Muncie author to visit JCPL Monday

Travelers choose their destinations for a variety of reasons.
They might embark to see a specific landmark, track their ancestry or enjoy a warmer climate.
It was a T-shirt that led Kelsey Timmerman to Honduras, beginning a journey that culminated in his first book.
Timmerman, a Union City, Ohio, native and the author of “Where am I Wearing?” and “Where am I Eating?”, will speak at 6 p.m. Monday in the community room at Jay County Public Library.
“That really inspired a lot of curiosity in me to want to go out and meet people and see how they lived,” said Timmerman of his anthropology studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
After graduation in 2001 he began to travel, started to write about his experiences, got published in some magazines and newspapers, and began making a little bit of money. He realized his travel options were endless.
And then he looked down at his favorite T-shirt, which reads “Come with me to my tropical paradise” and has a picture of Tattoo from the 1970s TV show “Fantasy Island.”
He decided he would follow that shirt. It was made in Honduras.
So he traveled to the Central American country bordered by Nicaragua to the south and Guatemala to the north with El Salvador tucked to its west. He went scuba diving and explored the jungle, but decided he should at least go to the factory where the shirt was made.
Timmerman waited outside for the end of a shift and met a worker about the same age as him.
“It got real then,” Timmerman said. “I started to realize … for the first time ever … that all our clothes come from somewhere else and someone else.
“What does that mean for them?
“It’s a very tangible way that we’re connected with the rest of the world. So then I became obsessed with where stuff comes from.”
He let that obsession create his travel itinerary.

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