Students’ dilemma: Fight cancer or support sweatshops?

October 8th, 2008 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

Keren Gottfried a student journalist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, is reporting on an interesting ethical dilemma on campus. The school’s book store is selling T-shirts for $10. Six of those dollars will go to fight cancer. That’s a great cause, few would argue, right? Wrong!

A group of students is questioning where the shirts came from and under what conditions they were made. Great questions, right? Right! The fabric was made in the USA, sent to Honduras where it was sewn, shipped back to the USA, printed, and eventually found their way into Wilfrid Laurier’s bookstore. Can all of that traveling be done for $4, some of which is profit? Maybe, but the labor expenses need to be real low.

Keren contacted the company that made her shirt and asked them. You should read her article. Of great interest to me is that Keren gets stonewalled by Delta Apparel – the same folks who stonewalled me on the first leg of my WAIW? quest.

It’s always great to see other people asking “Where Am I Wearing?” I just wish the answers were easier to come by.

New World Vision Report Interview

February 19th, 2008 | By Kelsey | 1 Comment »

I recorded another interview for the World Vision Report about Where am I Wearing?. We recorded this one from Ball State’s David Letterman communication center. If you’ve listened to the previous interviews there’s not much new in this one, but it is much clearer. All of the other interviews were recorded continents away over the phone. This one was recorded over an ISDN line in the studio and it sounds like I’m in the same room with Peggy, the host, even though she was in Texas. It’s part of a one-hour special on fashion that will appear on many NPR stations across the country.

I’ve yet to hear myself on the radio, which would be a hoot. But last week a fella I met in China emailed me after hearing one of my previous interviews I recorded via phone in Cambodia, with Peggy was in Texas, with the producer in Seattle, and the editor in North Carolina. The World Vision Report works from a virtual office.

We live in a virtual world. This is a good thing for a writer living in Indiana.

A thousand words

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

Where am I wearing? The ultimate slideshow

October 31st, 2007 | By Kelsey | 3 Comments »

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.

Encore! Encore!

October 15th, 2007 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

The World Vision Report included my Honduras soccer piece on an encore edition. I’m glad they liked it well enough to run it again. I think my On Air reading still has a lot of room for improvement.

Great news, but it would be even greater, if they paid twice!

Baseball Photos

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

My experience teaching baseball in Honduras just aired on the World Vision report a few weeks ago and I’ve had a request to post photos from our game of muddy baseball.

Seeing how the MLB playoffs just started yesterday, what better time is there to post photos of America’s pastime in Honduras?

None.

Go here to check them out.

A random passage

October 1st, 2007 | By Kelsey | 2 Comments »

I opened my sample chapter and randomly selected these three paragraphs:

What if all of this turns south? I came all the way to Bangladesh to locate the underwear factory, which this obviously was not. If the receptionist doesn’t tell us the location of the factory or pass us on to someone who could, then I’ve failed, and if the Honduras T-shirt factory was any indication of how I would be treated, I’m screwed.

I nervously sat trying to read the reaction of the receptionist, comparing it with my Honduras experience and worrying that I had fooled myself into a strange, expensive vacation under the delusion it was some kind of worthwhile quest.

Dalton’s phone rang and he stepped away from the counter to answer it. I stood, pulled out my underwear, and approached the counter.

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.

IDIOT Touron quote of the day…

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

“I only got seven dives in. I hope they didn’t jump the gun too soon.”

-Bob Shearer of Pennsylvania who was evacuated by military helicopter from the island of Roatan shortly before hurricane Felix devastated the region.

I really hate to use “Touron” to describe Bob. How about Inconsiderate, Dolt of Immense, Obtuse, Thoughtlessness (IDIOT). Thousands of homes and lives are threatened by one of nature’s most violent forces and Bob bitches about missing out on a few dives. They should have left Bob tied at the reef off of Roatan and let him do all of the diving he wanted to do, hurricane or no hurricane.

Here’s an update on Felix

Moskito Coast braces for hurricane

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

Hurricane Felix is about to hammer the Moskito Coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua. I followed the tag of my favorite t-shirt to the region in 2005. I have fond memories from the trip, including:

Teaching an island village to play baseball

Trekking though the jungle

Playing soccer

Trying to get on a boat with lobster divers

My brother’s being bit by a malaria carrying mosquito

The storm strengthened to a Category 5 this morning and is likely to threaten the livelihoods and the lives of many of the friends I made in 2005, including Kaiser and his family. My thoughts are with them this morning.

I’ll post links to any relief efforts in the future.