{"id":161,"date":"2016-07-07T21:11:51","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T21:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/?page_id=161"},"modified":"2016-07-12T17:39:08","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T17:39:08","slug":"cbs-early-show","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/aboutus-overview\/cbs-early-show\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Keoghan&#8217;s Heroes&#8221; Segment on CBS&#8217;s The Early Show, June 18, 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"center\">\n<div style=\"width: 320px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-161-1\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/x-flv\" src=\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/CBS_Early_Show_700Kbs_F7.flv?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/CBS_Early_Show_700Kbs_F7.flv\">https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/CBS_Early_Show_700Kbs_F7.flv<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><small>Air Date: June 18, 2007 \u00a0|\u00a0<\/small><small><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/2007-06-18_CBS_Early_Show.wmv\" target=\"CBSEarlyShow\">WMV\u00a0version<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2007\/05\/21\/earlyshow\/series\/amazingrace\/main2833240.shtml\"><em>Original Article<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>(CBS News)<\/strong> Phil Keoghan, the host of the CBS reality series, \u201cThe\u00a0Amazing Race,\u201d uses his down time between races to do some global\u00a0exploring of his own exclusively for The Early Show.<\/p>\n<p>His most recent stop took him to Montecristi, Ecuador, one of the last great\u00a0centers of Panama hat production.<\/p>\n<p>Keoghan met up with Brent Black, a man who is helping to save the dying art\u00a0of Panama hat weaving.<\/p>\n<p>Black left a lucrative advertising career in the United States when he\u00a0learned that few young people were entering the profession. He is trying to\u00a0improve pay and working conditions for the weavers.<\/p>\n<p>Phil decided to spend some time with Black to learn what it takes to weave\u00a0these hats and to see if he could find the perfect Panama hat for himself.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s Phil\u2019s report:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This might be confusing, but Panama hats don\u2019t come from Panama. They\u00a0come from the destination of my latest trip: Montecristi, Ecuador. I met up\u00a0with Brent Black, an American whose goal is to keep the Panama hat industry\u00a0alive for generations to come.<\/p>\n<p>In my quest for the perfect hat, I got to see the differences in quality.\u00a0Brent\u2019s hats are elegant and impossibly light, with a weave so fine,\u00a0they\u2019re like linen to touch.<\/p>\n<p>His hats are plenty expensive, but I found out why. Brent took me to the\u00a0dusty mountain town of Piles, home of one of the finest weavers in the world,\u00a0Sim\u00f3n Espinal, a weaver who spends hours a day stooped over a bench,\u00a0nimbly turning straw into gold.<\/p>\n<p>Sim\u00f3n showed me a partially completed hat, and I asked him how long\u00a0it took to get to that point.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDos meses,\u201d he responded, or, in English, two months.\u00a0Unfortunately, Sim\u00f3n is a dying breed, as there are only a handful of\u00a0weavers like him left.<\/p>\n<p>I was brought five miles into the jungle to explore the creation of a Panama\u00a0hat. Weavers search for \u201cCogollos,\u201d young shoots of a specific\u00a0variety of palm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow many of these do you need to actually make a hat?\u201d I\u00a0asked.<\/p>\n<p>Sim\u00f3n responded, \u201cThree hundred.\u201d Three hundred Cogollos\u00a0shoots to make one hat.<\/p>\n<p>To make the hat, Cogollos are cut gently with machetes and hand-carried back\u00a0to town. There, the reeds are split by hand and foot. Only the choice center\u00a0straws are harvested. They then get quickly blanched in boiling water for\u00a0softening, and hung out to dry. Finally, sulfur smoke bleaches the straw\u00a0overnight, and that is all before the first weave is even spun.<\/p>\n<p>Months later, after the hat is formed, a \u201crematadora\u201d executes a\u00a0careful back weave to prevent unraveling. Once the straw is trimmed, an\u00a0apaledor pounds the hat with hardwood mallets to keep the hat supple. They are\u00a0ironed, trimmed, and blocked into their final shape.<\/p>\n<p>Brent learned the art of Panama hat weaving himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI understood why people love Panama hats. I understood why these hats\u00a0were legendary,\u201d Brent said.<\/p>\n<p>Brent took me to the headquarters of the Montecristi Foundation, an\u00a0organization he started that helps support weavers. It promotes them as artists\u00a0and brings medical attention to the whole town.<\/p>\n<p>We could barely conduct an interview because everyone around was thanking\u00a0him.<\/p>\n<p>Brent is a businessman, though, making a healthy living selling Panama hats.\u00a0But he is intentionally increasing the base pay of weavers in an effort to\u00a0improve their lives and attract new, young weavers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s the idea,\u201d Brent said. \u201cTo keep going back\u00a0and forth and keep raising (wages) as the market will bear until we get to the\u00a0point where (weavers) make a really good wage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By the end of my trip, I got my Panama hat\u2026and a newfound\u00a0appreciation for the difference one man can make.<\/p>\n<p class=\"legal\"><small>\u00a9 MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Air Date: June 18, 2007 \u00a0|\u00a0WMV\u00a0version Original Article (CBS News) Phil Keoghan, the host of the CBS reality series, \u201cThe\u00a0Amazing Race,\u201d uses his down time between races to do some global\u00a0exploring of his own exclusively for The Early Show. His most recent stop took him to Montecristi, Ecuador, one of the last great\u00a0centers of Panama [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":1004,"parent":27,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-161","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3426,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/161\/revisions\/3426"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}