friends of the library

last year, the ’skis read the book three cups of tea by greg mortenson.  ’twas a nice book.  a book about hope and peace.

but, as you may notice, the ’skis don’t really read books about hope and peace.  we read books about terrorism and mountains.   thankfully, the book also contained its fair share of tales of islamic radicals nestled amongst the 7000m peaks of the karakoram range in pakistan and afghanistan. 

the book told the story of how greg mortenson, after a failed attempt to scale k2 stumbled into a pakistani village and discovered a need to educate the youth of the village.   upon returning to the states, mortenson founds a non-profit organization dedicated to building schools in afghanistan and pakistan.   as you can imagine, a western man building schools in poverty striken communities in fundamental islamic cultures has many great stories to tell.   hence, three cups of a tea was a really great read.

 we were inspired by his book and noticed on his website that he was coming to speak near us.   we went to his talk tonight at the belmont high school. 

belmont is a pretty affluent neighborhood so you can imagine the type of audience that would come out to a hear an author talk about how to “spread peace through education.”   the phrase “liberal elite” definitely came to mind as i scanned the crowd.  

anyway, a relatively good talk.  mortenson has great stories to tell and it was fun to listen.  even though we had to block out chorus of ”yes we can“ everytime mortenson said the word “hope.”