 Hi and welcome everyone to Afghanistan, Women's Adventure and Travel Writing with Maxine Rose Schur and Diane LeBeau. They will be in conversation with Matthew Felix. My name is Taryn Edwards, and I am one of the librarians at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco. And this event was produced in collaboration with the San Francisco Writers Conference. Together, the conference, the Mechanics Institute, we strive to provide high quality learning experiences for writers at low cost or free. And so this event clearly qualifies. I'd like to thank those of you who elected to support this event by paying a little something to attend. It really does go a long way to help the Institute do more in these challenging times. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Mechanics Institute, we are an independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, the oldest designed to serve the general public in California. We are also a cultural event center and a world renowned chess club that is the oldest in the nation. Right now, we are slowly transitioning back into being fully open. And we are still, however, hosting many virtual events, but in some ways, virtual events are better because we can enjoy them from our living rooms. At any rate, I encourage you to consider becoming a member of the Mechanics Institute. It's only $120 a year, and with that, you help support our contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. So let me introduce our speakers tonight. We have Diane LeBeau, who has worked for women's rights in Afghanistan, ridden a camel through locust swarms on the Libyan Sahara and searched for Amazon women's descendants amongst Mongolian horsewomen. Her writing has appeared in many anthologies and other publications and received myriad awards, and in particular, her book Dancing on the Wine Dark Sea, a memoir of a trailblazing woman's travels, adventures, and romance, is available at Book Passage and Amazon, and most importantly, is available in the Mechanics Institute's collection. We also have Maxine Rose Schur, who is an award-winning children's book author, travel essayist, and writing instructor. Her travel memoir, Places in Time, is about her around-the-world journey. It has received prestigious awards, and then she has a picture book called Brave with Beauty that was named the 2020 Best Picture Book of the Year by the Northern California Book Reviewers Association. And surely, the Book Reviewers Association are going to know which is the best picture book. And then last but not least, we have Matthew Felix, who is a regular moderator for the Mechanics Institute, and he is also the program director for the San Francisco Writers Conference podcast, and is an author himself and a publisher and book marketing expert. So, thank you all, three of you, for coming tonight. Before I turn the floor over to you, I do want to ask that our guests use the chat space to post your questions. We will get to them at the end of the interview, and if you feel like you don't have time to concentrate both on thinking of questions and watching the show, I will send you a link to the event's video in a couple of days. It will be posted on our YouTube channel, so I'll send you the link to that. Anyway, thank you so much for coming out tonight. Are you ready, Matthew? I'm ready. I've been ready all day. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having us, Teran. Really appreciate it. And thank you, everyone, who's here tonight. I know that after the past year plus year and a half, however long it's been now, we've done so many Zoom events and things that a lot of us are tired of Zoom. And so it really means a lot that you would join us tonight for this event, which we're all really excited about. So thanks again for that. Let me just give you a quick rundown of kind of how tonight's going to go since we do have two authors that we're going to be talking with. So first, Maxine is going to give an overview of her book, Beauty to, wait, Bravery to Beauty. Did I get that right? Brave with Beauty. Brave with Beauty. Thank you very much. In which chronologically comes before it happens in the 15th century, I believe. And so we're going to start with Maxine's book, and she's going to talk about that. Now we're going to move on to Diane's book, which is a more contemporary collection of her travel, memoir experiences and memoir, a part of which includes her tales in Afghanistan. And then I'm going to interview both of them. We'll be going back and forth and I'll be asking them about their experiences in Afghanistan, travel and travel writing. And then we will end up, as Teran said, we'll wrap things up with 10 minutes of Q&A. So yes, if you have questions while we're conducting the event, feel free to send them our way using the chat feature. For those of you who don't know, if you go to the bottom of your screen, there's a chat icon, click that chat icon and then you can just type in your questions there. Otherwise, you can just hold off until the end. And I think that's it. So without further ado, let me turn it over to Maxine, who's going to talk about Brave with Beauty. Go ahead, Maxine. Great. Thank you, Matthew. And thank you, Teran. Thank you both for arranging this wonderful evening. I'm always excited to be talking about travel. So without further ado, as Diane will be sharing her more obviously recent experiences working with women in Afghanistan, I'm going to give you a glimpse of the Afghanistan that I knew, which was actually half a century ago when I traveled there. So I had come to Afghanistan in 1972 and I came there with my husband at the time, whose name was Steven. And we actually traveled in a van in the dead of winter, we drove from Switzerland to Afghanistan on what is now turned the hippie trail. When I came to Afghanistan, I was very young and very naive. I'd never heard of Afghanistan. I swear to God, I hardly knew. I didn't know anything about it. And so I felt when I got there that I had not only traveled so far in distance, but I had traveled really, really far in time. I mean, I felt I had traveled back to the Middle Ages in Herat, the ancient Western city where we mostly stayed. There was no sidewalk. There was no railroad. There was no fire hydrant gas station. There was no pharmacy. There was no grocery store. People, most people got around by horse and buggy or by donkey or by camel. There was very little electricity as people lit their homes with oil lanterns. The customs official who at the border, before we drove into Herat, didn't have any shoes. He was barefoot in the snow. And we had met an Englishman who had broken his arm and was just told to go into the bazaar and buy a big bag of plaster while they tried to find someone who knew how to make a cast. So that was Afghanistan in 1972, scribes lined the street to write letters for the mass of people who were illiterate and the cripples were just let out to beg in the street, no matter what their age, you know, five year olds to 90 year olds were begging in the street. To give you another glimpse of Afghanistan at that time, here's an excerpt from one of the essays in my book. And it's titled A Memory of Herat, and it describes our first day in the city. After breakfast, we headed toward the center of town where high on a hill rose the great ancient Citadel originally built by Alexander the Great. A wind had blown up and the air was so very dusty that I held a handkerchief over my face as we walked. But suddenly our way was blocked by a crowd of women who were screaming and yelling in front of a shop doorway. We asked a Pashtun man nearby, what in the world was going on? Sugar. It's about the Russian sugar, he told us. The housewives want sugar, but it comes from Russia. And we never get enough for everybody. So the first ones in the door will get the sugar. You see, the women are very angry. Just then a policeman who was trying to keep order climbed upon a chair and unbuckled his leather belt. And with it, he lashed with sharp, even strokes. He lashed the women with his belt and they ran screaming like yelping dogs. And the Pashtun man sighed. It's always the same now, he said. From where you come from the United States, we answered. Oh, America. OK, I heard your king has gone crazy. King. Oh, you mean Nixon? Well, yeah, maybe. Yeah. Well, never mind. Come into my shop and I'll give you the best tea in Herat. His dusty shop was cluttered with silk, turkman robes, beautiful rifles and laid with mother of pearl, huge necklaces of lapis lazuli, tiny purple purses embroidered with mirrors. And also, as in many of the shops, was a box of glass bangles. And each bangle was etched with a saying from the Koran. Coca-Cola bottles, he explained. The foreigners leave them and we make jewelry. We watched and he grabbed three small china cups and we watched with uneasiness as he went into the street and washed the cups in the gutter. When he came back, he dropped a bright green cardamom seed into the china teapot. He measured the tea leaves with his fingertips and then he poured hot water from an aluminum kettle that was bubbling on the wood stove. My name is Mohammed, he said, smiling and turning to Steven. Excuse me, but your wife is the only respectable woman I have seen in Afghanistan. She has her head covered and she even walks in the street with her face covered. Good foreigners are good for Afghanistan and bad foreigners are not. I can tell you are good foreigners. Allah bless you both. I pulled my old scarf tighter around my head. You have tourists in Herat now, Steven commented. Yes, tourists, they all come for something. The young ones for hashish, the older ones for antiques. Oh, the Russians are here, too, but you will see more if you go to Kabul. What do the Russians come for? We asked for oil. What else? Of course, many Afghans don't even know this, but I have a friend in Missouri, Sharif. He is how you call it, geologist. He says to me, there is oil in the Hindu Kush and the Russians know this, but they don't want anyone else to know it, even us, especially us. They will keep it secret until they want it. Here, take more tea. Muhammad poured the tea and sat silent for a long while. He softly rubbed his pockmarked face, and it was obvious he was deep in thought. Are you worried about the Russians, I asked? They will, he sighed, get their way. There will be terrible things happening, maybe an invasion. He sighed again. In the end, it will be all right. There will be long years of war. The world will not understand. But in the end, Afghanistan will still be Afghanistan. Same donkey, different saddle. Before we left, Muhammad gave us each Bakshish, silver tribal rings and set with carnelian in glass. Go with Allah, he said quietly. We thanked him and we wished him well. We were three shots down when he called to us. We turned to see him standing in the doorway, waving goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. He shouted, see you in the second life. We continued on to the Masjid Ijami, the Friday Mosque, built in the 12th century of brilliant blue tiles laced with poetry. The metallic blue couplers of the mosque's minarets merged with a sharp blue of the winter sky. And from the mosque, in the far, far distance, stood six towering minarets silhouetted against the snow-capped mountains. And these minarets were all that remained of the great college and spiritual center designed and built in the 15th century by Queen Goharshad, Tamerlane's daughter-in-law. But now from a distance, the clay brick minarets lost their colorful tiles and they resembled only factory smokestacks. Years after my travels, those once glorious minarets among the vast runes of a great educational and spiritual complex haunted me. And I wondered, who was Queen Goharshad? And I began to research and then I discovered extraordinary facts about this impoverished backwards country. First of all, I learned that many historians believe Queen Goharshad was one of the most powerful women in history. In the mid 15th century, for 50 years from her throne in Harat, she ruled with her husband over the Timurid Empire, which stretched from Turkey to the doorstep of China. And she is considered one of the greatest patrons of the arts. In her day, in under her reign, music, calligraphy, fine art, painting, poetry and architecture flourished as never before. In fact, this is the most astonishing fact. In the 15th century, Florence was called. I mean, sorry, Harat was called the Florence of Asia. The Queen was not only a patron, she was also a great artist herself. She was a poet and an architect. She helped design the magnificent complex. And those who saw it said it was that they were the most beautiful buildings in the world. And they later became the model for the Taj Mahal. And so those years, many years ago, seeing the vast ruins of Queen Goharshad's complex, I was inspired to learn about Afghanistan. And I had learned that it was very, very different from the medieval place I visited. And they chaotic medieval place that we see on television. Afghanistan had once been a prosperous economic powerhouse on the Great Silk Road. It was a world center of not only art, but of science. It was in Afghanistan so far removed from what we see today. And this knowledge led me to research even more. And to write the picture book that Matthew had mentioned called Brave with Beauty, which tells the story of Queen Goharshad and how she was known as the priceless gem. And in fact, she sold her gems. She sold all her crown and her jewelry to fund these great municipal projects. And I'm just going to close with these point words of a 15th century historian who said of her reign, from the time of Adam until this day, no age, period, cycle or moment can be indicated in which people enjoyed such peace and such tranquility. Thank you. Oh, that was so beautiful. And what a poignant moment to end with. Thank you as well, given the current situation in particular. So thank you for that. So many great moments in that. And I have your book, but I have not read it because you sent it to me right before I ran off for my trip. And I only take one backpack, but I am definitely reading that book now. So thank you for that. Wow, beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you. OK, if we may now, Ms. LaBeau is waiting in the wings, ready for her time in the spotlight. And so, Diane, if you would like to bring us from the 15th century closer to some temporary contemporary times with Afghanistan, but also talk about your your other travels as well as they are detailed in your new memoir, Dancing on the Windarcy. Take it away, Diane. Thank you. And also, you had asked me to talk about travel writing. So we're going to talk about that. So first of all, to tout my book, Beautiful Cover. And people ask why I wrote this book. And when I was around four, I was writing books, even though I didn't know how to write, but I had a blank book. But I also noticed that women and girls were not exactly treated equally. And this wasn't that long ago, even though I'm a little bit older. And what? Well, I wanted to be a veterinarian and I was called. I was a pre-vet at Penn State and I was called in by my advisor who said, well, you we don't really want you here. You're just going to be just going to be married and have babies. You're taking the space of a man. So that was pretty irritating. And I sort of carve my own path. And that's what this book is really about, my different adventures over a couple of decades. It's a compilation of adventure, romance, little bit feisty stuff and learning about other human beings and their cultures, often focusing on women in different cultures. Now, Maxine talked about the history of Afghanistan. That was really beautiful. I have to say that things haven't changed that much in the villages. I always felt that I was going into medieval territory when I was there, although in the last 10 years, things have changed. By the way, I want to point out that I'm wearing Afghan necklace that I bought when I was there. So what while I was teaching and living in Paris, I met a number of Afghan women who were in exile there. And together with them and some French women, we decided to have a conference on the border of Afghanistan and help them form a declaration of the essential rights of Afghan women. And we did succeed in doing that. And at the time things were looking optimistic. The U.S. defeated the Taliban. Kofi Annan and Bill Clinton signed this declaration. I went back the next year for the Loya Jirga, at which I actually spoke as an American. And there the rights of Afghan women are written into their constitution more than we have in ours. But I want to give you a taste of one of my chapters, the first time I entered Afghanistan. I had never visited a war zone before and I couldn't help feeling anxious. Small villages of stone and mud dwellings grew visible as we angled in toward the Kabul airport. Our planes swept past bunkers and a graveyard of smashed planes and the cadavers of military aircraft. We were entering a land of wallessness, anarchy, warlords and 23 years of conflict. A part of the world where civil war and foreign invasions were more normal than peace. We stepped off the plane into the country of light as Afghanistan had been called. It's actually a really beautiful country. A young Afghan American traveling with us said, I thought I wouldn't remember anything since I moved to the States when I was five. But now that I feel the air, I know that I'm home. Inside the terminal, young man and ragged brown garments who look straight out of the Middle Ages pleaded to help me with my luggage to earn 10,000 Afghanis, about 25 cents. A van awaited us. Don't worry that there are no seat belts, said the driver. I drive slowly, he floored it, racing up the wrong side of the road of the divided street against the oncoming traffic. Indeed, there seemed to be no traffic rules for stoplights in Kabul. Traffic moved like spilled milk, anywhere space allowed. Through the open window of our van, I bought the survival guide to Kabul from a street child. It said there's a lot to see, even if most of it is wrecked. On the way to the hotel, we passed bombed out houses, stores and even palaces near the center of town. Burned skeletons of buses were stacked on top of each other around the devastated former public transportation center. Women in Blue Burkas and street children baked at the windows of our van. Men with no legs, victims of mines negotiated the streets on makeshift skateboards and the traffic pleading for Bakshish or money. As we approached our hotel, I noticed the top floor had no roof. Only jagged remnants left behind by a past shelling or bombing. Affecting nonchalance, I joked to the driver that I sure hope our rooms would be on a lower floor. Such bravery during my visit, I experienced as women who ran secret schools for Afghan girls during the Talib takeover. Brave journalists, when we visited the Kabul film archives, journalists had plastered their film archives into the walls to save them from Talib destruction. I became friends with one legged Mujahideen, a warrior who had fought to protect his people. All his life and lost his leg in a mine accident. He's one of the most optimistic and cheerful people I know. I supported him and his family in rebuilding their home and went back to visit a couple of times. When I asked him how he remained so cheerful, Ashreef responded, leaning toward me, Diane, we have peace now and peace is everything. That was then. However, as you know, what's happening now is the nightmare. And just as a side little commercial, I urge all of us to give support, whether to local groups. We have some in the Bay Area, hosting refugees or international organizations. I can mention two women for women international or Afghans for tomorrow. So I have other chapters in my book and my book contains succulent tales for my life around the world, including the Middle East, North Africa, with some French and other romances along the way. As a travel writer and a curious woman, as well as a romantic and someone who believes in living as fully as possible. Over the years, I found that one of the best means to sink into a culture, into its depths, is through romantic entanglements. I follow in the heritage of Chaucer's wife of Bath, as well as Erica Jung's fear of flying. And as another aside, my book, by the way, is a terrific idea for spicing up your loved one's stockings in the upcoming holidays. Nice plug. Nice plug, Diane. That was so subtle. That was so subtle. So on a business note, I was asked to sprinkle in some insights about the art of travel writing. So I'll just do a couple. When you're on the road, I think of it like fishing. You cast your line far and deep, be patient, gently pulling your catches in order to find your point or your narrative arc as guru travel writer Kim Cahill says, that is, you be I feel like a giant eyeball, like you want to take in everything that's all around you without distractions from traveling with other people if you can spend most of your time alone. It's good to be open, of course, to strangers to learn some bits of languages, to take notes on the spot and write when you're alone at meals and in your room at evening. My notebook is like my companion when I'm on the road. Your best writing may will happen on the scene. Sometimes the night before you leave, especially if you're going alone to a new place, it's like diving into an icy pool, but you just do it. And once you're there, you sink into your surroundings. And in fact, the water warms up. By the way, traveling as a woman also gives you some advantages because we're more perhaps acceptable to some culture. Certainly. What? No, just somebody unmuted themselves. Let's see. They're gone. They left. They just left whoever that was. I thought they didn't like what I said. Yeah. Yeah. I know I've been paying close attention to making sure everyone was muted, but somehow they unmuted, but then they left. So anyway, go ahead. Funny. OK. Anyway, traveling alone as a woman, you have an insight into culture. I had that in Morocco, certainly in Afghanistan. And also people befriend you, offer assistance, open up their lives to you. Sometimes one lead entices you, which gives you a reason to go. For example, some years ago, I heard that Cuba had something called the family law, which made it illegal for a man to not help with the housework of his wife was working outside the home. So I pictured, Manuel, you were under arrest. You did not take out the garbage. A wife could actually perform a citizen's arrest on such a loafer. That story is in my book. Sometimes disasters lead to gems of experience. People always expect everything to go come okey dokey when you're on the road. But as a writer, I mean, Tim Cahill says this, if nothing goes wrong, you have to have a spiritual experience to have a story to write. So it's good when, for example, one lonely night, I was in Honduras. And I had one of the last rooms. It was a holiday in the in the city. To go to Galpa and I went back to my room and the owner had given my room over to a chain smoking hooker who was one of her best friends and there was no other place to stay. So I as a result of spending a lot of time in the lobby, I met an actually very handsome archaeologist who was a specialist in the Copan ruins where I plan to go the next day. And so he and I ended up sharing a car and I had my own expert archaeological guide or another story which is called an Italian bedtime story. That's in my book. It's about being chloroformed and robbed on an Italian train. And one of my friends later said, Diane, you'll do anything for a story. And I can attest to that. I can attest to that. So, Diane, I'm going to have to cut you off because you've touched on some of the themes that we're going to talk about in the Q&A and we're kind of running out of time here. So I want to transition unless if that's OK. You just talked about some of the advantages of being a woman traveler. And you said something along the lines of I'm going to paraphrase here. But you said, alone as a woman allows you insight into the culture. People befriend you. Can you speak a little bit to that? And then I'm going to ask Maxine your thoughts on this because a lot of times we hear, you know, a lot of my women friends say I'm not so sure I want to travel alone as a woman. I think you've traveled alone a lot. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit? And then I'm going to ask Maxine the same question to talk about her experience as a woman traveler. Sure. Well, for example, staying with Afghanistan, I got invited to women only parties. And they taught me to belly dance in the Afghan way. And they kept saying this was funny because they kept saying per hun to me. And I thought I was being too sexy, like they were saying whore. But when they took me back to my hotel, I said, what does whore hun mean? And they said, sister, thank you, our sister for being here. Nice. Well, what about your experience? You know, you just mentioned another favorite story from your collection is the one that you just mentioned where you get chloroformed. So there also there also can be sort of the negative side. And that wasn't necessarily because you were a woman or not. I mean, I I've run into enough dangerous situations myself. But but thoughts on on the flip side of that, because I love that example of because you were a woman and you're in this country where there's all women gatherings, that that's that's a great example. But what about some some of the flip side as well? Well, you mean negative things because some of the challenges and maybe some people have asked me that and there only been two times in my life when I was physically attacked and they were both here in the Bay Area. I walked down streets and Kabul in Marrakesh and I never had any physical violence. In fact, you're you're so it depends on the country, of course, but in Afghanistan, for sure, I just look so different. And I always dress modestly and have my head covered. But and also being a teacher, there's a great respect for teachers and writers. So I often played those cards. But no, I never I. One of my stories is how I spent a New Year's Eve in. In a Morocco and I ended up at a party where all the men were with me smoking hashish and the women were in the kitchen and at a certain point I was invited to see the new apartment of one of the young men. And I I sort of pushed the envelope. I have to say that. So I went into this strange apartment with three young men. And I thought, shit, what am I doing here? Sure. And then they said to me and the tension rose. Aren't you afraid being here with? No, you guys, you don't know you guys. Yeah. And I somehow out of me, I said, no, because I know that you're gentlemen and you will always take care of me. And all the tension swept away. The next day when I was sitting on the bus traveling out of Luxor, I sweated a little bit when I thought that was maybe a stupid thing to do. Yeah, I think I think that was, yeah, in hindsight, something to have to revisit. But, you know, I love what you just said about, you know, I've traveled a lot as well. And when people ask me, you know, about getting into dangerous situations, I have the same response that you do, which is the only place I've ever been held up at gunpoint is here in San Francisco in my own neighborhood. So yeah, I had two gun attacks here. Yeah, this was taken more than 10 years ago, right? Within a year. Right. So Maxine thoughts on traveling as a woman and maybe perhaps some recommendations also. And yeah, well, you know, I think it's it's not just traveling as a woman. I think there's another factor to it and that's traveling at a certain age. When I was a cute young thing, you know, a very naive and I was flooding around Greece wearing miniskirts when the miniskirts were banned in Greece. I was just like, you know, this is sort of innocent and I'm just grateful that nothing terrible happened. But as a woman, I've traveled so much on my own. And what I find is it tends to bring out as Diane was mentioning this kind of protective instincts in people. I mean, a few years ago, I went to China and my God, I never had to never had to even lift my suitcase. There was always some somebody would come and pick it up for me. You know, whether whether they saw my age or whether it was a woman, it actually was to my benefit. And I had just mentioned that I'm I'm going to Paris on Tuesday. And I, you know, Paris is my happy place, one of my favorite places in the world. And I think any woman of a certain age, what they say, what they what they call it in French is a woman, a woman of a certain age and a few crumbs. And that's me, you know, Kéke Miet, that, you know, you're never too old in France to be flirted with. And I just love that, you know, and it's not serious. It's just fun, you know, waiters and people in stores and everything. And so I think traveling as a woman has a lot of fun advantages and shouldn't be afraid of it. In fact, I just read that the largest demographic of people traveling solo in the world these days are women. And in fact, strangely enough, they're married women whose husbands don't want to travel. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Do you have any specific recommendations for for women like that who have said, you know what, I don't have my husband doesn't want to join me. I don't have girlfriends, perhaps who want to join me any. And maybe it's their first time sort of setting out on that sort of adventure. Any any recommendations? Well, I think if if you're not a season traveler and you want to travel because your your hubby's, you know, would rather stay home, I think one of the great things you can do is is just to get your feet wet, you know, dip your toes in the water is to join a tour group. There are there like overseas adventure travel and Paragreen travels. They have special tour groups that are just for women. And a lot of these women are married women who just want to, you know, meet other women their age and travel together. And that's a great first start before going off completely independently. Right. Like anything else sort of sort of practice. That again, Diane. Road scholar yet. Road scholars. Yeah. OK, so I want to get philosophical here for for a for a moment. So despite the pandemic, you know, you're going to Paris next week. I just came back from five weeks in Europe, despite the challenges. And clearly, that's because travel really really speaks to us on lots of different levels. So, Maxine, can you talk to sort of why do we travel sort of philosophically? And I know that's a big question that can take an hour. I think it's a very subjective question. I travel for a number of reasons. And one of them is going to sound very strange is. I like I like to know what I'm, you know, in our daily lives, we're so busy, we live a kind of external life, got to go to the grocery store. Oh, we got to do the laundry. Oh, people are coming over. I got to I got to make this food and I got to do this and that. And everything else. OK. But when I'm traveling, I am in my head more. I'm expiry. I'm I'm very, very experiential. And I'm beginning to get back in touch with myself, with what I love and what I'm passionate about. And that's a lot of that is culture and art. So that's one of the reasons that I travel. And I also find that when I when I travel, I love to read about a place beforehand, I like to know a lot about that place, which is the opposite of the way I used to travel when I was young. But I think it enhances, it just enhances and enriches my life. Diane, thoughts on why we travel? Well, for me, it's learning about other cultures and the world and people and getting to know individual people and really sinking into the culture. And in some cases, I'm working for issues. For example, women's literacy in Afghanistan. I've been involved with that. And along with what Maxine said, it's I feel so free once I get on a plane, just a big sigh. I hate packing. I hate the preparation. But once I'm on the plane, I'm a free person. And and when I talked about earlier, I feel like I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson talks about becoming a human eyeball where you just observe everything around you. And it's it's so freeing. I don't have to worry about cleaning my desk or going for groceries or anything. I just, you know, whatever comes up, be real, be ready to roll with it and and make some wonderful friends. I have friends like we all do, I think, all over the world. I've seen your desk and I don't think you've cleaned it for a while, actually. So let's just be clear about that. Let's just be honest, that that's not really something that you spend a lot of your ordinary time on. You can't quite see it. OK, so so so thanks for that. And yeah, I agree with everything you guys just said. You know, it's the same for me just getting out of our day to day. And then the perspective that comes comes with that. You know, Diane, you touched on something else with regards to sort of changing gears and talk about travel, writing. You know, you talked on well, it's not even just writing, but. You know, in the description for today's event, we mentioned, you know, the uncertainties, the joy that comes with some of the uncertainty of traveling. And you mentioned from a travel writing perspective that, you know, the disasters oftentimes lead to the gems. But Maxine, can you talk a little bit about that theme of how, you know, so often it's not necessarily what we've planned that ends up with our most significant experiences that often it's it's it's the unexpected. Oh, absolutely. Can you speak to that? In fact, if you plan it, I think that that's very scary because it can produce some really deadly writing. You cannot plan an experience. You know, I used to have a wonderful friend. She was like 97 and she said to me, you don't know an experience. And you you can't know an experience until you have it. And that's exactly the same. I mean, if I look at every single one of my of essays in my book, Places and Time, every single experience I've had, I couldn't I couldn't predict. I mean, I've had a sheriff pull a gun in my face in Mexico. You know, I've met I didn't know I would become great friends with with with the Turkish fishermen. You know, who would know that all these crazy things would happen? You know, I'm talking about China again. I went to China a few years ago and people told me, oh, well, the Chinese aren't very friendly there. They won't be very nice to you. My God, the people were absolutely amazing to me. They went out of their way. I would never ever have a guest of the experiences that I had. So no, you know, you have to let life unfold when you travel. You just go with the flow and that will make for the best story, whether it's a whether it's a disaster or a very happy experience. Right. And so and so let's talk about that. Diane, you know, you both you and Maxine, you went from traveling all over the place to deciding that you also wanted to do travel writing, which we've we've already talked a little bit about. But I'm just curious, Diane, how did you make that jump from traveling to deciding, wait, I actually want to document my experiences and share my experiences? Well, I've always been a writer and actually I was at book passages, travel writers conference when it first started, I think the first year or so. And Don George, who's one of our local gurus, was running salon dot com. And I think I was in his seminar and I had written academic stuff, but usually about women in different cultures, including indigenous women, and Hopi women. So I said to Don, I have this story about how my love affairs often start and end in phone booths. It was before cell phones all over the world. He said, oh, my God, right. And I want to publish it. So I did it was and it ended up being a real success story called Love on the line. That's great. And Maxine, how did you how did you decide? Well, curiously enough on the the it was Don George, who also inspired me. But I think it was even before Diane LeBeau, because it was back in it. It was back in the eighties. I think it was the mid eighties. And he was speaking at a bookstore called Phineas Fog, Phineas Tea Fog or something like that. And I I was like this, you know, starstruck kid. And I went up to him and I said, I'm going to write for you one day. He was the editor of the San Francisco, the travel section for the San Francisco examiner. And what happened was I went to my brother-in-law's wedding in Marseille. He married an Algerian French woman and they had a very traditional Algerian wedding. And I wrote about that. I called it Journey into Marriage and he published that. And then he published everything I wrote after that. And so he kickstarted my travel writing career. I had won the Lowell Thomas Award for an essay that he had published. And after I won that award, I thought, wow, maybe I can be a travel writer. That would be a good reason to think it might be worth a worthwhile pursuit. Exactly. I love that Don is the common denominator here. Too bad he's not here tonight. We'll have to make sure we'll have to let him know that he came up for both of you. That's that's quite a tribute. That was in the days when there was real travel sections and newspapers. And he he would publish all kinds of things that, you know, whether it was travel 20 years ago or whatever, if he loved the piece, he would publish it. Right. Yeah. So in the interest of time, I'm going to ask you guys just two more questions. One is a follow up related to travel writing. And then I do want to circle back to Afghanistan. But the question, Diane, what inch or what what advice would you give someone who's interested today in getting into travel writing? You you remember VATW, the former director or I forget what your title was. President, the former president of VATW Bay Area Travel Writers. What advice would you give someone who wants to get into travel writing today? Well, it's certainly changed because not everything is printed anymore. A lot of things are online. Certainly get with a group like Bay Area Travel Writers. And if you're in California, Left Coast Writers is another great one. Get a writing group. Go to bookstores, at least we used to say that. I guess I should say go online now and browse websites and and Internet possibilities and be ready to submit and don't be nervous. I mean, you probably get some rejections. You don't always get accepted the first time. And but check things out with with readers, with your friends. Tell your stories. You know, I had a getting this book done. I am a great procrastinator, but I was in Westminster Abbey a couple of years ago after we traveled around Ireland. We ended up back in London. And I went to the tomb of one of my gurus, Joffrey Chaucer. And I don't know if I even believe in this stuff, but I was kind of like meditating at Chaucer's. We're two and his voice came into my head that just said, just write your stories, just tell your stories. So I had a directly encouragement from Joffrey Chaucer. Well, between Don George and Chaucer, I mean, it's really hard to argue with with who we've got supporting both of you tonight. Maxine, any other thoughts on what you might tell someone who wants because it has changed so much. Well, it's it's a big topic and I actually teach a travel writing course. But one thing I want to say is when people say they want to get into travel writing, they have to understand what kind of travel writing they're talking about because there's so many different kinds. You could specialize in writing about specific destinations or resorts. You could be you could be a travel writer, write about golf or senior travel or write, you know, traveling with kids or maybe you want to write the literary travel essay. So I think first you want to sort of understand what is your passion? What do you what do you who are you understand what you want to bring to the world and then understand that, you know, unfortunately, now there's kind of a glut of travel writing, you know, online and there's so much. You know, we all know about the most far flung corners of the earth because somebody's written about it. So you're always going to have to have some kind of unique angle if you want to hook an editor these days. You can't just say, you know, the old editor mantra is that location is is not is not a travel article. You know, so I think that's very important. I want to add to, you know, I taught college for 35 years and and then directed study abroad programs in Paris and had people do travel writing, memoir writing, and I taught here for the San Francisco State Osher Lifelong Learning. And one thing I found and you were talking about older people traveling people enjoy writing for themselves or for their families. And a lot of my writers at SF State didn't really care if they got published or not. They just got joy out of telling their stories and having their children or grandchildren be able to read them. So I love that actually for people to write. Yeah, that's that's a nice. Can I just say one thing, Matthew? Yes, please do what when I teach travel writing, the biggest misconception that I see with my students is they believe that anecdote equals story and it doesn't. You can have the greatest anecdote in the world, but I'll be so jealous. I want that anecdote. I wish I had that. But how do you structure it and shape it dramatically for a story? So I think, you know, just learn the basics of what good writing is, you know, shaping story structure, using fictional techniques of dialogue. And, you know, that kind of thing. So great advice, fishing for the point, fishing for the arc. So I want to ask one more thing. We have 10 minutes left and I do I just feel as if it's important to kind of circle back to Afghanistan, given what's going on over there. So I know that neither of you have been there recently and you're not professing by any means to be experts in in what's going on or Afghanistan in particular, what's going on right now, since it's also recent. But I am just curious, you know, Diane, I know you have a relationship with with a family there and Maxine, I'm not sure what, you know, how much how plugged in you are to what's going on there now. But any thoughts, maybe I'll start with Diane about any insight or advice in sort of how those of us who have no experience with Afghanistan might kind of try to make sense of what is going on over there now. Well, we don't quite know, but it's really quite a disaster. I've been mentoring and sponsoring a young woman that I met in 2000. She had asked me to adopt her, actually, when I met her in Tajikistan and I've stayed in touch with her and her family. I've lost touch right now. She did get out last year and she got as far as Kazakhstan. I think that it's terrible. I understand that our government finally didn't know what else to do. It and what Maxine was saying, Afghanistan has been around for a long time. It's it's there's a was a book, a British book written called The Great Game that was made into a play at Berkeley Rep about over the centuries, how different colonial powers have tried to conquer and control Afghanistan. And everybody starts to leave. The only ones that chug along there are the Chinese because they don't try to take over the government. They just build railroads and use the resources of the country. So they I don't know. It's it's particularly sad for women and really tragic. Right. Right. There is no no answer at the moment. Right. Maxine, any any thoughts? I mean, again, to the extent that you can have any. Yeah, I yeah, it's I think it was inevitable what happened. I mean, it was it was bound to collapse in one way or another. I think what we're seeing worldwide is we're seeing a rise of extremism. We see it here in our own country, for God's sakes. So, you know, who knows what the future of Afghanistan will hold. The Taliban say, oh, they're going to, you know, let women let girls go to school or this and that. But, you know, how far can you trust the Taliban? You know, so I think we'll just have to wait and see. You know, in the meantime, we need these charities to support the people. And I would urge everybody to contribute. My book Places in Time is coming out in the third running next next year by Legacy Book Press and part of the money will actually go to help Afghan Afghan refugees. So I think whatever we can do in our small way would be helpful. And Diane, do you want to say thank you, Maxine? Yeah. And Diane, do you want to mention the two organizations that you mentioned earlier? Sure, Afghans for tomorrow and women for women international. That was actually started by a woman whose father was forced to be the pilot for Saddam Hussein and she escaped to the US eventually and started this organization. So it's it's a really legit organization, women for women international. OK, there's also global fund for women. OK, great. Thank you. So we have one question from Adele. And if anyone else has questions now is the time to throw them in the chat window. And if not, I have plenty more for our last six minutes. But Adele asked, what year was it when you first went to Afghanistan? And I think Maxine, you said 72 for you. Is that true? 1972, 72. And Diane, when were you first there? I was at the border in 2000 and we were supposed to go over the border. Our plane just fell down, whether it was bombed or we don't know. But fell down. So we had our meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. So 2000, then I went back the following year after the Taliban were ousted in 2001. And then I was back in 2006 and things were looking so good. There were new restaurants opening, internet cafes, women were fully in school. The American University of Kabul and Kabul University offered me teaching jobs. I was almost ready to move over there. Mm hmm. Taryn, any, any. I know you often have questions or almost always have questions. I want to give you a chance as well. And if not, like I said, I have more. I guess I just have a question about the writing process. When you started your respective books, did you have a vision of how your book would turn out or did you just kind of? I haven't read either of them, but yet. But did you sort of write a piecemeal or did you have like this vision? OK, I'm going to write a memoir about this experience. Tell me more about how you're the genesis of your books. Well, a lot of my stories were published along the way and won awards, brag, brag, brag. And people started saying, well, maybe you should put a book together. And then I thought, well, what's the theme? And the theme throughout my writing and my life are the balancing of freedom and the need or the feeling to have desire to have love and intimacy and a sense of home. And I'm always an independent spirit. But how do you piece to get? You know, I don't didn't create a regular family. My family is kind of a patchwork around the world. So the stories were collected, and then I found that there was a theme going through them. So I started to put it together. And I worked with a wonderful editor, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, who's the director of Left Coast Writers. And she she's like an army sergeant, you know, and she finally, because I have a lot of other things going on and distractions. But we get together once a month at her home in Oakland. And I'd have to produce another story or I get browbeaten. Maxine, how did your collection come together? Yeah, you know, I had a lot of angst about my book because every single essay in my book Places in Time had already been published either, you know, by Don George in The Chronicle or Christian Science Monitor or Salon.com or somewhere. So I had all these disparate stories. But the one thing that tied it together, that that all these experiences happened on the one single journey. It was a year and a half's travel around the world. So I thought, well, how am I going to throw these together? And then I realized they're already to do was put a little glue in between the chapters to say, OK, then we went from here to there. And then bang the next because it works chronologically. And then the next story started. So it's basically one single journey starting in Berkeley, California in the 60s. Great. Yeah. So, Linda or Lena, I'm sorry. I'm not sure how to pronounce your name. She has a question. She asks and Maxine, if you want to take this first, how do you support yourself as a travel writer? Well, I don't. I don't know anybody who does. I think it's impossible. You know, you can't quit your day job. Yeah. Travel writing is a good thing. Pardon me. That's the million dollar question, right? Right. Right. I mean, you know, yeah, maybe if you're, you know, Thoreau, Paul Thoreau or something like that. No. Well, I just I just interviewed Jeff Greenwald for the San Francisco Writers Conference podcast and that episode just came out last Friday. And I asked him that question as well. I said, you know, given how much the climate has changed, the landscape has changed with Instagram and everyone having blogs and V blogs and on and on and on and to your point, Maxine, which you touched on early in today's event, just how we can all go everywhere now. And there's no there's so much less. It's also much more accessible. And I said, you know, what's the place of the travel writer and how do you make a living out of it? He's like, well, yeah, I don't almost no one is going. He compared it to being a star in Hollywood. You know, there will be a few people, Anthony Bourdain and Rick Steves, like there'll be a select few who are able to make a living from it. The rest of us are going to do it because because we love it. You love it. Diane, any any additional thoughts on that? Yeah, I do know some people, some of my friends or colleagues who earn their living, they piece things together. Sometimes regular columns and local papers. I myself, I taught college for 35 years. So that was, you know, a lot of my support. I also trained and showed Morgan show horses and bought and sold horses. So I mean, that's kind of a strange occupation. I suppose for a travel writer, but I do know a few people, but they mainly earn their living through tech writing, other kinds of writing, local papers. And there were a few like the late Lee Foster, who was a photographer and travel writer. He was a great marketer. I know another woman who lives in Sonoma, who writes for local papers and she's been a freelancer all her life, but not just travel. See, that's yeah, another point that Jeff made. And then I'll turn it back over to Teran, because I know we've reached the hour. But another really good point that Jeff made was he was saying that I don't know if it was Salon, for example, that, you know, five, 10, however many years ago, they might pay 1500 for a story, whereas now they might pay 200 or 300. So not only to Maxine's point earlier, has there been, you know, this tremendous amount of travel writing that's now out there, the prices, you know, what you're paid has just dropped. Tell me my first my first stories, for example, for a Bride magazine, I was paid $1,500 plus 300 for each photo. The good old days. Yeah, the good old days. Maxine, Diane, any last minute thoughts before, like I said, I turn it back over to Teran. Oh, I think I think also to add to that, the day of the press trips is over to write all the perks that went with being a professional travel writer. But I would just encourage anybody who wants to dip their toes into travel writing to really do it, because it's a wonderful when you write down what your own thoughts and feelings are about a place, you are strengthening your sense of self and who you are. And that's a very important process. It makes you slow down. It makes you observe. It makes you, you know, think just a little bit more about what you're experiencing. So I would encourage, you know, try it to that point. Would you like to say how people could study? Are you teaching now? I know you said you teach in general, but are you teaching now? Can I'm not teaching exactly right now? I do teach, I've been teaching at the San Francisco writer salon, which is on both on Balboa Street in San Francisco and in Berkeley, California. I teach children's book writing and I'll be teaching travel writing, but I don't have the dates yet or anything. Yes. OK, but people can go to MaxineSher.com is your website. Absolutely. And they can contact me for more information. OK, and Diane, you are at DianeLeboa.com. And Karen. It's a beautiful website created by Matthew Felix. OK, thank you. I did not create it. Somebody else created it, but I did I did take it to the next level. Yes, I spruced it up. I didn't create it, but I did spruce it up. So thank you for that shout out, Diane. And thank you, Maxine. Thank you, Diane. This is great. I love talking about Afghanistan. Thank you, everybody for coming. Yeah. So, Taryn, would you like to wrap things up for us? Yeah, I just wanted to, you know, thank everyone for attending tonight. And thank you, Diane and Maxine and Matthew for sharing your your insights. I mean, I'm ready to go somewhere and and write about it. Go, girl. Perfect. Perfect. That's it. And I just want to reassure everyone that the video for this event will be posted on our YouTube channel. And since you all have made reservations via Eventbrite, I will send you an email shortly today, not today, not tonight. No, it's late. Yeah, they were already here. They don't need the link. They were already here. But but I'll be in touch with the link to the video. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Taryn. Thanks Mechanics Institute. Thank you. Bye, everyone. Have a nice evening. Bye bye.