Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin: Three Cups of Tea

"The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger.
The second time, you are an honored guest.
The third time you become family."

Last winter, it seemed like everyone I knew was reading Three Cups of Tea. And now I know why. It's not a gripping page-turner. It's not a literary masterpiece. It's a simple, inspiring, true story about how one person with vision and determination can truly make a difference in the world.

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time follows the story of Greg Mortenson, a young man who fails in his attempt to climb K-2, the world's second tallest mountain. Very ill after his climb, Mortenson is taken in by residents of Korphe, a small Pakistani village. Moved by their hospitality and stunned by the absence of a school in the area, Mortenson vows to return to Korphe and build a school for the village. A school that, against the grain of custom, will teach girls as well as boys.

Greg Mortenson sold everything he owned and wrote letters asking for donations. Things began to come together when a group of school children in River Falls, Wisconsin heard about his cause and collected over $600 worth of "Pennies for Peace." Mortenson has spent the last 15 years building schools for girls and boys in Pakistan and Afghanistan, sometimes at great risk and danger to his own life. Today, his schools educate more than 26,000 girls and boys in Central Asia.

Mortenson argues that the education of girls in particular is the key to the end of the "war on terror." While educated boys often leave their villages to work, girls stay home, take care of their families, engage their communities. He quotes an African proverb: “If you educate a boy, you educate an individual, but if you educate a girl, you educate a community.”

There's an interesting quote from a September 2007 article about Mortenson in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Consider the word “jihad.” We know about that word in one context — a violent quest. But the word has other meanings — reflecting other pursuits. But before beginning a jihad, you ask permission from your mother, Mortenson said. If she is educated — she’s less likely to give approval for a violent mission.

Those who dismiss education say that many of the 9/11 hijackers were educated — and that’s true, Mortenson said. “But none of their mothers were educated.”

For more information and to get involved:
Central Asia Institute
Pennies for Peace

Tricia Tunstall: Note By Note

A few weeks ago, Roger Sutton over at Read Roger (the Horn Book blog) mentioned that he was enjoying Tricia Tunstall's Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson. So I picked it up from the library and got immediately swept away.

Everyone who has ever taken private music lessons remembers something about their teacher vividly. My father *still* can drum up images of the nun he learned from (and the sharp rap of her ruler on his knuckles!) As Tricia Tunstall so astutely points out, "there are very few occasions when a child spends an extended period alone with an unrelated adult." She proceeds, elegantly and sweetly, to give us an intimate glimpse into that unusual relationship from the perspective of both student and teacher.

I loved this book. If you have ever taken music lessons, or have ever taught a child how to play piano, dance, or read a book, my guess is that you'll probably love it too.

Elizabeth Patridge: This Land Was Made for You and Me

I just finished Elizabeth Patridge's biography of Woody Guthrie: This Land Was Made for You and Me. The book is geared for kids ages 12 and up, but there is enough detail and depth there to hold the attention of any adult interested in Woody Guthrie's music. Pete Seeger calls it "The best book about Woody ever written!"

In my "Stories behind the Songs" post about This Land Is Your Land, I wrote that Woody wrote over 1400 songs in his lifetime. Elizabeth Patridge says the number is over 3000, which is incredible especially when you consider that he only lived to be 55 years old.

The story of Woody Guthrie's life is fascinating, filled with moments of optimism, despair, redemption, and unthinkable tragedy. Elizabeth Patridge places Woody's story firmly within the events, places, and people who were so important to him and shaped who he was. The Dustbowl, Great Depression, migrant farms, New York City folk scene, and the Cold War all play a major role in the development of his songs.

And all the folk music greats show up: Ledbelly, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Bob Dylan...the list goes on and on. The tragedies in his story are so heavy, and would almost be too much to bear if it wasn't for the stories of the people he loved and who cared about him and took him in and forgave him his weaknesses and idiosyncracies time and time again. Through good times and bad, it is clear that those relationships were influences on his music. Woody famously said:

"I hate a song that makes you think that you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood."

The one question that is still burning in my mind after closing the book is, whatever happened to Mary? His first wife who dropped out of high school to be with him and endured all his wayward, rambling ways while she tried to take care of three children with little to no sporadic income. Halfway through the book, I started to hope that after their divorce, she went on to have the happy, stable life she probably dreamed of. But from the notes in the back of the book, it looks like two of her children contracted Huntington's Disease (the disease that tragically killed both Woody and his mother) and the third died in a car accident. There should be a song for Mary. Maybe there is, but there should be more.

There is much more information on Elizabeth Patridge's website, including an interview with Arlo & Nora Guthrie (two of Woody's children from his second marriage with the incredibly talented, patient, and giving dancer Marjorie Mazia).

Abigail Thomas: Safekeeping, Some True Stories from a Life

My sister recently recommended Abigail Thomas' Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life as good airplane reading. When I first glanced through it, I admit, I groaned. The chapters are extremely short, the story jumps around with no chronological order, the viewpoint changes from third person to first person to second person with no warning. I thought, oh great, another too-cool-for-school, experimental memoir that's trying to be deep. Thanks, Anna.

Then I started reading.

Safekeeping is actually a very lovely, well-crafted book about marriage, love, life, and mostly, memory. It is the story of a middle-aged woman who is trying to piece together her memories, trying to sort through and reconcile her life after the loss of a close friend who was "once upon a time" her husband.

The short, out-of-order chapters work because that is how memories come to us. In short, uncontrollable bursts. A displaced memory of a smashed dish, a loose fragment of a conversation, the cramped feeling of an old apartment.

The switch in viewpoint works surprisingly well. Instead of coming off as unbearably post-modern or uber-artistic, it serves as a simple, concrete tool. A woman trying to get a 360 degree view of her life. We see her as a young woman as *she* remembers herself. Then we see her as she imagines an objective observer might see her. Then her sister comes in and says, no that's not how it went at all...don't you remember?

And that's the thing. We don't remember. Not exactly. Abigail Thomas writes on her website:

I’ve written nothing but non-fiction for years now in spite of my poor memory. I can remember moments, and scenes, but not what happened when or what came after...But if I could remember everything in its proper sequence, there’s a lot of life that’s interesting to live but not so interesting to write about, let alone read. And frankly, I’m bored by chronology. I don’t even believe in chronology. Time is too weird. It contracts, then it shoots forward (or back), it dawdles, stops still, and then suddenly we’re twenty years down the road. Whole decades evaporate. For me connecting the dots is not as absorbing as the dots themselves. I’m more interested in why certain memories stand out. Why these and not others?

It's a great question, and one that I've been thinking about ever since I read Safekeeping. Writer Anne Lamott said this about the book, and I don't think I could sum it up better:

[Safekeeping is] not so much memoir as a stained-glass window of scenes garnered from a life. This is an unforgettable portrait of a grown-up woman who has learned to rejoice in being herself. Reading it, we feel the crazy beauty of life.