Archive - July 2013

1
The Peace Corps Earns a B-, Two Cs, and a D from First Response
2
FRA Releases First Report Card Assessing Peace Corps' Implementation of Kate Puzey Act
3
E-Books VS. P-Book
4
Remembering the Peace Corps Volunteer Magazine?
5
When Peace Corps Staff Lived Like PCVs
6
Shriver Stories: Sarge at Georgetown University Talks About Debra Marcus
7
The Peace Corps' First Photographer: Rowland Scherman Special Screening At Washington D.C. Newseum
8
Norm Rush (CD Botswana 1978-83) New Novel Subtle Bodies Coming In September
9
Susan Kramer O'Neill's (Venezuela 1973-74) Calling New Delhi for Free: and other ephemeral truths of the 21st century
10
PIRATING PEACE CORPS BOOKS
11
First Class of Peace Corps Global Health Service Partnership Volunteers Sworn In at the White House
12
Congressman John Garamendi (Ethiopia 1966-68) Speaking Up For The Peace Corps
13
Obama Selects Nominee For Top Peace Corps Job
14
Shriver Stories: The Ambassador Will Vouch For Me
15
Hessler (China 1996-98) and Packer (Togo 1982-84) In Current New Yorker

The Peace Corps Earns a B-, Two Cs, and a D from First Response

In November 2011, Congress enacted the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act to ensure that volunteers serving abroad can access the care, support, and resources they need to prevent, respond to, or recover from a sexual assault.  Since the passage of the law, First Response Action has closely monitored Peace Corps’ implementation efforts to make sure it is creating a volunteer-centered program as envisioned by the law.  Relying on information provided by the Peace Corps and reports issued by federal agencies, First Response Action presents its first “report card” assessing the agency’s work thus far. First Response Action applauds Peace Corps’ progress in a few key areas.  Indeed, most of the agency’s progress implementing the Act has occurred during Carrie Hessler-Radelet’s tenure as Acting Director since October 2012.  First Response Action also appreciates the agency’s cooperation in providing updates on its implementation efforts.  The reality remains, however, that the . . .

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FRA Releases First Report Card Assessing Peace Corps' Implementation of Kate Puzey Act

FRA Releases First Report Card Assessing Peace Corps’  Implementation of Kate Puzey Act Report Highlights Gaps, Calls on Peace Corps To Promptly and Fully Implement the Law, and Expresses Concerns With Peace Corps’ Outdated Sexual Assault Definitions and Lack of Robust Whistleblower Program July 31, 2013 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Casey Frazee (513-518-4936); Karestan Koenen (646-765-8992); Madhu Chugh (202-663-6529) WASHINGTON – First Response Action (FRA) released its first report card today assessing the Peace Corps’ progress in implementing the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act, the law passed by Congress in November 2011 to ensure that volunteers serving abroad have access to the care, support, and resources they need to recover from a sexual assault.  Assigning an overall grade of “C,” FRA found major gaps in Peace Corps’ compliance with the law.  According to Peace Corps’ own 2012 Annual Volunteer Survey Results, crimes of sexual assault committed against volunteers . . .

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E-Books VS. P-Book

The July 29, 2013 issue of The New Yorker has a nice piece on this topic. I think you might be able to see it on-line this wee. Some points in the article, which is on page 23 of the issue, are that a recent report from the Codex Group shows browsing in stores is still a far more common way of finding new books than either online search or social media. Also, Independent bookstores are now thriving, thanks in large part to their close ties to both publishers and customers. There is still the idea that books are  “technologically obsolete” and the book industry is heading down the path that the music industry took because between 2009 and 2011 e-books sales rose at triple-digit annual rates. However, last year, according to industry trade groups, e-book sales rose just forty-four percent. As the article points out, “This kind of deceleration . . .

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Remembering the Peace Corps Volunteer Magazine?

It started as a newsletter in November 1961. It was edited by three women: Betty Harris, Sally Bowles, and ET PCV Margery Michelmore who had famously put the Peace Corps on the front pages of every newspaper in the U.S. with her postcard written from the University College at Ibadan while she was still in training for Nigeria. The Volunteer newsletter quickly became a monthly that went to all PCVs, and as a magazine it was edited by Kellogg Smith for two years. Smith had come to the Peace Corps in September, 1962, after serving with the Democratic National Committee. He was for six years a copy editor with the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, and before that spent seven years on the desk of the Cleveland Press. He also co-authored two textbooks on English grammar, and was a graduate of Williams College. At the Peace Corps, in December of ’64 . . .

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When Peace Corps Staff Lived Like PCVs

The staff orientation instruction booklet for Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands, back in 1968 when the Peace Corps Training was done on St. Croix and St. Thomas, has an interesting piece of instruction for incoming training staff. One paragraph in the 9-page orientation pamphlet, which is mimeographed and stapled together, reads: LIVING ACCOMMODATIONS AT THE VITC The living accommodations at the VITC are not luxurious by any standards. Housing for married couples is not available unless specifically stated in writing by the Director of the VITC. Housing for single staff members is generally shared quarters. A single room provided with two beds, two chairs, one dresser, one standing wardrobe rack. Linen is distributed once weekly. Toilet and shower facilities are located in a separate building. There is no hot water at the St. Croix Camp and no flush toilets. The St. Thomas Camp is equipped with flush toilets, and in some . . .

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Shriver Stories: Sarge at Georgetown University Talks About Debra Marcus

[A couple weeks ago I posted what Jon Ebeling (Ethiopia 1962-64) had to say about Shriver visiting his town of Debra Marcus, and then seeing Shriver a few years later at the State Department in Washington. Here’s Shriver again talking about that visit to Debra Marcus, and quoting from a letter written by another PCV in that town, Dick Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64). Sargent Shriver gave the one hundred Sixty-fifth Commencement of Georgetown University in early June of 1964. He talked, of course, about the Peace Corps, telling the graduates and their families that he had been at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand and was awarded an honorary degree to honor the Peace Corps and the 265 Volunteers serving in Thailand. Three of those Volunteers, he said, graduated from Georgetown. Then he went onto talk about eight Volunteers who had trained at Georgetown for the Peace Corps in the summer of ’62.] . . .

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The Peace Corps' First Photographer: Rowland Scherman Special Screening At Washington D.C. Newseum

“Eye on the Sixties: The Iconic Photography of Rowland Scherman” Guests: Rowland Scherman and Edith Lee Payne Date: Sunday, August 25, 2013 at 2:30 PM Location: Documentary Theater, Washington, D.C. Newseum Note: A Q&A with Scherman and Payne will follow the program. The Newseum presents a special screening of the new documentary “Eye on the Sixties: The Iconic Photography of Rowland Scherman.” The film is an intimate portrait of Scherman and documents his work during the 1960s, one of the country’s most transformational eras. Among his many assignments, Scherman was the primary photographer of the 1963 March on Washington, which he shot for the United States Information Agency. The Newseum screening takes place just three days before the 50th anniversary of the march. One of Scherman’s most iconic photographs from the march is of 11-year-old Edith Lee Payne. Payne will be part of a panel discussion following the film to . . .

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Norm Rush (CD Botswana 1978-83) New Novel Subtle Bodies Coming In September

The book jacket copy on Subtle Bodies reads: In his long-awaited new novel, Norman Rush, author of three immensely praised books set in Africa, including the best-selling classic and National Book Award-winner Mating, returns home, giving us a sophisticated, often comical, romp through the particular joys and tribulations of marriage, and the dilemmas of friendship, as a group of college friends reunites in upstate New York twenty-some years after graduation. When Douglas, the ringleader of a clique of self-styled wits of “superior sensibility” dies suddenly, his four remaining friends are summoned to his luxe estate high in the Catskills to memorialize his life and mourn his passing. Responding to an obscure sense of emergency in the call, Ned, our hero, flies in from San Francisco (where he is the main organizer of a march against the impending Iraq war), pursued instantly by his furious wife, Nina: they’re at a critical point in . . .

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Susan Kramer O'Neill's (Venezuela 1973-74) Calling New Delhi for Free: and other ephemeral truths of the 21st century

Susan O’Neill is the author of Don’t Mean Nothing (Ballantine 2001; UMass Press 2004; Serving House Books 2010), a collection of short stories based loosely on her hitch as an Army Nurse in Viet Nam. She has edited Vestal Review , an ezine/print literary journal for flash fiction, since it began, literally at the turn of the century. Her stories and essays have appeared on line and in print, in commercial and literary magazines, professional journals, Spoken Word zines and, in the Old Days, in real newsprint. She has worked as a reporter, a freelance writer, an RN, a storyteller, an envelope-stuffer, and a wedding singer. Susan’s more-or-less monthly essays, under the heading Off the Matrix, can be found on this site at PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org/off-the-matrix, and she wastes a shameful amount of time on Facebook and Twitter (@oneill_susan). Susan’s new book — Calling New Dehli for Free (and other ephemeral truths . . .

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PIRATING PEACE CORPS BOOKS

Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) sent in the following note on what is happening with Peace Corps books: File sharing has been in the news for many years, usually about pirated movies and music. The result was a new governmental investigative team called the Internet Crime Claim Center (IC3) and a formatted complaint form to warn computer pirates to cease and desist (see DMCA Notice). Books can also be shared. If you have a copyrighted book and wish to give it away, file sharing might be a valuable tool. However, if you sell your book, you might unexpectedly find others giving it away. Recently three of five of my Peace Corps books were offered for free downloads without my permission. The site had no listed address or name of a contact person. According to a web search, the host was a company worth more than four million dollars, without an . . .

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First Class of Peace Corps Global Health Service Partnership Volunteers Sworn In at the White House

Volunteers prepare to leave for one-year assignments working as medical or nursing educators in Tanzania, Malawi and Uganda WASHINGTON, D.C. July 18, 2013 – Thirty U.S. doctors and nurses from across the country were sworn in at the White House today as the first class of Peace Corps Global Health Service Partnership volunteers. The new volunteers will leave this weekend for one-year assignments as medical or nursing educators in Tanzania, Malawi and Uganda, where they will work alongside local faculty to train the next generation of healthcare professionals. “These volunteers will soon depart for a ground-breaking adventure – an opportunity to make a real difference in communities abroad while enhancing their own skills,” Peace Corps Deputy Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet said. “The Global Health Service Partnership is an exciting continuation of the Peace Corps’ commitment to global health.” The Global Health Service Partnership – a collaboration of the Peace Corps, the . . .

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Obama Selects Nominee For Top Peace Corps Job

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has nominated the deputy director of the Peace Corps to be the agency’s director. The White House on Thursday announced the nomination of Carolyn Hessler Radelet to the top Peace Corps post. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Western Samoa in the early 1980s and held various positions with a public health management firm, John Snow Inc., before becoming the agency’s deputy director in 2010.

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Shriver Stories: The Ambassador Will Vouch For Me

Charlene Duline (Peru 1962-64) had just moved to Paris in 1969 and Christmas was approaching when she read in the newspapers about a Christmas Eve Mass that the new Ambassador was having in the ancient Sainte Chappelle Church. Well, why don’t I let Charlene tell her story of meeting up with Sarge once again, this time in Paris. The Ambassador Will Vouch For Me It was 1969 and Christmas was approaching. I was settling into life in Paris, France after moving there two months previously. I saw an article in the newspaper about a Christmas Eve Mass Sargent Shriver, U.S. Ambassador to France, was having in the tiny, ancient Sainte Chappelle church and inviting diplomats, friends and family. It was going to be an intimate and elegant affair, and I decided that I would like to attend. A friend who was a volunteer in Morocco was coming to spend Christmas . . .

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Hessler (China 1996-98) and Packer (Togo 1982-84) In Current New Yorker

Staff writer for The New Yorker George Packer (Togo 1982-84) who in May published The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, which was reviewed recently on the site, has a comment on page 21 of the July 22, 2013, issue. Packer writes about the double standards of American foreign aid in the Middle East, given what is happening in Egypt. Meanwhile 0n the streets of Cairo is our own Peter Hessler (China 1996-98). Peter, who is also a staff writer for The New Yorker, also has a new book out this spring:  Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West. Peter’s Letter From Cairo in on page 26 of the current issue and is entitled, “The Showdown: winners and losers in Egypt’s ongoing revolution.” Peter and his family live now in Cairo, only blocks from Tahrir Square, and his view of the military ‘coup’ is an eye-witness account from . . .

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