Another Million Little Pieces?

BunsenBurner
Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:31:27 +0000

A local newspaper columnist used a harsher title for his article:

[Three Cups of Bull: Greg Mortenson and the value of truth | Seattle Times Newspaper](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/restlessnativeblog/2014814324_three_cups_of_bull_greg_mortenson_and_the_value_of_truth.html)



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Hornbein was an early chairman of the Central Asia Institute’s board. Krakauer now reports that his friend Hornbein’s 2002 resignation from the board was a last resort after failed attempts to rein in Mortenson’s questionable accounting for funds, among other things.

Another Seattle man literally helped create the charity. Mortenson’s first benefactor was the late Jean Hoerni, a wealthy, Swiss-born physicist who pioneered modern microchip technology in the Silicon Valley, and donated $1 million to the cause before he died in 1997.

These were good deeds by good people. Many, many have followed as the Central Asia Institute, by all accounts a wonderful idea, has grown.

All of which makes it more infuriating to read Krakauer’s assertion that Mortenson, at a time when he says he was developing a spiritual connection with the kindly villagers in Korphe, was likely chilling in a comfy Western motel in another town.

To Mortenson supporters, it’s all too easy to swat away at Krakauer like an irritating gnat and dismiss the entire matter by asking The Big Question: In light of the good that Mortenson has done, do these little details really matter?

Damn right they do.

Mortenson’s “nonfiction” tale, used to solicit tax-free millions from donors who include penny-saving small children, is repeated before sell-out crowds all across America as gospel.

The Korphe experience is the very heart of his story. It’s what makes Mortenson’s epiphany so fascinating, and made even typical skeptics such as myself want to believe it.

Korphe, you see, injects the element of fate into the plotline – as if some unseen hand guided this purposeless drifter, his spirit flagging, to that time and place, and made Mortenson its messenger moving forward. It also establishes Mortenson’s work as a repayment for unsolicited kindness supposedly shown first to him by others.

The truth, as it now appears, is that he did return and begin charity work in the region a year later, making his way to Korphe – after reneging on his promise to build a school in a village he actually had visited, Khane.

But without the Korphe selflessness, most of the magic in “Three Cups” goes poof.

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