It was far below freezing as we four women trudged along looking for Macky Auditorium at the University of Colorado. Macky is said to look like an old castle.
We pingponged our eyes around the Boulder campus until we spotted two huge buildings. We dubbed them the Witches Castle and Hogwarts, then amused ourselves by singing the “March of the Winkies” from “The Wizard of Oz” and wondering which castle was Macky.
We rounded a corner.
“Oh, that castle’s Macky,” said Susan as hundreds of bundled people flooded the doors like beans poured through a funnel, filling a jar. Besides frigidity, the air was full of hurry-up- you’re-missing-something frenzy. We stopped our semi-frozen, Winkie soldier march and high-tailed it into the auditorium, quickly, like everyone else.
No, Barack wasn’t speaking. And, no, it wasn’t Mitt or Hillary or either of the Johns. It wasn’t a musical performance, or a felon ex-CEO making a fortune on his incarceration story. Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea — One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time,” was speaking.
When my friend told me, in early December, that we were going, I’d never heard of the book and thought it might be about dreadful ladies lunching or manners or middle age.
It’s not.
I went to the bookstore three times, but it wasn’t in stock. The third time, I pulled a copy from beneath the chin of a sales clerk carrying a stack of the just unwrapped volumes. His arms were half-empty by the time he arrived at the “best-seller” selves; I followed him and watched people politely snatch copies of the slim paperback from his dwindling pile.
Mortenson’s book, written with David Oliver Relin, has been on The New York Times’ best-sellers list for 49 weeks. The book is now No. 2 in nonfiction paperback. Macky Auditorium, with a sold-out crowd of 2,000, was the biggest venue Mortenson had ever taken on. I suspect that’s about to change.
The Central Asia Institute, founded by Mortenson, builds schools for children in remote villages of Pakistan and Afghanistan. One school costs less than a new VW Beetle. He has, firmly and absolutely, no political or religious agenda. His only agenda is literacy.
Why literacy for little kids who have no shoes and live in mountains so high and remote that just traveling to them can be nearly impossible? Because of jihad.
Jihad can be defined as holy war, but that’s just part of the definition. It can also mean a spiritual quest, or a journey toward education, or a profession.
Under Islam, a young man must ask for the blessing of his mother to go on jihad. Guess what? When mamas are educated, their health and the health of their families improve. And, when mamas are educated, overwhelmingly, they say “NO!” when their sons ask for blessings to join the Taliban.
Of course they say “no.” Mortenson, along with many thousands of good Pakistani and Afghanistan people long ago figured that out. He is now trying to teach the rest of us.
When the book was accepted for publication, the higher-ups planned to add the subtitle “One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations . . . One School at a Time.” Mortenson told them he didn’t want the T word in his title, that his book was not about terrorism, and that he was tired of the emphasis, in our country, on fear.
They said the book wouldn’t sell without the T word. So, he made a deal: If the book went to paperback, it would be reprinted with the subtitle he wanted, “One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time.” The publisher agreed.
The T word has long since been dropped.
There is an answer to this mess we’re in. And, since almost none of our country’s leaders have asked us, individually, to do a whole hoot of anything constructive in the last decade, perhaps we could start asking each other.
Read this book. You’ll remember God is nondenominational. You’ll remember small things change the world. You’ll remember we’re all the same. And, you’ll be filled with something you’re missing: big hope.
For more information about Mortenson’s work visit or E-mail Fort Collins poet and writer Natalie Costanza-Chavez at grace-notes@comcast.net. Read more of her essays at .
