Three Cups of Tea

I heard about Greg Mortenson’s work in building Korphe school near the Braldu river in the Karakoram shortly before my 2001 Pakistan trip. When I unexpectedly encountered a brand new school in the village of Hushe I at once knew that this was a further achievement by Greg. Here girls as well as boys are being educated. The story of its construction, completed in 1998, is included in chapter 16 of Three Cups of Tea; One Man's Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time. This book, written by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, has been a New York Times best seller for an incredible 94 weeks.

I made contact with his organization, The Central Asia Institute (CAI), when I got back. In 2006, although I knew Greg would be incredibly busy, I wrote to ask if he would write a foreword to my book. To my astonishment he said yes—with enthusiasm. That was just before the paperback edition of Three Cups of Tea hit the world. I finally shook Greg by the hand this fall, but I had to stand in line for two hours to meet him and thank him for his support. Such is fame.

The Institute’s publication Journey of Hope arrived last week. It records the growth of the CAI and its success in working with communities to achieve their educational goals in the mountains of the Karakoram, Pamir and Hindu Kush. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, where so much is going wrong and the struggle for military control seems endless, this is one story that is going right. What a difference a small amount of money can make when the community is determined to succeed.

Today I received a Christmas card from Jim Koenigsfeld of Durango, CO. We shared a tent on the way to Everest in 2005. Greg visited Durango and Father Jim had the presence of mind to ask Greg to add his signature to mine in his copy of Himalayan Portfolios. Thanks Jim for the idea. If you, the reader, can track Greg down I am sure he will be delighted to sign your copy.

PS. The new CAI calander features schools being built in the Pamir mountains of Afghanistan.

Interview of the Month

My October exhibit at the The Picture Framer gallery in Cheshire prompted Tracey O'Shaughnessy to arrange for us to meet. Our exciting and rewarding conversation about Himalayan Portfolios lasted for almost two hours. Later there were numerous e-mail exchanges to clarify philosophical points. The result is the essay Portfolio / This Month in the December issue of the Connecticut Magazine (p 42). An equally professional and rewarding interview by Hank Hoffman in September led to an article in the series Artists Next Door in the October issue of The Arts Paper (Arts Council of Greater New Haven.) I am amazed how these skilled writers were able to turn a stack of notes into valuable presentations. The text of these articles, together with Lee Jacobus’ enthusiastic comments on my book on the Faith Middleton Book Show (Connecticut Public Radio, aired Oct 13), will be found on my web site.

Hello. Welcome to my Blog World

My advisory committee tells me that a blog should be spontaneous and open to unexpected comments from those who log on. I am sure they are right, but I have one slight difficulty, I am only really spontaneous above 10,000 ft. Below that elevation I am weighed down with a sense of responsibility and given to serious analytical statements; above I am given to wry comments and liable to break into dance. In this I resemble the yak. Just looking at a yak below 10,000 ft you may not know it is weighed down with responsibility, but other yaks can tell. Above 10,000 ft the spontaneity is obvious to all, provided you take into account the limited gestures that nature has given to the yak. But here goes. Even a philosophical yak can hope to fly.

Bound by Tradition and Religion:

Tibetan Tangkas
Exhibit: THE BENTON MUSEUM OF ART

UConn Storrs (Until Dec 19)

Some months ago when Himalyan Portfolios first emerged Karen Sommer and Tom Bruhn, at the Benton, invited me to contribute to their planned exhibit. They needed a landscape context for the Tibetan art to be displayed and for the sand mandala to be constructed by the monks of the Namgyal Monastery. The mandala has been a great attraction at the museum in the past. The completed design will be swept away in a closing ceremony on December 7.

We selected two pairs of photographs. Each pair joined a Nepalese monastery to its mountain setting. The first joined Braga Monastery with the Roc Noir, a massive glaciated promontory of the Annapurna Himmal. The second pair, taken in Inner Dolpo, joined Shey Monastery with a view of the arid landscape seen from the Se La looking towards Tibet (Himalayan Portfolios, pages 85, 89 and 58, 59.) Shey monastery was the 1973 destination of Peter Matthiessen, as recoded in his book The Snow Leopard. My visit was in 1993; the first year that access to Inner Dolpo had been granted for many years.

With my usual excess zeal for imparting information, I prepared a wall statement compressing the evolution of Himalayan Buddhism into just three pages. “No way can we display that,” said Tom. But then he came up with the idea of printing a fold-out flier. With a touch of great showmanship he used as the cover a spectacular image taken from one of the Tangkas: Palden Lahamo, “Glorious Goddess,” protector of the Geluk order (to which the Dalai Lama belongs), guardian of Lhasa. The image was a great hit with the school parties trailing through the museum to see the sand mandala.

Lecture: Once the pictures were chosen I had to fulfill my commitment to give a Sunday lecture on Landscape and Belief; A View Camera in the Himalayas. This was a chance to revisit some of the ideas I had developed in the essay in the second part of Himalayan Portfolios. I contrasted two narratives: that of the Western visitor who travels by choice and that of the people of the mountains who must survive isolation, aridity, earthquakes, landslides and the collapse of moraine lakes.

For the first I showed pictures taken in the Pakistan controlled Karakoram, the region of K2. I argued that the primary Western narrative is the Heroic Quest whose focus is a search for a core identity. There is an encounter with the Mountain Sublime that combines beauty, joy, terror, awe.

For the second I showed pictures of Dolpo in Nepal. Here the narrative centers on Buddhism. My photographs show tokens of the Absolute: carved mani stones, prayer flags, cairns decorated with tattered scarves, isolated monasteries and sacred mountains. The Buddhist and Bon monasteries focus on Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. But the dangers of the environment are entwined with idea of mountain gods and sprits, demons and fierce defenders. Many of the Tangkas on display that represent fierce defenders derive from the yogin-based tradition exemplified by Padma-sambahva (Lotus Born) a Tantric teacher and miracle worker who came to Tibet around 760 CE and founded the Old Sect (Nyng-ma-pa). In the mountains Buddhist devotion embraces the isolation as it concentrates on the Absolute.

Such a condensed presentation raised many issues. Do the concepts of the Mountain Sublime and the Absolute share enough to form a bridge between East and West? Can a non-Buddhist use the View Camera as a neutral instrument to understand the Buddhist culture in a more that superficial way? Can the View Camera help to reveal the concept of core identity to a Buddhist culture that believes in transcending identity? Are such journeys of the imagination possible?

History: My participation in the Benton exhibit is the completion of a challenge posed in 2001. As a result of Karen’s suggestion, I was invited to exhibit my Himalayan Photograph in the Jorgensen Gallery at UConn. I spent the year preparing the exhibit of some 70 black-and –white photographs, plus some in color— making larger or better prints and creating introductions and maps. The exhibit in 2002 coincided with an exhibit at the Benton: The Mystical Arts of Tibet. Later, my photographs, thanks to Toni Hulse and Tom Vendola, were whisked away to the Pfizer Headquarters in New London.

The Jorgensen show convinced Charles Fields, and eventually me, that a book was possible. I did not realize how far I might have to journey and how many books I would have to read and reread to reach that final goal. But without that initial invitation the book would never have happened. What have I learned along the way? Well for one thing, Yaks are very hard to photograph.

Nepalese Ambassador

Kenneth Hanson presents Himalayan Portfolios to

the Nepalese Ambassador Suresh Chalise

“…. in gratitude to the Nepalese guides who have done so much to make my visits to the Himalayas memorable, With all good wishes, Kenneth Hanson, November 08.”