Kelsey Timmerman's Blog, page 40

Stand Up

(I’m at the right, attempting to grow into my ears and noes at my 1997 Eagle Scout court of honor)

In case you haven’t heard, I have joined the ever-growing number of Eagle Scouts across the country who are turning in their awards in protest over Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policies.

I first announced my position here on my blog and then I cross-posted over to the Huffington Post. Three days later the Huffington Post approved the post and placed it on their front page for more than a day.

Folks at Talk of the Nation read the post and invited me on. Listen to me chatting with host Neal Conan and fielding calls.

Over the past week I’ve received an outpouring of support.

As soon as I got off the radio, Billy, the gay Eagle Scout marrying my cousin, told me that he was going to send his badge back, too.

A gay friend wrote me on Facebook: Kelsey, thank you. I read this out loud to [my partner] as I was trying to soothe our baby girl, Grace, and started to cry. It means a lot when a straight white male (with such enormous biceps) sticks up for the gays.

Each of the above was worth 10,000 negative comments.

And there were plenty of negative comments, too. I received this email from a fella by the name of Jim Miazza:

“I watched my 2 sons earn Eagle, I am gld that BSA National protected them from but f-ers like you.”

I don’t mind being on the other side of any issue with that guy!

Still, when people praise me for my stand, I sort of hang my head and take the compliment. I wish I could look into the distance, put my fists on my hips, and say something meaningful about truth, justice, and the American way. Instead I stare at the ground and mumble a thank you.

It’s been a week since all of this began and I think I’ve finally figured out why I can’t whole-heartedly accept the praise.

First, I’m sad that an organization that provided me with so many wonderful experiences continues to move in a direction that excludes an entire group of Americans.

But also…

I suffer from everybody Loves Raymond Syndrome.

I grew up in a place where there are many folks who would disagree with me. Despite our different views of the world, these people are my friends, family, fellow scouts, and neighbors. While I’m able to separate debate on issues like this from personal attacks, I worry that they won’t.

I don’t like not being liked.

Also…

I have to feed my family.

I speak at a wide array of schools of varying sizes and ideologies. This is one of the primary ways that I feed my family and spread my message. Before I stood up on this issue, I considered how this could negatively impact my relationship with such schools. Would I have invitations retracted? Would I receive fewer requests? How could speaking out negatively impact my career?

Also…

I don’t have the time.

I leave for Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa on Friday to continue researching my next book. I have a lot of writing and pre-travel loose ends to tie up. I have other things to do. I’m too busy to stand.

A friend I worked with as a SCUBA instructor in Key West wrote me: “You, my FRIEND, are a hero. Ya got the stones of a GIANT.”

I think a hero wouldn’t hesitate to stand up. I looked around, dipped my toe in the water, had a bunch of selfish thoughts, stepped back to consider some more, and then reluctantly stood.

I could have played it safe and stayed silent. I actually considered turning down Talk of the Nation. Instead, I stood and continue to do so. Tonight I’ll be speaking out on the Alan Colmes Show shortly after 11PM. I just received an email from GLAAD (Gays & Lesbians Alliance Against Defamation) wanting me to join their efforts. I will.

Standing isn’t always safe or convenient, but you do it when what’s inside of you ignores all of the reasons you shouldn’t

I stand because I value the lessons that Boy Scouts instilled in me.

I stand for my son Griffin who I hope will join Scouts if they change their anti-gay policy.

I stand for the gay scouts who shouldn’t have to stand alone.

I stand because this issue is bigger than me.

I stand not because I’m a hero, but because I’m a former Eagle Scout.

When do you stand? When have you stood for something? What was it?

An Eagle Scout No More: Why I’m sending my badge back to Boy Scouts of America

Adam and I snuggled in the woods beneath our makeshift lean-to. We were 14. We weren’t gay; we were cold. If we were gay, we would have been booted from Scouts, at least according to the discriminatory policies of the Boy Scouts of America’s national leadership.

We adhered to our own don’t ask don’t tell policy. When our Wilderness Survival merit badge instructor asked us how we survived our night alone in the woods, we left out all the details about spooning and just told him about the structural integrity of our shelter.

Adam and I both went on to become Eagle Scouts.

Now I’m worried about the moral integrity of Boy Scouts of America and whether they can stay relevant and survive in the 21st century.

SCOUTS HELPED MAKE ME WHO I AM

When you spend a few nights in the woods alone at such a young age hiking, camping, and navigating, you learn a lot about yourself. You learn what hunger and exhaustion feel like, what darkness and silence are. You gain confidence that you can go without, and that you can provide for yourself in almost any situation.

But we probably learned more from each other. There were boys from the farm, city, and trailer parks in our troop. There were several kids with mental and physical disabilities. We learned to accept one another and work together. We learned lessons that are exactly opposite of Boy Scouts of America’s decision to double down on discriminating against gay scouts and scout leaders.

When I joined Scouts, I couldn’t flip a pancake. I weighed less than 90 pounds. I hiked to the summit of mountains carrying a pack half my body weight where the wind was so strong that the leaders had to hang onto me so I wouldn’t blow away. We made shelters. We canoed. We built fires. We got lost in a cave.

I learned what adventure was and along the way who I was.

Scouts helped make me who I am. Today as an author and journalist I travel alone to parts of the world I can’t pronounce. I accept cultures and people in their own terms. I try to look past our differences and see our similarities.

To this day I can still recite the Scout Oath, although I now think the line “to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight,” should be changed to “sexually straight” because apparently that’s what BSA means.

To be clear, I doubt troop 184 in Union City, Indiana, would have booted anyone for being gay. I think our leaders recognized that no matter what orientation or affiliation a boy had, they could benefit from what Boy Scouts had to offer.

Gay or straight, everyone should know how to build a fire, swim, and tie a bowline.

I WAS AN EAGLE SCOUT

I was proud to be an Eagle Scout, but now I’m turning in my Eagle Scout badge.

Seriously. I’m mailing it to the Boys Scouts of America with this post and I encourage other Eagle scouts to do the same. Send your Eagle Scout badge to:

The National Boy Scouts of America

1325 W. Walnut Hill Lane

Irving, Texas 75015-2079

The independence, confidence, leadership, and moral compass that Scouts instilled in me, forces me to speak out against their discrimination against gay boys and leaders.

When they decide to change their policies, they can mail my Eagle badge back to me.

Let’s not take this out on our local troops. It’s not fair to the boys. I’m speaking out to protect them. I would be thrilled if my son was interested in scouting. But if BSA goes another 12 years with this policy, there might not be any local troops to protect and support.

USA Olympic uniforms made in China

You can barely press an on button in the last 24 hours and not see someone in Congress complaining that the USA’s Olympic uniforms designed by Ralph Lauren were made in China.

This is grandstanding except when it isn’t

Yes, it’s an election year, but one of the most outspoken members of Congress Senator Sherrod Brown has always been outspoken on this issue. He suggested that Hugo Boss could have designed the uniforms and manufactured them in his home state of Ohio where they have a factory.

I had no idea Hugo Boss had a factory in Ohio. Brown’s point is a good one: Yes, 97% of our clothes are made overseas, but there are factories here that still could have done the job.

He’s not grandstanding.

As for the other members of Congress who I’ve never heard speak on this issue before… they totally are. This is an easy issue to look good on. Members of Congress are practically fighting for the mic to complain about this.

No help from taxpayers

The United States is one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t financially support their athletes.

From the ESPN article China-made U.S. Uniforms Rise Ire:

“Unlike most Olympic teams around the world, the U.S. Olympic Team is privately funded and we’re grateful for the support of our sponsors,” USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said in a statement. “We’re proud of our partnership with Ralph Lauren, an iconic American company, and excited to watch America’s finest athletes compete at the upcoming Games in London.”

The USOC has also partnered with BP post-oil spill and BMW. A lot of the money going to support our athletes is from outside our own country already. It’s hard to complain about the USOC not supporting American businesses when American businesses aren’t supporting them.

To be fair, there are plenty of American businesses supporting the USOC, but my point is that the scramble for private funding has led to them casting a net beyond our border.

Made in China

The mic members of Congress talks into complaining about made in China uniforms was more than likely made in China.

The shoes they walked to the mic in were also probably made in China.

So are the Blackberries and iPhones from which they tweet their disgust.

If they want to tackle the larger outsourcing issues, have at it. But don’t ignore the loss of U.S. manufacturing 99% of the time and complain about made in China when it’s convenient and good photo-op.

What do you think? Should Team USA’s uniforms be made in the USA?

2012 Common Reading Programs

Winthrop Students receives copy of WHERE AM I WEARING?

I am blown away by the amount of schools using WEARING in their common reader programs this year.

In case you are wondering what a common reading program is: They are typically directed at freshmen. Every freshmen gets a copy of the book and participates in discussion sessions about the book in the Fall. Normally they invite the author to speak as well.

From 2008-2011 eights schools have used WEARING as a common reader. This year the following schools are using it (I’ve noted when I’m visiting the campus):

Ball State University – 9/18/12

Texas State – 9/26, 9/27

Winthrop University – 10/3, 10/4

Cedar Crest College – 10/11, 10/12

Georgia Highlands College – ?

Also, the community of Rome, Georgia, is reading WEARING this summer. I visit Rome on 10/9.

I am honored to share the stories of the workers I met on my trip with all of the above and how meeting them changed me forever.

I can’t wait to visit the schools and Rome. I love speaking to an audience even if they haven’t read my book (which I’ll be doing at Georgetown College, Rutgers, and Lindenwood University this fall), but there’s something really special about standing in front of a few hundred to a few thousand folks who’ve spent hours traveling with me page-by-page.

Most of my events are open to the public. If I’m in your area, please come and laugh at my jokes. And of course, if I’m not in your area and you would like me to visit your university or group, you could always invite me to speak.

The Facing Project: Looking foreword

The Facing Project is really taking off. J.R. Jamison, my co-founder, knows a ton of people who are interested. We’re not just talking in Indiana, but in other countries. We’re not just talking a small group, but campus-wide projects and mayoral commissions. I promised I would follow up my introductory post about the project with the foreword to the initial project we launched in Muncie with the help of TEAMwork for Quality Living. Here it is…

(Oh, one more thing. I’d love it if you liked the Facing Project on Facebook. We’re almost up to 100 likes)

Every Community has a story. What’s yours?

Poverty is a hot button issue in the Muncie and Delaware County communities, as it is nationally, and internationally. We argue about how to define poverty and when, how much, and if to help those living in poverty.

Somewhere between 8,000 to 23,000 Muncie residents live in poverty. But as you crack open this book, I want you to think about a different statistic: One.

Do you know one person living in poverty? And if you are living in poverty, do you know one person who isn’t?

The writers and subjects of the 21 stories and poems to follow do.

Facing Poverty enlisted writers in the community to tell the stories of individuals and families living below the poverty line as well as those citizens actively helping those living in poverty.

For two months, writers and those facing poverty from all angles met up to share stories. Maybe you saw us at IHOP or Starbucks or walking down the street chatting. We shared stories of triumph and tragedy, of loneliness and community, of hate and happiness, of deep depression and lofty goals.

The writers listened and jotted notes, and then they did something a bit uncomfortable: They took on the voice and persona of their subjects and wrote as if they were them. The “I” that you’ll read about in most of the stories does not represent the writer. The “I” represents a forced empathy in which the writer had to write in the first person as someone else, someone else who remains anonymous. They walked through their stories. Tried them on. Carried the feelings and emotions.

They did something all of their subjects had already done: They faced poverty.

I’d like to personally thank the organizations, including LifeStream, TEAMwork for Quality Living, Muncie Mission, CASA, Habitat for Humanity, Christian Ministries, and Pathstone for introducing us to the amazing folks they serve and the volunteers who help them. Without their support, this book wouldn’t be possible.

I especially wish to thank Muncie Civic Theatre and Lorel Lloyd as well as Dr. Michale Daehn and Ball State University theater education students for interpretive readings of many of these stories. Their involvement in the project has made this a key part of the Delaware County Poverty Awareness week.

Molly Flodder of TEAMwork for Quality Living headed up the outreach to our partners and also poured her heart and soul into editing this project as did Linda Gregory, Betty Wingrove, Annemarie Voss and Hal Roepke.

Alec Brenneman, a recent Ball State grad, and Chelsea Roberts, a soon-to-be Ball State grad, played a crucial role in wrangling writers – an activity that is right up there in level of difficulty with cat herding.

Our special thanks goes to Pat Marin of Marin & Marin Design and to Rich Michael of Spencer Printing for taking this collection of stories to something you can hold in your hand and keep on your bookshelf. And mot of all, we thank the George and Frances Ball Foundation for the grant that supported the publishing of this book.

In closing, the writers gave their time and ability. And the subjects gave us all an even greater gift: their stories.

Regardless of where you stand on the debates that surround poverty, I hope you’ll approach these stories with an open mind and heart. You can argue about statistics, but you can’t argue with stories.

If you are facing poverty or want to help those who are, please visit http://bit.ly/facingpoverty for information on local organizations that can help.

Kelsey Timmerman

Author of Where Am I Wearing and Muncie Resident

A parent’s apology to couples without kids

The young couple jokes and laughs over their entrees. She forks him some steak. He spoons her some soup. I imagine delicately slamming their faces into their mashed potatoes. But when our 1-year-old chucks his milk, splattering it everywhere, and our three year-old-starts to cry about us not letting her sit upside down on the table with an elephant (or something), I look at them and apologize.

Maybe they looked at us while we juggled toy cell phones, sippy cups, and outrageous demands, and they thought, “We are SO glad we don’t have any kids,” or maybe they thought our kids were charming in their own unique way and a discussion on becoming parents began.

Maybe they didn’t think of us at all. But we thought of them.

We’ve only been parents for 3.5 years, which doesn’t seem like an amount of time you could forget what it’s like to only feed yourself at a restaurant or only wipe your HANDS. But we have.

We envy the couple. They have more than 30 seconds to themselves each day. They can read books that don’t rhyme and aren’t about using the potty. They can have a hobby other than stacking rubber blocks and Legos.

“Remember when we were awesome,” a friend with four kids told me. I wrote a post about our conversation. We could be romantic on a whim. We could pull all nighters working. We could pursue an array of projects, interests, and passions.

But now we’re parents.

“I would write/read/exercise/volunteer more if I didn’t have kids.” I don’t verbalize this, but I think it a lot. I’m guessing other parents do too. At times I look at couples with no kids and hold their childlessness against them because I’m jealous.

There. I said it. I’m jealous of couples with no kids. I’m jealous of their time. I know other parents who’ve hinted at the same thing.

I’m not sure it’s correct to think that I would write more or accomplish more if we didn’t have kids. Maybe I would just watch a lot more movies and play more video games. I would love to play more videogames. I don’t play any, but I SO could. Kids need to eat and they need diapers and they need college educations and stuff like that, which are all things that push me to do my work more for two reasons:

1) I’m responsible for providing all of these things;

2) I believe my work makes the world a better place.

(Maybe you think #2 is a little boastful, but everyone should be doing something that they feel makes the world a better place for the next generation. If you don’t feel that your job is making the world a better place, you aren’t doing the thing you are meant to be doing.)

Regardless of the reason (choice, biology, etc) a couple is childless, envying them isn’t fair. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that when you mentioned your quick weekend vacation that was 10 times longer than any vacation we’ve had in 3.5 years that I rolled my eyes. I’m sorry I imagined slamming your face into mashed potatoes. I’m sorry I imagined setting my son’s biohazard diapers on your front porch, setting it on fire, and ringing the door bell.

I adore my kids. If you’ve read about my homesickness you know that. I have a month-long trip coming up and I’m already almost in tears about it.

As much as I envy them, I also feel sorry for them. Again, this isn’t fair. Sorry.

When couples who don’t have kids have a bad day, they don’t get to come home to funny little people who call them mom or dad, who make them forget about all their troubles. Some days I’m not a good writer, I’m not productive, I get bad news, but when I go home and little arms wrap around my knees and little smiles are smiled in my direction, nothing else matters. No matter how bad of a writer I am, I can always be a good dad.

If you are reading this and don’t have kids, let me explain this to you: You know how a dog can make you forget that you sucked at work or that your boss yelled at you? Well, being a parent is like 10 times the feel good a dog can give you, unless of course your kid is being a brat and then you wish you could throw them in a cage. But that’s a whole other blog post.

Do you envy couples without kids? Do you envy couples with kids?

The Obamacare Decision

Breaking news (if there is such a thing): The individual mandate in Obamacare stands.

Maybe you’re seething; maybe you’re jumping up and down.

I have no idea what this means for the future of healthcare and I don’t think experts for or against know either.

But here’s what I do know…

We pay $350/month for our health insurance and have an $11,000 deductible.  We don’t have health insurance; we have bankruptcy insurance.

Our premium jumped $30 since last year, despite another year of not even coming close to reaching our deductible.

Last year we paid cash for the birth or our son since we didn’t have maternity coverage. We shopped hospitals first. “Hey, we’re having a kid. What kind of deal can you give us?”

People very close to me have health issues that make them uninsurable…until now.

People very close to me pay a monthly health insurance premium that is more than my mortgage.

People very close to me lost their jobs and lost their health insurance. That’s just crazy.

My wife worked for a doctor who didn’t provide a penny toward his employees’ health insurance.

Health insurance was becoming less and less affordable way before Obamacare was a twinkle in President Obama’s eye. I hope the Affordable Care Act makes insurance…well… more affordable.

I have no idea if it will, but the direction things were going wasn’t sustainable.

How unaffordable has your health insurance become?

Gay men can’t donate blood but former sex tourists can

Questions on blood donor questionnaire:

Have you had sexual contact with someone who has HIV /AIDS or has tested positive for HIV/AIDS?

Have you had sexual contact with a prostitute or someone else who takes money or drugs or other payment for sex?

From 1977 to the present have you received money, drugs, or other payment for sex?

(Males Donors) Have you had sex with another male (even just once)?

Yesterday the local blood center was giving away 2 pints of Baskin Robbins ice cream for 1 pint of blood. Since the average human has 10 pints of blood, that means that I would have to donate 5 times before my body would be coursing with 100% cookies ‘n’ cream.

We all have our dreams.

They didn’t want my blood. But not for any of the have-you-had-sex-with ____ reasons above, but because I recently had been to Colombia. I left ashamed. I really wanted to give. Ashamed, but comforted by the fact I still scored 2 pints of Baskin Robbins.

I got to thinking about all of the evasive questions and it was brought to my attention that if you are a man who has had sex with a man “even once” you can NEVER give blood.

Never.

Gay men can’t donate blood. Ever. The FDA does not allow it.

Fear trumps science

There really doesn’t seem to be much reason or science to why gay men can’t donate. In fact, here’s what the American Blood Centers and the American Red Cross told the FDA in 2006:

“The current lifetime deferral for men who have had sex with other men is medically and scientifically unwarranted.”

This ban seems to be a carry over from the HIV/AIDS scare of the 1980s. Then maybe it made sense: No one was sure what was going on or how the disease was transmitted. (My brother had convinced me that you contracted AIDS after sitting on the toilet at a truck stop.) And the disease was decimating the gay community.

Instead of hanging out with coffee farmers in Colombia, if I would have maxed out my credit card having wild, drug-fuelled orgies with HIV positive Colombian prostitutes, according to the FDA, I could donate one year post-orgy. (Post-orgy, that is the first time I’ve ever used that word.) But if I were a gay man (like this guy) in a monogamous relationship and had been with only this one partner, and we always used condoms, the FDA would ban me for life from giving blood.

That’s right, a former sex tourist could give, but not a gay man.

Is that fair? Is this discrimination? If you were in need of a couple pints of blood who would you choose to receive from, a gay man in a monogamous relationship or a recently reformed male sex tourist who frequented Thai brothels for 30 years before stopping 12 months ago?

The reason that former drug users and prostitute-frequenters can give is because all donated blood is tested.

The Department of Health and Human Services is currently conducting a study to see if the ban on gay men donating can be lifted. Hopefully, science will trump our fears. It has in the UK. They now allow men who’ve not had sex with another man in the previous 12 months to donate. I guess that’s progress, but still seems inordinately discriminatory and an unnecessary way to limit the blood supply.

Every 2 seconds someone needs blood. That’s 4.5 million Americans each year in need of a transfusion. Every summer and during holidays there are blood shortages. This is a ban that impacts us all.

Gay men should be allowed to give.

–

If you agree sign this petition to the FDA to lift the ban

Learn more at Saving Lives With Helpful Guys

Announcing The Facing Project

The mission of The Facing Project is to help communities tell their own stories.

If you believe in the power of stories, please like The Facing Project fan page.

I believe that each of us needs to put that thing we’re best at, that drives us, that makes us feel alive, that fuels our passions, to the use for our local and global communities. For me this is taking complex issues like sweatshops, the global food system, and poverty and telling the stories of individual people. Suddenly all the stats and bootstraps that we argued about disappear and we are left with the story of an individual who faces the challenges of that issue.

I believe one of the biggest successes of WHERE AM I WEARING? is its ability to start a dialogue with everyone from anti-sweatshop activists to globally recognized apparel brands.

In the new edition of WEARING I find the first garment worker I met in Honduras now living in California. I tell the story of his life-risking journey through Mexico riding on top of trains over mountain passes and dodging Mexican police and local bandits. Amilcar crossed illegally into the United States and started a new life to support his family, including three children back in Honduras. The story is about immigration, but not about politics. The story is Amilcar’s. Even Lou Dobbs could read the story and relate to it.

I had been thinking about a community-based writing project for a while and ran some ideas by Molly Flodder at TEAMwork for Quality Living in Muncie. Molly thought the project was a great fit for Muncie’s Poverty Week.

Working with 17 local not-for-profits, we matched up 21 writers with 21 people facing poverty – either living in poverty, or helping those living in poverty. The individuals facing poverty told their stories to the writers who wrote the stories in the first person to maintain the anonymity of the subject, but also to more intimately capture the subject’s voice. The stories were published in a book shared at Poverty Week and performed as monologues at events at The Muncie Civic Theater and at Ball State University’s Theatre department.

Hundreds of people in the Muncie community came together Facing Poverty.

One of the writers involved in the project was J.R. Jamison. J.R. works for Indiana Campus Compact and wrote the Service Learning section in the Appendix of the new edition of WEARING. J.R. and I discussed what it would take to get other communities to roll out similar projects and how we could help them.

Here’s the gist of the project:

Communities would organize and enlist a team of writers to be paired one-on-one with citizens who are facing life circumstances that deserve to be shared to better educate the broader community, and bring awareness to issues we face in our communities each day. Together, the pairs will meet, get to know each other and share stories of triumph and tragedy, of loneliness and community, of hate and happiness, of deep depression and lofty goals. For some communities this might be poverty, for some domestic violence, for others bullying or some other issue.

Writers will use their talents to take on the voice and persona of their subjects and write as if they were them—in the first person—bringing to life a voice that has been silenced, while keeping the anonymity of the subjects. The stories would culminate with a book to be shared throughout the community, and acted out by local actors through community theatre—bringing a face to the voice. Through these awareness outlets, communities can begin to sit down together to face the next steps of discovering solutions to the problem.

We’re nearly finished with a tool kit that helps communities do all of the above and looking to launch similar projects in 10 communities in the United States and beyond.  If you’re interested in launching a Facing Project email me kelsey@kelseytimmerman.com.

Over the next week, I’ll share some of the stories from our pilot project in Muncie.

Until then, please like The Facing Project fan page and watch this video of poet Michael Brockley reading Hollywood’s poem featured in Muncie’s Facing Poverty Project.

Every community has a story. What’s yours?

Guest Post: Make the road your home for pennies on the mile

I visit students around the country encouraging them to travel. Many of them ask about the cost, after all they say, “We are just poor students.” They think travel is a cruel joke — when you are young and have the knees and time to see the world you don’t have the money, and when you are older you have the money and not the knees for it. I tell them the world is cheaper than they think it is.

I will always welcome others encouraging students to see the world. That’s why I’m happy to introduce you to Everett Pompeii, a student who is traveling the world on less than $8/day. He’s writing a book telling how, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to: Earth. He launched a Kickstarter campaign in support of his book project and is almost at his goal of $2,500.

Take it away Everett!

—-

To Those Seeking a Higher Education,

I have a ticket to anywhere, and it’s yours for the taking. There is nothing that I can say or do to convince you take it, but if you want it, it’s yours. I’ve hitched the US’s Eastern Seaboard, backpacked Europe, and done all of the above while Down Under. And all that way, everyone kept telling me, “I could never.” Well, I’m here to tell you, YOU CAN! With a little sense of adventure and a bit of cunning, you can make the open road your home for pennies on the mile. A Prius would blush at what you’re capable of.

 

The key is not only to know this but to act on it. I’m a college kid too; We have no true commitments beyond the next week. Classes are cyclical. There’s no wife, no kids, no mortgage. All we have is potential, and it need not be squandered sitting idly in our youth.

 

“Much travel is needed before the raw man [or woman] is fully ripened.”

 

 Set the dates and make no other plans. It’s time to travel; it’s time to live.

 

Everett Pompeii runs the site Nemo’s Travels, and he is the author of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to: Earth”, which is available on Kickstarter until June 29th, 2012.”