to see improvement. I believe that my writing continually improves — EATING is better written than WEARING — but all of this is subjective. I also like that I fail a lot. In facing, if I’m not pushing myself to the point of failure (I failed at 115 lbs), I know that I didn’t try hard enough.

However, like CrossFit, you only get better as a writer by doing it day after day, tweaking your form here, honing your technique there.

If you want to learn more about the CrossFit journey, I’ve written 9 blogs for the Arsenal from how I got roped into it, to how it has changed our lives.

Look out Norfolk, San Diego, St. Louis, San Francisco, Dayton, Indianapolis, Galesburg, Muncie, etc., here I come!

I’m speaking all over the place this spring — east coast, west coast, and middle coast! If I’m in your neighborhood, come see me or meet me for a fair trade coffee or whatever.

I’m looking forward to criss-crossing the country several times to share the stories of the folks I’ve met on my travels. If you’re interested in having me speak to your conference, university, school, or event, check out my speaking page.

March 27 4th Annual Peace and Justice Conference, North Hampton Community College Lehigh, PA

Event Description

Public event sponsored by Northampton Community College’s humanities and social sciences division, political science department, communications department, Political Science Club and the NCC Forum on Peace, Justice & Conflict Resolution. Guest speaker, Kelsey Timmerman is the author of “Where Am I Wearing? A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories and People That Make Our Clothes” and “Where Am I Eating? An Adventure Through the Global Food Economy.” His writings have appeared in various publications and aired on NPR. He seeks to connect people around the world.

Location Information:

Main Campus – Lipkin Theatre  (View Map)

3835 Green Pond Road

Bethlehem, PA 18020

United States

Room: Kopecek Hall

 

March 29 Principia College’s 65th Annual Public Affairs Conference “Sustainability: Not a fad. But a Future.” Elsah, IL.

This is a student led conference. Here’s a video they put together promoting the event. Patagonia’s Vincent Stanley will also be speaking there:

April 7: Literary Festival Norfolk, VA. Details TBD.
April 10-11 Erma Bombeck Humor Writers’ Workshop

I’ll be leading the following session twice on Saturday morning.

Writing Nonfiction: Connecting People Through Stories

Writers of creative nonfiction explore truths through verifiable facts, shaping the narrative using the same tools as writers of fiction: scene, pacing, setting, characterization, etc. Students will be introduced to these elements and given the opportunity to use them in their own writing and share them in the class.

 I’ll be hanging out Thursday night, Friday morning, and maybe Friday night for the book signing.  I wish I could stay for the whole thing, but my schedule gets nuts, as you’ll see if you keep reading.

 

April 11 @ 1:30: Cristo Rey High School, Indianapolis, IN
April 12 San Diego, CA. Details TBD.  
April 16 Ball State University (My hometown!!)

I’ll be speaking in Pruis hall about EATING? which was used as Ball State’s sophomore read this year.

April 17 Tarrant County College @ noonish, somewhere on campus

They used EATING as a common reader. I speak at noon.  Check out this cool Prezi they made to promote the book:

April 18 Sabre (parent company of Travelocity) HQ (private)
April 22 Knox College @ 7PM Earth Day Celebration Galesburg, IL

Earth Day! I think this might be outdoors, if winter ever ends!

April 23 St. Louis Community College Saint Louis, MO, details TBD

Another return visit. It’s always nice to know that I left a good impression. I enjoyed interacting with the very engaged students at STLCC. 

April 25 Menlo School Atherton, CA

I spoke hear a few years ago about WEARING and I’m thrilled to be heading back to interact with high school and junior high students over the course of the day.  Last time one of the students thought her “great-grandfather or something started Levi’s.”  The school has fake grass!

April 26 5:30 – 8:00 PM  “Project Hope & Fairness Fundraiser” at Pear Valley Winery in Paso Robles, CA

Tom Neuhaus of Project Hope & Fairness played a prominent role during my experiences in Ivory Coast while writing EATING.  This event is awesome. Besides raising awareness about the plight of cocoa farmer in Ivory coast we’ll be raising glasses and oodles of good food and chocolate to our mouths.

Including an author in the common read experience

One of the coolest experiences I get to have as a storyteller is when one of my books gets used as a common reader in a community or as part of a first year experience on a campus.

When I started to get invites to common reading programs, I couldn’t believe it:

“You want me to visit with and speak to a few hundred or a few thousand folks who’ve read my book?”

That’s like the best day of an author’s life, right?

I enjoy diving deeper into a discussion with folks who’ve read my work, and exploring larger takeaways from multiple disciplines and perspectives. Participating in common reading programs has enhanced my understanding of my work. I’ve had the chance to talk with historians, philosophers, economists, and freshmen across the country who have shared their unique views on a book that I’ve lived and have written.

So whenever my books gets used like this, I try to go all out to help the stories spread in those communities.  I recently attended the First Year Experience conference in San Diego and shared the flyer below with those in attendance:

The flyer can be downloaded here: FYE 2014 flyer

If you’re thinking about using WEARING or EATING, hit me up for ideas of how I can help you reach your community or campus – hi@kelseytimmerman.com.

This one is for you Harper

I’ve spent roughly 37 days (that’s 24 hours X 37 days, or  888 hours) of my life since Disney’s Frozen came out performing the songs from the movie. You see, I have a five year old daughter, Harper.

Sometimes we pick individual songs from Frozen and just dance and sing.  Other times we play the soundtrack from start to finish and act out the parts.  I don’t mean to brag, but my rendition of “Do you Want to Build a Snowman” literally moved Harper to tears. (Dear Broadway producers, I’m available when you get to casting the musical.)

In honor of Harper’s love for all things Frozen, I’m posting two performance of Idina Menzel singing “Let it Go.”  The first is her recent performance with Jimmy Fallon and the Roots on the Tonight Show, and the other is her performance on the Oscars.

Idina Menzel – Let It Go – Oscars 2014 by IdolxMuzic

Love you, Harper! Can I be Elsa this time?

The 3 Pitfalls High School Sweethearts Face, and How We Overcame Them

I married my Homecoming date, Annie.

This despite the fact that I wore a sweater vest to the Homecoming dance and that we dated for 11 years before getting married. That’s right…11 years! That’s totally a record, and one that I might add, I came very close to not achieving.

Each year I get invited to speak at 20 to 30 universities across the country about my travels and my books, which are regularly selected as the common reading books that all incoming freshmen are supposed to read. And each year there is one question that freshmen women who are still with their high school boyfriends want me to answer:

“How did Annie put up with you?”

Only Annie can truly answer that question, but this is my attempt to hash out the three pitfalls that all high school sweet hearts must overcome to have a lasting relationship, and how we overcame them.

#1 High school guys are jerks

Annie lived right across the street from our high school. My 17-year-old peanut brain, couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t just walk herself over to the football field instead of having me pick her up for our first date to the Homecoming game. After all, I had just cleaned out the inside of my Trans-Am, and why would I want someone tracking dirt onto my freshly Armor-alled floor mats?

When I was 17, chivalry was dead. I killed it repeatedly.

I was on the homecoming court and I had to wear a suit. It was a cheap suit and my blond leg hairs poked through my black pants. We laughed. It was cold but our interlocked sweaty hands stayed warm for the entire game.

This is how our high school courtship went: Moments I’ll never forget interspersed among moments of me being a dope.

I like to think that, relatively speaking to other high school guys, I was a good boyfriend. Still, that’s grading on a pretty ugly curve. I ignored Annie in the halls. I barely acknowledged her presence in the company of any of my friends.

In turn, she treated me like I was a teen heartthrob. She wrote me poems. She had pictures of me hanging on her wall. She wore my jersey to basketball games.

Now that we’re on year seven of our marriage, and year 18 of our relationship, I’m not quite on the pedestal I once was. But pedestals easily topple. Those early laughs and those innocent quarters of handholding were building a solid foundation that would last.

High school guys are jerks, yet in high school, jerks often get the ladies.

For high school sweethearts to last, a guy needs to unjerkify before his lady’s intolerance for jerks wanes.

#2 The clock is ticking

The summer after I graduated high school, I broke up with Annie. I was moving on to college life, and college girls, and she still had two years of high school. At least that was my logic.

We spent hours that summer almost breaking up before a late night session of conversation and tears and I’m sorrys finally made the breakup official.

I was really bad at breaking up with Annie. I think that’s because I really liked her and didn’t even know why I was breaking up with her. It’s just what the older high school boyfriend was supposed to do before he went off to college.

We almost never fought. Our relationship wasn’t full of drama. We had a blast together. I was distracted by what was next. What would happen to us when I was traveling the world like Indiana Jones or sailing the seas on a sailboat, or some other daydreamer’s global quest that had nothing to do with any small town in the Midwest?

The breakup didn’t last very long. None of them did. And there were others. Annie graduated high school and went to a different college. I graduated college and did the six-month world backpacking trip thing before finally settling down as a SCUBA instructor in Key West.

If there were ever a job for a twenty-something year-old man to pickup women, it is working as SCUBA instructor. I once had one of my female students tell me my eyes were the same color as the blue ocean. I don’t mean to brag, but I had to dodge several advances through the years. It was easy to pass up on these opportunities to explore another relationship because I had Annie, who I simply couldn’t imagine living without, even while we lived thousands of miles apart.

Annie graduated college. By this time we had been dating for 6 years.

“What’s next?” There was that question again.

We moved together to North Carolina for a few years. I worked retail and wrote. Annie worked as a nanny. We were happy in our 600 square foot apartment except for one thing…

“What’s next?”

Annie wanted to move back to our hometown in Ohio.

The relationship clock doesn’t stop and it gets a really early start for high school sweethearts. By the time Annie had graduated college, we had dated for six years. By the time we moved back to the Midwest after our time in North Carolina, we had dated for eight years.

Everyone wanted to know when we were going to get married. They had been asking for years. And now Annie wanted to know if marriage was even on my radar.

It wasn’t.

The amount of time you are in a relationship increases the pressure to get married. When the clock starts for high school sweethearts they are further from the time in their lives where they will be emotionally and financially stable—at a place to be married.

According to a National Health Statistics report, couples who get married before they are the age of 20 only have a 54% chance of remaining married for ten years. The odds increase to 69% if a couple marries between 20-24, and to 78% if they get married after 27. (We got married when I was 28 and Annie was days away from 27.)

High school sweethearts are more likely to get married sooner, which means they have a higher chance of having a failed marriage.

The pressure to get married after dating for eight years was too much. Annie broke up with me. We didn’t talk for three months. I traveled to Central America tracking down where my T-shirt was made and she moved to Muncie.

I returned home early from my trip to attend the funeral of a boat captain I had worked with in Key West. Captain Ralph had always told me: “Marry that girl.”

I decided to take Ralph’s word’s to heart, and I got busy trying to convince Annie that there was a future for us.

Eventually I did marry that girl, and now that girl is the mother of my two awesome kids.

#3 You become different people

I had my Trans-Am phase. I had a time in my life in which I read too much Thoreau and Emerson and was a bit too transcendental to be sufferable for some folks. I had my Indiana Jones phase where I pushed the limits of adventure a little too much–too close to deadly venomous snakes, too deep beneath the ocean’s surface. And then, eventually, those things added up to be me.

My friend, author John Scalzi, wrote about this phenomenon years ago on the occasion of his 20th high school reunion:

I’ve often said to people that as far as high school reunions go, the 20th is the one that really matters. At earlier reunions people are still finding their way into the adult world, and at the later ones you find out which people have left the world entirely. At the 20th, however, everyone’s pretty much become who they were going to be. You’re irrevocably adults, you have spouses and children and status and you are you. This is one reason I was so keen on coming to this reunion: I wanted to see the people the people I had known as they were growing had become.

Annie went through different stages as well. She worked as a dolphin trainer and a nanny.  She crocheted a bit. We were lucky that at each of these stages we grew together—despite all of the above challenges—and not apart.

It’s like we were different people who fell in love all over again at each stage of our lives.

***

I’ve circled the globe multiple times reporting from 80 some countries before I finally realized that the girl of my dreams grew up only three miles down the road from me.

I’m lucky to have married my high school sweetheart, and I’m amazed as much as anyone else that she still puts up with me.