NY Times Q&A with Arthur Frommer

**Article taken from the New York Times online

Arthur Frommer Answers All Your Travel Questions, and Then Some
By Stephen J. Dubner (New York Times)


Arthur Frommer (founder of the Frommer's series of travel guides) Last week, {NY Times} solicited your questions for travel pro Arthur Frommer. Thanks for the strong response and thoughtful questions. As for Arthur’s answers, below — well, they are IMHO fantastic. Now I see why his books are so popular. He is opinionated, colorful, informed, passionate, and a few dozen other things. We hope you enjoy.

Q: As the dollar continues to fall against the euro, why aren’t more Europeans traveling to America?
A: Because of the psychological, bureaucratic, and political barriers that we have erected to hinder their travels here. In many of the countries that don’t enjoy our visa-waiver program, it takes three to four months simply to receive an appointment to apply for a visa. Once would-be travelers finally get inside one of our consulates, they are questioned about personal characteristics having nothing to do with security or terrorism, but rather with the possibility that they will overstay their visas and become illegal immigrants. One tour operator handling incoming travel from Poland recently said that half of the people he wishes to send to the U.S. are turned down for visas because they are young, single, without property or homes that they own, etc., and are thus more likely to stay in the U.S. illegally.
When people do travel here, they are treated like criminals upon arrival at customs, or, at best, received with cold discourtesy. The result of all this is that travel to the U.S. has fallen off by close to 20 percent since the year 2000, while most other countries are enjoying a rise of 20 percent or more in their incoming tourism! The decline of our own tourism industry creates a loss of more than $100 billion a year, tens of billions of dollars in tax revenues, and hundreds of thousands of jobs. The administration’s handling of the matter is a scandal. And, by creating the impression among people of the world that we are an arrogant, cold, and unfriendly people, we make ourselves less safe.

The Menil Collection

The Menil Collection opened in 1987 to preserve and
exhibit the art collection of John and Dominique de Menil. Considered one of the most important privately assembled collections of the twentieth century, The Menil Collection houses approximately 15,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and rare books. Masterpieces from antiquity, the Byzantine and medieval worlds, the tribal cultures of Africa, Oceania, and the American Pacific Northwest, and the twentieth century are particularly well represented. Among the highlights of the museum are its Surrealist holdings, widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost collections of its kind. The Menil Collection displays selections from its permanent collection and regularly offers special exhibitions and programs to the public.

This is a really wonderful place to visit in Houston. The only thing I did not like was the rule about taking pictures. Pictures in the Menil building and in the Rothko Chapel are not allowed.

E. Barnett Newman
Broken Obelisk, 1963-67















D. Mark di Suvero
Bygones, 1976

Houston, Texas

A Thousand Splendid Suns

"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs. Or the thousand splendid suns that hide beneath her walls."






Khaled Hosseini's second novel is even better (to me) than his first, The Kite Runner. A Thousand Splendid Suns is the heart-wrenching story of two women living in Afghanistan. The harsh experiences they each endure are shocking and eye-opening, yet Hosseini manages to turn this into a warm and inspiring tale. Above all things, love endures. A must read!

Left to Tell

"If you make a decision in your heart, just see if it is coming from a loving heart because most of the time, we make decisions from a heart that is angry, and then we realize that we have made a mistake."




Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza is an absolute MUST READ for everyone. Her recount of surviving the 1994 Rwandan Holocaust is as shocking and horrible as it is inspirational and positively moving. Please read this.

Thank you June, for bringing this book to my attention.

Our beautiful oceans

Water, like religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it. People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it. People fight over it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it. --Mikhail Gorbachev

Cancun

West Coast (Malibu, CA)

East Coast (NYC)