It's Still Not Easy Being Green

摘要

Jeannette arsenault runs an "Anne of Green Gables" souvenir shop with enough knickknacks to make eBay jealous. She sells "Anne of Green Gables" potato chips, strawberry jam and raspberry cordials, along with more than a few $300 ceramic figures (though the $50,000 Anne concrete statue standing guard outside the shop on Canada's Prince Edward Island isn't for sale). "It's amazing how Anne has taken on a life of her own," Arsenault says. "Yesterday a man was in here and wanted to know how long she had lived." That's not a hard mistake to make, considering the store wall plastered with hundreds of photographs of Anne Shirley impersonators, most of them preteen girls and at least one cross-dressing 94-year-old man. if you stand around too long, Arsenault will get you, too. When a reporter came in to ask about Canada's most famous literary heroine, Arsenault rushed to a closet that holds Anne dresses in 20 sizes and dumped it on his (OK, my) shoulders, plopped a hat with two red braids on my head and made me pose for a photo. I could hear the girls giggling all the way over in the doll aisle.