Where am I Wearing?

Great travel book, current events update, and thoughtful consideration of the worldwide apparel industry written in language that holds interest for all readers. Writer, traveler Kelsey Timmerman takes his five favorite pieces of clothing: t-shirt from Honduras, underwear from Bangladesh, sandals from China, Jeans from Cambodia, and shorts from USA and does a global tour to understand the lives of the people who make his clothing. Are they really made in sweatshops? How do these people live? IS there some oversight of the conditions in which the people who make our clothes find themselves?

The author manages to enter almost all the factories to see where his clothes are made, and he meets people who make the clothes and talks with them, through interpreters, about their lives in the factories. He meets children in the factories and talks about the effects of boycotts on children specifically. He meets families separated by thousands of miles who work to send money home to their loved ones.

This book is assigned reading for the incoming freshman class at Northern Kentucky University, and I found out about it through my in-laws who read it in anticipation of the author's visit to NKU this fall to speak to that class. The assignment of the books seems timely given the recent fires at the clothing shops in Bangladesh (book was written in 2009).

I really love this book and this writer and look forward to reading his next: Where am I eating?  Available at the library.

On the Noodle Road

Whew!  I've been reading this travel narrative/cookbook for about a month. It was a slow read, and I was often tempted to put it down, but yet there was something endearing about the author/traveler and her insights about food, travel, love and women.

Chinese American Jen Lin Liu founded a Chinese cooking school in Beijing and met an American journalist also living in Beijing who she marries. Upon traveling with him in Rome she conceives of an idea to trace the path of the noodle from China to Rome. She strives to understand where the noodle first originated and decides that following regional cuisine while traveling the silk road would be a fascinating travel memoir.

She travels through China, Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and finally Italy to answer this one question: did China invent the noodle that Italians have now perfected?  The question, while somewhat intriguing seems (and I think proves to be) a mighty thin thread to hand a 300 plus page travel narrative.

Ms Lin-Liu does dig deep into some more interesting questions primarily about the place of women in most of the countries through which she travels. She also begins to ask difficult questions about her own marriage. She meets lots of friendly cooks and locals who introduce her to the cuisines of the region.

After struggling to get through this memoir, I started to really like this author and stuck with it to hear how her marriage ended up and read her conclusions about the noodle. I won't give it away--I hate to spoil it for others.  I will say that while Central Asia seemed pretty bland food wise, she wrote food porn about the cuisines of Turkey and Italy that made me vow to travel to eat in both of those places.

In the end, some interesting observations in patches, a few recipes, an earnest author who you root for, and some good food writing probably salvaged this memoir.  A must read if you plan to travel in this region.

The Society of Timid Souls or How to be Brave by Polly Morland

Polly Moreland takes readers on a journey exploring bravery.  She calls us Timid Souls, and we are welcome with her as she travels England and the US and other parts of the world interviewing and discussing bravery with brave people.  She did not try stunts--like doing brave things herself (thank you!).  Instead she examined courage and bravery from many many angles: approaching death, facing war, facing animals, acting courageously in sudden spontaneous life threatening situations, leaving war, and even criminality.  And the ultimate in bravery--taking stands on moral issues. Civil rights leaders?  Non-violent protesters? 

She writes the book from the prospective of a non-brave person trying to understand what it means to be courageous.  Some of the interesting questions she considers are: Can you be brave if you have no fear?  Can the 9/11 hijackers be considered brave?  What about animals?  Can our pets be brave? Performers? She interviews dying men, men who ran away from war, people who stand up to criminals, matadors, the parents of a women who died fighting a fire, and a man who marched with Martin Luther King. 

Her discussion of the subject was compelling, fun to read, and it had a small light hearted touch which hinged on the whole idea of a timid soul society.  We all are rather timid souls, in search of lessons on how to be brave as the group that gave the book its title were called. Some classical musicians around 1942 formed a society for timid souls whose sole mission was to overcome stage fright.  So we, like they, are part of this quest. We go along and investagte this phenomenmon with her. 

It was slow going at times, but thoroughly enjoyable.  Lots of stories to ponder and ideas about courage.  If the topic interests you, it is worth having a look at.  Due out this summer.  I have this early erview copy if you want to borrow it.

The Camino by Shirley MacLaine

Just a few words about this celebrity memoir written by spiritual guru and actor Shirley MacLaine.  It is part of my summer long reading list involving books by pilgrims who have taken the famed Santiago de Compostela--the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James that I blogged about a few weeks back.

I think about a third of the book was dedicated to how she dodged reporters and paparazzi once they discovered who she was and what she was doing.  Another third was dedicated to the mechanics and rigors of the trail and the remaining third was a detailed account of an on-going and recurring vision she had at various points on the trail. Some guy from a prior life kept appearing to her.

It all seemed a little crazy and whacked out to me. The most interesting part was how she avoided the media and the fact that she did it at age 60+, so I felt like there was some hope of me getting it done someday.

The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber

I picked up this page turner on my birthday, while I was away from home at a conference, my traveling companion was busy doing other things, and my family was far away.  I needed something to draw me in and help me forget that I was missing birthday among friends.  I am not sure where I first heard about this, but the minute I saw it on the shelf I knew it would be my birthday present to myself.  I love reading journalistic accounts of real life events.  I am interested and amazed to watch a writer recreate complex events and turn them into elegant narrative despite the fact the he or she was no where near the events of the story. This write especially was able to see and hear and interpret all that happens with his clever imagination and in the eye of his mind. The transformation and writing can be miraculous.

This story of an angel of death, a nurse who begins killing his patients, is a  difficult story to tell for a host of reasons.  Charles Graeber recreates the events of 16 years by reviewing police reports, hospital reports and interviewing the many many people why were involved, even the killer himself. The story is told in an exciting manner, first by following the nurse who is perpetuating the crime, and then by following the police who eventually clue in to his crimes. The difficult mitigating factor is the fact that the hospital was fighting the police who were investigating the crime. Hospital officials would never be complicit in investigating the system that allowed a nurse to kill multiple patients over and over. How bad would that look for the hospital?

The Good Nurse is a true life crime thriller complete with good guys, bad guys, and real heroes. It is scaring me away from hospitals for the foreseeable future.  Who know how easy it would be to get away with murder? I highly recommend this true crime/hospital drama.  

True Stories of Becoming a Nurse

My life lately has been filled with nurses.  Between my father going into a skilled nursing facility, my son needing lots of doctor appointments, and watching Call the Midwife, I think about and interact with nurses all the time.  More than I realize.  Funny that way, doctors are the important ones, the ones we see for problems, but nurses really have all the answers, comfort, and common sense.  

Reading, I Wasn't Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse made me actually consider becoming a nurse.  Each essay, written by a different nurse, was thoughtful, articulate and presented me with a side of nursing I had not before considered.  The authors were mostly female, from all over the US and Canada, and most had discovered second careers in writing and had written about their working life with humor, pathos, and insight. 

There were nursing students, nursing home nurses, pediatric nurses, ER nurses, nurses in rural china, and nurses on ships that sailed to impoverished nations to aid the poorest of the poor, suffering from common ailments that would never bother us.  I read about nurses who dealt with AIDS patients in the era when no one would touch one and nurses who arrived at people's homes to check on them in their darkest hours.  There were hospice nurses, and nurses who survived cancer to go on and become nurses themselves and one beautiful essay about nurse whisperers: told from the point of view of the person watching the nurse care for her aging parents.  Great one!

I enjoyed every essay and would like to write to one woman who raises issues about HIPPA and confidentiality that I have always thought about and considered in my own career with writing circles and incarcerated women.  She articulated some of the things I think about with regard to storytelling beautifully.

The epigraph on the front of the book says, "required reading for anyone going into healthcare" I would go one further and say it is required reading for anyone needing healthcare.  Truly, that good.  Good work. Thanks Nurses!

The Road to Santiago

Odd little travel narrative about one woman's three trips on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela told in a kind of mixed-chronological order.  First, the most recent trip, a weeks worth of the camino taken with her 12 year old daughter.  I have been thinking lately this would be a fun trip to take with my daughter when she is about 12, so this part became a kind of cautionary tale.  I pictured my sweet girl, age 12, wearing an i-pod for 200 km and rolling her eyes at me.

The next part was a short chapter, her first time on the Camino, which involved her arriving in Spain while 7 months pregnant to do some research for a book and stumbling upon the path, walking on it a bit, and then realizing she needed to come back someday. Walking the Camino while 7 months pregnant was not smart. Contractions ensued.

The last part was the second time she came, 7 years after her first try, and she walked to the end.   I was a little unclear how many km she actually walked, but I don't get the impression she did the whole pilgrimage.  It seemed like perhaps two weeks worth.  It was a solitary journey and one she embraced even though it was often difficult and painful. She was not so much interested in the sites along the way as she was her own personal solitariness and the spiritual experience of walking the Camino.

At the end I realized this short narrative was part of a series published by National Geographic which included all manner of places around the globe.  Somehow, the fact that it was a series kind of made it seem a little less that it should have been.  Somehow, it explained why it was thin.  But it made me want to go and try it myself.  I have begun planning.  I think my first goal is to simply get in shape.  I have 8 more years until my daughter is 12.  Think I can do it?