Telling a story through the Presidents who shaped history

Barack Obama

Recently, while entertaining out of state friends, we happened one evening to visit the nation's only complete collection of presidential portraits outside of the White House at the Smithsonian Institute's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The gallery of Presidential Portraits is a timeless exhibition that lies at the heart of the National Portrait Gallery's core mission: telling the American story through the individuals who shaped it.

From George Washington to Barack Obama, presidential portraits have always attracted our interest. Once upon a time – before newspapers, magazines and television – a painted portrait or a sculpted image was the only means that most of us knew of our Presidents. And, as I've learned, throughout much of the 19th century, there was a lively debate over which portrait of George Washington most accurately conveyed his proper image.

Inside the gallery of Presidential Portraits, there are a variety of presidential likenesses, including oil on canvas, marble head busts, engravings – and, there's the Chuck Close portrait of Bill Clinton that is truly amazing and has to be seen. As I took note while walking through the gallery and viewing the presidential portraiture in order of their presidency, from Washington to Obama, I couldn't help but notice that some portraits were more sophisticated and interesting than others. Let's face it – I think Teddy Roosevelt is just a bit more striking a figure than Millard Fillmore. Same goes for JFK compared to Calvin Coolidge. No offense, some presidents are just more interesting than others.

Bill Clinton

As I drew closer to the newest presidential portrait – of Barack Obama – I noticed an orderly queue line and soon I joined it so that I could take a few candid photographs. The portrait of the 44th President by artist Kehinde Wiley was unveiled on February 12 at the National Portrait Gallery and it's become the center of attention – along with the new portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama – inside the entire National Portrait Gallery.

"Historically, portraiture has always been about saying yes to things that we want to celebrate, but I think also the commissioned portrait has often times been about a society saying, 'Who are the people we collectively want to honor?' and particularly with the presidential portrait, this is the highest aspect of that tradition," said Wiley, during a recent interview with Time. "It's been – I can't tell you – an extraordinary honor to be able to participate in that."

The portrait of Obama makes quite a statement. It's anything but drab. The former president is shown wearing a black suit with an open-collared shirt. He's sitting on a wooden chair. And, he's surrounded by flowers and green foliage. The flowers, I learned, include: blue lilies, from his father's home in Kenya; jasmine from Obama's home state of Hawaii; and chrysanthemums, the official flower of Chicago, the former president's hometown.

John F. Kennedy

At the unveiling of his portrait, Obama said, "What I was always struck by whenever I saw (Wiley's) portraits was the degree to which they challenged our conventional views of power and privilege."

Wiley stated, "The ability to be the first African-American painter to paint the first African-American president of the United States is absolutely overwhelming. It doesn't get any better than that."

After seeing the Obama portrait, Brian T. Allen wrote in The National Review, "Obama looks directly at us, as if he reads our minds and challenges our assumptions. It's jarring but effective. He's formal and familiar, both tense and loose. He leans toward the viewer. It's not a position comfortably sustained. It's not repose. It suggests imminent action. For Obama, this probably means he's about to tell us, 'That's not who we are,' instructing us to question some near-universally held sentiment. Wiley builds the figure with straight lines and diagonals. His suit is dark. Aside from his wedding ring, he's unornamented. Obama's open collar softens the effect. It's his trademark look but seems like a uniform. He's a role model, so it works."

In Between: Taking on gender politics without apology

On Sunday morning in Washington, D.C., my wife and I attended a sneak preview of In Between (Bar Bahar in Arabic), a bold and brassy Israeli drama written and directed by Palestinian filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud about living Arab and female in Israel. The "in-your-face-but-not-in-your-face" film is set in freewheeling and secular Tel Aviv, where the fallout from Arab Spring has brought about a new underground of Palestinians who are enjoying never-imagined freedoms – they're caught up in a new social revolution, a new world order, if you will – yet, whose underground nightlife remains contemporary and ethnic.

In Between presents three very different women – a conservative, hijab-wearing Muslim university computer science student; a modern Muslim criminal lawyer who likes to party after hours; and a liberal, Christian underground scene DJ/bartender – who happen to share an apartment where they find themselves balancing their lives between "tradition and modernity, citizenship and culture, fealty and freedom." Each woman tries to shape her own destiny despite living in a conservative Arab society that's entrenched in patriarchy.

In In Between, there's a whole lot of young people who are thinking and behaving differently – a mixture of gay and straight culture – while breaking down sacred and sexual barriers. The film, which stars Palestinian actresses Mouna Hawa (as the beautiful extrovert Laila), Sana Jammelieh (as the artsy and closeted lesbian Salma) and Shaden Kanboura (as the somewhat näive but observant and studious Nour), is presented in Arabic and Hebrew dialogue with English subtitles and includes an exotic and pulsating electronica soundtrack. It is Hamoud's first feature-length film – she did it with Israeli funding – and it earned her a fatwa from her own people because of the frank and explicit subject matter it tackled: homosexuality, intoxication and drug use.

"I couldn't imagine this happening, but I am not surprised," said Hamoud, during a 2017 BBC Newsnight interview. "They didn't want to look in the mirror and see the ugly face that is put in front of them."

As we see during this non-rated 103-minute film, In Between also deals with a Jewish state that treats its Arab citizens with a sense of mistrust, which makes it even more of a challenge for Laila, Salma and Nour to be able to live free in a restricted society and defend their sense of independence from the familial values they no longer share.

Throughout In Between, suggests critic Susan Wloszczyna of RogerEbert.com, what is most intriguing is "how each woman is allowed to make mistakes and learn from them without any judgment on Hamoud's part." Another critic, Ella Taylor of NPR, writes that "Hamoud's narrative instincts can be broad, but she is rarely glib or coy. That she has chosen to focus squarely on internal tensions within the Arab community – the widening cultural and political gulf between the generations – is a mark of her courage, her bravado and her brutal honesty."

In his review of In Between, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott notes that the movie "is fatalistic about the local political situation, pessimistic about men and encouraged by the power of female solidarity. In other words, whether by serendipity or prophetic insight or some combination of the two, it's a perfect movie for the movement."

Adds Hamoud: "The thing that's really touched me is when women come and say 'you are inspiring for us'. I cannot ask for more than this."

In awarding In Between best debut feature film at the Haifa Film Festival, the jury described it as "a powerful creation about women fighting to shape their fate by coping with challenges, through friendship, courage, victory, and by breaking free of shackles, and the price they pay."

In an age of #MeToo, In Between takes on gender politics without apology. I highly recommend this award-winning film, which has received limited release in the U.S.

Photo: Courtesy of Film Movement. Videos: Courtesy of YouTube.

Nike: Equality has no boundaries

LeBron James during the filming of Nike's "Equality" commercial. /
"We can be equals everywhere."

On Sunday evening during the nationally televised Grammy Awards program, Nike debuted a short film about #EQUALITY. It's message was clear: Equality has no boundaries.

This extraordinary 90-second spot, filmed in black in white, was directed by Melina Matsoukas who has two Grammy Awards for her work on Beyoncé's "Formation" and Rihanna's "We Found Love." It features NBA great LeBron James and co-stars American athletes Serena Williams, Kevin Durant, Megan Rapinoe, Gabby Douglas, Victor Cruz, and Dalilah Muhammad.

"Equality" has already received more than 4 million views on YouTube.

The central theme of "Equality," which also features actor Michael B. Jordan in a cameo as well as narrating the script, and singer Alicia Keys covering Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," is this: "The Equality and fairness prevalent in major professional sports should transcend into broader society."

As part of Nike's Black History Month campaign, their initiative aims to "inspire people to take action in their communities."

The voice over in the film (Jordan) says "if we can be equals here," referring to a basketball court, then James says "we can be equals everywhere."

Writing in ESPN's "The Undefeated" sports, race and culture website, writer Clinton Yates said: "Using a street art metaphor to make a point about in-your-face activism is not only effective, but for many who'll likely see this ad, perhaps familiar."

It made an impact with me; I hope it makes an impact with you.

#EQUALITY
Is this the land history promised?
Here within these lines.
On this concrete court. 
This patch of turf.
Here, you're defined by your actions, not your looks or beliefs.
Equality should have no boundaries.
The bonds we find here should run past these lines.
Opportunity should not discriminate.
The ball should bounce the same for everyone.
Worth should outshine color.
If we can be equals here, we can be equals everywhere.

A postscript: Nike has released a behind-the-scenes look at "Equality," which is worth a good look. It showed what equality means to each of the athletes involved. Said Rapinoe: "Being a woman in sport, first of all, equality is not always something that we're privy to. And being a gay woman in this country, in sport, wherever I am in the conversation, it's there. It's my responsibility of making sure that I speak up about it, and speak up for other people. Hopefully, it can grow that movement in that way."

Adds James: "At the end of the day, we're always just trying to find a way that we can all feel equal, we can all be equal, have the same rights, have the same feelings, being able to be in the same place no matter the color."

• Nike, which plans to air the "Equality" film during next Sunday's NBA All-Star Game, is currently promoting "Equality" t-shirts on its website. According to Adweek, Nike will donate $5 million during this calendar year to "numerous organizations that advance equality in communities across the U.S., including Mentor and PeacePlayers."

Beyond black and white: searching for a new equality

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar / A great American thinker.

Growing up in the valley suburbs of Los Angeles in the 1960s, one of my childhood heroes was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Back then, as Lew Alcindor (his birth name before he changed it after converting to Islam), he was the dominating force in men's collegiate basketball in leading UCLA to three consecutive NCAA championships. I've always been fascinated by Kareem, not only as an athlete but as a human being because he's shown himself to be so much more than a basketball player. He's also a great American thinker.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's new book
focuses on many paramount issues
facing our society, including:
racism, war, death, love, hope

My current reading project is Abdul-Jabbar's latest book, Writings On the Wall: Searching For a New Equality Beyond Black and White. Co-authored with Raymond Obstfeld and published this fall, it's an insightful book that's full of wisdom and conviction and a must read as we transition from eight years of steady and thoughtful leadership by Barack Obama to the chaos-induced "post-truth" presidency of Donald Trump. In Writings On the Wall, Abdul-Jabbar explores how today's America "is a fractured society, sharply divided along the lines of race, gender, religion, political party and economic class." The book is filled with plenty of fresh reporting and serious thinking.

Writings On the Wall focuses on many paramount issues facing our society: racism, abuse of women, why politicians attack the media, war, growing old, death, love, hope. He approaches these issues with both insight and passion and draws upon his life experiences not only as superstar athlete but also as a scholar, celebrity, parent, education advocate, journalist, charity organizer, African-American and a Muslim.

U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, himself a former NBA basketball player, Rhodes Scholar and author, wrote that Abdul-Jabbar "brings his unusual and unique life story to bear on the issues of our day and adds insight for all of us in the process."

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar used his trademark
"sky hook" shot to help win six NBA
championships during his 20-year
Hall of Fame career. 

Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA's all-time leading scorer and a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. In retirement, he has been an activist and an in-demand speaker, a basketball coach and the author of nine books for adults and three for children, including What Color Is My World?, which garnered the author the NAACP Image Award for Best Children's Book.

As an essayist for such publications as the Washington Post and TIME magazine, Abdul-Jabbar has written on a wide range of subjects, including race, politics, aging and popular culture.

In 2012, he was selected as a U.S. Cultural Ambassador. Last month, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a White House ceremony.

"My real passion for history is in using it as a critical guide to our future, both personal and cultural," writes Abdul-Jabbar.

"History illuminates the safest path in front of us by revealing the pitfalls of the past. It is a secular bible of cautionary and inspiring stories that distills the wisdom of thousands of years of human endeavor into practical lessons about humanity's morals, politics and personal relationships. It is the ultimate self-help book. And right now, given the political and social turmoil in America, we need all the help we can get."

Abdul-Jabbar integrates a lot of popular-culture references in illustrating his ideas. He's a fan of the many artistic ways that our society chooses to communicate both its darkest fears and its brightest hopes. "Pop culture visualizes the public discourse in myriad ways: through music, movies, TV shows, poetry, comic books, literary novels, plays, YouTube, graffiti and new forms of expression that come along every day," he writes. "It provides the embraceable melody of our cultural song – it doesn't matter how profound the words of the song are if no one wants to listen. Whether Tarantino or Truffaut, all points of view and creative presentations have a place. Popular culture is a language that bridges generations, economic statuses and ethnic backgrounds. It provides a common heritage-in-the-making that brings our diverse community closer."

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spoke during the 2016
Democratic National Convention.

Why did he write this book? "For me, there would be no point in writing a book like this unless I had some hope that it might help improve life for Americans," writes Abdul-Jabbar. "I don't imagine anything grand, just that some contentious issues might be clarified, that some people might hear a reasonable voice that isn't from the same background as others they listen to.

"Maybe they will become a little more understanding. Mostly, I hope to expand the discussion about what America is and what it means to be an American. Not with waving flags and sentimental speeches but with a return to exploring the document that defines who we are and what we stand for: the U.S. Constitution."

With his book, Writings on the Wall, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
hopes "to shine a flashlight on the path back to the
Age of Reason and the ideals of the U.S. Constitution."

What does he hope to gain? "Many Americans, as evidenced by the 2016 presidential campaign, abandoned these founding principles of reason to voice their fear, anger, frustration and rage. They openly and proudly expressed their racial bigotry, religious intolerance and misogyny as if the past 100 years of history of incremental social progress had never happened.

"Without even knowing it, they have dragged the American flag through the mud by rejecting all the principles it represents. As cartoonist Walt Kelly said in Pogo: 'We have met the enemy and he is us.' With this book, I hope to shine a flashlight on the path back to the Age of Reason and the ideals of the U.S. Constitution."

Will it work? Abdul-Jabbar is hopeful. "Each generation has to confront these challenging ideas and find ways to incorporate them into their personal belief systems as they go about their daily lives. ... I hope people choose to answer the call and together we ring about the miracle and wonder."

That, I believe, is an American dream worth dreaming.

Studying our dining habits through a photographer's lens

Dinner in New York, 2014 / A mother and her baby daughter share dinner together in their
Upper West Side home while visiting via Skype with grandmother in Boston.

Eating dinner today involves a lot of multitasking and, increasingly, a lot of media consumption. It didn't always used to be this way.

Once upon a time, the family dinner was a chance for parents and kids to enjoy socializing with each other on any number of topics from school activities to presidential politics. Not so much anymore as dining has shifted from a primary to a secondary activity in our short-attention span-but-hurried lives. Now, it's not uncommon in many dining rooms for a TV set to be on that's airing a favorite program or, maybe, the stereo is playing ambient mood music -- even a radio might be tuned into a baseball game. Of course, for some, TV sets and radios are so old school when an iPad or iPhone are much more portable.

"The spread of the Internet, computers and cellphones in recent years has given people many methods of communication, and dinner has lost its original essence," says New York-based photojournalist Miho Aikawa, who more than four years ago decided to explore the subject of modern dinner by photographing people eating in New York City, focusing primarily on "private dinner moments."

"The changes in society, as well as the people who form them, have led to a shift in how we spend our dinner time," adds Aikawa, who has also studied people eating in Tokyo, too.

I came across Aikawa's excellent series of photographs entitled "Dinner in NY," via a recent feature about her work in Slate.com while (what else?) eating -- lunch not dinner -- and, it got me thinking about how multitasking and media consumption affect how I dine.

Let's see, eating breakfast offers me a chance to listen to NPR's "Morning Edition" on the radio while reading the print edition of The New York Times. At lunch, I alternate between glancing at my news feed on Facebook or perusing The San Francisco Chronicle e-edition on my MacBook Pro. As for dinner, well ... I'm guilty as charged about having the TV set on to watch a sporting event on ESPN or, maybe, "Chopped" on the Food Network, while I nosh on homemade pizza served with a butter lettuce salad, a bowl of fresh-cut Tomatero strawberries and a glass of Kermit Lynch French red wine.

Mind you, my wife and I still use our dinner time to enjoy stimulating conversation about a wide range of topics that include: sports, literature, food, music, travel and gardening. We like to keep it light. Nothing too heavy, although sometimes we might watch The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC whilst we dine. The other night, for something entirely different, we viewed an episode of Jerry's Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee that featured Jon Stewart online with our laptop occupying the corner of the dining room table. Seinfeld's online comedy show was welcome company at our dinner table.

"Initially, I had hoped to use this project as a means to provide inspiration and a chance to reflect on the reality and the potential of what dinner is, and can be," Aikawa wrote on her Facebook page. "Of course, there can be many different types of dinner, and the project is not about changing any one's dinner habits. I don't think having dinner with a cell phone, or laptop is bad or wrong. One of my subjects was talking with her grandmother via Skype during her dinner, and it can enhance the pleasure of the table."

Note: Aikwa's series, "Dinner in NY" is on display in this year's edition of The Fence at Brooklyn Bridge Park through October.

Photo  © 2014 by Miho Aikawa Photography.