Mark Twain really liked Anne of "Anne of Green Gables" -- and so did I

Most people consider "Anne of Green Gables" a children's book, specifically, a book for girls.

As a child, I didn't read it. I read a lot. Sci-fi classic. Classics for boys, such as "Treasure Island" and "The Three Musketeers." The Hardy Boys mysteries. Tom Swift adventures.

But "Anne of Green Gables" or "Little Women" or "Little House on the Prairie?"

Not this cowboy.

My loss, as it turns out. Artificial barriers delineating what you should or shouldn't read does nobody any good.

I was charmed by the staged reading of "Anne of Green Gables" put on by the Next Step Performance Company this weekend at the LCCC Playhouse in Cheyenne. Small theatre, big cast. Next Step puts on productions that raises money for scholarships for students majoring the fine arts. Cast and crew are all volunteers, which allows ticket sales and auction proceeds to go to scholarships.

"Anne of Green Gables" by Lucy Maud Montgomery is a serious story. An aging duo, brother and sister Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, are getting too old to do all of the chores required by Prince Edward Island farmers in 1908. Matthew is in his 60s and Marilla in her 50s. Had automation come to the farm in 1908? Matthew has heart problems. His solution for cardiac arrhythmia is to get back to work. Marilla does all of the cooking and cleaning. Darns socks. Makes clothes. Bakes pies. On PEI, you have to make hay while the sun shines, which is does about the same length of time as it does in rural Wyoming.

They decide to adopt a 13-year-old male orphan to help out around the place. Orphans must have been a dime a dozen in 1908. Unfortunately, Matthew arrives in his buckboard at the Avonlea train station to find a scrawny 11-year-old girl waiting for him. The taciturn Matthew is kind of taken with the talkative Anne "Anne with an E" Shirley. The practical Marilla, not so much. "What good is a girl on a farm?" she asks. Anne must go. A neighbor says she will take Annie. The neighbor it bitchy Mrs.Blewitt, who has a zillion little kids and goes through hired help like there's no tomorrow. Marilla knows that Mrs. Blewitt probably will work Anne to death, which wouldn't have been much of a crime in an era of widespread child labor. She lets the lively Anne stay at Green Gables. Matthew is pleased. Anne gets into some minor-league scrapes. She stands up for herself with the town gossip, Rachel Lynde (played with aplomb by my one-time arts colleague, Rita Basom). Matthew spoils her with little gifts. Marilla gets on her case but you can see her attitude softening as time goes on.

Women readers know this story. I don't. No less a literary personage than Mark Twain thought that Anne was "the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice." The book has sold 50 million copies in 20 languages during the past 107 years. That's 500,000 copies annually, give or take. The author's home and the green gables farmhouse on PEI is a literary tourist stop, visited by scores of loyal readers from all over the globe. The town of Cavendish, the model for Avonlea, plays up its legacy. Nearby is a national park dedicated to Montgomery's works.

I didn't know any of this until I saw the staged reading and conducted a Google investigation of "Anne of Green Gables." Amazing story, really. We writers secretly yearn for our legacy to outlive us. I don't have much of a legacy. I visit those old homesteads and birthplaces of those who do. The best example I can think of is Nebraska's Willa Cather and her town of Red Cloud. The entire town is dedicated to Cather and her books and stories.A wonderful places to spend a warm spring day.

Living writers are learning how to enhance their local brand. Buffalo's Longmire Days celebrates the mystery novels and the TV series spawned by Craig Johnson's fiction. Carbon County celebrates  the fictional creations of native son C.J. Box. This is a trend that will only get bigger as the "local" craze grows. If you're a locavore, you should be devouring the creations of local writers, artists and performers.

Guest blogger: "Three cups of tea" and girls' education are keys to Greg Mortenson's mission

Guest blogger this week is Linda Coatney, Cheyenne poet/essayist and fine ukelele player and singer. She reports on Greg Mortenson's March 29 presentation in Cheyenne. 

Greg Mortenson has humanitarian marrow in his bones.

As an adolescent, Mortenson lived in Africa with his Lutheran missionary parents and his then three-year-old sister as his father set up the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi, Tanzania, which was opened in 1971. His father announced that, in ten years, the facility would be staffed by the citizens of Tanzania. A month later he was fired for having the audacity to think that Tanzanians could run their own hospital.

So Mortenson, who spoke in Cheyenne Tuesday night, is familiar with failure. The title of the first chapter in his book Three Cups of Tea is "Failure." It is the beginning of his prophetic journey in building girls schools, first in Pakistan, and then in Afghanistan. At 23, Greg's sister Christa died from a massive epileptic seizure on the morning she was to go on her dream trip to Deyersville, Iowa, where the movie Field of Dreams had been filmed. She was inspired by the film and watched again and again.

Mortenson decided that he would climb Kilimanjaro in Christa's honor. He brought her necklace with him and he planned to leave it as an offering at the top of the mountain to "whatever deity inhabited the upper atmosphere" (From Three Cups of Tea, pg. 9). He had summited "The Savage Peak" at eleven years of age, and had much climbing experience at other locations. Nothing to it to doing it again, he thought.

He ended up spending 78 days on the mountain, but never made it to the top. When he finally got down, a sick and exhausted Mortenson ended up in the village of Korphe, where the first school was built.

At the Cheyenne presentation, we watched a short film about the first school built in Afghanistan. On Mortenson's first visit to Afghanistan, he discovered classrooms of boys in the metal storage containers used by the Russians during their invasion and occupation of the country. He also saw that the girls had no place to hold class except outside on a hillside. It was here that he met Gomajin, a young boy who herded his goats while watching the progress of the school. He was anxious for its completion so that he could attend. But he stepped on a land mine and died from his wounds. In Gomajin's memory, his father learned how to remove land mines. There is a monument to Gomajin near the school. From the first board for framing, the villagers wanted a strong school, one that could withstand bombs.

The term “three cups of tea” means that with the first cup, you are a stranger, second cup a friend, and by the time you are drinking a third cup, you are family. But this is not a linear progression, 1-2-3, boom, you're in. In every village, there is an unspoken progression of bringing one into the social circle. It may take many cups of tea, not formally ceremonial, but an important indicator of acceptance and trust. Greg has taken many cups of tea in his 18 years in the field, and has been able to bring schools to villages where one would not think they would survive, let alone thrive.

Why girls schools? Educating girls has many positive rewards for the community. Women bring life and nurture it after it is here. Statistics show that when girls are educated, the birth rate drops, the infant mortality rate drops, the quality of life improves, and women go back and serve the community from a more informed place. It is a powerful thing when a woman can read the news. Isolation breeds fear. It becomes a vicious circle of fear and ignorance breeding ignorance and fear. Education is the only way to civility.

Mortenson, who lives with his family in Montana when not traveling, mentioned more statistics. Since 2007, more than 3,000 girls schools have been destroyed or shut down by extremist groups. There is a proverb that says, "The ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr." In 2000, there were only 800,000 students, mostly boys age 5-15. In 2011, the count was up to 8.3 million children, with 2.8 million of those girls.

In talking with the elders of these villages, Greg has been told that they don’t need firepower, they need brain power; that they want to be part of the decision-making process; that they want education; that if they don’t like someone, they will take care of them. Afghanistan is also sitting on a mining boom, and the rest of the world is waiting to exploit 

The subtitle on Three Cups of Teas is “One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time.” This was not the first choice of the publisher, who wanted to say something about one man's mission to fight terrorism. But Mortenson is adamant that he is doing this to promote peace. The book didn't sell with the publisher's subtitle, but Greg was able to get the publisher to agree that the subtitle would be changed if the book didn't at first do well. After the subtitle was changed, the book became a best-seller.

Mortenson also talked about the poverty in this country and how we must be willing to touch, hear, and be poverty to realize any formative changes to the situation. His Pennies for Peace program does this, and suggests the grass roots effort in towns across America of collecting pennies and getting the money to our most impoverished schools. This was his first fund-raising program, but it only began when he was asked to speak at a school about how to get the school built in Korphe. Up to then, he had typed hundreds of letters asking for donations, and only received one check back, from TV commentator Tom Brokaw. A young boy brought his pennies to Greg, and that is how Pennies for Peace began.

Our military mission in Afghanistan now includes soldiers who work at laying some groundwork for the beginning of a school in villages. Greg believes the most successful mission begins with empowering the members of the village. They must dedicate the land for the school, provide the labor to build, and get the materials to where they need to be. With this kind of investment, the village is not so willing to let the school be closed. When the elders of a village in Afghanistan played on the playground of a school, they told Greg they wanted a school in their village, a place where extremists had a strong hold, but only if it had a playground also. They told him that as children, they never had a chance to play, all they were taught was to fight.

Around the world, children are bought and sold into slavery, and at the youngest of ages, are taught to kill. Soccer balls are made by children in Pakistan. China and India have huge child labor forces. Children are mistreated, poorly fed, work fourteen-hour days, and fear abduction and/or molestation at night. Many just disappear. They are certainly not allowed to go to school, but many want to.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a speech in which he tried to emphasize what it will take to make headway against the extremist faction in this part of the world. The only hope to supplant the extremist movement is through education, and understanding a culture in which we are too quick to judge as not in the least understandable. He says that hearts and minds cannot be captured by force. Maybe he remembers when Rep. Charlie Wilson was jeered out of Congress when he asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for $1.5 million to be put into education in war-torn Afghanistan, after the Russians had been ousted by Wilson’s bringing stinger missiles to the Afghan people.

Mortenson can just guess what the world might look like today if education had been the goal back then.

 As one village elder told Greg, the more bombs you drop, the harder the earth becomes. 

So Mortenson continues his work against the ill winds of prejudice and ignorance.

After his Cheyenne speech, he received a standing ovation from the 5,000-some attendees.

--Linda Coatney, Cheyenne

Many local events lead up to March 29 talk in Cheyenne by activist and author Greg Mortenson

I try to spend some of that time I once devoted to Sunday morning mass to the contemplation of nature, spirituality and even organized religion.

While reading this morning’s Cheyenne paper, I saw an ad promoting the appearance of activist, educator and author Greg Mortenson. He wrote the acclaimed bestseller, “Three Cups of Tea,” about his experiences promoting primary education in Afghanistan. He will speak on Tuesday, March 29, 7-8:30 p.m., at the Taco John’s Event Center in Cheyenne. Tickets are $5 for students and $15 for the general public.

Presented by these Cheyenne Community Partners: Laramie County Community College, LCCC Foundation’s Gerald and Jessie Chambers Speakers Series, Rotary International, Laramie County Library System and Foundation, Laramie County School District #1.

Great cooperation on this project by all levels of the public education system. That includes the library. Kudos to Rotary International. I admire their good work. So many selfless and community-minded organizations out there. The Lions work on behalf of better vision, the Shriners sponsor childhood learning disability clinics, the Kiwanis Club seems to do all the good things a community needs, such as the amazing free pancake breakfasts during Cheyenne Frontier Days. I find it compelling that a bunch of people can gather together to perform good works. Such a contentious age we live in, yet altruism continues. We must crave it.

A few words about Mortenson from the LCCC Foundation web site:

Greg Mortenson, co-author of the New York Times bestseller, "Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time," will share insightful commentary and stunning photography to educate and promote awareness of the importance of primary education, literacy and cross-cultural understanding about the remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson has dedicated his life to bringing education where few education opportunities existed before. In 1996, he co-founded the Central Asia Institute with his wife, Tara Bishop, and since then has managed to construct 145 schools in the Middle East and bring educational opportunities to more than 64,000 students, including 52,000 girls. Mortenson’s extraordinary journey has had many hardships, but recently it also has brought international appreciation. In 2009, he was awarded the "Star of Pakistan" and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2008 and 2009. FMI: 307.433.0024.

A number of events this month lead up to the March 29 event. Our family has been collecting pennies for Pennies for Peace. The library has focused many of its events around the concepts of altruism. Here’s one:

TEENS MAKE A DIFFERENCE, March 16, 6 p.m.: Join us for an evening with Judge Ronn Jeffrey as we explore ways you can impact your community in a positive way. Teens will have a chance to win a ticket to hear Greg Mortenson speak at the Taco John’s Event Center on March 29, 7 p.m. Don’t forget to bring your Pennies for Peace! (Grades 7-12 & parents, Cottonwood Room, 1st floor).

The library also will host a tea party on St. Patrick’s Day, celebrating tea-drinking cultures such as Ireland, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Very innovative. ON St. Patrick’s Day, many of us forget that the Irish also drink tea.  

LCCC has also planned a number of related events. This coming week is spring break on campus. But on Wednesday, March 23, these are scheduled:


Ethnic food tasting: 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., Center for Conferences & Institutes, Room 129/130. Food tasting limited to LCCC students and employees. Roundtable discussion: “Women and Islam in a Central Asian Context” with Dr. Marianne Kamp, Dr. Mohammed Salih and Arshi Nisley. 1-3 p.m., Center for Conferences & Institutes, Room 129/130.

See other events celebrating the work of Greg Mortenson

"Three Cups of Tea" author Greg Mortenson to speak in Cheyenne March 29

From a post on Facebook (cross-posted from wyomingarts blog):

Two-time Nobel Prize nominee Greg Mortenson will share insightful commentary and stunning photography to educate and promote awareness of the importance of primary education, literacy and cross-cultural understanding about the remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

He will speak at the Taco John’s Events Center in Cheyenne on Tuesday, March 29, 7-10 p.m. Limited amount of tickets go on sale on Friday, Jan. 7. Tickets: $5 Students (K-College)/$15 General Public. Contact the Taco Johns Events Center at (307) 433-0025 or on-line at www.cheyennecity.org

Greg Mortenson promotes peace through education. He is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute www.ikat.org, founder of Pennies For Peace www.penniesforpeace.org, and co-author of New York Times bestseller "Three Cups of Tea" which has sold over 4 million copies, been published in 47 countries, and a New York Times bestseller since its 2007 release, and Time Magazine Asia Book of The Year.Mortenson’s new book, "Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books Not Bombs, In Afghanistan and Pakistan," was released by Viking on December 1, 2009.

As of 2010, Mortenson has established over 145 schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 64,000 children, including 52,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before.

Laramie County Partners are bringing Greg Mortenson to Cheyenne for a series of activities, including talking to school children and a public event in the evening on March 29. The partners include: Laramie County Community College Foundation, Laramie County Community College, Cheyenne Rotary, Laramie County Library, Laramie County Library Foundation and Laramie County School District No. 1.

http://www.facebook.com/LaramieCountyPartnersPresentGregMortenson

Military seeks out new advice for Afghan quandary

Greg Mortenson, the Bozeman, Mont., mountain climber turned activist turned author, is in the news for his unique approach to winning the war in Afghanistan.

NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/world/asia/18tea.html?src=me&ref=homepage