July 11, 2019 • 35 mins
How can you know where you're going if you don't know where you come from? Travel writer Daniel Scheffler trips back to explore his South African roots before he treks to Sicily to propose to his husband. And somewhere en route, he climbs a mountain in Chile, greets a Roman god in Birmingham, Ala., and grabs a pour-over coffee, of course. #travel
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, and welcome to everywhere. I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler.
I was always traveling from the beginning, and my very
young mother's belly mosying around southern Africa with Ron Stewart
is a soundtrack to our life together. Maybe this is why,
thirty plus years later, I have such a bush of
(00:23):
hair in my head. I don't know. Perhaps more importantly,
this is why I feel like travel is so much
a part of who I am. Not in the obvious.
Let's ask Daniel for some travel advice on where to
eat in insert city here, but in a much deeper way.
So May West was speaking to me when she said,
(00:44):
and I paraphrase, good boys go to heaven, bad boys
go everywhere. Today's travel commandment thou shalt know your starting point.
(01:04):
I always say my birth mother is normal Gene, not
quite Marilyn Monroe. But what she did do is travel
with wild, abandoned topless, with the wind through her breasts.
She was in Africa, and so it all felt so
free to her. Okay, let's establish this right now. Africa's
(01:29):
like that. It helps you lose those strange inhibitions you
tend to hoard over time. Remember when you were just
a wee lass or lad. You just tried everything twice
and again if you wanted to, and you did it
all without thinking about it too much. And here you
are today and you're questioning whether to go to age
(01:51):
old incredible Mexico because the media sparks fear in you
over some border situation. There's something about that scarlet blood
soil of Africa that stays in my being. I leave
again and again, and somehow being born in Africa means
you always get tugged home. That like umbilical cord, is
so taught. I know it. When I get off the
(02:14):
plane and I smell that air, it alters me every time,
no matter where I've come from. It smells like the
bush belt, like everywhere animals sweat for kunt. The clouds
are extra enormous, And when the afternoon rolls in, just
as you're thinking about a lovely tea time, they do
(02:34):
a dance of storms. It's louder than what your ears
think they can handle, and it's wetter than any rain
you've ever felt. Big drops tossed to clean your soul,
and they come with such a riotous frenzy, and all
your ships washed away. The drool is always the same.
(02:55):
I kick off my shoes and I find my feet
banned the sand or soil or somewhere, and it immediately
roots right there. My feet become the very beginning of
life as we know it. It taps into centuries of
humanity and all its cruelty and beauty. Only Africa can
make you cry and laugh all at once. I'm not
(03:20):
supposing that Africa doesn't have its problems, and I'm not
suggesting that just because I was born on the continent
that somehow miraculously I understand it better than But I
don't know the Koi, sand or others that have been
there before me. You have spent centuries reveling in it,
protecting it. On the contrary, I'm a white boy from Africa.
I can partially see both the sword and the shield.
(03:45):
I read this beautiful line and in wild the Cheryl
Strait book, and she was talking to Oprah and they
were having this conversation and she said something like the
wilderness has a clarity that included me. Okay, sure, granted
she was talking about the Pacific Crest Trail, but that
somehow stayed with me. Africa shows you exactly that ponder
(04:08):
about that gorgeous sentence. Once more, isn't the thing we're
all looking for and maybe the reason we even leave
to journey across oceans and even now space. Just a
little more inclusion, please, So I think my birth mother
must have stuffed me with some of those liberty jeans.
(04:29):
I'm always climbing up a land rover so I can
watch the wild dogs play, or running up a hills
so I can see the nearby islands or some open plains.
And then there are these endless mountains I'm hiking up
to see what I can see from there. In fact,
whenever I get to a city, besides for finding a
poor over coffee specifically which I'll share more details with
(04:52):
you in a moment, I try and find a rooftop
or a hilltop or a uppy uppy situation to observe
just what I'm dealing with. Let me demonstrate. So, think
about a city like Santiago, chill Am. You hike a
little mountain which is right downtown, and of course there's
like an enormous religious statue looking down at you, possibly
(05:15):
judging you, And this is where you can survey almost
the entire city, and those incredible Andy's in the distance.
So that's how I understand it, and I'm able to
swallow it. Let's think about another place like um, Birmingham, Alabama,
that has the Roman Guard of Fire Vulcan on a
(05:38):
hilltop right downtown, gleaming down at the southern heyday glimmer
of a hope city. That's the first thing I did
as I arrived. I went to hold hands with this
cast iron, burly bearded, bare bottomed man so that I
could really see the city. Why, actually, I lie. The
first thing I did as I got off the plane
(06:00):
in Alabama was to go to a gas station in
this tiny little town annexed to Birmingham for barbecue gas
in a rub. I was eating flesh at this point,
and I'm much more plant orientated at the moment. For
all kinds of reasons. We could definitely debate. Life is
(06:20):
simpler when you can drive a truck full of gas
and eat a piece of meat. I was told by
the man behind a smoker. But let's get back to
the poor of a coffee. When I'm traveling. Before I
arrived somewhere New, whether it's Atlanta, Alaska, or Australia, I
put into the little Google search bar the following phrase
(06:42):
pour over coffee, enter city here and I pressed searched.
So the theory is that if they serve pour over
from a Comax or maybe a V sixty and even
an error press, they probably in lots of certainty take
their beans seriously. So then you know, and this is
what I know, is that I will find not only
(07:04):
a fantastic cup of coffee, but probably people who also
give a shit about their cup. And if we found
naked coffee, I'm kidding, but seriously, of course, there's nothing
I love more than bearing some skin. I'm not saying
that I'm a nudist or anything, but since twenty three
and me says I have some very serious German roots,
(07:25):
we could do a whole episode dedicated to the German
love for Barden Barda on a kleinder I of course
proposed to my new Jersey Italian husband. In the nude.
We were leisurely swimming off the coast of Sicily near
some terribly old ruins and agrigento. There were Dover style
(07:45):
cliffs over to the left and some fucking crazy Game
of Thrones castles to the right, in a place called
the lovely sounding Reservo naturale di ponta bianca in my
best Italian. So think about it. Proposing while travel, Well,
that makes sense, that's what you want to do in
(08:06):
the nude. Even more sense. Whilst you're traveling. Maybe your
guard is down a little and you're more open to something.
The dog isn't waiting for you to take her out,
and there's some magic ship that's about to happen. Well,
travel gives you that little opening cranny in the universe
to promise your whole heart to someone. And my Jersey
(08:29):
boy is always busy. It's hard to get his full
attention on anything. And I mean, let's not even try
and get his undivided attention. But you know it, deserted
soft heeably beach with waves quietly kissing your feet and
inviting you in for a dip in the nude. Hell, yes,
that held his attention. Not because it's dramatic and not
(08:51):
because it's a selfie inducing moment, but because we were
there together and the skies opened up and gave us
this private moment to share our love discuss, and that's
was the starting point, like no other Michael and I
starting in life together, just like the one my bio
mom had envisioned, and then a life was changed forever.
(09:18):
I'm gonna pause this right here for a moment for
our sponsors to weigh in, But do come back to
hear more about where I've been scooting around this week.
Trade tables up. You're returning to everywhere land. That's my
experience with Secily. Now I also like to think about
(09:39):
it in terms of now and then, So I'm inviting
my dear friend Holly onto the show to give us
that then. Yes, so we're only going to focus on
a little bit of them, because history, of course is
very rich in Sicily. There is a lot to discuss
and talk about. And this is going to sound perhaps
(10:00):
a bit almost morbid compared to your story, but there's
a reason I want to go there. I want to
talk a little bit about its military history. Uh, there
are ruins near where you proposed to your beloved. He
saw them, maybe didn't fully process them. No, I was
non processing mind elsewhere. Totally understandable. The Deluty Military Battery
(10:21):
is there, and that has been there since early on
in the twentieth century. It was built between nineteen fifteen
and ninety three, so around World War One. But what
we really want to talk about in terms of what
makes Sicily important in world history. Is World War two.
I thought you were going to say the wine culture,
all the delicious press. Judo no, no, also very important
(10:43):
on both points. But when Secily was invaded by the
Allies on July tenth three, that was known as Operation Husky,
it was a very very important moment in the war.
It's one of those places that I think, again to
Western ears, we think of this Lee is a very
small part of the world, or a small part of Europe,
(11:04):
but it was really pivotal that actually is considered by
many historians to be one of the most important Anglo
American campaigns of the war. For one, it was the
first time that the Western Allies made an assault on
what was called Fortress Europe in essence, and it also
became this important experiential learning curve for the Allied forces,
(11:26):
Like they took from that a lot of knowledge and
a lot of experience and a lot of learning that
they then could apply to the rest of the war
going forward. But here is the thing that to me
is always very very important whenever we talk about historical
wars or any military action. It's really easy to lose
sight of the fact that those are real people involved.
(11:47):
We tend to talk about, you know, the dates and
the names and how power changed, but there were young
men there that didn't all make it out. The Allies
had twenty three thousand casualties at Cecil. That is a
lot of people. That is still the smallest number that
I'm about to use in this quick statistics list. German
(12:08):
forces had thirty thousand casualties, but the Italians had a
hundred and thirty five thousand and a hundred thousand access
troops were captured. So those were a lot of young men.
But here's really why it ended up shifting part of
the war, because at this point, by the spring of
ninety three, Mussolini was in some trouble. Like his own
(12:30):
people were, We're starting to rise against him. There were
opposition groups that were forming. There were people that were saying, like,
I really think we should make peace with the Allies.
I really think we should broker some sort of situation
and get out of this ward and wine to get
that right. Let's all be cool. Who wouldn't prefer that.
It's hard for me to understand why anyone would otherwise.
(12:52):
But the problem was that there was a lot of
German military presence in Italy at the time, so it
wasn't like they could just easily go, Nope, we're voting
on this, we have changed our minds, were washing our
hands of this war. They couldn't. There were German forces
literally everywhere, So that is sort of why this becomes
so pivotal. Uh. Sicily had been part of Italy since
(13:15):
eighteen sixties, so it was considered a very important part
of the country. So before that it was ruled by
the Bourbons and it was considered a different municipality. And
then it actually merged with the Kingdom of Sardinia in
eighteen sixty technically and then became part of the Kingdom
of Italy officially in eighteen sixty one. This is why
all the American Italians go to Scillate to uncover all
(13:38):
this history. Yeah, and it's kind of like the heartland
in many ways. And also we've discussed the delicious things
that come from there. Right now, happily, put down those headphones.
Let's go. You don't really have to ask me thrice,
but don't ask me a second time because we got
to finish this segment. So when uh, this invasion happened.
(13:59):
What was happening in Rome was that this was really
such a hard hit on Italy, particularly again considering those
casualty numbers, that Mussolini's government began to just collapse. And
so two weeks after the Allies invaded Sicily on July,
he was forced to resign by the Fascist Grand Council.
(14:19):
He was actually arrested that day, And in essence, this
removed Italy from the war, from the They're Little Access
agreement and they were no longer part of it, and
that meant one more country that the Allies were not fighting,
So that made it very very important. What's really really lovely, though,
is that there has been this waiting for the loveliness
to comes. Loveliness coming. Military history is often really dark,
(14:42):
but I think very important. You can't turn away from
those things because they are part of our shared history. Uh.
In the twenty teens and efforts started to make it
into a nature preserve. At this point, like you saw them,
the military buildings there have all largely collapsed or you know, crumbled.
So environmental groups convened in Palermo in they actually asked
(15:04):
the Italian Army to also be part of these because
they wanted to make sure that the military history of
the area was documented, just as they were preserving all
of the natural things that have grown there. They also
want to make sure we don't lose any of that
in the process. But what I really love about your
story and why this is so important to me to
talk about these unfortunate things that happened there and these
(15:25):
young men that lost their lives there, is that because
this is a place that has seen blood and pain
and horror, and yet you have found it to be
a place that is nothing but beauty and charm and magic.
And you add to that by sharing your love with
someone else there and then in turn sharing it with us.
So to me, like these are the moments that redeem
(15:46):
the ugliness of humanity, is that people find a way
to get through that and then build something else beautiful
in those same spots. Holly, I know you're crying, but
I'm going to cry, but that's how I feel. I mean,
when I proposed to Michael, it wasn't planning for it
to be necessarily on a military area, But now that
(16:08):
you told me this, my proposal to him and I'll
love together is somehow more meaningful to me like somehow,
like the two of us, two men in the freedom
of the century, can come and be together. And I
love found at a place which is wasn't about love,
was about fear and about hatred. Yeah, you have made
(16:31):
this place for a lot of young men died into
a place where young men shared love. And to me,
that's what makes it magical. That's what makes traveling the
way you do such a beautiful thing. Like you can
heal these spaces where bad things have happened in some
ways and in absolute the same vein the place can
heal you. That's why I find myself trying to leave
(16:55):
my house and pack a bag and climb on another
flight is in fact the possibility that I could get healed.
And then there's this beautiful synergy where that place now
is so unbelievably beautiful that it also heals you in return,
and you kind of create this this beautiful um infinity
of sort of a healing energy that goes back and forth.
(17:16):
That sounds a little hippi or dippier than I usually get,
but I think to build on really your whole message, right,
Like you have the opportunity when you travel to heal
places with your own love like that's part of what
makes humanity great, as a counterpoint to all the things
that can sometimes make humanity not so great. So thank
you for adding love to the world, and to that
(17:37):
part of the world in particular. I love that you're
crying everything. You can throw a glitter in the air
and yell kittens, and I'll probably cry, But this is
to me very meaningful. Let's take a break to him
from our sponsors, and we'll be right back with more
travel from everywhere. The time has come from everywhere. Now
(18:01):
where were we? Welcome back? I was in Washington, d C.
Recently interviewing Stephanie Stebsh, the director of the Smithsonian American
Art Museum. We spent the morning chatting about using art
as a way to better understand America, and I could
listen to her for the rest of my life. Hi, Stephanie,
(18:26):
Hello Daniel. It is so lovely to be in d
C with you. Thank you for having me. I wish
I could offer you a perfect day. Yesterday was a
perfect day for the cherry blossoms. It's true. I saw
some cherry blossoms, and I'm thrilled to be in DC
at this time of the year. I've never done it before.
So well, once you see the cherry blossoms that it
suggests a return visit, sort of like seeing Mount Fuji
(18:47):
tells you that you're going to return to Easter. Tell
me exactly what you do in d c stefinitely. I
work at the Smithsonian, which is best described in Forward
Everything under the Sun, And if you know the Smithsonian,
it's a sun symbol, so that works well for us.
But in truth it is the largest museum and research
(19:10):
complex in the world. And in the family of Smithsonian museums,
of which there are nineteen, I run two of them.
Can we back up one second, I want to talk
about crafting. Before moving to America, I had never crafted anything.
For me, Crafting is this very American thing. Tell me
a little bit about crafting as an American thing. Well, Daniel,
(19:33):
I think language is important. So when we talk about craft,
craft can be both a noun the object, the crafted object,
and it also can be a verb the way you're
using it. And I would say today, in particularly, we're
living in the midst of a maker's movement like Etsy
Etsy craft beer, you know, handcrafted bread's artisanal. Back to
(19:56):
the making of the hand. And if you know your history,
which I imagine you do, Uh, there was the industrial Revolution,
and there was a counter revolution. So just as things
were becoming mechanized and and you made the same which
in many ways was an innovation in and of itself,
to repeat in making the exact same kind of object,
there was a counter movement led by artists, of course,
(20:19):
to go back to the handmaid, to go back to
the human scale. And that, of course took place mostly
in the realm of craft, whether it was a wallpaper
by William Morris, or crafted objects and furniture like good
stuff Stickley here in the United States, or pottery or
iron work. That was a moment at the turn of
the nineteenth century. Now, of course, we live in a
(20:42):
moment where once again I would say, we almost don't
know how things are made anymore. So some days I
want to go back to the handmaid. It is meditative,
it is quiet, and we even see it in the
industrial world. Have you been to a Nike store recently?
I have. They now have a counter and many of
them that invite you to make your own exactly. Now,
(21:06):
some people are terrified that I would like just the
regular choices. Others are excited to be invited to create
their own versions, and I think it speaks a little
bit too identity America as very distinctive, as you know
in your travels. Uh, one place feels very different than
another place, and yet it can feel the same. Right
we have, We've shared malls across the country. Sometimes it's
(21:28):
comforting to travel again as I did as a child,
and know there would be the comforts of a holiday
in everywhere you went there was a happy sameness. Or
even McDonald's, I know the menu, and again with every movement,
I think there's always a happy counter movement, and then
suddenly you felt, well, shouldn't I be seeing something that's
unique to this place, whether again it's food or fashion
(21:51):
or architecture. And that's why I'm such a big fan
of when you travel you should go to museums. I
fully agree we should talk about that a lot, indeed,
and not just art museums, which talk about the creativity
of a place, of a region, of a moment. But
I like going to um Charlotte, North Carolina and going
to the Museum of the New South and learning about
(22:13):
how air conditioning forever change to the South, not something
I thought about before I had gone into that museum
and saw fabious exhibition on that topic. Well, isn't that
the point of your museum? This very museum we're in,
like it inspires you to travel America and beyond in
ways that you may not have thought about. People travel
(22:34):
and they don't realize that museums are ecilitarian. It's for everybody.
There's nothing to be scanned of of a museum. I
certainly think so. I always um am fascinated by the
house in which the museum sits. There's a great movement
to create new museums, and they often are in brand
new buildings with fabius architecture, often signature architecture, and of
(22:57):
course also museums are set in history buildings. That's our case.
We sit in the old Patent Office, which is actually
one of the most spectacular buildings, a great example of
Greek Revival architecture. But more importantly, it's the house of
American ingenuity, and the driving force of America in many
ways is entrepreneurship, is creating new things, is mechanization, is
(23:21):
um making improvements. So of course you'd expect to see
a few patents that we have still kept here in
some of the wonderful shelves of the old Patent Office building.
One of my favorites to point out to people is
an effort to improve the mouse trap. Why do you
think people don't understand museums? People travel to all over
(23:42):
the world, and you're like, yeah, I should go to
the museum, and it's almost an obligation, like, oh, like,
I guess i'm here in Barcelona, let me go to
the product or oh, I'm in South Africa, I should
see the Holocaust Museum in Cape Town or the Apotheid Museum.
And and my whole thing is, don't see it as
an obligation. Don't see it like a whole day adventure.
(24:03):
Go for an hour, go for ten minutes, go and
explore in a way that's yaws, opposed to the museum
telling you how. And that's like, I don't know if
you guys have been to museum. Heck they do, I've
heard about them, but I would have to go in disguise. Okay, great,
let's do it. So when we have a date in
(24:24):
New York or Los Angeles, and you'll be in disguise
and you should experience that. It's one of the most
amazing ways to see in a museum because people, I
think as travelers are confused about how to interact with
the museum. Well, you know, if you think about the
history of museums, museums were not for everyone. Not everyone
was invited in, the hours were limited. One of the
(24:46):
great revolutions of the French Revolution was actually throwing open
the doors of the loof of extending the hours so
that the working person could come experience that they're a museum.
And what are museums? We are storehouses many ways. What
we really are our treasure houses of things that people
care for. So this is the American Museum of Art.
(25:10):
What is American art? Uh, it's a big definition, it's
a varied definition. So we at the Smithsonian American Art
Museum have a special duty. We cherish forty four thousand
works of art across four centuries, across all media. So
we have from folk art to photography, We have craft
(25:33):
to something called time based media, so things made with
video and and lights and l ed s. We obviously
have paintings and sculptures, with prints and drawings. We have
a definition of America that doesn't really reach all of
the America's Some museums have a broader definition. And you
and I spoke earlier about boundaries, again, how do you
(25:54):
define America? But it really is about the American experience.
Artists capture something about the now and the contemporary that
is also hopefully universal, and that's why it speaks to
us across time, across materials, and it invokes hopefully wonder
sometimes upset, and that's okay as well. We try to
(26:19):
help our visitors understand a little bit of the time
in which the art was created. We often try to
talk about process and uh. Again, I think artists speak
to us through their own creativity and um. When they
do it very very well, they stop us in our
tracks and they create something that's unforgettable and that sparks
(26:43):
hopefully some combination of reflection and inspiration and a sense
of wonder. That is the American experience. I mean, I
chose to come and live here in search of that,
and to me, part of that is the American dream.
Like the idea year of Americana, apple Pie Cowboys, it's
(27:06):
very limited, and I think that we're expanding. I'd like
to think we're expanding as much as there's a current
administration that's tightening on this very limited experience. I think
that we as a nation of immigrants and people that
have been here from the beginning, as a combination of
these wonderful people, we want to expand their definition in
(27:30):
order to enrich our experience, the American experience. My best
friend touch down this morning for the first time in
his life to America, and he landed in New York
and his first impression was everyone feels part of the world.
And it was such a He's Dutch, and it was
such a beautiful thought that I had, like I live
(27:54):
in it, so I forget, but I was like, yeah,
that's exactly America from here and everywhere. Yes, And in
many ways we think of America as a young country,
which of course does not take into consideration that native
peoples who were here for centuries and centuries. What we
also have to think about America is in terms of
(28:15):
the founding of modern America is its place in the
rest of the world. And so I think there was
initially a bit of an inferiority complex, a sense that
the grandeur of Europe, these great castles and cathedrals, and
these artistic and intellectual contributions that came from Europe and
I think that was a little daunting initially in America,
(28:38):
until the Americans in many ways realized or or came
to understand this notion of American uniqueness. And it begins
with the landscape. It begins with the power and majesty
of Niagara Falls, a subject matter that was much painted
and photographed, So this sense of natural wonder and bed
(29:00):
and then captured by artists. And then you repeat this
sense of wonder when you march across the country from
the coastlines to the um Yosemite to the Grand Canyon.
I love the way Ken Burns has described the American
National Park. He says, it's a uniquely American idea to
(29:21):
take lands and forever make them private for the enjoyment
of all, for the benefit of wildlife, for understanding our
or nature, and coming back to a place to refresh ourselves.
And that's a pretty radical idea because coming to America
was Wow, look at these endless timber forests, look at
these oars, look at all these um resources to exploit
(29:46):
to build with, whether it's ships or or skyscrapers. And
so to stand back and say no, this belongs to
us all. That's a wonderful sense of um, common need
and comm and purpose that is so beautiful. Those are
the things that I think about America, and I think
a lot of people forget. And that's why you have
(30:08):
to travel, right, Daniel, exactly, the I must travel as
a great Diana Freedland said. Indeed, and early on the
railroads understood that they would have an evolving purpose. Yes,
they would have to connect this great country. They would
have to determine places of settlement. Being on the railroad
was being connected. And then later on the railroads needed
(30:31):
to bring not only um materials across country, but they
would need to bring people. They would need to invite
people to explore, to put down routes, to grab land
and and make their fortune. This kind of manifest destiny
of the country. And it also frankly spread people out
across the country as they're pouring onto our shores, whether
(30:51):
it was on the west coast with Chinese or on
the east coast with the Irish who arrived before the Germans.
So the Germans were sent across country and to settle
the Midwest. So again, artists were part of that storytelling
of bringing people together to understand. Mm I see a
(31:12):
lighthouse that must be New England. That must be the coast.
M I see a barn, I see fields, that must
be the Midwest. They kind of gave us the language
for understanding America. That's why I want everyone to come here.
I feel like if you understand that and then you
sent yourself out on America, your whole experience will be different.
(31:36):
I mean, I feel that I feel for the first
time that I'm part of something. I may not have
been born here, but I immigrated here and I feel
part of that fabric. Daniel, you haven't touched upon this,
but I think it's a little bit implied in the
sense of America and when you travel, when typically encounters
the national flag. When you come to America, you encounter
(31:58):
the stars and stripes every rewear everywhere, and then other
things that the world thinks of as Americans. So car culture,
American car culture is unique. The scale of the place,
again back to landscape, suggests that we can have oversized
cars that are open that invite you to to breathe
(32:19):
in as you criss cross the country on on endless
stretches of road artists who are drawn to cars to
road trips. I also think that there are subsets of
American car culture that we should always be attentive to.
How do people share their identity in the choice of
their hub caps, or in choice of music, or in
(32:40):
choice of color, wheel size, or adornment. We think about
the limits of travel because of discrimination. The Oscar Award
winning movie Green Book that was a reality for many
people in terms of their not being welcome and having
to make route and having a kind of a coded
(33:01):
book for travel. Certainly women don't always feel safe traveling.
The lgbt q I A plus community struggle with those
things still today. I don't know if you've seen Um
Killer Mike. They've got to show that they were doing
together on Netflix and basically the premises they were going
(33:22):
to spend twenty four hours in Atlanta only supporting black
African American businesses, meaning everything they do had to be
owned or the CEO of had to be African American,
so no phone, they struggled to find a hotel, they
had to stay at an amb and B they couldn't
(33:43):
get into a car because no car company has a
black CEO or owner. And I've been thinking about doing
an l g b t q I A plus version
of this at least you can use your iPhone right exactly,
and I could definitely you find a gay owned hotel
in New York. But the idea of that to replicate
(34:06):
that on a journey when you travel, I think is
genius and that gives you a small window into that
is how travel used to be. Well, that's how the
experience was for African American screen book and etcetera. Right,
And it's the diversity of America that makes it a whole.
It is this notion that we strive hopefully for a
(34:26):
better union, that the American story is not complete. There
are unwritten chapters, there are overlooked chapters, there are dark
chapters that we must reckon with. And then there's a
question about what is your contribution to the American story,
and we celebrate American creativity. Whether your work will end
(34:47):
up at the Smithsonian American arm Museum, I don't know.
Time will tell. Thanks to spending the morning with me, Stephanie.
This has been such a delight. Thank you. Thanks for
hanging out. Connect with us on Instagram at Everywhere Podcast,
(35:07):
Twitter and Everywhere pond, or on the website at everywhere
podcast dot com. I'm Daniel Shaffler. Signing off, I'll be
seeing you everywhere.
Hi, and welcome to everywhere. I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler.
I was always traveling from the beginning, and my very
young mother's belly mosying around southern Africa with Ron Stewart
is a soundtrack to our life together. Maybe this is why,
thirty plus years later, I have such a bush of
(00:23):
hair in my head. I don't know. Perhaps more importantly,
this is why I feel like travel is so much
a part of who I am. Not in the obvious.
Let's ask Daniel for some travel advice on where to
eat in insert city here, but in a much deeper way.
So May West was speaking to me when she said,
(00:44):
and I paraphrase, good boys go to heaven, bad boys
go everywhere. Today's travel commandment thou shalt know your starting point.
(01:04):
I always say my birth mother is normal Gene, not
quite Marilyn Monroe. But what she did do is travel
with wild, abandoned topless, with the wind through her breasts.
She was in Africa, and so it all felt so
free to her. Okay, let's establish this right now. Africa's
(01:29):
like that. It helps you lose those strange inhibitions you
tend to hoard over time. Remember when you were just
a wee lass or lad. You just tried everything twice
and again if you wanted to, and you did it
all without thinking about it too much. And here you
are today and you're questioning whether to go to age
(01:51):
old incredible Mexico because the media sparks fear in you
over some border situation. There's something about that scarlet blood
soil of Africa that stays in my being. I leave
again and again, and somehow being born in Africa means
you always get tugged home. That like umbilical cord, is
so taught. I know it. When I get off the
(02:14):
plane and I smell that air, it alters me every time,
no matter where I've come from. It smells like the
bush belt, like everywhere animals sweat for kunt. The clouds
are extra enormous, And when the afternoon rolls in, just
as you're thinking about a lovely tea time, they do
(02:34):
a dance of storms. It's louder than what your ears
think they can handle, and it's wetter than any rain
you've ever felt. Big drops tossed to clean your soul,
and they come with such a riotous frenzy, and all
your ships washed away. The drool is always the same.
(02:55):
I kick off my shoes and I find my feet
banned the sand or soil or somewhere, and it immediately
roots right there. My feet become the very beginning of
life as we know it. It taps into centuries of
humanity and all its cruelty and beauty. Only Africa can
make you cry and laugh all at once. I'm not
(03:20):
supposing that Africa doesn't have its problems, and I'm not
suggesting that just because I was born on the continent
that somehow miraculously I understand it better than But I
don't know the Koi, sand or others that have been
there before me. You have spent centuries reveling in it,
protecting it. On the contrary, I'm a white boy from Africa.
I can partially see both the sword and the shield.
(03:45):
I read this beautiful line and in wild the Cheryl
Strait book, and she was talking to Oprah and they
were having this conversation and she said something like the
wilderness has a clarity that included me. Okay, sure, granted
she was talking about the Pacific Crest Trail, but that
somehow stayed with me. Africa shows you exactly that ponder
(04:08):
about that gorgeous sentence. Once more, isn't the thing we're
all looking for and maybe the reason we even leave
to journey across oceans and even now space. Just a
little more inclusion, please, So I think my birth mother
must have stuffed me with some of those liberty jeans.
(04:29):
I'm always climbing up a land rover so I can
watch the wild dogs play, or running up a hills
so I can see the nearby islands or some open plains.
And then there are these endless mountains I'm hiking up
to see what I can see from there. In fact,
whenever I get to a city, besides for finding a
poor over coffee specifically which I'll share more details with
(04:52):
you in a moment, I try and find a rooftop
or a hilltop or a uppy uppy situation to observe
just what I'm dealing with. Let me demonstrate. So, think
about a city like Santiago, chill Am. You hike a
little mountain which is right downtown, and of course there's
like an enormous religious statue looking down at you, possibly
(05:15):
judging you, And this is where you can survey almost
the entire city, and those incredible Andy's in the distance.
So that's how I understand it, and I'm able to
swallow it. Let's think about another place like um, Birmingham, Alabama,
that has the Roman Guard of Fire Vulcan on a
(05:38):
hilltop right downtown, gleaming down at the southern heyday glimmer
of a hope city. That's the first thing I did
as I arrived. I went to hold hands with this
cast iron, burly bearded, bare bottomed man so that I
could really see the city. Why, actually, I lie. The
first thing I did as I got off the plane
(06:00):
in Alabama was to go to a gas station in
this tiny little town annexed to Birmingham for barbecue gas
in a rub. I was eating flesh at this point,
and I'm much more plant orientated at the moment. For
all kinds of reasons. We could definitely debate. Life is
(06:20):
simpler when you can drive a truck full of gas
and eat a piece of meat. I was told by
the man behind a smoker. But let's get back to
the poor of a coffee. When I'm traveling. Before I
arrived somewhere New, whether it's Atlanta, Alaska, or Australia, I
put into the little Google search bar the following phrase
(06:42):
pour over coffee, enter city here and I pressed searched.
So the theory is that if they serve pour over
from a Comax or maybe a V sixty and even
an error press, they probably in lots of certainty take
their beans seriously. So then you know, and this is
what I know, is that I will find not only
(07:04):
a fantastic cup of coffee, but probably people who also
give a shit about their cup. And if we found
naked coffee, I'm kidding, but seriously, of course, there's nothing
I love more than bearing some skin. I'm not saying
that I'm a nudist or anything, but since twenty three
and me says I have some very serious German roots,
(07:25):
we could do a whole episode dedicated to the German
love for Barden Barda on a kleinder I of course
proposed to my new Jersey Italian husband. In the nude.
We were leisurely swimming off the coast of Sicily near
some terribly old ruins and agrigento. There were Dover style
(07:45):
cliffs over to the left and some fucking crazy Game
of Thrones castles to the right, in a place called
the lovely sounding Reservo naturale di ponta bianca in my
best Italian. So think about it. Proposing while travel, Well,
that makes sense, that's what you want to do in
(08:06):
the nude. Even more sense. Whilst you're traveling. Maybe your
guard is down a little and you're more open to something.
The dog isn't waiting for you to take her out,
and there's some magic ship that's about to happen. Well,
travel gives you that little opening cranny in the universe
to promise your whole heart to someone. And my Jersey
(08:29):
boy is always busy. It's hard to get his full
attention on anything. And I mean, let's not even try
and get his undivided attention. But you know it, deserted
soft heeably beach with waves quietly kissing your feet and
inviting you in for a dip in the nude. Hell, yes,
that held his attention. Not because it's dramatic and not
(08:51):
because it's a selfie inducing moment, but because we were
there together and the skies opened up and gave us
this private moment to share our love discuss, and that's
was the starting point, like no other Michael and I
starting in life together, just like the one my bio
mom had envisioned, and then a life was changed forever.
(09:18):
I'm gonna pause this right here for a moment for
our sponsors to weigh in, But do come back to
hear more about where I've been scooting around this week.
Trade tables up. You're returning to everywhere land. That's my
experience with Secily. Now I also like to think about
(09:39):
it in terms of now and then, So I'm inviting
my dear friend Holly onto the show to give us
that then. Yes, so we're only going to focus on
a little bit of them, because history, of course is
very rich in Sicily. There is a lot to discuss
and talk about. And this is going to sound perhaps
(10:00):
a bit almost morbid compared to your story, but there's
a reason I want to go there. I want to
talk a little bit about its military history. Uh, there
are ruins near where you proposed to your beloved. He
saw them, maybe didn't fully process them. No, I was
non processing mind elsewhere. Totally understandable. The Deluty Military Battery
(10:21):
is there, and that has been there since early on
in the twentieth century. It was built between nineteen fifteen
and ninety three, so around World War One. But what
we really want to talk about in terms of what
makes Sicily important in world history. Is World War two.
I thought you were going to say the wine culture,
all the delicious press. Judo no, no, also very important
(10:43):
on both points. But when Secily was invaded by the
Allies on July tenth three, that was known as Operation Husky,
it was a very very important moment in the war.
It's one of those places that I think, again to
Western ears, we think of this Lee is a very
small part of the world, or a small part of Europe,
(11:04):
but it was really pivotal that actually is considered by
many historians to be one of the most important Anglo
American campaigns of the war. For one, it was the
first time that the Western Allies made an assault on
what was called Fortress Europe in essence, and it also
became this important experiential learning curve for the Allied forces,
(11:26):
Like they took from that a lot of knowledge and
a lot of experience and a lot of learning that
they then could apply to the rest of the war
going forward. But here is the thing that to me
is always very very important whenever we talk about historical
wars or any military action. It's really easy to lose
sight of the fact that those are real people involved.
(11:47):
We tend to talk about, you know, the dates and
the names and how power changed, but there were young
men there that didn't all make it out. The Allies
had twenty three thousand casualties at Cecil. That is a
lot of people. That is still the smallest number that
I'm about to use in this quick statistics list. German
(12:08):
forces had thirty thousand casualties, but the Italians had a
hundred and thirty five thousand and a hundred thousand access
troops were captured. So those were a lot of young men.
But here's really why it ended up shifting part of
the war, because at this point, by the spring of
ninety three, Mussolini was in some trouble. Like his own
(12:30):
people were, We're starting to rise against him. There were
opposition groups that were forming. There were people that were saying, like,
I really think we should make peace with the Allies.
I really think we should broker some sort of situation
and get out of this ward and wine to get
that right. Let's all be cool. Who wouldn't prefer that.
It's hard for me to understand why anyone would otherwise.
(12:52):
But the problem was that there was a lot of
German military presence in Italy at the time, so it
wasn't like they could just easily go, Nope, we're voting
on this, we have changed our minds, were washing our
hands of this war. They couldn't. There were German forces
literally everywhere, So that is sort of why this becomes
so pivotal. Uh. Sicily had been part of Italy since
(13:15):
eighteen sixties, so it was considered a very important part
of the country. So before that it was ruled by
the Bourbons and it was considered a different municipality. And
then it actually merged with the Kingdom of Sardinia in
eighteen sixty technically and then became part of the Kingdom
of Italy officially in eighteen sixty one. This is why
all the American Italians go to Scillate to uncover all
(13:38):
this history. Yeah, and it's kind of like the heartland
in many ways. And also we've discussed the delicious things
that come from there. Right now, happily, put down those headphones.
Let's go. You don't really have to ask me thrice,
but don't ask me a second time because we got
to finish this segment. So when uh, this invasion happened.
(13:59):
What was happening in Rome was that this was really
such a hard hit on Italy, particularly again considering those
casualty numbers, that Mussolini's government began to just collapse. And
so two weeks after the Allies invaded Sicily on July,
he was forced to resign by the Fascist Grand Council.
(14:19):
He was actually arrested that day, And in essence, this
removed Italy from the war, from the They're Little Access
agreement and they were no longer part of it, and
that meant one more country that the Allies were not fighting,
So that made it very very important. What's really really lovely, though,
is that there has been this waiting for the loveliness
to comes. Loveliness coming. Military history is often really dark,
(14:42):
but I think very important. You can't turn away from
those things because they are part of our shared history. Uh.
In the twenty teens and efforts started to make it
into a nature preserve. At this point, like you saw them,
the military buildings there have all largely collapsed or you know, crumbled.
So environmental groups convened in Palermo in they actually asked
(15:04):
the Italian Army to also be part of these because
they wanted to make sure that the military history of
the area was documented, just as they were preserving all
of the natural things that have grown there. They also
want to make sure we don't lose any of that
in the process. But what I really love about your
story and why this is so important to me to
talk about these unfortunate things that happened there and these
(15:25):
young men that lost their lives there, is that because
this is a place that has seen blood and pain
and horror, and yet you have found it to be
a place that is nothing but beauty and charm and magic.
And you add to that by sharing your love with
someone else there and then in turn sharing it with us.
So to me, like these are the moments that redeem
(15:46):
the ugliness of humanity, is that people find a way
to get through that and then build something else beautiful
in those same spots. Holly, I know you're crying, but
I'm going to cry, but that's how I feel. I mean,
when I proposed to Michael, it wasn't planning for it
to be necessarily on a military area, But now that
(16:08):
you told me this, my proposal to him and I'll
love together is somehow more meaningful to me like somehow,
like the two of us, two men in the freedom
of the century, can come and be together. And I
love found at a place which is wasn't about love,
was about fear and about hatred. Yeah, you have made
(16:31):
this place for a lot of young men died into
a place where young men shared love. And to me,
that's what makes it magical. That's what makes traveling the
way you do such a beautiful thing. Like you can
heal these spaces where bad things have happened in some
ways and in absolute the same vein the place can
heal you. That's why I find myself trying to leave
(16:55):
my house and pack a bag and climb on another
flight is in fact the possibility that I could get healed.
And then there's this beautiful synergy where that place now
is so unbelievably beautiful that it also heals you in return,
and you kind of create this this beautiful um infinity
of sort of a healing energy that goes back and forth.
(17:16):
That sounds a little hippi or dippier than I usually get,
but I think to build on really your whole message, right,
Like you have the opportunity when you travel to heal
places with your own love like that's part of what
makes humanity great, as a counterpoint to all the things
that can sometimes make humanity not so great. So thank
you for adding love to the world, and to that
(17:37):
part of the world in particular. I love that you're
crying everything. You can throw a glitter in the air
and yell kittens, and I'll probably cry, But this is
to me very meaningful. Let's take a break to him
from our sponsors, and we'll be right back with more
travel from everywhere. The time has come from everywhere. Now
(18:01):
where were we? Welcome back? I was in Washington, d C.
Recently interviewing Stephanie Stebsh, the director of the Smithsonian American
Art Museum. We spent the morning chatting about using art
as a way to better understand America, and I could
listen to her for the rest of my life. Hi, Stephanie,
(18:26):
Hello Daniel. It is so lovely to be in d
C with you. Thank you for having me. I wish
I could offer you a perfect day. Yesterday was a
perfect day for the cherry blossoms. It's true. I saw
some cherry blossoms, and I'm thrilled to be in DC
at this time of the year. I've never done it before.
So well, once you see the cherry blossoms that it
suggests a return visit, sort of like seeing Mount Fuji
(18:47):
tells you that you're going to return to Easter. Tell
me exactly what you do in d c stefinitely. I
work at the Smithsonian, which is best described in Forward
Everything under the Sun, And if you know the Smithsonian,
it's a sun symbol, so that works well for us.
But in truth it is the largest museum and research
(19:10):
complex in the world. And in the family of Smithsonian museums,
of which there are nineteen, I run two of them.
Can we back up one second, I want to talk
about crafting. Before moving to America, I had never crafted anything.
For me, Crafting is this very American thing. Tell me
a little bit about crafting as an American thing. Well, Daniel,
(19:33):
I think language is important. So when we talk about craft,
craft can be both a noun the object, the crafted object,
and it also can be a verb the way you're
using it. And I would say today, in particularly, we're
living in the midst of a maker's movement like Etsy
Etsy craft beer, you know, handcrafted bread's artisanal. Back to
(19:56):
the making of the hand. And if you know your history,
which I imagine you do, Uh, there was the industrial Revolution,
and there was a counter revolution. So just as things
were becoming mechanized and and you made the same which
in many ways was an innovation in and of itself,
to repeat in making the exact same kind of object,
there was a counter movement led by artists, of course,
(20:19):
to go back to the handmaid, to go back to
the human scale. And that, of course took place mostly
in the realm of craft, whether it was a wallpaper
by William Morris, or crafted objects and furniture like good
stuff Stickley here in the United States, or pottery or
iron work. That was a moment at the turn of
the nineteenth century. Now, of course, we live in a
(20:42):
moment where once again I would say, we almost don't
know how things are made anymore. So some days I
want to go back to the handmaid. It is meditative,
it is quiet, and we even see it in the
industrial world. Have you been to a Nike store recently?
I have. They now have a counter and many of
them that invite you to make your own exactly. Now,
(21:06):
some people are terrified that I would like just the
regular choices. Others are excited to be invited to create
their own versions, and I think it speaks a little
bit too identity America as very distinctive, as you know
in your travels. Uh, one place feels very different than
another place, and yet it can feel the same. Right
we have, We've shared malls across the country. Sometimes it's
(21:28):
comforting to travel again as I did as a child,
and know there would be the comforts of a holiday
in everywhere you went there was a happy sameness. Or
even McDonald's, I know the menu, and again with every movement,
I think there's always a happy counter movement, and then
suddenly you felt, well, shouldn't I be seeing something that's
unique to this place, whether again it's food or fashion
(21:51):
or architecture. And that's why I'm such a big fan
of when you travel you should go to museums. I
fully agree we should talk about that a lot, indeed,
and not just art museums, which talk about the creativity
of a place, of a region, of a moment. But
I like going to um Charlotte, North Carolina and going
to the Museum of the New South and learning about
(22:13):
how air conditioning forever change to the South, not something
I thought about before I had gone into that museum
and saw fabious exhibition on that topic. Well, isn't that
the point of your museum? This very museum we're in,
like it inspires you to travel America and beyond in
ways that you may not have thought about. People travel
(22:34):
and they don't realize that museums are ecilitarian. It's for everybody.
There's nothing to be scanned of of a museum. I
certainly think so. I always um am fascinated by the
house in which the museum sits. There's a great movement
to create new museums, and they often are in brand
new buildings with fabius architecture, often signature architecture, and of
(22:57):
course also museums are set in history buildings. That's our case.
We sit in the old Patent Office, which is actually
one of the most spectacular buildings, a great example of
Greek Revival architecture. But more importantly, it's the house of
American ingenuity, and the driving force of America in many
ways is entrepreneurship, is creating new things, is mechanization, is
(23:21):
um making improvements. So of course you'd expect to see
a few patents that we have still kept here in
some of the wonderful shelves of the old Patent Office building.
One of my favorites to point out to people is
an effort to improve the mouse trap. Why do you
think people don't understand museums? People travel to all over
(23:42):
the world, and you're like, yeah, I should go to
the museum, and it's almost an obligation, like, oh, like,
I guess i'm here in Barcelona, let me go to
the product or oh, I'm in South Africa, I should
see the Holocaust Museum in Cape Town or the Apotheid Museum.
And and my whole thing is, don't see it as
an obligation. Don't see it like a whole day adventure.
(24:03):
Go for an hour, go for ten minutes, go and
explore in a way that's yaws, opposed to the museum
telling you how. And that's like, I don't know if
you guys have been to museum. Heck they do, I've
heard about them, but I would have to go in disguise. Okay, great,
let's do it. So when we have a date in
(24:24):
New York or Los Angeles, and you'll be in disguise
and you should experience that. It's one of the most
amazing ways to see in a museum because people, I
think as travelers are confused about how to interact with
the museum. Well, you know, if you think about the
history of museums, museums were not for everyone. Not everyone
was invited in, the hours were limited. One of the
(24:46):
great revolutions of the French Revolution was actually throwing open
the doors of the loof of extending the hours so
that the working person could come experience that they're a museum.
And what are museums? We are storehouses many ways. What
we really are our treasure houses of things that people
care for. So this is the American Museum of Art.
(25:10):
What is American art? Uh, it's a big definition, it's
a varied definition. So we at the Smithsonian American Art
Museum have a special duty. We cherish forty four thousand
works of art across four centuries, across all media. So
we have from folk art to photography, We have craft
(25:33):
to something called time based media, so things made with
video and and lights and l ed s. We obviously
have paintings and sculptures, with prints and drawings. We have
a definition of America that doesn't really reach all of
the America's Some museums have a broader definition. And you
and I spoke earlier about boundaries, again, how do you
(25:54):
define America? But it really is about the American experience.
Artists capture something about the now and the contemporary that
is also hopefully universal, and that's why it speaks to
us across time, across materials, and it invokes hopefully wonder
sometimes upset, and that's okay as well. We try to
(26:19):
help our visitors understand a little bit of the time
in which the art was created. We often try to
talk about process and uh. Again, I think artists speak
to us through their own creativity and um. When they
do it very very well, they stop us in our
tracks and they create something that's unforgettable and that sparks
(26:43):
hopefully some combination of reflection and inspiration and a sense
of wonder. That is the American experience. I mean, I
chose to come and live here in search of that,
and to me, part of that is the American dream.
Like the idea year of Americana, apple Pie Cowboys, it's
(27:06):
very limited, and I think that we're expanding. I'd like
to think we're expanding as much as there's a current
administration that's tightening on this very limited experience. I think
that we as a nation of immigrants and people that
have been here from the beginning, as a combination of
these wonderful people, we want to expand their definition in
(27:30):
order to enrich our experience, the American experience. My best
friend touch down this morning for the first time in
his life to America, and he landed in New York
and his first impression was everyone feels part of the world.
And it was such a He's Dutch, and it was
such a beautiful thought that I had, like I live
(27:54):
in it, so I forget, but I was like, yeah,
that's exactly America from here and everywhere. Yes, And in
many ways we think of America as a young country,
which of course does not take into consideration that native
peoples who were here for centuries and centuries. What we
also have to think about America is in terms of
(28:15):
the founding of modern America is its place in the
rest of the world. And so I think there was
initially a bit of an inferiority complex, a sense that
the grandeur of Europe, these great castles and cathedrals, and
these artistic and intellectual contributions that came from Europe and
I think that was a little daunting initially in America,
(28:38):
until the Americans in many ways realized or or came
to understand this notion of American uniqueness. And it begins
with the landscape. It begins with the power and majesty
of Niagara Falls, a subject matter that was much painted
and photographed, So this sense of natural wonder and bed
(29:00):
and then captured by artists. And then you repeat this
sense of wonder when you march across the country from
the coastlines to the um Yosemite to the Grand Canyon.
I love the way Ken Burns has described the American
National Park. He says, it's a uniquely American idea to
(29:21):
take lands and forever make them private for the enjoyment
of all, for the benefit of wildlife, for understanding our
or nature, and coming back to a place to refresh ourselves.
And that's a pretty radical idea because coming to America
was Wow, look at these endless timber forests, look at
these oars, look at all these um resources to exploit
(29:46):
to build with, whether it's ships or or skyscrapers. And
so to stand back and say no, this belongs to
us all. That's a wonderful sense of um, common need
and comm and purpose that is so beautiful. Those are
the things that I think about America, and I think
a lot of people forget. And that's why you have
(30:08):
to travel, right, Daniel, exactly, the I must travel as
a great Diana Freedland said. Indeed, and early on the
railroads understood that they would have an evolving purpose. Yes,
they would have to connect this great country. They would
have to determine places of settlement. Being on the railroad
was being connected. And then later on the railroads needed
(30:31):
to bring not only um materials across country, but they
would need to bring people. They would need to invite
people to explore, to put down routes, to grab land
and and make their fortune. This kind of manifest destiny
of the country. And it also frankly spread people out
across the country as they're pouring onto our shores, whether
(30:51):
it was on the west coast with Chinese or on
the east coast with the Irish who arrived before the Germans.
So the Germans were sent across country and to settle
the Midwest. So again, artists were part of that storytelling
of bringing people together to understand. Mm I see a
(31:12):
lighthouse that must be New England. That must be the coast.
M I see a barn, I see fields, that must
be the Midwest. They kind of gave us the language
for understanding America. That's why I want everyone to come here.
I feel like if you understand that and then you
sent yourself out on America, your whole experience will be different.
(31:36):
I mean, I feel that I feel for the first
time that I'm part of something. I may not have
been born here, but I immigrated here and I feel
part of that fabric. Daniel, you haven't touched upon this,
but I think it's a little bit implied in the
sense of America and when you travel, when typically encounters
the national flag. When you come to America, you encounter
(31:58):
the stars and stripes every rewear everywhere, and then other
things that the world thinks of as Americans. So car culture,
American car culture is unique. The scale of the place,
again back to landscape, suggests that we can have oversized
cars that are open that invite you to to breathe
(32:19):
in as you criss cross the country on on endless
stretches of road artists who are drawn to cars to
road trips. I also think that there are subsets of
American car culture that we should always be attentive to.
How do people share their identity in the choice of
their hub caps, or in choice of music, or in
(32:40):
choice of color, wheel size, or adornment. We think about
the limits of travel because of discrimination. The Oscar Award
winning movie Green Book that was a reality for many
people in terms of their not being welcome and having
to make route and having a kind of a coded
(33:01):
book for travel. Certainly women don't always feel safe traveling.
The lgbt q I A plus community struggle with those
things still today. I don't know if you've seen Um
Killer Mike. They've got to show that they were doing
together on Netflix and basically the premises they were going
(33:22):
to spend twenty four hours in Atlanta only supporting black
African American businesses, meaning everything they do had to be
owned or the CEO of had to be African American,
so no phone, they struggled to find a hotel, they
had to stay at an amb and B they couldn't
(33:43):
get into a car because no car company has a
black CEO or owner. And I've been thinking about doing
an l g b t q I A plus version
of this at least you can use your iPhone right exactly,
and I could definitely you find a gay owned hotel
in New York. But the idea of that to replicate
(34:06):
that on a journey when you travel, I think is
genius and that gives you a small window into that
is how travel used to be. Well, that's how the
experience was for African American screen book and etcetera. Right,
And it's the diversity of America that makes it a whole.
It is this notion that we strive hopefully for a
(34:26):
better union, that the American story is not complete. There
are unwritten chapters, there are overlooked chapters, there are dark
chapters that we must reckon with. And then there's a
question about what is your contribution to the American story,
and we celebrate American creativity. Whether your work will end
(34:47):
up at the Smithsonian American arm Museum, I don't know.
Time will tell. Thanks to spending the morning with me, Stephanie.
This has been such a delight. Thank you. Thanks for
hanging out. Connect with us on Instagram at Everywhere Podcast,
(35:07):
Twitter and Everywhere pond, or on the website at everywhere
podcast dot com. I'm Daniel Shaffler. Signing off, I'll be
seeing you everywhere.
Everywhere News
Host
Daniel Scheffler
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