All Hail the Blue Jeans

October 24th, 2007 | By Kelsey | 2 Comments »

I’ve talked before about how James Sullivan’s book Jeans is a little too much into the Americaness of jeans, but really it’s hard to argue with him too much. Here’s a passage:

All blue jeans, whether they are rough as sidewalk or burnished to a hand as fine as cashmere, share an “Americana” feel. They may be cut and sewn in Japan, Vietnam, or Hong Kong, using denim from mills in Mexico, India, Italy, or Turkey and synthetic indigo dye from Germany or Brazil. Yet wherever its origins, a pair of blue jeans embodies two centuries’ worth of the myths and ideals of American culture. Jeans are the surviving relic of the western frontier. The epitomize our present-day pre-occupations – celebrity and consumer culture – and we’ll likely be wearing them long after the business suit, say, has bee relegated to the dustbin of fashion.

One question: What the heck do Canadians think of such talk? Are blue jeans more American than Canadian?

“They” were Jeans

October 12th, 2007 | By Kelsey | 4 Comments »

On Wednesday I posted a quote from James Sullivan’s book “Jeans.” Allow me to rewrite the quote in the context with which he intended it to be read:

First JEANS built the country’s (USA) infrastructure, then JEANS populated it with collective identity.

From what I have read in the book so far, Mr. Sullivan has a tendency to overwrite in his glorification of this inanimate object of Americana. They are jeans, that’s it. When they get wet, they don’t dry. If you’re sweaty they stick to you. And If you run in sweaty jeans you’ll get a rash. Jeans didn’t win WWII. Jeans didn’t settle the West. Give it a rest Sullivan.

That being said, you can bet I’ll be quoting Sullivan when I write about my all-American blue jeans that were made in Cambodia. Sullivan writes about jeans representing the blood, sweat, and tears that built America. They are the American dream that you wear. It’s ironic that today jeans are made by young women workers like Nari and Ai in Cambodia who make not much over $50/month and live eight in a room. I’m guessing that Sullivan will touch on this, too. At least I’m hoping so.

As for our little mini-contest here…

Justin guessed that “they” were Americans, that makes sense.

Kent guessed immigrants, that makes sense.

Thanks for playing.

Melissa, who doesn’t read books, but has been known to sit down with a long book review or two, knew Sullivan was referring to Jeans. I was actually thinking this contest would not have a winner and I wouldn’t have to ship off any Touron attire. I was wrong.

Melissa, feel free to pick something from the Touron Attire store and drop me an email with your mailing address.

World Vision Report Interview – Part 2

October 1st, 2007 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

Peggy talks to me about my All-American blue jeans made in Cambodia.

If you haven’t listened to PART 1 you should.

My piece “Explaining Baseball” on the World Vision Report

September 26th, 2007 | By Kelsey | 1 Comment »

The piece aired this past week on the nationally syndicated program. Hear what it’s like to be a non-baseball playing American who becomes an international ambassador of baseball for a day.

Listen to it now.

The theme of this particular show was “Helping Out.” You can listen to the full show here.

I highly recommend listening to this piece on Scott Neeson, a Hollywood big wig that turned his back on living the high life and is now giving hope to the children of Phnom Penh’s city dump in Cambodia. I featured the dump in Sundays “a thousand words” photo.

A thousand words

September 23rd, 2007 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

Scavenging at the Phnom Penh city dump

Only 3 stances on garment dilemma?

August 24th, 2007 | By Kelsey | 7 Comments »

I found this 2005 story on the Huffington Post during a recent Google session. Bob Burnett visited a factory that makes LEVI’S for the article and says there are only three ethical positions to take on the matter. The weird thing is that after I’ve committed over 4-months of my life to meeting garment workers and visiting their homes and factories, none of these “ethical positions” is my position.

What is my position?

I’m still thinking about that, but it’s not any one of them stated below. The dilemma isn’t that simple. If I was made the World Czar of Garment Ethics, I would encourage organizations to work with the factories to show them that, in a sense, a happy worker is a productive worker. If paying, training, and treating their workers better helps their bottom line, widespread changes may be possible. And that’s the thing, the changes must be widespread. If we focus on one country and improve conditions and pay, conditions and pay will only get better and more expensive, and eventually the industry will jump to where the conditions and pay are cheaper.

Here’s an excerpt from Burnett’s story:

Ultimately our purchase of foreign-made products is a moral question: do we take “fairness” seriously? There are three distinct ethical positions that Americans can take. The first is to view the issue as a consumer and to make purchasing decisions strictly on the basis of price and quality; to ignore concerns about who makes our clothes and what their living conditions are.

The second perspective is to see our decision as a reflection of American global economic policy and to demand that our government protect US workers as the first priority, to take care of our own citizens before we worry about workers in faraway countries, such as Cambodia. The problem with this position is that the Bush Administration has decided that American laborers are not as important as the earnings of their employers. George W. Bush and company are not going to worry about Cambodian workers, if they do not care about American employees; in fact, the Bush assault on the rights of our labor force has lowered the bar for workers around the world.

That leaves a final perspective, which steps outside consumerism and national concerns, and asks what our religious morality has to say about whether we should be concerned about the living conditions of the workers who make so many of the products we take for granted. As more than eighty percent of Americans identify as Christians, the applicable code of ethics comes from the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, “Treat people in ways you want them to treat you.” Indeed, Jesus emphasized that the rich should care for the poor, “If you wish to be perfect, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor.”

Where am I wearing? highlights

August 4th, 2007 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

Here are all of the audio slideshows and “Made In” summaries in order:

The Quest

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Made in Bangladesh - My underwear

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Made in Cambodia - My all-American Cambodian blue jeans

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Made in China - because going barefoot sucks

In an Email from a Cambodian friend…

July 26th, 2007 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

“No I did not eat any spiders as it is not the season and I don’t feel I want to eat I would prefer baby duck instead ”

Phalline loves her baby duck.

The Hash

July 24th, 2007 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

The Hash House Harriers is a drinking club with a running problem.

One person is appointed “The Hare” and lays out a trail using flower or spray paint. The group attempts to navigate the Hare’s trail trying not to get distracted by various false trails and dead ends. When the trail ends the drinking begins.

I went on my first hash in Cambodia after reading about an opportunity to “run through the countryside surrounding Phnom Penh” in the newspaper. I went. It poured. It was awesome.

Imagine that you live out in the countryside and you are sitting on your porch waiting out a torrential down pour. And then a string of soaked foreigners splashes by in running shorts. Trust me. You’ve never seen anything like it. I can tell because I’m one of the runners and that look on your face says it all.

If we got lost, the locals would point the way. Local children would practice their English and when you responded, “HI!” they would giggle and hide behind their mothers. The Hash is a great way to see the countryside and meet the people that live there.

It’s also great to be around other people who have some shared common experience and language. For me the Hash was an opportunity to escape my quest for a few hours. I didn’t have to use hand gestures to talk. Most people try to treat foreigners with the utmost of respect. This gets old after a bit. It takes another foreigner to put you in your place, “You’re full of shit.”

At its worst the hash is junior high – filled with immature sexual innuendos and drinking beer from bedpans (Ok, maybe not exactly like junior high). The jokes and songs do get old, but in all, the hash is a kind of therapy for expat professionals and anyone else who wants to run 4-12 miles and act silly.

I went on two Hashes in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and two in Guangzhou, China.

Paul Berton, a British comedian, went on the Guangzhou Hash a few years ago while taping a television show about his travels. His show (watch it now) focused on all of the ugly parts of the hash – the local women trying to meet a sugar daddy foreigner; foreigners looking to becoming a sugar daddy of a local woman. While this is apparent and something I will definitely address when I write my chapter on Cambodia, the Hash is also about positive interactions between foreigners and locals. But that’s not very good television.

The Hash is also about running and sometimes a little post-run, post-sushi bowling…

Cosmo Kramer in Cambodia Contemplating Cosmos

July 17th, 2007 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

Are you a celebrity? Did your image take a nose dive after you were arrested for giving underage midgets shots of Tequila intravenously while attending a folk music festival in Alaska? Or maybe you were doing stand-up and completely lost your cool stringing together a long chain of racial slurs captured on a cell phone?

Forget rehab? Travel. Get away, to somewhere exotic where you can talk to the press about things like the spirituality in stone and walk around the slums holding HIV babies.

Michael Richards is the latest celebrity to escape. I would be interested to know if the fella who wrote this story found Richards or Richards found him. Is Richards trip an image-cleaner campaign, a vacation, or spiritual search for the meaning of life?

Richards on the people of Cambodia and Angkor: “At first, I was a little bit struck by the poverty, but when I leaned in I could see how open-hearted the Cambodian people are, and I was touched by it,” Richards said. “I’d always wanted to take a trip to the Far East. It’s a place I’d never been. I knew of Angkor Wat and I’d seen pictures, so we decided, ‘Let’s go for this.’ It’s amazing: You can walk around and it’s all hands-on in the temples, it’s not roped off. Seeing spirituality in stone is inspiring.”