They are windows to our souls. They say who we are and what we believe; who we support and who we despise. A good one will make us laugh or, heaven forbid, think just a little. Maybe. A bad one will make us roll our eyes, draw our ridicule.
More than any other item of clothing we own, our T-shirts deliver our message to the world.
“Shit Happens.” The red shirt with large block yellow lettering, worn by a man applying to join my father’s construction crew, provided me with my earliest lesson of the power of the T-shirt. I was playing in the yard with my brother when the man stepped out of his car and walked towards the house/office.
At some point in our lives we shake a present and, when we hear that it’s clothes not toys, we don’t pout. Instead we think, “Huh, I could use some new clothes.”
That’s a sad day.
It happens when we can no longer blame our mothers for dressing us like doofi (plural of doofus) in pinstriped blue jeans and snowflake sweaters; when we take over our own fashion responsibility, for better or worse. For me that time was high school. Sure, I didn’t actually buy or pick out my clothes in the store – Mom still did – but I did dress myself: “Now, which Scooby-Doo T-shirt should I wear today?” Christmas was a time to expand my selection of Scooby…
This video produced by the National Labor Committee has some pretty powerful images, including young Bangladeshi women sleeping with their faces smooshed against the side of their sewing machines.
I’m all for people knowing where and who make their clothes, but I think this video has some faults. The narration is a bit extreme and completely dismisses the context in which the workers live.
The narrator says that the factories reach 100-degrees in the summertime and that the worker’s clothes are covered in sweat as if the workers have a place to escape the heat. They don’t. If they weren’t at the factory, they would be sitting in 100-degree heat in their home. Granted, workers coloring…
Suddenly the number of Chinese who live below the World Bank’s poverty line of a dollar a day jumped from about 100 million to 300 million, roughly the size of the United States population. And if you thought China’s energy consumption was dismally inefficient, consider that it still uses the same amount of energy to produce 40 percent less stuff. The reassessment does not just involve China. India is also likely to be downsized. And, by the way, global growth has very likely been slower than we thought.
Not to make light of colon or rectal cancer, but I received the following letter in the mail today and it cracked me up:
The American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons (ACRS) invites you to submit an entry in the 2008 National Media Awards program, which recognizes journalists who have excelled in communicating information to the public about colon and rectal disease, such as colorectal cancer, hemorrhoids, diverticulitis, Crohn’s Disease, ulcerative colitis, anal fissures, and irritable bowel syndrome.
I can’t remember the last time I wrote about anal fissures…Oh, wait, I’ve never written about anal fissures. I really can’t think of anything that I’ve ever written that would warrant me receiving an invitation to participate in this award.
Some days writing is hard. Actually, it’s not so much the writing, but the sitting down to write that is the hard part for me. But my hardest day writing is nothing compared to every day of writing for the former editor of the French version of ELLE Magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby. A stroke left him completely paralyzed, except for the ability to blink his left eye.
His left eye is all he needed to write his next book. He blinked out every letter of his memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to an assistant who held up a slate with the alphabet.
Think about it. No pre-writing. No notes. No cut and paste. No spell check. No google.
It’s when your agent emails you a long list of things that an editor interested in your book wants and you think to yourself, “Awesome! I should be able to get that knocked out in the next three or four days.” And then you read that you have to have it all done by 6pm and it’s already 3pm.
I got it all taken care of. With more time, I could have done a better job, but it is what it is. Plus, instead of hanging over my head for a few days, it was only there for a few (very intense) hours.
My proposal has made it several steps into a few publishing houses and I’ve got my fingers crossed. I really can’t think of…
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