Today one of my colleagues sent me a link to this story: "Is Three Cups of Tea writer Greg Mortenson a fraud?"
I rolled my eyes before I even read it, assuming it would be some ridiculous media witch hunt (and, in fact, some people are calling it that). I certainly didn't think it would be anything to take remotely seriously. But then I read the article, and it troubled me. So I looked up some more articles -- they're hitting the news like crazy today -- and read those. And most of them were equally troubling. Here is another one. (I do think the difference between the stories published in my hometown -- where Mortenson currently resides -- and the stories published pretty much everywhere else are interesting. I wonder if that will change at all as this story develops.)
I read Three Cups of Tea back in 2007, and I loved it. At least, I loved the ideas, and Greg Mortenson became one of my personal heroes. (I have to admit right now that the writing was only okay, if that. Which should tell you right there that I feel pretty strongly about the story, about the work itself, because -- snob that I am -- I can have a hard time looking past clunky writing and overwrought metaphors, and Three Cups of Tea is heavy on both). I think it is (was? is? I don't know right now) an extremely important book. I championed that book all over the place. A few months after I read it, my friend Kyanne and I heard Mortenson speak at Town Hall in Seattle. We met him afterwards, and when we told him we were teachers, he immediately hooked us up with 120 free hardcover copies of his book for our school. They were delivered within the week.
I did not find him to be a particularly charismatic person. He's not a natural public speaker. (He makes no secret of this; he really played up the whole "I hate wasting all my time at events like this, I'd rather be out doing all this important work, but I have to promote all my very important work so I can continue to do it" aspect of his personality.) I've read several accounts by people who find him "difficult" to work with, and frankly, he and David Oliver Relin -- who actually wrote Three Cups of Tea -- have never really seemed to like each other that much. I'm not sure any of these things are faults; they're simply my impressions, based on meeting him one time and based on things I've read, so take them with a grain of salt. But also, keep in mind that until today, I was still firmly inspired by this man.
And look, I'm not waving a pitchfork here. Many of the responses to his alleged deceit have been pretty vitriolic (although to be fair, it seems that most people who comment on stories online are working out some of their own unresolved issues. Sheesh. There's a reason I try to avoid reading comments). I'm not boiling over with righteous indignation just yet because I just don't know enough, and I'm waiting for more to be revealed; for now, I've landed somewhere between unsettled and disheartened. I haven't paid too much attention to the "inconsistencies" in some of the stories, because truth in memoir, in story, is not always the same as fact. If it is, I'm in a lot of hot water with this blog, because my husband would pick through it and be all, "THAT IS NOT EXACTLY WHAT I SAID." However, I think it is totally reasonable to be troubled by the implications of some of the accusations.
When I read that first article, after I'd let it sink in for a bit, I thought about one of the novels I deeply loved when I was about thirteen: A House Like a Lotus, by Madeleine L'Engle. One of the things I remember as though I read it yesterday is the idea that when you put someone on a pedestal, you have to be careful to get out of the way when their clay feet come crashing down. I think that I was far more likely to do this when I was younger, and I'm sure I experienced the pain of not getting out of the way more than once. I'm not thirteen anymore, but a part of me still feels that sense of -- dare I say it? -- betrayal. It's absolutely silly for me to say I trusted Greg Mortenson, because I don't know him. Meeting him at a public event, reading his work, and sharing his hometown make for interesting anecdotes, but it's arrogant to claim that any of those things mean I can really say anything about his character. So maybe I shouldn't feel so disillusioned.
And maybe, as more of the story develops, I won't have reason to be. For now, I can say this: I still believe that the work he has done, or at least the work he began, is extremely important. I believe he has done real good in the world. Even Jon Krakauer -- once a fervent supporter himself (and, interestingly enough, no stranger to criticism of this sort) -- concedes that point. So it really is a shame that this -- whatever this turns out to be -- will undoubtedly cast a pall upon his efforts. Because I know it's going to be difficult for me to recommend his books with such wholehearted enthusiasm anymore, and I'd certainly think twice before sending any money to the Central Asia Institute.
Do intentions matter more than ethics? (There's a loaded question, eh?)
Monday, April 18, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Where I've been
Earlier this evening, I watched with great joy as my son shoved handfuls of ravioli and broccoli into his mouth and gnawed contentedly on a crust of ciabatta bread. Later, I slipped off his shirt and pants before bed and grinned as he took off crawling down the hallway, cackling at his clever escape from pajamas.
It was a perfectly ordinary evening, really, and it's not unusual for me to take great joy in watching my children just be themselves. We're pretty playful people, and we generally have fun at dinner and bedtime. But tonight I am particularly aware of -- and grateful for -- each giggle, each grin, each bite of food taken with its usual gusto. Just one week ago, Isaac was so sick he didn't want to so much as sit up by himself. He was on his seventh straight day of a 102-degree fever, he had eaten virtually no solid food for a week, and I was growing increasingly frantic.
He had seemed fine, if perhaps a bit touchy, the previous Monday morning. I wrote the touchiness off as teething, since he's working on some molars, and we all went on our merry ways as usual. I was halfway through teaching my second class when I received the call informing me that he was running a high fever and had suddenly become lethargic and shaky. His hands were freezing, his skin was mottled, and he was trembling. I spent my lunch break scrambling to find coverage for my last class of the day so I could go collect my sick little son, and then I broke my "Don't ever cry at school" rule. I mean, we had just battled an exhausting round of colds and ear infections, and I was looking forward to, oh, a month or so in which we didn't have to pay a visit to his pediatrician.
If only it had been another cold or ear infection, though. I never thought I'd find myself wishing so hard for such a thing. On Monday, I thought another ear infection would send me over the edge; by Friday, I was desperate for such a simple answer. Because after five days of sheer misery -- fevers, my son's refusal to eat, his lethargy, his glassy eyes, his screams if I ever tried to set him down, the sleepless nights (including one that found me standing blearily in the shower at 3 a.m. after Isaac threw up all over me), his bouts of trembling and slightly purple lips whenever his ibuprofen wore off -- we were no closer to knowing what was wrong than we had been on Monday. His ears were clear. I worried about pneumonia at that point, having read a few too many stories about children who sounded clear in the doctor's office but wound up with fluid-filled lungs during a chest x-ray. I worried about far more insidious things as well, thanks to the internet. ("Stay away from Google," my friend Becca said. "Do you know how many times I've diagnosed myself with spinal meningitis?") On Friday, our doctor said that if he hadn't shown significant improvement throughout the weekend, we should take him to the off-hours clinic in Tacoma. By Saturday afternoon, I let go of my desperate hope that he would, miraculously, get over this on his own. On Sunday, we made an appointment to take our very sick little boy to the doctor for the third time in a week. Kyanne -- who has saved our lives and our sanity more times than I can count -- volunteered to stay with Suzannah (which was so helpful; Suzannah is usually pretty easy to have along, but it would have been long and boring and perhaps stressful for her), and Matt and I bundled our miserable boy into the car for the ride to Tacoma.
The atmosphere in those off-hours clinics is so different from that of an ordinary pediatrician's office on a weekday. No one is there unless they really need to be; it's for all of the cases that are, perhaps, too serious to wait for regular hours. The usual bustle of the receptionists' desk is quiet, because only one person is working. The parents who sit in the waiting area look exhausted, pinched, worried. The children are subdued; no one is reading books or playing. I sat with my son on my lap, and he went limp against my shoulder. I rocked him and kissed him and thought about how much I loved holding him like that, and about how sweet it was; at the same time, it terrified me, because Isaac is a busy, boisterous fifteen-month-old who loves to give hugs and cuddle before bed but normally has no patience for that kind of snuggling in the middle of the afternoon.
I liked the on-call doctor a great deal, and as it turns out, he lives up the street from our regular pediatrician and they're good friends. He was reassuring, but not at all dismissive -- one of the reasons I love our doctor as well. After spending a good amount of time examining our son, he said, "My gut feeling is that this really is just a bad virus, but I sense that you might feel better if we run a couple of tests -- right, Mama?" And I teared up right there in the exam room, which I had been trying really hard not to do. He went on to say that he would run a flu test and check his oxygen, as well as order some blood work, but that he felt that we should hold off on more invasive procedures (checking for a bladder infection, which involves inserting a catheter -- painful! -- and chest x-rays, because he likes to be careful about exposing such young children to radiation unless he feels it's necessary).
Another doctor called later that evening to tell us that Isaac's white blood cell count was "elevated." It took me exactly three minutes on WebMD to determine that he definitely had leukemia. I put him to bed and cried.
Fortunately, our regular pediatrician called first thing the next morning after he looked over the results himself and said he'd like to do a urinalysis. So I took my son back to the doctor for the billionth time, held his little hands while two nurses inserted a catheter and he screamed and cried and shook (which, for me, was far more excruciating than actually giving birth to him), comforted him afterwards, and had a diagnosis within five minutes: Isaac had been suffering from a UTI/kidney infection. This time, my eyes filled with tears of relief -- not because I was particularly thrilled that he had such a potentially scary infection, but because knowing what it was meant we could actually fix it, and also, after convincing myself that he had leukemia or something, a kidney infection felt pretty handleable. Even after learning about worst-case scenarios in which some kind of anatomic abnormality could be the cause of it, I feel like it's something we can handle. (We'll be taking him in for an ultrasound to get a look things soon, and I'm actually feeling pretty relaxed about this.)
Twenty-four hours after starting antibiotics, Isaac was snatching food off my plate. On Wednesday, he ate his own dinner. On Thursday, he was playing happily on the floor and squealing. On Friday, he ate normally all day long and had a great evening at home with my parents while Matt and I went on an actual date in Seattle, by ourselves. Last night, he laughed and splashed enthusiastically in the bathtub. (His last bath was all trembling and sobbing, yet another sign that all was not well.) And tonight, I watched his fat little hands grabbing for more ravioli, laughed as he shot naked out of his room and made a beeline down the hall, and kissed his head as I put him to bed, letting the anxiety and fear of the last week drain out of me.
I try -- I really try -- to be as present as I can in my children's lives. I try to appreciate all of the sweet, perfectly ordinary moments we share every night. But the last few days have reminded me, again, how easy it is to take for granted the beautiful sound of a child's easy laughter or a night of worry-free rest. And I know that, because I am human, I'm not always as present or as grateful as I could be -- but tonight I'm holding it all close, all the beautiful ordinary blessings of this life we have, and it is all I want, and it is enough.
It was a perfectly ordinary evening, really, and it's not unusual for me to take great joy in watching my children just be themselves. We're pretty playful people, and we generally have fun at dinner and bedtime. But tonight I am particularly aware of -- and grateful for -- each giggle, each grin, each bite of food taken with its usual gusto. Just one week ago, Isaac was so sick he didn't want to so much as sit up by himself. He was on his seventh straight day of a 102-degree fever, he had eaten virtually no solid food for a week, and I was growing increasingly frantic.
He had seemed fine, if perhaps a bit touchy, the previous Monday morning. I wrote the touchiness off as teething, since he's working on some molars, and we all went on our merry ways as usual. I was halfway through teaching my second class when I received the call informing me that he was running a high fever and had suddenly become lethargic and shaky. His hands were freezing, his skin was mottled, and he was trembling. I spent my lunch break scrambling to find coverage for my last class of the day so I could go collect my sick little son, and then I broke my "Don't ever cry at school" rule. I mean, we had just battled an exhausting round of colds and ear infections, and I was looking forward to, oh, a month or so in which we didn't have to pay a visit to his pediatrician.
If only it had been another cold or ear infection, though. I never thought I'd find myself wishing so hard for such a thing. On Monday, I thought another ear infection would send me over the edge; by Friday, I was desperate for such a simple answer. Because after five days of sheer misery -- fevers, my son's refusal to eat, his lethargy, his glassy eyes, his screams if I ever tried to set him down, the sleepless nights (including one that found me standing blearily in the shower at 3 a.m. after Isaac threw up all over me), his bouts of trembling and slightly purple lips whenever his ibuprofen wore off -- we were no closer to knowing what was wrong than we had been on Monday. His ears were clear. I worried about pneumonia at that point, having read a few too many stories about children who sounded clear in the doctor's office but wound up with fluid-filled lungs during a chest x-ray. I worried about far more insidious things as well, thanks to the internet. ("Stay away from Google," my friend Becca said. "Do you know how many times I've diagnosed myself with spinal meningitis?") On Friday, our doctor said that if he hadn't shown significant improvement throughout the weekend, we should take him to the off-hours clinic in Tacoma. By Saturday afternoon, I let go of my desperate hope that he would, miraculously, get over this on his own. On Sunday, we made an appointment to take our very sick little boy to the doctor for the third time in a week. Kyanne -- who has saved our lives and our sanity more times than I can count -- volunteered to stay with Suzannah (which was so helpful; Suzannah is usually pretty easy to have along, but it would have been long and boring and perhaps stressful for her), and Matt and I bundled our miserable boy into the car for the ride to Tacoma.
The atmosphere in those off-hours clinics is so different from that of an ordinary pediatrician's office on a weekday. No one is there unless they really need to be; it's for all of the cases that are, perhaps, too serious to wait for regular hours. The usual bustle of the receptionists' desk is quiet, because only one person is working. The parents who sit in the waiting area look exhausted, pinched, worried. The children are subdued; no one is reading books or playing. I sat with my son on my lap, and he went limp against my shoulder. I rocked him and kissed him and thought about how much I loved holding him like that, and about how sweet it was; at the same time, it terrified me, because Isaac is a busy, boisterous fifteen-month-old who loves to give hugs and cuddle before bed but normally has no patience for that kind of snuggling in the middle of the afternoon.
I liked the on-call doctor a great deal, and as it turns out, he lives up the street from our regular pediatrician and they're good friends. He was reassuring, but not at all dismissive -- one of the reasons I love our doctor as well. After spending a good amount of time examining our son, he said, "My gut feeling is that this really is just a bad virus, but I sense that you might feel better if we run a couple of tests -- right, Mama?" And I teared up right there in the exam room, which I had been trying really hard not to do. He went on to say that he would run a flu test and check his oxygen, as well as order some blood work, but that he felt that we should hold off on more invasive procedures (checking for a bladder infection, which involves inserting a catheter -- painful! -- and chest x-rays, because he likes to be careful about exposing such young children to radiation unless he feels it's necessary).
Another doctor called later that evening to tell us that Isaac's white blood cell count was "elevated." It took me exactly three minutes on WebMD to determine that he definitely had leukemia. I put him to bed and cried.
Fortunately, our regular pediatrician called first thing the next morning after he looked over the results himself and said he'd like to do a urinalysis. So I took my son back to the doctor for the billionth time, held his little hands while two nurses inserted a catheter and he screamed and cried and shook (which, for me, was far more excruciating than actually giving birth to him), comforted him afterwards, and had a diagnosis within five minutes: Isaac had been suffering from a UTI/kidney infection. This time, my eyes filled with tears of relief -- not because I was particularly thrilled that he had such a potentially scary infection, but because knowing what it was meant we could actually fix it, and also, after convincing myself that he had leukemia or something, a kidney infection felt pretty handleable. Even after learning about worst-case scenarios in which some kind of anatomic abnormality could be the cause of it, I feel like it's something we can handle. (We'll be taking him in for an ultrasound to get a look things soon, and I'm actually feeling pretty relaxed about this.)
Twenty-four hours after starting antibiotics, Isaac was snatching food off my plate. On Wednesday, he ate his own dinner. On Thursday, he was playing happily on the floor and squealing. On Friday, he ate normally all day long and had a great evening at home with my parents while Matt and I went on an actual date in Seattle, by ourselves. Last night, he laughed and splashed enthusiastically in the bathtub. (His last bath was all trembling and sobbing, yet another sign that all was not well.) And tonight, I watched his fat little hands grabbing for more ravioli, laughed as he shot naked out of his room and made a beeline down the hall, and kissed his head as I put him to bed, letting the anxiety and fear of the last week drain out of me.
I try -- I really try -- to be as present as I can in my children's lives. I try to appreciate all of the sweet, perfectly ordinary moments we share every night. But the last few days have reminded me, again, how easy it is to take for granted the beautiful sound of a child's easy laughter or a night of worry-free rest. And I know that, because I am human, I'm not always as present or as grateful as I could be -- but tonight I'm holding it all close, all the beautiful ordinary blessings of this life we have, and it is all I want, and it is enough.
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