Thoughts on travel: Leaving your baggage behind

Rick Steves /
PBS travel host,
writer and activist

During my recent visit to Seattle while attending the American Library Assocation’s mid-winter conference, I sat in on an engaging and informative lecture by Rick Steves. He’s the longtime PBS travel host, writer and activist, who spoke about the need to understand our fellow human beings in other countries.

During his lively one-hour conversation, Steves emphasized the importance of traveling outside our comfort zone in order to learn about other people and cultures. One of his goals, I learned, has been to inspire and equip Americans to venture beyond Orlando’s Disney World. The Washington native was clearly a man on a mission on this Sunday morning. He was preaching to the choir – and it gave him its undivided attention.

Certainly, Steves is one who is not afraid to travel. In fact, for decades, he’s been crafting European tour experiences for Americans. By his estimation, he’s spent about a third of his adult life traveling throughout Europe. However, it was following the 9/11 tragedy in 2001 that Steves began to view politics as inextricable from travel.

“A life of travel can be a catalyst of peace,” Steves told his Seattle audience. He’s got a book out to back up his talk, ‘Travel As a Political Act,’ which is in its third edition (Hackett Book Group, 2018).

“When someone tells me to have a safe trip, I’m inclined to say, ‘Well, have a safe trip at home,’” said Steves. Despite Europe being statistically safer than the U.S., he noted that “Our country has never been more fearful.

“Fear is for people who don’t get out very much. The flip side of fear is understanding, and we gain understanding when we travel.”

Rick Steves signing
copies of his book,
‘Travel as a Political Act.’

Steves spoke of the importance that travelers need to get out of their comfort zone and show empathy for the rest of the world. “I’m into reality and humanity,” he said. “There’s a lot of baggage we are clueless to. We need to know about other country’s baggage. It’s important to understand baggage.”

If you think about it, and certainly Steves emphasized it, when you meet people along your travels – and take the time to discover their interests – it fosters an understanding of others and of the world at large.

“You go to France and step into a cheese shop, and it’s a festival of mold. The cheesemonger is evangelical,” said Steves. It’s one of many times that he drew laughter. “In Ireland, I enjoy the sensation that I’m understanding a foreign language. Forget your schedule, this is why you’re there. Get into a conversation.

“Europe knows how to work hard, but it knows how to play, too.”

He added, “You travel and realize the American dream is great, but it’s not unpatriotic to recognize there are other dreams.”

Encore: Who lives, who dies, who gets to tell your story?

Creative genius / Lin-Manuel Miranda

It's been said that works of art have long informed how people understand the past, and Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, which I saw for the second time in the past year last weekend in New York City, is no exception.

As the creative genius of the Broadway smash-hit Hamilton, Miranda changed the way that people considered one of the Founding Fathers and the era he lived in. In doing so, it put Miranda in lofty territory, alongside how Shakespeare transformed Richard III, and how the author Leon Uris romanticized the founding of Israel in his novel Exodus.

In revisiting an essay I wrote about Miranda in March 2016, here's some things worth noting:

In creating Hamilton, Miranda relied on the core elements of hip-hop and R & B-inspired music as well as jazz, pop and Tin Pan Alley – plus a racially-diverse cast – to make history as relatable as possible. Soon after its 2015 debut, Hamilton became a certifiable Broadway box office hit – it remains one of the toughest, most-sought after tickets on Broadway – and the musical became centered around a story arc that relates Hamilton's life story, from his orphaned upbringing in the West Indies to his death in a duel at the hands of Aaron Burr.

"This is a story about America then, told by America now," Miranda, a native New Yorker of Puerto Rican heritage, once told The Atlantic, "and we want to eliminate any distance between a contemporary audience and this story."

In a September 29, 2015 essay for The Atlantic, Edward Delman wrote, "Hamilton, then, has the potential to strongly influence the way Americans think about the early republic. For one thing ... it understands Thomas Jefferson to be a deeply flawed individual. It presents an American history in which women and people of color share the spotlight with the founding fathers. The primarily black and Hispanic cast reminds audiences that American history is not just the history of white people, and frequent allusions to slavery serve as constant reminders that just as the revolutionaries were fighting for their freedom, slaves were held in bondage.

"Perhaps, the most significant lesson the show might teach audiences, and one that has particular relevance today, is the outsized role immigrants have played in the nation's history. Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant – a fact that Miranda repeatedly emphasizes throughout the show – and the musical also prominently features the Marquis de Lafayette, a French nobleman who played a crucial role during the revolutionary war."

It's pretty amazing to think back to the fascinating process which Miranda translated the history of the unlikely rise and untimely fall of the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, onto the stage. He drew upon the Ron Chernow biography of Hamilton for focus and inspiration. Then, flash back to May 12, 2009, when Miranda first performed "The Hamilton Mixtape" before an audience that included President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word, accompanied by pianist Alex Lacamoire.

In looking back at a February 2015 feature about Hamilton, Rebecca Meade of The New Yorker wrote: "It does not seem accidental that Hamilton was created during the tenure of the first African-American President. The musical presents the birth of the nation in an unfamiliar but necessary light: not solely as the world of élite white men but as the foundational story of all Americans. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington are all played by African-Americans. Miranda also gives prominent roles to women, including Hamilton's wife Eliza Schuyler, and sister-in-law Angelica Schuyler. When they are joined by a third sister, their zigzagging harmonies sound rather like those of Destiny's Child.

"Miranda portrays the Founding Fathers not as exalted statesmen but as orphaned sons, reckless revolutionaries, and sometimes petty rivals, living at a moment of extreme volatility, opportunity, and risk. The achievements and the dangers of America's current moment – under the Presidency of a fatherless son of an immigrant, born in the country's island margins – are never far from view."

The Grammy Award-winning original cast recording, produced by The Roots' Questlove and Black Thought – has been a welcome companion of mine on my car stereo for several years – and I never really tire of its songs.

"I don't know how many really good ideas you get in a lifetime," Miranda once told The Hollywood Reporter, "but the idea of telling Hamilton as a hip-hop story was definitely one because you get to do everything: love and death and a war and duels and revenge and affairs and sex scandals."

One thing remains certain: Thanks to Miranda's genius, the Tony Award-winning Hamilton continues to have a positive influence in altering our perception of American history, and the role in which artists are helping shape historical narrative. And, Miranda knows that he can't stop being who he is just because more people are looking at him.

Photo credits: Lin-Manuel Miranda's Twitter feed and Google Images. Video/audio credit: YouTube.com.

Opinions that matter: When these coaches speak ...

Gregg Popovich /
"Values are more important to me than
anyone's skill in business ... It tells us who
we are, how we want to live and what kind
of people we are."

It's been a week and counting since Election Day 2016. Dazed and confused, we've been trying to make sense of the new world around us. Many of us have felt sucker punched by Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton. Yet, some who are prominent in our sports culture are taking a stand while demonstrating their political activism. When these coaches speak ... I listen. So should you.

San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich and Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, a couple of the best and brightest minds in sports, are among the many professional coaches and athletes who have shared blistering critiques following Donald Trump's election as President of the United States last Tuesday. As coaches in the NBA, where 75 percent of the athletes are black, their opinions matter.

In a recently published ESPN interview, Popovich spoke out in frustration of Trump, who will become the 45th President of the United States when he is inaugurated in January.


"I'm a rich, white guy. And I'm sick to my stomach thinking about it," said Popovich, a graduate of the Air Force Academy. "I couldn't imagine being a Muslim right now or a woman or an African-American, a Hispanic, a handicapped person, and how disenfranchised they might feel." He went on to say that for any one in those groups that voted for Trump, "it's just beyond my comprehension how they ignored all that."

On the day after the election, in an interview with The New York Times, Kerr said: "All of a sudden you're faced with the reality that the man who's going to lead you has routinely used racist, misogynist, insulting words. I didn't think this was The Jerry Springer Show." 

Over the past four years, I've had the pleasure of informally meeting Kerr on several occasions. He is a parent of University of California women's volleyball player Maddy Kerr, and my wife and I have season tickets to Cal volleyball. Kerr is warm, friendly and outgoing – and never one to shy away from societal discourse. As the son of an American academic who specialized in the Middle East, Kerr spent much of his childhood in Lebanon and other Middle East countries before returning to the U.S. to study history and sociology and star as a basketball player at the University of Arizona, then embark on a fruitful professional career in the National Basketball Association.

Steve Kerr (right) with Draymond Green /
The Golden State Warriors head coach is not one to shy
away from societal discourse.
"I didn't think this was 'The Jerry Springer Show.'"

"People are getting paid millions of dollars to go on TV and scream at each other, whether it's in sports or politics or entertainment" said Kerr, a five-time NBA champion as a player who coached the Golden State Warriors to a championship in 2015 in his rookie season as a head coach. "I guess it was only a matter of time before it spilled into politics."

Before a recent home game against the Detroit Pistons, whose own head coach Stan Van Gundy also spoke critically about Trump, Popovich admitted he's sick to his stomach, "and not basically because the Republicans won or anything, but the disgusting tenor, tone and all the comments that have been xenophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic. And I live in that country where half the people ignored all that to elect someone. That's the scariest part of (the) whole thing to me.

"It's got nothing to do with the environment, Obamacare and all the other stuff. We live in a country that ignored all those values that we would hold our kids accountable for."

Popovich believes that Trump's words and actions cannot be overlooked or forgotten. He went on to say this: "Everybody wants him to be successful. It's our country; we don't want it to go down the drain. Any reasonable person would come to that conclusion, but it does not take away the fact that he used that fear-mongering and all the comments from day one. The race-baiting with trying to make Barack Obama, our first black president, illegitimate. It leaves me to wonder where I've been living and with whom I'm living."

The Spurs head coach also showed empathy for minority groups which might be adversely affected by the President-elect's remarks made during his campaign.

"What gets lost in the process are African-Americans, Hispanics, women and the gay population, not to mention the eight-grade developmental stage exhibited by him when made fun of the handicapped person," Popovich said. "I mean, come on. That's what an eighth-grade bully does, and he was elected president of the United States. We would have scolded our kids. We would have had discussions and talked until we were blue in the face trying to get them to understand these things. And he is in charge of our country. That's disgusting."

Popovich's frustration with the President-elect goes beyond partisan politics.

Gregg Popovich /
A Trump presidency, he said, is on the same path as the
Roman Empire. "My final conclusion is, my big fear is,
we are Rome."

"Values to me are more important than anybody's skill in business or anything else because it tells who we are, how we want to live and what kind of people we are," he said. "That's why I have great respect for people like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, John Kasich, who I disagree with on a lot of political things. But they had enough fiber and respect for humanity and tolerance for all groups to say what they said about (Trump)."

Popovich continued, by saying "One could go on and on. We didn't make this stuff up. He's angry at the media because they reported what he said and how he acted. It's ironic to me. It just makes no sense. So that's my real fear. And that's what gives me so much pause and makes me feel so badly, that the country is willing to be that intolerant and not understand the empathy that's necessary to understand other groups' situations.

Popovich was finished – or was he? As he ended his remarks, he had one final thought. He said he was concerned that the United States under a Trump presidency is on the same path as the Roman Empire. "My final conclusion is, my big fear is, we are Rome."

Photos: Courtesy of Google Images.

As close to the bone as filmmaking gets: Ken Burns Presents "Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies"

A biography of cancer / First the book,
now the film

Imagine the problems that would be alleviated if a cure for cancer were found.

In the spirit of learning and understanding, last week my wife and I attended a screening of the new Ken Burns Presents "Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies," a film by Barak Goodman, at the invitation of KQED, our PBS affiliate, in San Francisco.

The film, a three part, six-hour documentary, will debut next week from March 30-April 1 on PBS -- and I highly recommend you see it.

After all, convening dialogue in the pursuit of lifelong learning can only lead to a better understanding of our world, right?

We saw a 45-minute preview that included portions from all three parts, followed by an interview and a Q & A session with Barak Goodman. The Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated film director reminded us how we are all impacted by cancer and noted how some of us will die because of the deadly disease.

"Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies" is based on physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer Siddhartha Mukherjee's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, which examines cancer with "a cellular biologist's precision, a historian's perspective, and a biographer's passion."

Through Goodman's direction, the film tells the complete story of cancer, "from its first description in an ancient Egyptian scroll to the gleaming laboratories of modern research institutions," according to the program's website. "At six hours, the film interweaves a sweeping historical narrative; with intimate stories about contemporary patients; and an investigation into the latest scientific breakthroughs that may have brought us, at long last, to the brink of lasting cures."

The film combines science and case studies with history -- more than 100 people were interviewed and 700 hours of film were produced over a two-year period -- and, after previewing "Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies," it's easy to see the influence filmmaker Ken Burns had on the project as executive producer. Call it the Ken Burns effect, if you will, of panning and zooming from still imagery and using lots of talking heads on camera to tell the story.

"There's a lot of Ken Burns stuff (techniques) in it," said Goodman. "While his finger prints are all over it, the really great thing about Ken is he gave us the space to make the film."

Much of the film took place at the The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, Md., and at the Charleston Area Medical center in Charleston, West Virginia.

The film tugs on a lot of heartstrings and emotions. "It was extremely emotionally challenging because we got very, very close to the patients we filmed, some of whom didn't survive their cancer," said Goodman.

In a PBS promo for the film, Burns said that "Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies" is "about as close to the bone as filmmaking gets for me. Cancer has been a huge part of my life. There is never a moment in my awareness as a human being that I didn't know that something was desperately wrong with my mother, at 2 1/2 to 3 years. She was sick with cancer. She died when I was 11, almost 12 years old.

"The reason why I do what I do comes from this illness and this death and watching it  happen," he said.

After a 10-year struggle with the disease, Burns' mother died of breast cancer.

Cancer is a monumental and difficult but solvable problem, says Goodman. "We hope the series makes people hope; to not shy away from the disease."

To learn more:
http://video.pbs.org/program/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/

On Tunisian tennis: A season on the brink?

Malek Jaziri / The No. 1-rated Arab tennis player in the world.

At a glance, the order of play for last Friday's quarterfinal-round of the ATP Challenger event in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, which included three of the top four remaining seeds, seemed ordinary enough.

Except that it wasn't.

At 10 a.m. on Court No. 3, the order of play showed a scheduled match between two unseeded players, one an Arab, the other an Israeli. However, before play began in this lower-tier tennis tournament -- the minor leagues of professional men's tennis, if you will -- Malek Jaziri of Tunisia, ranked 169th in the world at the time but currently the top-rated Arab player, withdrew from his match against Amir Weintraub, an Israeli, who advanced on the walkover to the semifinals.

More often than not, a walkover is the result of one player being too injured to be able to play. Only, this time, Jaziri's inability to play was because of political interference and not because of a knee injury, diplomatic and convenient as it might seem -- regardless of what the tournament's website indicated as the official reason.

Instead, in a move that arguably shocked the tennis world and garnered the attention of both USA Today and Sports Illustrated here in the U.S. as well as various international media abroad, Tunisia's tennis federation ordered its best player off the court, forbidding him from playing. Simply because his opponent-to-be was an Israeli.

In an e-mail provided by Jaziri's brother and manager, Amir, to the Tunisian state news agency on Friday, the Tunisian tennis federation on Thursday stated: "Following a meeting this afternoon with the Ministry of Youth and Sports, I have the immense regret to inform you that you are ordered not to play against the Israeli player."

A sports ministry spokesman, Sadok Touati, confirmed for the Associated Press that the federation sent the e-mail on Thursday after it consulted the ministry.

"The ministry does not interfere in the affairs of the sports federations," said Touati. Meanwhile, the federation president was unavailable for comment.

Although Jaziri, 29, is ranked well below the top players in his sport  -- a little over a year ago he was 100 places higher (69th) before injuries and a string of losses against lower-ranked opponents derailed him -- by all indications he is afraid the Tunisian federation's decision could harm his career. Few besides Jaziri in Tunisia have achieved a world ranking that would garner much notice. And, Jaziri could have risen to 135th had he won the tournament in Tashkent. Instead, when the new rankings were released on Monday, his ranking changed from 169th to 165th following last week's tournament.

Malek Jaziri drapes himself in his country's flag after he won
his first round match in the 2012 French Open.

While Arab countries have over the past decades observed boycotts of varying degrees against Israeli athletes in a protest over Israel's treatment of Palestinians, it's a shame to see athletes today become pawns in a geo-political chess game. And, in a sport which prides itself on global competition and is played worldwide, it's a disturbing interference of politics by a country (Tunisia) which is still searching for a democratic balance after its Jasmine Revolution paved the way for other Arab Spring revolutions a little more than two years ago. Tunisia has been in the midst of a political crisis for many months as a result of deadlocked negotiations between the ruling Islamist party, Ennadha, and the opposition over new parliamentary and presidential elections.

"It's a pity for the athletes who get caught up in these situations that end up hurting their personal career," said Shlomo Glickstein, the director of Israel's tennis association. In a statement, he added that it was sad such incidents such as what happened on Friday still occur.

In an interview with L'Equipe, Selima Sfar, a former Tunisian professional tennis player and the only Arab woman to achieve a top-100 world ranking (she was once ranked 75th in 2001), said she was shocked and worried about the "regressive" behavior shown her country's tennis federation.

Selima Sfar

"I am angry and disappointed," Sfar told the French sports daily. "It is a very bad image for my country. We fought hard to become professionals and now we are not supported."

Sfar, who retired from the tour in 2011, believes that political interference is unbearable. "Our people fought also with blood to move towards democracy and openness, and instead we are moving backwards," she said. "To play against an Israeli does not mean you are being a bad Tunisian Arabic or a bad Muslim. I'm proud to be Tunisian, Arab and Muslim, but I am ashamed of my country when it behaves like that."

In this day and age, it seems to me that if an Indian (Rohan Bophanna) and a Pakistani (Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi) can separate their differences and unite as a formidable doubles team, putting the politics of their two warring nations aside and promoting peace on the court, then an Arab nation which is struggling to establish its identity in the world of tennis should allow its best player to face all comers -- even if the player on the other side of the net is Israeli.

Just imagine, Jaziri and Weintraub could have used their match to try to improve relations between their countries. Ironically, both belong to the same French tennis club, Sarcelles Tennis, north of Paris. If they can both get along and be friends on and off the court -- they have known each other for years through their sport -- why can't Tunisia work towards promoting tolerance and understanding with Israel and allow Jaziri and other Tunisian athletes to compete against Israelis?

According to various published reports, the president of the Sarcelles tennis club, Jonathan Chaouat, said he spoke to Jaziri last Thursday night and that the player was upset that he would be unable to play Weintraub.

"He explained to me that he could not play the match," said Chaouat. "When I asked him where the pressure not to play was coming from he replied 'my country.'

"What is certain is that it was not Malek who decided not to play this match. Malek was taken hostage."

Malek Jaziri

Although he was reluctant to discuss the matter, Weintraub told the Jerusalem Post that Malek "is a good friend" and that "he really wanted to play."

While Jaziri has not spoken publicly about last week's incident, earlier he described the challenges of being a professional tennis player in the Arab world in an interview published on the tournament's website.

"In Arabic countries there is not a tradition of tennis except in North African countries like Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria," said Jaziri. "There are, however, professional events in the Arab world like in Dubai and Qatar, but the Arab countries should come out and give more opportunities to players from the region. Giving wild cards is not enough; they need to support players in other ways, too.

"Tennis is a tough sport. We as professional tennis players have to fight it out every day," he said. "One week is good, one week is bad. And, we have to go through these ups and downs. In some countries, the situation is favorable for tennis players because of the support of their associations. But in some countries, like ours, it is really bad. Life for us is a battle every day."

Asked about finding support in his home country, Jaziri said: "I had a national sponsor, but now my country is going through a very bad period economically and politically; it is not easy for me. I have a tough job at hand to manage my tennis. I want to travel with a coach, but can't afford one. But, I'm hoping that the situation will change for the better."

In an interview with Agence France-Presse on Monday, Amir Jaziri blasted the decision of the Tunsian tennis federation as "shocking, because it brings politics into sport. We are totally against that. And Malek is the first victim, because tennis is his career, his bread-winner.

"To be clear, Malek pulled out for sporting reasons, because he was injured. He did his warm up, something was wrong and the doctor found that his knee was swollen," Amir Jaziri said.

"But at the political level, we received an order not to play. It was an e-mail from the Tunisian Tennis Federation, via the technical director."

Amir Jaziri said in the interview with AFP that he didn't know whether his brother would have played the match if it weren't for the knee injury. He said he failed to understand how the Tunisian Tennis Federation could give such an order considering that Jaziri has previously faced Weintraub and Tunisia played against Israel in the 2009 Federation Cup.

"Tennis doesn't normally get much media coverage in Tunisia," said Amir Jaziri. "What happened was only done as part of an electoral campaign, and everyone profits (electorally) from this."

The International Tennis Federation (ITF), which has jurisdiction over federations (while the ATP -- the Association of Tennis Professionals -- has jurisdiction over the players), is investigating the whole matter involving the Tunisian federation forcing Jaziri to withdraw against his wishes at Tashkent. While it is unclear what, if any, sanctions might be imposed against the Tunisian federation, I'm in agreement with the ITF's ideals.

"The ITF believes that sport fosters good collaboration between nations," said ITF spokesman Nick Imison. "And, as such, players should be able to compete freely on the international circuit. If a federation were responsible for a player taking part that would go against the ethos of the organization and against the ITF constitution.

"The most important thing going forward is for Tunisian players to be able to play freely against any opponents in the future. That is the aim of all the tennis governing bodies."

A postscript: On Wednesday, the ATP released a statement saying it had completed its investigation and relieved Malek Jaziri of any culpability.

"We have found no wrongdoing on the part of the player and all of the information we have gathered has been passed  on to the ITF," the statement said.

Meanwhile, the ITF's investigation of the alleged forced pullout remains ongoing, said ITF spokeswoman Barbara Travers.

"The ITF takes any matter regarding discrimination very seriously and this incident will be discussed by the ITF Board of Directors at its regularly scheduled meeting (Oct. 31-Nov. 1) in Cagliari, Italy," Travers wrote in an e-mail. "We have asked the Federation Tunisinne de Tennis to make any relevant submissions to the ITF ahead of that meeting."

While Travers said the ITF would have no further comment until after the board meets, the ITF could bring sanctions against the Tunisian tennis federation, such as bans from Davis Cup competition, if it finds that the federation violated regulations. The ITF is also affiliated with the International Olympic Committee.

Malek Jaziri photographs courtesy of footplus.tn, rolandgarros.com and atpworldtour.com.
Selima Sfar photograph courtesy of tunisienumerique.com.