The soft face of the child ducks for cover as a tank fires and missiles launch. You can almost see the innocence leaving his eyes for good and fear taking its place. Awful.
But this is happening and this is always happening somewhere in the world.
Watch this five minute video and think of what it must be like to grab all that’s important and keep walking until the fear of death is far behind.
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The last writing award I won was in 4th grade. I wrote a story about a boy who stumbled upon a pair of flying shoes that he wore, flew into the heavens, and met Thor. It won honorable mention in the county writing competition.
My first two books have been well-received, and launched my career as a writer, but they’ve yet to win me any awards. Sure, if the publishing world had a superlative category, I would definitely have a good shot at, “Most likely to go anywhere, in search of anything.” But no actual awards, yet.
That’s why I’m thrilled to announce that I’m an Emerging Author Finalist for the 2013 Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, alongside Tricia…
“Hi, my name is Kelsey Timmerman. How much does it cost to have a kid at your hospital? I’ll pay cash. ”
This is the state of the American medical system today. Patients are forced to approach the birth of a child like they would shopping for a used car. That’s exactly how it felt, and that’s exactly how an expecting mother described her similar experience shopping for hospitals recently to the New York Times:
“I feel like I’m in a used-car lot.”
Like the woman featured in the story, we had insurance, just not insurance that covered maternity expenses. Of course, we didn’t realize that we didn’t have maternity coverage until after my wife Annie was pregnant with our second child.
We had different insurance for the birth…
Summer is a time of rest, bike rides, backyard pools, and teaching my 4-year-old daughter to rider her bike without training wheels (on Father’s Day! I won Father’s day!). But I love summer events. They tend to be more intimate and laid back.
Here are my July Appearances
July 20 – Paso Robels, CA: Project Hope & Fairness Fundraiser at Pear Valley Vineyards. Wine and chocolate? Yes please! I traveled with Tom Neuhaus of Project Hope and Fairness in Ivory Coast while researching WHERE AM I EATING? Happy to help them raise money to improve the lives of cocoa farmers in West Africa.
July 22 – Columbus, IN: Batholomew County Library. Love visting libraries and happy they are having me back to talk about EATING after I spoke there about…
Shortly after I landed in Valledupar, Colombia, I was abducted by the indigenous Arhuaco.
Over the previous few week I had been in contact with them and must’ve asked, “Do I need a translator? My Spanish stinks,” ten times. They never answered. They never told me if they were going to pick me up at the airport. They never told me that I was going to be whisked away into the mountains down treacherous roads to the heart of their spiritual world. They never told me that I was about to have an amazing experience witnessing the most preserved indigenous culture I had ever seen.
Of course, I did use Google Translate for all of my emails, so maybe they thought my Spanish was better than it actually is.
Lucky for me,…
One of the most talked about parts of WHERE AM I EATING? is when I freed a slave in Ivory Coast. This was the subject of an editorial in James Hallmark’s recent column in the Amarillo Globe-News titled Injustice must be confronted.
James writes:
“We have made helping easy in America, perhaps too easy. When a tornado strikes Oklahoma, we text “Red Cross” to 90999 and we have “helped.” We are asked to “like” a Facebook page and told doing so will help free little girls from sex trafficking. These small actions may indeed help and even be essential, but someone has to get their hands dirty to free slaves, liberate little girls from prostitution, or clean up a tornado’s damage.”
James says that my decision to hatch a plan to free…
In 2012 Texas State freshmen read WEARING as part of their Common Experience — A Global Odyssey: Exploring Our Connections to the Changing World.
Dr. Salwa Khan with the School of Journalism & Mass Communication, had her students produce WEARING-themed segments. The segments explore if students think about where their clothes are made, how Texas State sources their athletic uniforms, feature University of Texas students who fought to get their university to sign on with the Worker Rights Consortium, and feature an interview with local clothing designer.
What I really enjoyed about each segment is that they took this global issue and talked about how it impacted their lives as locals.
Here are the the titles and credits for…
I spent the previous night in the guest room of a gold miner who employed 15-year-old workers. The bus that was supposed to take me all the way to Ghana, had ended at a flooded road in Burkina Faso. We then took a dugout canoe across the road to a brakeless taxi to a city without a hotel.
The next morning I had to take the taxi back to the flooded road, which I crossed again in a dugout canoe to a bus that would take me to Ghana. That bus dropped me off in Pa, Burkina Faso, where I waited for a bus to Hamile, Ghana, that may or not show up.
I waited hours.
The entire time I waited a man…
In May of 2012 I traveled with 7 students from Winthrop University to Guatemala on a trip arranged and led by The Village Experience. Here was our itinerary.
I wanted a place to compile all that was said about the trip. This is that place.
Jennifer Sandler, Winthrop’s study abroad coordinator, as quoted on the Winthrop University website: The students were exposed to so many new experiences, ideas, situations and people, and they were nothing but engaged and enthusiastic the entire program. We were all sad to leave Guatemala, but I firmly believe that the students’ fire for travel and international experiences has been stoked, hopefully never to be extinguished.
I had a blast talking about travel, food, and WHERE AM I EATING with Sean Keener of Bootsnall Travel yesterday.
Sean is a busy guy with three kids three and under. In fact, in the video he confessed that his kids and work keep him so busy that, “Sometimes I have to wait hours to take a dump!” I so appreciate him taking 55 minutes of prime pooping time to ask some great questions and getting pretty deep into EATING.
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