January 3, 2014 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Thelma Firestone’s Daughter by William Siegel (Ethiopia 1962-64)

Jan 03 2014

[For all of us of a certain age, seeing the new film Inside Llewyn Davis brings us back to those years and the romance of living in New York City and on the edge of society as we tried to make our way as writers, artists, and folksingers. Within the ranks of the Peace Corps, we have a few very successful professional writers and a few really good guitar players, and one of them, Will Siegel, not only played the guitar professionally, but he is also a successful writer and editor. Will Siegel went to Greenwich Village after his Peace Corps (Ethiopia 1962-64) tour, playing in and hung out at the clubs made famous by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and now dramatized in this new movie featuring a character named Llewyn Davis. In his time in the village, Will performed as “Will Street” at Gerde’s Folk City and The . . .

Review of Douglas Cruickshank (Uganda 2009-12) Somehow: Living on Uganda Time

Jan 03 2014

Somehow: Living on Uganda Time by Douglas Cruickshank (Uganda 2009-12) Verflectin Media, San Francisco http://douglascruickshank.com/ $60.00 400 pages 2013 Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) Douglas Cruickshank’s Somehow: Living on Uganda Time, is a big book, and its 400 pages of photos and text are heavy, amazingly so. Not as in ‘heavy going’, but as in profoundly engrossing. To both the author-photographer and his friends the Ugandans, it is heavy with special meanings; stimulating, fascinating, captivating and… You get the idea. When he joined the Peace Corps and went to Uganda Douglas Cruickshank was 56 and had recently downsized his life. He called it the “Great Shedding of Things”, having sold and given away most of his possessions and encumbrances – except his camera, a sense of adventure and his way of seeing and capturing the essence of life digitally. He entered Uganda as a stranger in a strange land, . . .

Archive - January 3, 2014