CD Harris Wofford, PCV Barry Hillenbrand, Mrs & Mr. Norman Rockwell

Memory and history are tricky. So tricky that it’s amazing that history gets anything right, even a matter as seemingly uncomplicated as a minor moment in Peace Corps history. In April this year nearly 30 RPCVs from the Ethiopia II training group that served in Ethiopia and Eritrea from 1963-1965 met in Florida to catch up with what was happening Ethiopia — and with each other.  At one point someone recalled the visit that Norman Rockwell made to Ethiopia to do some sketches for a project he was preparing for Look magazine on President Kennedy’s legacy. “Right,” I blurted out, “Rockwell slept in my bed.”  As everyone laughed, I explained that when Rockwell came to Debre Marcos, the town where I was teaching along with seven other PCVs, we made plans to turn over some of our rooms to the Rockwells.  Debre Marcos, you’ll understand, was not renown for four star — or any star — hotels.  Norman himself got my room and bed. Or so I have told the tale, always greatly embellished, for years.

But John Schafer (Ethiopia 1963-65) says that he can’t recall where the Rockwells stayed that night. Schafer, who was my house mate for two years, had more reason than most to remember the visit. His family and the Rockwells were personal friends for many years back in Vermont, and Rockwell came to Debre Marcos, in part, to sketch Schafer in situ. Indeed John’s likeness is among those of several PCVs in the Rockwell Peace Corps picture spread that ultimately appeared in Look in 1966.

Both John and I searched our old letters and dairies to shed more light on the Rockwell visit, but with little success.

Indeed even the date of the visit is in doubt. Many Rockwell profiles and histories list his visit to Peace Corps Ethiopia, as well as India and Colombia, as taking place in in 1966, the year the Rockwell stories ran in Look. But clearly that is wrong because all of us in Ethiopia II left Ethiopia in 1965. Additionally a picture I have of the Rockwell visit to Debre Marcos shows Rockwell and his wife with Ethiopia country director Harris Wofford and myself (holding a bundle of Rockwell sketches). Wofford, who left Ethiopia in 1964, recently told me that he remembered the visit, but couldn’t recall where he — or Rockwell — spent the night.  Rockwell did some sketches of Marc Clausen (Ethiopia 1962-1964) in  Dessie, Ethiopia. A picture of Clausen  with an Ethiopia farmer in his field appears in the story. That was an odd anomaly since Clauson was an teacher, not an ag worker, but notes from Rockwell, now with the Rockwell museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, indicate that Rockwell was intrigued by what he called the “almost Biblical” quality of farming in Ethiopia.

What is, I believe, a copy of one of Rockwell’s Peace Corps pictures hangs in the outer office of the Peace Corps director in Washington. And those of us who remember Rockwell’s visit recall him as a generous, kind and very thoughtful person who cared very deeply about what Peace Corps was doing. In his quiet, unprepossessing way, he worked to memorialize what he considered one of JFK’s great legacies.   So it doesn’t really matter where he slept in Debre Marcos.

(But you know in all fairness and honesty, I do think that Norman Rockwell did sleep in my bed! (Maybe.)

Barry Hildenbrand (Ethiopia 1963-65)

How many PCVs in this photo can you name?

Both the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment survey and Conference Board’s Index of Leading Indicators rose in May, signaling that employment and growth may be stronger than forecast by most economists.

How can that be with 7.5 percent of the workforce looking for work and some 18 million that have either part time, or no work at all? The real answer is the U.S. economy is almost too complex to accurately measure, and economists have their biases when predicting growth. In fact, few understand what is called macroeconomics, which helps to predict how government polices affect growth.

For instance, Haver Analytics surveys monthly a group of leading economists, and found that the latest Blue Chip survey foresaw U.S. economic growth of 1.6 percent in Q1’13 following an anemic 1.4 percent rise during Q4′12, when Q1 GDP growth was actually 2.5 percent.

“There is, however, divergence as to the degree of further improvement,” wrote Haver Analytics in a major understatement. “By the end of 2013, the consensus foresees GDP growing at 2.7 percent rate with the top 10 forecasts at 3.6 percent and the bottom 10 at 1.8 percent. The same divergence holds true for next year’s expected growth. The consensus of a 3.0 percent advance in real GDP for Q4 2014 is derived from 3.8 percent at the top end and 2.2 percent at the bottom.”

The Blue Chip Indicators also forecast a 7.5 percent unemployment rate by the end of 2013, when it has already dropped to that level in May. The Congressional Budget Office also forecasts 2 percent growth this year, rising to 3.5 percent in 2014.

Graph: Calculated Risk

Consumer spirits are improving dramatically this month in what very well may be a reflection of improvement in the jobs market. The consumer sentiment index jumped to 83.7 for the mid-month reading vs 76.4 for the final April reading and vs April’s mid-month reading of 72.3. The Econoday consensus was looking for 78.0 with the high-end estimate at 82.5. The latest reading is near the recovery high set in November.

Boosted by strength in housing permits, the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators (LEI) surged 0.6 percent in April, double the rate of growth expected by the Econoday consensus and at the high-end of the Econoday consensus. The gain points to rising economic momentum six months out.

Also showing strength are financial measures, including credit activity, as well as jobless claims and the stock market. On the negative side are manufacturing measures, which reflect this sector’s ongoing bumpy ride, as well as consumer expectations. This latter factor, however, is very likely to turn positive in May judging by this morning’s big jump in the consumer sentiment report.

Graph: Haver Analytics

The bottom line is that conditions may be improving enough that consumers are willing to spend again. The household debt-service ratio - an estimate of the share of debt payments to disposable personal income - fell to 10.38 percent in Q4’12, reported the Federal Reserve.

That was the lowest since the series started in 1980. In comparison, the ratio, which takes into account outstanding mortgage and consumer debt, was 10.56 percent in the third quarter. It peaked in the third quarter of 2007, shortly before the U.S. economy fell into recession. This may give consumers, who power 70 percent of economic activity, enough confidence to spend again.

Harlan Green © 2013

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarlanGreen

The major new element is the sequestration that has reduced USA Federal spending.  This goes directly contrary to the deficit spending policy of the last four years.   However, in spite of the reduced federal spending the US economy continues to plod along on a path to a brighter future.  So who is to say we would not have done the same if we had not used deficit spending, maybe the system just automatically self corrects.

The fascinating event is our raging stock markets that are all hitting new highs.   Whatever has happened, the one percent is still doing much better than the middle class throughout the world.

As I have said before it is long past time to more closely examine the policies used until now since there is no clear demonstration that one is better than the other.   Meanwhile my bet on how the US economy will regain the heights it reached IN 2007 is paying off in spades.   The petroleum industry is booming with its all out use of fracking to extract major new energy resources.  And this industry that generates trillions of dollars in economic activity will lift all boats.   Think I’ll move to Minot.

Reviewed by Dennis Grubb (Colombia 1961-63)

“This was life. This is why he joined the Peace Corps .The could be danger ahead, but the possibility was what made it interesting …..Maybe I am no longer the kid I used to be. Maybe I am becoming a different person ….But what would the Peace Corps brass think about all this-if I they ever found out. No matter, he told himself. I am here to help Colombians; that’s what I am doing.”Colombian settings in books written by former Peace Corps Volunteers, or RPCVs as we are known are few and far between. Paul Mathes, an RPCV , Colombia 1964-66, self-published  ”To Know the Rainforest”,  is an action /adventure novel  incorporating  the three well-worn  Latin America and Colombia themes: poverty, land and putas. The novel  turns  this reviewer, a Colombia RPCV, back to his memorable  experience in Colombia 52 years ago. 

Meanwhile fast forward to The New Yorker, April 22, 2013, an article A State of Nature, Life, Death and Tourism in the Darien Gap, by Jenneie Erin Smith  describes the rainforest on the border between Colombia and Panama, suspiciously near the setting of Mathes novel.  Smith’s article describes the Darien Gap and, like the Mathes novel its inhabitants —the Embrea Indians, the colonizers fleeing from the poor barrios of Medellin, the prostitutes and the FARC.  Mathes is either a seer, or the rainforest story has been incubating as his novel for decades.

I’ll tell you what the Peace Corps brass would do in, 1964 or today, if they found out a PCV aligned himself with the paramilitaries or drug dealing human traffickers…The Peace Corps Director would send his ass home especially after receiving a call from the US Consul General having been tipped by the CIA station chief that an American oil company drilling in the rainforest met a “gringo” messing with their drilling plans.  Although sixties  volunteers were pretty much on their own, as the Peace Corps rule book was a work in progress, advising the People’s  Liberation Army and  cooperating with a known  notorious drug and human trafficking  smuggler  was certainly off limits.

The novel is  quick paced in the  first half, slows mid-way  for the remainder of the read; however, Mathes peppers his narrative with familiar, translated,  Spanish expressions, known only to Spanish speakers, in Italics such as “cacajuetes“  which means peanuts in Spanish. This  slow action/adventure  non page turner puts, Peterson, the Peace Corps Volunteer, midway through his two year service, into a situation not easy to believe, although the characterizations are believable, like the prostitutes  and drug smuggling chief Trujillo, the  rainforest  Embera Indians,  his  a poor urban dweller companions who are  colonizing the forest under the  government supported land reform program, known as INCORA and sponsored by JFK’s  Alliance for Progress.

The novel timeline  is  the period 1964-1966, the early years of Peace Corps in Colombia but two years after the first group of Volunteers, known as Colombia I, were sent to Colombia by JFK at the request of his friend  President Alberto Llamas Camargo. Lleras Camargo was the former President of the Organization of America States in Washington and was acquainted with the Massachusetts Senator and after Kennedy was when elected President, Lleras requested the first group of Volunteers be sent to Colombia. Mattes writes a about the early years of Colombia Peace Corps experiences characterized by little home office supervision, and JFK’s mandate “do what you can the world is watching, and stay out of trouble.’ Peterson, boring of his urban community development project assignment, asks his supervisor for permission to travel with some Medellin barrio residences to the rainforest to homestead free land offered up by the Colombian government.  In today’s Peace Corps, Peterson, a volunteer, would be denied the permission and it most likely would not grant in the years of the Mathes Peace Corp experience.

Mathes technical novel sticks to the persistent Latin America and Colombia themes of poverty, land rights, human rights and human trafficking.  Mathes action/adventure novel is unlike the other Colombian Peace Corps book written by Paul Arfin. The Arfin book “Portrait of a Peace Corps Gringo“, self-published in 2009. In Paul’s nonfiction book, Arfin served at the same time as Mathes, he describes his work in Colombia, but is more a catharsis on his middle class life before and after the Peace Corps.

It is Peterson, who carries the story.  Mathes prose is steady and quiet and falls back on a trail of italic clichés (in Spanish). The action begins when Peterson, obviously the pseudo name, for Mathes and his Colombian friends from the barrio in Medellin, hatch a chivalrous plot in an attempt to save a young woman prostitute who is trying to escape from her abusive drunken companion on a chive ride. The chiva is an open air bus mounted on a truck body used for intercity travel. Peterson and his companions are traveling to the departure point for the colonizers adventures to establish a finca in the untamed Colombian rainforest.

In the early years of Peace Corps in Colombia volunteers were not stationed in the rainforest, but a few were assigned and worked on the fringes. ….For Colombia I PCVs, rainforest lore consisted of the rescue and search party stories related by several volunteers who tried to hack their way to the site of an Easter plane crash that claimed the lives of two volunteers. The first two volunteers killed in Peace Corps service, Larry Radley and David Crozier, for whom the Peace Corps training camps in Puerto Rico (former CCC camps) were dedicated. Radley’s brother, Gordon, RPCV Malawai, found closure in 2011 when the Colombian military helicoptered him to the crash site atop a mountain in the rainforest to place a marker.

Despite the title this novel,  Mathes shifts amongst multiple perspectives to examine  with constant  references to floor, fauna, jaguars, rare birds,  snakes found  in the rainforest as Paterson, as his party trek  their way through the action scenes. Lucky for the travelers,  Peterson is packing his  Peace Corps issued medical kit to treat wounds and snake bites. Here the novel reads like a Boy Scout guide to the rainforest.

Midway through the novel Mathes shifts between the mores of Eagle Scout Peterson’s Berkeley, California youth culture and the difficulty of the colonizers to tame the forest, and the plight of the Indian girls pressed into servicing the vaqueros of the drug cartel and FARC. Peterson’s mission includes helping liberate the prostitutes and dreaming of making love between clean sheets.  He scores with Yolanda, his barrio buddy Dario’s  sister, after being married by the Indian chieftain in the rainforest, and exclaims “it’s going to be impossible to do this…without going all the way.” Its 1964, the pre “hook-up” college and Peace Corps generation!

The adventure/action novel ends at a recruiting dinner/meeting with the Commander of the FARC. Lidia, the chiva bus liberated hooker explains that girls are being held against their will at the Trujillo Ranch. Yolanda recounts how the folks from the barrio in Medellin came up to rainforest to start a finca on the free, government INCORA land. Dario explains, he is Yolanda’s brother and then Miguel speaks. “I am a gringo, an Americano. Peterson continues “I am a Peace Corps volunteer. “There are about 400 of us in Colombia. Has anybody met one?” A few hands shot up. He continues.” I came because the Peace Corps like the People’s Army is in favor of land reform, freedom, education. The Peace Corps hopes to accomplish this without violence, but I have seen that sometimes force is necessary.

Peterson is a lovable and peculiar figure. Mathes struggles, as an aging RPCV, to sort out what his life could have been like as a Peace Corps volunteer in the rainforest. Honestly, the action story bores after a while as the adventure is fictional including the arrival of a gringo named McAlister, saying “We work for the US Government. We are not here to harm anyone. We have heard good things about you, Mr. Peterson. Basically, we want to offer you a job.”

Did Peterson take the job? Read the novel!!

Dennis Grubb, an RPCV (Colombia 1961-63) is an Eagle Scout like Paterson, the protagonist in  Paul Mathes novel” To Know the Rainforest.” In June 1961, Grubb finished his sophomore year at Penn State and was working his summer job as a theatre production assistant when he was called by Sarge Shriver to train at Rutgers University beginning June 25, 1961 for service with Colombia I, the first Peace Corps group to train and the first Peace Corps group to serve in Latin America. After graduate school at American University and the London School of Economics, he has been an international banker/broker and is the founder of InvestAsia, Ltd, a development finance consulting firm working in some 25 developing countries.

Every time I find it painful to stand up after a meal either at home or a restaurant, I remember the title of this blog, which is a comment one of my aunts used to make every time she moved from a sitting to a standing position.

About 25 years ago, while I was living in New York I began to feel a lot of back pain after I sat a long time or walked a lot. I mentioned this to a friend who was a professional piano player. She said that she had begun to experience a lot of back pain a few years earlier both during her practice and when she was performing. A fellow musician suggested she visit a practitioner of The Alexander Technique.

I am now living in Japan so when I remembered how my back pain decreased when I worked to change the habits of how I stood, sat and walked in New York, The Alexander Technique did not come immediately to mind as a way to alleviate my pain. But out of the blue one of my wife’s graduate students who is a nurse mentioned in a conversation that her sister was an Alexander Technique practitioner!

We called her immediately and I have now had two sessions with her. Though it has been 25 years since I last had a session, after both sessions I felt as if I was re-living the sessions 25 years ago in New York.

I will not tax your mind with loads of a lot of details about what the Alexander Technique is about, just a few details. Frederick Alexander was an actor who was born in Australia in 1869. As young man he was frustrated because though he could speak with no problems with friends when he stood on a stage to recite Shakespeare he lost his voice. He decided to compare his posture when he spoke with friends and when he was on stage to recite Shakespeare. He noticed great differences between how he stood and moved in both settings.

Over time, he was able to overcome his loss of voice by standing on stage the same way he stood when he was chatting with friends.

You can find many more details about his life and his technique on the Internet. I just want to point out one lesson that I have been reminded of and learned in the two sessions I have just experienced in Japan.

In Japan, the chairs I set in at our dining room table are about 4 inches/12 centimeters lower than I sit in in New York. This means that when I sit in a chair in Japan my legs between my knees and my pelvis are pointing up rather than parallel with the floor. This puts a great deal of strain on my legs and back.

I have now put a 4-inch/12 centimeter pad on the chair I sit in when I eat. I can now sit down and stand up without putting my hands on the arms of the chair to ease me into either a sitting or standing position.

I had lunch with a person 25 years younger than I am last week in our apartment—American like me. He is the same height as I am. When he sat down I noticed that he braced himself on the arms of one of our dining room chairs. And when he stood up he propped himself up putting his hands on the arms of the chairs. His habits were the same as mine as just as detrimental to the long-term negative effects on our bodies.

I am excited by the Alexander Technique not only because I have found it beneficial to the way I sit, walk, stand and lie down but also because I think that Alexander has lessons for teachers that are in line with what I have been advocating for many years. I am not promoting the Alexander Technique for you to deal with your back pain, though I think it will alleviate it. Rather I am promoting Alexander’s ideas because they are in tune with what I have been advocating for decades to better understand our teaching.

1. Most of what we do is out of consciousness—I call this following rules and Alexander calls it following habits.

2. To change how we teach or sit or stand, we need to observe in minute detail a minute or two of our behaviors. Then we have to notice and feel the differences. It is only then that we can begin to change one of our behaviors slightly. If we sit on a chair that is too low for us so that our legs between our knees and pelvis are pointing upward rather than parallel with the floor, we need to put something on the chair seat so our legs are parallel with the floor. And we have to feel the difference.

If students use erasers during dictations so that you cannot see what words they wrote incorrectly you have to ask them to put their erasers in their pencil cases so that you can see what they wrote and how it is similar and different from what you said.

Small changes and no judgments! Alexander used the word “habits” because he had no interest in judging people about having bad posture or bad habits of sitting or walking. He just wanted people to learn awareness of how if they sat or stood or walked one way or another there would be different consequence. Ditto my long-term call to be descriptive and analytical rather than judgmental. The rules or habits we follow are inculcated in us through years. To make even small changes—something both Alexander and I advocate requires that we are non-judgmental.

An obvious but rarely easily forgotten underlying assumption that Alexander and I both stress is that we have to constantly ask how what we think is useful, positive, helpful, etc. might not be any of these things. Alexander gives an example of seats on chairs used in schools. Most of them re built at about a 15-degree slant. As a result, students have to learn back which causes them to rest the their spine on the back of the chair. This posture weakens our ability to sit upright.

Practitioners of the Alexander technique display photographs of children sitting up straight on a flat seat unaided by the back of their chair and of children sitting with their backs resting on the back of the chair. The shoulders of these students are slumped forward and their neck is leading forward.

Most people enjoy sitting on sofas and upholstered chairs. They enjoy sinking into the cushions. But the enjoyment we experience can easily lead to a weakening of the back and shoulder muscles and ultimately to back pain.

PS The obvious is difficult to see! As I completed this reflection I asked the person who helps me with the Alexander technique to observe me at my desk. She saw in a heartbeat that it was at least 4 inches too low. So I now have a 4 inch high piece of Styrofoam the shape of my laptop underneath my Mac Book Pro. I sit up straighter of course. And I have less pain in my back and legs.

68.8 Flesch Reading Ease Grade Level 8.7

Now Rowland Scherman is himself subject of a film entitled, EYE ON THE SIXTIES: The Iconic Photography of Rowland Scherman.

The man who was behind the camera that focused on Scherman and his life is the film’s creative director, Chris Szwedo.

Chris has now done a 12 minute film on how the Rowland Scherman film came to be. This short video is available now.

Take an early look. Soon, the full version of the film will be on PBS and other stations nationwide. On August 25, it will be screened at the documentary theater of The NEWSEUM in Washington, D.C. (Check it out if you are in DC this summer.)

Take a moment and see the man–Rowland Scherman–who made us all (well, almost all) of us famous.

The making of EYE ON THE SIXTIES: The Iconic Photography of Rowland Scherman with commentary by
Director Chris Szwedo.

https://vimeo.com/66046480

DataQuick just reported Southern California homes sold at the fastest pace for an April in seven years amid the release of pent-up demand for move-up homes and high levels of investor purchases. This is while April new-home construction dipped slightly, though housing permits for new construction are increasing at 1 million units, annually.

The median sale price rose to a 58-month high, reflecting both home price appreciation as well as the simultaneous plunge in foreclosure resales and surge in mid- to up-market buying. On average, sales between March and April have risen 1.0 percent since 1988, when DataQuick’s statistics begin.

The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in the six-county Southland was $357,000 last month, up 3.3 percent from $345,500 in March and up 23.1 percent from $290,000 in April 2012. Last month’s median was the highest since June 2008, when the median was $360,000.

Last month’s sales were the highest for the month of April since 27,114 Southland homes sold in April 2006, but they were 11.8 percent below the April average of 24,291 sales. The low for April sales was 15,303 in 1995, while the high was 37,905 in April 2004.

“This is a market that is still re-balancing. Sales of deeply discounted properties in affordable neighborhoods are way down. Activity in middle and high-end communities is on its way up. Now it’s catch-up time, with a healthier economy spurring more demand and rising prices tempting more people to put their homes up for sale,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president.

Graph: Econoday

Privately-owned housing starts in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 853,000. This is 16.5 percent below the revised March estimate of 1,021,000, but is 13.1 percent above the April 2012 rate of 754,000. Single-family housing starts in April were at a rate of 610,000; this is 2.1 percent below the revised March figure of 623,000. The April rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 234,000.

But Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,017,000. This is 14.3 percent above the revised March rate of 890,000 and is 35.8 percent above the April 2012 estimate of 749,000. So we can see that future construction looks promising and continues the building surge in 2013.

So it is no surprise that builder confidence in the market for newly built, single-family homes improved three points to a 44 reading on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) for May. This gain, from a downwardly revised 41 in April, reflected improvement in all three index components – current sales conditions, sales expectations and traffic of prospective buyers.

Harlan Green © 2013

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarlanGreen

The Barrios of Manta: A Personal Account of the Peace Corps in Ecuador

Reviewed by Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002–04)

Originally published by New American Library in 1965, The Barrios of Manta was republished last year as an eBook in honor of the Peace Corps’ 50th anniversary. It remains not only an important document of the Peace Corps’ first work in Ecuador but also an engaging portrait of a fascinating couple, Rhoda and Earle Brooks, the married Volunteers who lived in one of the poorest barrios in the drought-stricken fishing port of Manta from 1962 to 1964. The problems the Brookses faced, the many resourceful ways they solved them, and the occasional failures they met are all relevant to the work of Volunteers today, and should be of interest to anyone who has lived abroad (or is considering doing so) in vastly different conditions than their own.

Rhoda Brooks

The book begins with a brand-new foreword written in 2012 by Rhoda, who also added a new afterword. In-between are the original prologue, epilogue, and sixteen chapters, for which the Brookses split writing duties. Rhoda took the prologue and chapters nine, eleven, fifteen, and sixteen; additionally, she kept the bulk of their diary which formed the basis of the book. Earle wrote the rest. While it might seem jumping back and forth between two different authors would lead to unevenness, their writing styles are so similar that this isn’t an issue at all. Nor is an approach that isn’t strictly chronological. They wisely chose to focus on long, extended scenes of particularly striking events or linked sequences of events rather than skimming through all the many happenings of two years, and the book’s sixteen chapters are logically oriented to this, with catchy (or chilling) thematic titles such as “From Bricks to Hot Lunches” and “The Bubonic Plague.”

The prologue by Rhoda pulls the reader immediately into the vivid story of a dying baby who hadn’t eaten for weeks and a place that hadn’t seen rain in years. The prose here as elsewhere is direct and bracing as salt air. The Brookses skillfully intertwine numerous statistics with writing in scene that places the reader in the midst of the heartwarming chaos that generally surrounded them.

They describe the usual challenges-the continual obstacles to their work, the strain of continually speaking a foreign language, the difficulty of getting used to the lack of privacy-as well as challenges specific to their assignment, such as sweeping out dead rats “by the dozen” in their new home, living through an epidemic of bubonic plague, and daily facing the threat of intestinal parasites, dysentery, and hepatitis.

Earle and Rhoda’s life together in Manta clearly wasn’t easy, but they never come across as complaining, and they make it clear at every turn that most of the locals definitely have it tougher: we meet a waiter who worked from eight in the morning to eleven at night every day of the week, with only every other Wednesday evening off, for the equivalent of about ten dollars a month. (By comparison, the Brooks’ rent alone was about twenty-five dollars a month.) And the fishermen: “When luck is good, they make fifty cents a day, but sometimes they fish fifteen hours a day and catch nothing for days at a time.”

The citizens of Manta come alive, through well-chosen details and telling dialogue: Viliulfo Cedeño, their unceasingly energetic counterpart, “one of the few people who had realistically come to grips with the plight of his country and had determined to do something about it”; Don César, their grumpy old landlord, who at first seemed annoyed at any disturbance of his solitude but by the end not only accepted the gringos but welcomed the nonstop stream of neighbors who visited; Otto Schwarz, the second-generation Latin-German shipping agent who “helped the Peace Corps more than any other single national”; and many others.

Even those who make fleeting appearances receive their vivid due, such as Earle’s carpentry students, fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys who “leave the shop for an hour or two to ‘run an errand’” — and later develop a venereal disease. Without judgment, Earle explains that “there were many women, usually older and generally deserted by their husbands, who were willing to pay these boys . . ..  The expense for the required treatment was one that I always deducted from the boys’ pay!”

This journalistic attention to detail and lack of judgment invites a sense of trust in the reader, as does their open honesty, all on display in this passage from Rhoda:

Inside the sleepy-looking little bamboo houses I visited, I found people struggling with the cruel realities of life: a child crippled by polio who had never received any physical therapy; a woman suffering from severe burns from a pan of spilled boiling water; a family of nine living and sleeping in one room and eating on the floor; children defecating in their own yards; half a dozen babies on the brink of death, pigs and flies in the kitchen, sharing the family’s food; a wife in tears because her husband was sleeping with the girl next door; a deaf-mute girl who had never had a physical examination; children with skin diseases and eye infections; and on and on-all this just a few steps from our door.

I would return home, sick with my inability to be of real help. Deeply depressed, I’d tell Earle of my experiences, and the well-known wave of futility would sweep over us as we asked ourselves what we could really do.”

It’s a refrain throughout the book; the Brookses genuinely seemed to question how much good they did. Yet they clearly did so much: starting and teaching classes on mechanics, first-aid, nutrition and child care, basketball, and swimming; organizing garbage collection days and participating in street clean-ups; initiating and running a program of building stoves for schools that, as a fellow volunteer noted, “helped provide the kitchen facilities to feed over two thousand children a square meal every day”; spearheading an intensive two-week “de-ratting” program to help mitigate effects of the annual bubonic plague epidemic in Manta; and providing help informally on countless occasions to anyone who asked at any time of the day or night, seven days a week. And that’s just a partial list.

It sounds exhausting, and even the optimistic Brookses had to admit that it was at times. They had already been in Peace Corps for more than a year when the long-delayed “cultural shock” they had been warned about hit them: “Many hours later we finally fell asleep in an exhausted stupor,” Earle writes. “The next day we felt tired and drawn. I had lost thirty pounds since entering the Peace Corps and we had both been pushing ourselves to the point of real fatigue.”

Naturally, much of the book covers their Peace Corps community development work, but they also spend significant time describing other aspects of their time overseas, such as their friendships, their travels around Latin America after their first year of service, and what they did in their free time (what little they had), as in this quietly lyrical passage:

One evening, after a particularly strenuous day of work on the anti-plague campaign, I flopped into the hammock in our front yard just as the sun was beginning to drop behind the church steeple across the bay. I caught Rhoda’s hand and pulled her down into the hammock beside me. The air was still except for the crashing of the surf and the sounds of the Franco family cooking supper next door-the crackle of their wood fire in the kitchen and the ruffle of their hens going to roost for the night. I pushed the ground with my toe and made the hammock swing just a little and pulled Rhoda close against me. We silently watched the changing sky.

Occasionally, the book shows that it is a product of its time: the mid-1960s, when American idealism was at its final zenith before several wars and the slow spiraling downward of the economy took their toll. “Large industrial organizations and mass-produced goods are the solutions to the problem of supply and demand in the United States, and, as a bonus, they also create more jobs for more people,” Earle writes. Such a statement today no longer sounds so noble, with our large industrial organizations producing too many minimum-wage jobs, and many people finding small-scale, locally oriented commerce a better solution to our problems.

There are a number of discussions about communism with a distinct Cold War-era feeling to them, and a long section in chapter eight that contemporary readers may find discomforting, where Earle and Rhoda encourage friends of theirs to remain together, even though the woman was being physically abused by the man. However, these sections provide a revealing glimpse into a different era, and as much insight into a past America as they do Ecuador.

Above all else throughout the narrative, there is a sense that the reader is there, as in the opening to chapter seven:

In a helter-skelter pattern along the fine sand beach, and extending inland for a quarter of a mile on the gently rolling dust dunes, stood the matchbox bamboo houses of these amazing and amiable people, our neighbors. The one- and two-room crowded houses were backed and squeezed together on unnamed streets. Yards were thick dust patches without vegetation. Absolutely nothing grew here and only the clusters of houses directly on the beach were left uninvaded by the billowing afternoon dust.

Children were playing in the yards. With great contentment, one of them grabbed the haunches of a pig, and as it squealed and dragged the child forward, he shrieked with delight. On the damp beach boys were playing soccer with a wad of rolled-up paper. At the bottom of a bamboo ladder leading into the dim interior of a slit-bamboo house, a young boy, about two and a half years old, sat strumming an imaginary guitar and singing simple Spanish songs.

A particularly poignant section occurs in chapter thirteen, when the Brookses learn that President Kennedy had been killed. What an odd, terrible, unsettling sadness they felt being among the very first groups of volunteers in the program Kennedy championed and then learning of his death while serving overseas in that program. Even in those days long before the Internet, this was news of such import that it came to them within half an hour of it breaking. This section also shows the deep connection they had with the Ecuadorian people:

All afternoon the neighbors came. Friends from town walked down the beach to our house; students and other acquaintances stopped at the door. They came in silence, some weeping, to share their sympathy and grief. They stroked our arms, patted our shoulders, and squeezed our hands. Raul’s aged father fell into my arms, sobbing shamelessly. “It is as if he were our own,” he wept. “He was president of the world.”

Perhaps the highest compliment that can be paid The Barrios of Manta is that by the time it is finished, it leaves a clear sense of who Rhoda and Earle Brooks were, and they come across as people worth knowing. They share of themselves so freely in telling their story that it’s difficult for a reader not to feel as if invited into their circle of friends. Only the most jaded or stoic will be able to read without being emotionally moved at some point, for anguish and for joy, mainly joy.

•

Writer Jeff Fearnside lived in Central Asia for four years and traveled widely along the Silk Road. He has published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, most recently About Place Journal, Verseweavers (poetry), the Potomac Review and ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (creative nonfiction), with work forthcoming in Ontologica. He currently lives with his Kazakhstani wife Valentina in Corvallis, Oregon. You can visit his website at Jeff-Fearnside.com.

Before that event, PCVs in Ethiopia went to Israel. Dick Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) reminds me that a number of Ethie Is did their 1963 summer project in Israel working on a kibbutz. This was arranged by Harris Wofford (Ethiopia CD 1962-64).

In this "A Writer Writes" essay, Bob Cisco writes about his recent trip, last month, to Israel and what he found after all these years.]

The Peace Corps  in Israel

 By Bob Criso (Nigeria & Somalia 1966-68)

 Like many former Peace Corps Volunteers, I’ve never lost my wanderlust or my curiosity about the rest of the world. My latest venture abroad was a month in Israel and, as frequently happens, wherever I go the Peace Corps is never that far away. My first visit to Israel was in ‘68, on my way home after two years in Africa. Israel was confident and euphoric at the time following triumphant victories in the ‘67 war. In 2013 Israel was anxious and insecure, surrounded by unstable Arab countries, threatened by Iran and deeply divided by domestic politics.  

Bob in Israel

After checking into my hotel in Tel Aviv, I stepped out onto a small patio and scanned the neighborhood. High on one of the nearby rooftops I recognized the green and white stripes of the Nigerian flag flapping in the afternoon breeze blowing in from the Mediterranean. The young woman working at the front desk told me the Nigerian embassy was half a block away. Laura, a twenty-something French Jew, left Paris and her family seven months ago to do aliyah (the right of return.) During my month in Israel, I would meet many young adults from different corners of the globe, doing aliyah.

Later at the hotel, I heard a stocky black man talking on his cell phone and immediately recognized the musical tones of Igbo. When he put the phone down, I looked over, smiled and said, “Kedu?” Reflexively, he immediately answered “A dim ma,” then did a quick double take and broke into a hearty laugh and a megawatt smile that could have lit up a dark room. “Ahhh,” he said, “You know Nigeria?”

George, a successful businessman, lives in Onitsha and was visiting Israel for the fifth year in a row. After both his parents were killed in a horrific car accident, he vowed to come to Israel every year to pray for them. George is a devout Christian and makes a pilgrimage to the holy sites saying prayers for his parents. It was a little odd seeing him wearing a yarmulke when the hotel hosted a ceremonial Shabbat dinner that Friday night but he was clearly an ecumenical good sport.

In Haifa, I met Ian, a young, exceptionally fit-looking Brit. He was in Israel doing research for an adventure tourism business he was starting up. While we talked about our work and our travels, I noticed a tall thin man sitting nearby reading a book.

The next morning, the tall thin man came up to me at breakfast. “Did I overhear you say you were in the Peace Corps?”

Bill served in both Kazakhstan and Bosnia in the eighties. He remains an inveterate traveler and cultural explorer. I thought I was adventurous until he told me about some of his quirky experiences traveling through Azerbaijan and Armenia.  

I went to the resort town of Eilat, not to lie on the beach or go scuba diving as many Israelis do, but to cross the border into Jordan, only fifteen minutes away. I wanted to go to Aquaba, see Petra and spend a couple of days in the Jordanian desert where I had arranged to sleep in a Bedouin tent. Walking through the streets of Eilat, I was struck by the number of people who looked like they came from sub-Saharan Africa, some of whom I was convinced were Igbos. Later on, when I overheard the cleaning people at my hotel talking, I was certain they were Nigerians. So I shocked another Igbo with my one-word command of “Kedu?” and within minutes he was rounding up the other Igbos who worked there to meet “the man who lived in Ishiagu.” Many African immigrants made their way north to the Middle East looking for work but there seems to be a clear distinction however, between black Ethiopian Jews and black “goyim.”

Two days after leaving Eilat, I was reminded of the risks traveling in the Middle East. Three rockets were fired into the city from the Sinai. Fortunately no one was hurt but someone who was there later told me, “Everyone ran from the beach looking for the nearest bomb shelter.”

I decided to visit the West Bank on my own with plans to stop in Ramallah, Nablus and, the often-volatile Hebron. I took the Arab bus from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and checked into a hotel near the Church of the Nativity, built on the spot where Christ is said to have been born. Walking through the square, I caught a sideways glance of a blond woman about my age snapping pictures with a large camera. Something about her struck me as familiar. Later walking through the Arab quarter, I realized it was Alice, a Peace Corps Volunteer who was in eastern Nigeria when I was there. I didn’t know her then but I had met her a few years ago at a Peace Corps reunion in Boston. Ironically, I had heard about Alice for years from her sister, Ruth, with whom I had worked earlier in my career.

Once our connection was established, Alice and I forgot about our plans and spent the rest of the day talking about Nigeria, our lives and Israeli politics. Alice had been in Israel with a group that was looking into the problems Palestinians faced in Israel and the West Bank. Our time together was an extended “schmooze” that went on for hours and passed like seconds.

After Alice left, I arranged to participate in an all-day program in Hebron. This involved riding on a bullet-proof bus into the heart of the Israeli and Palestinian disputed areas. Hebron has five micro-settlements in the center of the city, all built after the ‘67 war and which now block residents from passing through streets in their own neighborhoods. Two thousand Israeli soldiers protect about five hundred settlers. The settlers say they are only reclaiming territory that belonged to them before the Jews were killed and chased out in 1929. The Palestinians say that the Jews are intruders who occupy and over-control their land and lives. The program involved spending half a day with a Palestinian guide and touring the troubled neighborhoods, then going to a Palestinian home and hearing their story. The second half of the day involved doing the same with a Jewish guide and then going to a settler home to hear their point of view. We also visited a synagogue, a yeshiva, a mosque and stopped at religious sights important to both groups.  

Though too much of the day was about propaganda, it was transparent propaganda. The real value for me was just being there and observing the problems of daily life for both groups, going through numerous and intimidating checkpoints, meeting individuals with a firmly held point of view and, most of all, having the opportunity to ask questions to the residents themselves.

“Do you live in fear?” I asked a settler woman whose grandfather had been killed in the massacre of 1929.

“No,” she replied. “I know God wants me to live here.”

What would be your first wish if things could change,” I asked a man in the Palestinian home.

“To return to the ‘67 boundaries,” he answered.

For me, the ‘67 war also referred to the war in Nigeria when I was there. Throughout my day in Hebron I was reminded of parallels between Israeli-Palestinian and Igbo-Hausa issues: the religious and tribal loyalties, the stereotypes, the grudges, the suspicious fears, the eye-for-an-eye mentality, the breakdown in communication and the complex and the tangled knots of history that continue to surface generation after generation. I also thought about how tribal we all can be, something we see played out in American politics and international affairs.  

My month flew by and I left Israel feeling over-stimulated but better informed. I didn’t leave feeling optimistic about anyone finding a solution to the problems in the near future, given how both sides have dug in and how many other countries have become players behind the scenes. One encouraging sign was the surprising number of Israeli, Palestinian and international groups that work cooperatively to improve communication between the two sides. A joint Israeli-Palestinian group had arranged my visit to Hebron.

Flying home, I realized how fortunate I was to have had the experiences of living in Nigeria and Somalia. It was the Peace Corps, after all, that first opened the door for me into the big world beyond the small place where I grew up.

Bob Criso worked as a psychotherapist at Princeton University Counseling and Psychological Services and also had a private practice in Princeton. Now retired and living in New York City, he currently reviews plays and works on a memoir when he is not traveling.

The total amount of debt held by Americans fell again in the first three months of 2013 and stood at the lowest level since the middle of 2006, the New York Federal Reserve said Tuesday. The level of household debt fell by $110 billion, or 1 percent, to $11.23 trillion, mainly because consumers reduced their mortgage obligations and used credit cards less. Household debt is now 11.4 Percent lower vs. a peak of $12.68 trillion in 2008.

Graph: New York Federal Reserve

This is one reason retail sales are holding up. Mortgage debt slid to $7.93 trillion from $8.03 trillion in the fourth quarter to mark the lowest amount since late 2006. Mortgage debt fell in the first quarter even though more home loans were issued than in the prior quarter.

Delinquency rates improved across the board: mortgages (5.4 percent from 5.6 percent), HELOC (3.2 percent from 3.5 percent), auto loans (3.9 percent from 4.0 percent), credit cards (10.2 percent from 10.6 percent) and student loans (11.2 percent from 11.7 percent).  The overall 90+ day delinquency rate dropped from 6.3 percent to 6.0 percent this quarter, below the 8.7 percent peak from three years ago.

“After a temporary deceleration in the previous quarter, the data suggest that household deleveraging has resumed its previous trajectory,” said Wilbert van der Klaauw, senior vice president and economist at the New York Fed. “We’ll look to see if this pace of debt reduction and delinquency improvements will persist in upcoming quarters.”

Retail sales beat expectation in April, up 0.1 percent, 3.75 percent in a year, following a drop of 0.5 percent in March (originally down 0.4 percent). Analysts forecast a 0.3 percent decline. Motor vehicles were unexpectedly up 1.0 percent after a 0.6 percent dip in March. Unit new motor vehicle sales slipped in April but from high levels, according to manufacturers’ data. Core strength was in building materials & garden equipment; clothing; nonstore retailers; general merchandise; and food services & drinking places. There may be some seasonality issues but discretionary spending appears to be picking up.

Graph: Econoday

Other positive developments in the Q1 New York Fed report included a rise in the share of 30-60 day delinquent mortgage balances that transitioned to current and a decline in the rate at which current mortgages transition into delinquency.  Nearly 35 percent of 30-60 day delinquent balances became current compared to 28 percent in the previous quarter. Moreover, 1.6 percent of current balances became delinquent compared to 1.8 percent in the previous quarter.   
Highlights from the report include:

• Outstanding student loan debt increased $20 billion to $986 billion.
• Total mortgage debt decreased to $7.93 trillion from $8.03 trillion.   
• Auto loans increased $11 billion to $794 billion.
• Credit card balances decreased $19 billion to $660 billion.
• HELOC balances fell $11 billion to $552 billion. 
• Mortgage originations rose for the sixth consecutive quarter, to $577 billion.

Inflation and energy prices in particular are declining, giving consumers more room to spend, which will boost Q2 economic growth as well.

Harlan Green © 2013

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Farrar, Straus and Giroux is publishing the book that, as they write, is: “A riveting examination of a nation in crisis.” The Unwinding: An inner History of the New America journeys through the lives of several Americans, including Dean Price, the son of tobacco farmers, and an evangelist for new economy in the rural South.

The narrative combines these intimate stories with biographical sketches of such figures as Newt Gingrich to Jay-Z. The book, according to FSG ” portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer relevant, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.”

Times Square was in bloom: the Naked Cowboy, tighty whities coy behind his guitar, strummed in front of the Recruiting Office’s giant neon stars-and-stripes. Cops on horseback stood in file before Aeropostal, guarding a half-dressed model on the big monitor. Elmo hurled epithets at a tourist. Smurfette took a call on her cell. Two identical Woody-the-Cowboys competed for tips, as a Coke bottle competed with anthropomorphic M&Ms above them for facetime on block-long screens.

It was the ultimate commercial takeover of the heart of the city; the domination of Blade Runner via Disney fever dream.

The line to the polka-dotted van stretched back to the red stairs near the half-price ticket booth. “I’m gonna take mine home,” the young man in front of me said. “Why not? I’m only here because of her.” He nodded at his girlfriend.

She grinned. “I’m not taking mine anywhere. I want to see it there.” She pointed at the plaza beyond the van, where two guys with buckets and brushes stepped over a checkerboard of faces.

I, too, looked forward to seeing my face walked on in Times Square—or, rather, a three-by-five-foot black-and-white poster of my face, one of hundreds pasted to the pavement as part of the InsideOut Project.

**

I started on my path to this line a few weeks before, when I watched a documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival titled Inside Out: The People’s Art Project. It introduced me to the work of JR, a wiry, bearded 30-year-old street artist from France, whose trademark look features Wayfarers and a hat that might belong to your grandfather.

In 2011, JR won a TED prize, which gave him funding and a mandate to “Change the world.”

JR had already begun changing various sectors of the world by mounting massive outdoor art exhibits. At 15, he claimed the rooftops of his native Paris with his graffiti. He later found a camera in the Metro, and took black and white photos of some of his fellow “outlaws.” He was 21 when he enlarged and pasted these on the city’s walls, humanizing some of the faces behind Paris’s notorious 2005 riots.

His illegal face-pasting blossomed into a worldwide guerrilla movement. He and his volunteers plastered massive portraits of Jews and Palestinians next to each other on both sides of the wall that separated them. They collaborated to post the work of local artists in Berlin and Cuba. They celebrated women by pasting pictures of their faces, or enormous posters of their eyes, in countries where woman were decidedly uncelebrated.

And then came the call from TED.

You can watch the resulting TED talk at http://www.jr-art.net/jr. As summarized in the documentary, JR answered the call to “Change the World” with a challenge of his own: “I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together, we’ll turn the world…Inside Out.”

Since TED, JR’s Project has included Haiti, Brazil, Tunisia—where the Arab Spring fostered such vigorous “free dialogue” over portrait placement that the volunteers feared for their safety—Rome, Thailand, Guyana, even Juarez, Mexico. The team has photographed and pasted in locales all over the US, including Oakland, CA; a North Dakota Indian reservation; Red Hook, Brooklyn, and the South Bronx.

And now…Times Square.

**

Our line moved forward, and I chatted with visitors from France, an Upper East Side matron, a guy from Queens, a Japanese tourist. And, of course, the young couple ahead, who lived in the Bronx.

My turn came. I signed disclaimers on an iPad, and a volunteer led me to the back of the polka-dotted van. Inside was a tiny photo booth, where I took a stool opposite a camera imbedded in the wall. The volunteer tapped the mirror; I had six seconds to pull an appropriate face. I recoiled dramatically from the feet destined to troop across my likeness, and the shutter snapped.

I stepped out. My portrait printed and rolled from a slot in the side of the van. The volunteer handed it to me and used my phone to take my picture with it. She rolled it up and told me that the team had a backlog of pictures because it had rained yesterday and they couldn’t paste (When it rains, they remove the old posters from the pavement because they become dangerously slippery). So they’d be pasting yesterday’s posters this afternoon, and ours later this evening or tomorrow morning.

“How long do the posters stay down?” I asked.

“They’re temporary by design,” she said. “But mine stayed put for five days—the weather was dry. Come back tomorrow; we’ll have you pasted by then.”

**

I was disappointed that, unlike the subjects in JR’s movie, I wouldn’t be doing my own pasting. I was even more disappointed that I’d have to wait until tomorrow to see my poster on the ground.

Sure, it was temporary, and nobody would recognize me anyway, and my likeness was far from gorgeous. But still…

Whoa.

What’s with the ego? I asked myself. There is no inherent “meaning” in the Times Square project. It doesn’t highlight the resilience of the Haitians, or celebrate victimized women, or reveal the faces of persecuted LGTB Russians, or remind Equadorians that they have Indian minorities.

Times Square is just…faces.

My picture would be pasted down among hundreds, maybe thousands, then washed away by rain or worn away by feet, or scraped up by JR’s volunteers to avoid injury lawsuits. What was the big deal if I couldn’t paste it down myself? And why did it matter that I wouldn’t see it on the sidewalk the day it was taken?

I was lucky, really: This was Tuesday; we were leaving Thursday for Maine to see Paul’s mom, and I’d have a day to take a picture of myself in the square. I could show it to her; Ev would enjoy that. I could post it on Facebook and Twitter.

**

I returned Wednesday afternoon, my phone set to Camera.

My picture wasn’t there.

People who’d just had their pictures taken were handing their posters to the pasting guys. A few of the subjects seemed to be helping with the glue and brushes.

I asked one of the volunteers where yesterday’s pictures were.

She shrugged. “We’re alternating some of them with the new ones.”

I looked for the older posters. I didn’t see a pile, a box, even a rolled poster—just people handing over their new likenesses, which went straight to the cement.

Mine would get pasted while I was gone, and I’d miss it. I would have no photo for Ev, or Facebook or Twitter.

I suppressed the urge to beg the volunteer to find my poster.

Patience, I told myself. It was probably waiting its turn in the polka-dotted truck.

Or maybe, an evil voice whispered in my brain, it’s in the trash.

**

We left for Maine the next day. We returned on Monday. It hadn’t rained in New York; perhaps my poster had survived the weekend. I took the Q train Tuesday morning to Times Square.

I passed Woody and Woody. I dodged Elmo, edged around two well-endowed, guitar-toting women in skimpy undies—Naked Cowgirls??—and slipped through knots of tourists posing with a bored Smurfette.

The polka-dotted van was busy. The pavement in front of the red stairs was covered with faces, some tattered and some brand-new. A tall, wide building behind the half-price ticket booth was pasted from top to bottom with posters.

I walked every inch of the plaza. I was not there.

I examined the building. I was not there.

Was my face walked on by tourists last weekend? Was it was hidden beneath a new poster? Was it pasted at all?

If a face lies on the pavement in Times Square and nobody recognizes it, does it make a difference?

I stood back and surveyed the square.

It looked…stunning. Dizzying.

Grand.

Here was the ultimate human takeover of the heart of the city; a glorious domination of faces, faces, faces.

My heart swelled.

I didn’t recognize a single one. But I had represented; I had been a tiny part of this in some impermanent way.

That, I realized, was a very cool thing.

Well “Big Brother” has definitely arrived.  Now cameras issue traffic tickets.  The speed limit in DC, unless otherwise posted, is 25 miles per hour.  I suspect the cameras could photograph any car, at any time, in any place to find tons of people exceeding the speed limit.  I mean, who really drives at 25 mph in DC?

Now the small thinker would immediately see this as a money spinner for the financially hard pressed DC Government.   But there is a larger possibility.  Perhaps this is a way to stiffle political opponents by serving them with traffic violations on a continual basis until they yield on poltical issues.    Talk about government control.

But there is a bright side.  I asked Thrifty, since the ticket was issued to their car, would there be a violation marked against my record?  They said no, so at least I will not suffer more than the cost of the ticket.

Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-96)

Recollections of Our Peace Corps Service 1963-65 is a unique compilation of stories and essays written by an entire group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, “Guatemala III,” a “mixed bag” that included an African American, Japanese Chomorro, Jews, and Hispanic Americans.  The book is divided into three sections: (1) Roads to the Peace Corps and the Training Experience; (2) Service in Guatemala; (3) Thereafter. 

Each writer recalls being inspired by JFK’s unforgettable “ask not” speech, and they all share the “black anguish” of his assassination.  Several participated in the March on Washington in 1963 and heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “mountaintop speech” that filled them with an idealistic, determination to promote justice, equality and civil rights for all Americans.  They recount their dismay when their training assignment in Puerto Rico was canceled due to an outbreak of dengue fever there,  causing them to wait several weeks in a jobless, sometimes homeless limbo until they were directed to training in Los Cruces, New Mexico.

One gains an inside view of the history of Guatemala from RPCV Dave Smits, who writes about the overthrow of Communistic Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, the invasion of U.S.-trained troops from Honduras, the establishment of Yankee imperialism, and the rise of brutal death squads called “The White Hand” and “Eye for an Eye” that were responsible for 80,000 murders between the 1960s and the 1990s.

Bob Keberlein talks about Peace Corps’ collaboration with CARE in Guatemala, and his marriage to a devout girl who tended the local church.  Volunteers worked with CARE on general community development, school programs, sports, gardens, a library, health and sanitation facilities, nutrition, literacy, and a host of other projects that volunteers inevitably involve themselves.

Another volunteer, Ashley Smith, was glad she learned to eat black beans and rice, speak Spanish and make friends, because she, too, married a Guatemalan.

Carolyn Plage tells us that the group began with 69 trainees, several of whom were “selected out,” sent home for medical or psychological reasons, while others simply resigned.

My good friend in the RPCV Florida Gulf Coast group, Marcia Lang, recounts the mandatory drown-proofing and mountain climbing training they all underwent.  They had to traverse a canyon hanging from a rope, rapelling down cliffs on the other side.  As her trembling hands grabbed for ledges, the carabiner that attached to her belt and to the instructor far above, broke.  He swore and yelled at her to “just fix it” and, despite her terror as she tried not to look down into the rocky abyss, she did.  Her experience became legend among the group. 

Marcia also had an unfortunate time with her dog, Pepe, who bit her and several children who then had to have a series of painful rabies shots before they found out that poor Pepe did not have rabies.

Marcia’s strangest story happened when she became sick, then slowly paralyzed, and had to be evacuated from her village by helicopter.  Suspecting a spider bite, no one could really verify what had brought her close to death but, as mysteriously as the paralysis afflicted her, it slowly dissipated until she was well again.  She was thereafter called “Spider Woman.”

Bernie Engels was the jester of the group; all his stories are funny, especially “The Great Jalpatagua Pig Project (or Porky meets Pablo).”  The first thing he learned was that “… mature male pigs are known as boars and not, ‘Holy sh-t look at the size of those mother f—rs!’”  He also learned the “…fine art of breeding pigs … not for the faint of heart or those of a prudish nature.”  And how to communicate with a pig … “right, pig Latin!” He had me laughing out loud. 

Ann Silverman tells of the American Ambassador, John Edward Mein, who lived under heavy security and never “mixed it up” with the group.  She delivers the shocking news that he was the first U.S. Ambassador to be assassinated in 1968. I could not help thinking of the last Ambassador who was murdered, Christopher Stevens,  in Libya. 

Several photos enhance the narratives, such as Bernie Engels riding a horse at a village festival, Dave Smits birthing a calf, his wife, Pat, “hanging out” on a rope above a ravine, and Tim Kraft with villagers building a cistern.

In the Thereafter section, we learn what became of the valiant volunteers after their Peace Corps service.  They organized two reunions, one in New Jersey in 2003 and the other in Guatemala in 2005.  Their 50^th reunion in 2013 was held in Sarasota, Florida, where a dozen RPCVs had as much fun as they ever had.  Many have sustained ongoing relationships with their “families” in Guatemala.

Bob Keberlein, who married the “devout girl” in his village built a retirement home there after years of teaching in Wisconsin.  He speaks of the “dusty, dirt byways” that became paved roads filled with vehicles instead of cattle and horses, and the sight of electric, telephone and TV cables everywhere . 

Betsy Markland Schwartz took a bike ride with a few friends in their 60s from the Mexican border to Guatemala to meet her son, who had married and lived there. Hers is a story rife with danger, hardship and humor that was published in the Guatemalan newspaper, La Prensa Libre.  Not only that!  In 2009, this intrepid woman joined “Follow the Women/Pedal for Peace,” a group of 300 women from all over the world who cycled through the Middle East to Jerusalem, to raise money to help build a playground in Gaza.  Betsy’s team raised $4,271of a total $14,000.  (See www.pedal-4peacesc.wordpress.com.) Betsy also joined Habitat in Jordan and bicycled to Syria and Jerusalem, Lebanon and Turkey, and was tempted to bike through Iraq.  These stalwart women faced political roadblocks, hunger, thirst, and hostility, but also thrived on the help and kindness of strangers everywhere.  Besides raising money, the group’s mission was to “to Go, to See, to Tell and, finally, to Act.”  She does a great job of telling in her lengthy letters from the field.

In 2007, Evelyn Brubaker Glasscock traveled to Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia on a Woman-to-Woman mission of The Christian Church.

Lynda Sanderford Morrison celebrated Peace Corps 47^th anniversary in Armenia, her husband having served in Iran, she in Guatemala, and their son in Morocco.  Along with her husband, Gordon, they involved themselves in the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama.  After 9/11 they devoted themselves to supporting Muslims, and cross-cultural understanding.  She celebrates their Peace Corps experience, because ” … we each became immersed in cultures not our own, and this was the benefit of the experience.” 

Bryce Hamilton worked with fellow RPCVs at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, which unfortunately was marred by the Mexican Government’s repression of student dissidence and the massacre at the Plaza de Tres Culturas.  Bryce also worked with the “Environmental Teach-In” program in Washington, D.C., whose name was subsequently changed to Earth Day.  He and his wife collect quilts, most notably from Amish women, and give lectures and workshops around the world.  He founded Project Minnesota-Lèon, that connects Minnesotans with Nicaraguans. 

Bob Hetzel became the superintendent of Cairo American College in Egypt, and thereafter Director of the American Embassy School in New Delhi.

Dave Snyder worked in multi-national organizations in Colombia, Puerto Rico and Panama, while his wife, Sally, helps him recycle inkjet and toner-printer cartridges. They worked with The Wings Foundation, a nonprofit based in Antigua concerned with family planning and women’s health.  They also support The Colombia Project, which was formed by RPCV Volunteers of South Florida that helps womens’ groups with micro-lending.  This project, managed mainly by my good friend, Helene Dudley, won the Lorette Ruppe prize a few years ago, and is yet another example of making a big difference in people’s lives after Peace Corps.

Marcia Lang went to California and ended up working in Modesto’s Welfare Department, also earning an MSW at Fresno State. After graduating she worked in Rochester, NY with emotionally disturbed children, then went to India where Jay Jackson, a fellow PCV in Guatemala, was working with CARE in Rajasthan. They married the next spring and traveled the world together with CARE for twenty-five years.  According to CARE policy, spouses could not be employed, but Marcia volunteered, teaching blind and deaf people in Colombia, organizing theater groups in Indonesia, Egypt and Honduras, among other activities.  Jay went on to work with Mercy Corps in Guatemala, and Marcia collaborates with Mayan women artisans there, selling their handicrafts through the US National Committee for UN Women in Sarasota. 

Tim Kraft became a Peace Corps recruiter after his service, studied at Antioch College and got a Peace Corps scholarship to Georgetown University.  He later became Jimmy Carter’s appointments secretary, an elections observer in Nicaragua, Peru and Honduras.  He laments that Peace Corps is not better supported by our government.  “When you compare the efforts for peaceful outreach versus the carte blanche acceptance of preemptive warfare, I think our nation’s priorities are badly warped.”

I cannot recount all the stories of this amazing group of volunteers in this review but, as we are urged in the introduction, “All of it is told in a very articulate and moving way.  Take your time.  Read every page.”

More pictures and stories of this amazing RPCV group can be found at http://sites.google.com/site/peacecorpsguatemala3/.

Leita Kaldi Davis worked for the United Nations and UNESCO, for Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Harvard University. She worked with Roma (Gypsies) for fifteen years, became a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal at the age of 55, then went to work for the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti for five years. She retired in Florida in 2002. She wrote a memoir of Senegal, Roller Skating in the Desert, (amazon.com) and of Haiti, In the Valley of Atibon.  

check it out at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YTS10nBO5A

The Federal Housing Finance Authority that supervises the so-called Government Supervised Enterprises (GSE), now including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, just announced restrictions that not only weaken Fannie and Freddie’s mandate, but the mortgage and housing markets in general. The FHFA just announced that it will no longer allow Fannie and Freddie to purchase or guarantee so-called “non-qualified” mortgages with more than 30 years amortization or that have interest only payments, among other restrictions.

Fannie and Freddie’s mission is to “Ensure that the housing GSEs operate in a safe and sound manner so that they serve as a reliable source of liquidity and funding for housing finance and community investment”. So why has it just made a ruling that will restrict their ability to be the most “reliable source of liquidity and funding”, and so real estate in general?

FHFA’s answer is the “Adoption of these new limitations by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is in keeping with FHFA’s goal of gradually contracting their market footprint and protecting borrowers and taxpayers,” said the announcement.

Yet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the gold standard for mortgage underwriting, with the toughest qualification criteria, which is why these GSEs have the lowest default rates—some 3.13 percent vs. 6.7 percent for all private label mortgages, as I said in a past column (Saving Fannie and Freddie). That means first time home buyers and those with lower incomes will have to depend on portfolio lenders for those programs. These lenders therefore tend to use weaker qualification criteria and so either have to keep those mortgages on their books, or who package them as less credit worthy securities.

So Fannie and Freddie are the most “reliable source of liquidity and funding for housing”. There are really no other viable mortgage programs to sustain the housing market, in particular. They now guarantee some 90 percent of mortgage originations precisely because private label lenders have not come back into the market, even as housing prices have risen.

FHFA’s actual announcement said, “Beginning January 10, 2014, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will no longer purchase a loan that is subject to the “ability to repay” rule if the loan:

· is not fully amortizing,

· has a term of longer than 30 years, or

·includes points and fees in excess of three percent of the total loan amount, or such

other limits for low balance loans as set forth in the rule.

“Effectively, this means Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not purchase interest-only loans, loans with 40-year terms, or those with points and fees exceeding the thresholds established by the rule, said its announcement.”

Yet both interest only and 40-year amortized mortgage lower the payments for first time homebuyers, in particular. It also means shutting out lower-income buyers, even though Fannie and Freddie qualify them at the fully amortized rate.

There is no other way to interpret this ruling, other than another attempt to lower the overall quality of mortgage lending at a time when housing and real estate in general is at the beginning of its recovery.

Fannie Mae just reported pre-tax income of $8.1 billion for the first quarter of 2013, compared with pre-tax income of $2.7 billion in the first quarter of 2012 and pre-tax income of $7.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012. Fannie Mae’s pre-tax income for the first quarter of 2013 was the largest quarterly pre-tax income in the company’s history.

Need we say more? A financially sound Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will continue to be the mainstay of housing finance, unless those who do not want or support a healthy mortgage market for all home buyers succeed in limiting their mission to “serve as a reliable source of liquidity and funding for housing finance and community investment.”

Harlan Green © 2013

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter:www.twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Anyone connected with the Peace Corps who writes (or would like to write) is invited–at a Peace Corps discount–to attend the West Virginia Writers’ Workshop July 18 to July 21 on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. This program is run by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93). Mark’s books include The Incurables: Stories and The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala. He directs the West Virginia Writers’ Workshop.

Mark Brazaitis Author & Director West Virginia Writers' Workshop

Over four productive and thrilling days, attendees will participate in intimate (no more than 12 people) writing workshops under the guidance of nationally recognized authors of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and screenplays, including RPCVs Sandra Meek (Botswana 1989-91) and Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93); will engage in interactive craft talks; will listen to and participate in readings of creative work; and will learn how to navigate the sometimes intimidating world of publishing. In addition, attendees will have the chance to pitch their work to an

Sandra Meek, Poet

actual publisher!

Workshop tuition is normally $350. But if you’re an RPCV or otherwise connected to the Peace Corps, it’s only $300. Simply note your connection to the Peace Corps on your application. The application and other info are available here: http://english.wvu.edu/centers-projects/west-virginia-writers-workshop

Morgantown is located only 1 hour from Pittsburgh, 2 1/2 hours from Columbus (Ohio), and 3 1/2 hours from Washington, D.C.

You can connect with Mark Brazaitis directly at: Mark.Brazaitis@mail.wvu.edu

Tell them Coyne sent you.

“Strange Stones” (Harper Collins, 2013), by Peter Hessler (R). (Hessler photo: Darryl Kennedy)

Two members of the famous “China Gang” of Peace Corps writers, Peter Hessler and Mike Meyer, will be talking about China and Peter’s new book, Strange Stones at the Asia Society on Tuesday, May 21, 2013, at 6:30 p.m to 8:30 p.m. Here are the details:

ChinaFile Presents: Peter Hessler, author of the recently published Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West, a collection of essays and writing on China and the United States over the past decade. He will be in discussion with author Michael Meyer and Susan Jakes, Editor of ChinaFile.

Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Hessler’s best reportage from The New Yorker over the past decade. During this time, Hessler lived in both Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions. This unusual perspective distinguishes Strange Stones, which showcases Hessler’s unmatched range as a storyteller. “Wild Flavor” invites readers along on a taste test between two rat restaurants in South China. One story profiles Yao Ming, basketball star and China’s most beloved export, another David Spindler, an obsessive and passionate historian of the Great Wall. In “Dr. Don,” Hessler writes movingly about a small-town pharmacist and his relationship with the people he serves. While Hessler’s subjects and locations vary, subtle but deeply important thematic links bind these pieces - the strength of local traditions, the surprising overlap between apparently opposing cultures, the powerful lessons drawn from individuals who straddle different worlds.

Peter Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He is the author of River Town, which won the Kiriyama Book Prize; Oracle Bones, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; and, most recently, Country Driving. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2011. He lives in Cairo, Egypt.

Michael Meyer is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction book The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Time, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Chicago Tribune. He has represented the National Geographic Society’s Center for Sustainable Destinations. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and residencies at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and the American Academy of Berlin. His next book, In Manchuria: Life on a Rice Farm in China’s Northeast, will be published in 2013 and was excerpted on This American Life. His essays on Manchuria, “The Lesser Wall” and “Desperately Seeking City,” were published by ChinaFile. He teaches English at the University of Pittsburgh and literary journalism at Hong Kong University.

Susan Jakes is the Editor of ChinaFile, a new online magazine published by Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations. She reported for Time from 2000-2007, first as a reporter and editor based in Hong Kong and then as the magazine’s Beijing Correspondent.

Can’t make it to this program? Tune into a free live webcast at AsiaSociety.org/Live at 6:30 pm ET. Online viewers are encouraged to submit questions to moderator@asiasociety.org before and during the event.

Event Details

21 May 2013 6:30pm - 8:30pm
725 Park Avenue (at East 70th Street), New York, NY
$10 Members, $12 students and seniors, $15 non-members

And just who are these mysterious credit rating agencies?  Ok, ok, not so mysterious since we all know them but we are usually in the dark as to how they operate.  I personally don’t pay attention to these ratings since I can usally get what I want in spite of my credit rating that is littered with false information, bad debts, disputes, and more.  In fact I was once asked by a home seller for my credit report in order to purchase a property.  I got a printed copy of my report and handed it to the vendor saying, “you read it, I won’t waste my time.”  The report was 53 pages long!  Talk about sleep inducing reads.

When selling real estate to foreign buyers during the boom I used to test  mortgage brokers by asking them how they would get credit ratings for my foreign buyers.  If they said they could get credit reports on them, I told them thanks and go elsewhere.  Why?  Well the credit reports we are all famliar with are only available for residents of two counrtries, the USA and Canada.  The broker who said he could get one on my foreign clients obviously had no idea how to deal with a foreign buyer.

So how did I get mortgages for my foreign buyers who did not have credit ratings?   Believe it or not we used “no doc” loans which meant no documentation of stated income, assets, liabilities and so on.  Add subprime rates, adjustable interest, and low down payment and we had the most tenuous of loans going.  But my clients were richer than the average person so they did pay.

So while most of you sweat bullets to maintain a good credit rating I will continue to pay no attention to the rating agencies that at first congratulate you for improving your FICA score and then scare the hell out of you when the rating slips.

“I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.”

It would seem to me in this quote he does not wish to force his way of being onto others, which sounds like non-violence to me, but then again, is it possible to be non-violent while advocating violence, even in defense?

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.”

This one is my personal favorite, because he says “our” hearts.  Many folks confuse non-violence with Pacifism and Gandhi was a very far stretch from that.  The hunger strikes and willful disobedience and prison terms he endured in his lifetime show he deeply cared about the future of humanity and was willing to put his life on the line to show it.  The Pollyannas I’ve called “greenie-weenies” in the past spend their hours incessantly trying to prove to themselves and others that nothing is wrong, or that the government can and will fix it all, while the Pacifists refuse to participate in any way in anything.  They like to call Gandhi their greatest hero when clearly they are clueless as to how actively he pursued his passions.

In fact, hunger strikes are indeed violent, but apparently self-inflicted violence is an OK tactic to Gandhi.  I can’t help but question how well they work though, considering it hasn’t been too effective for those innocent prisoners still in Guatanamo being force-fed.

http://www.voanews.com/content/guantanamo-bay-hunger-strike-grows/1657331.html

Gandhi called his overall method of nonviolent action Satyagraha. This translates roughly as “Truth-force.” A fuller rendering, though, would be “the force that is generated through adherence to Truth.”

His belief was that through consistent tactics of refusing all support for an unjust system, such as the British rule of India, like boycotting British products, refusing to work for British employers, pulling one’s children out of British schools, refusing to supply the British with services, and not paying taxes a nation could eventually “withdraw Indian support from the vast, monstrous Machine of Empire until it ground to a halt.” (Wolpert).

But the problem is it never did ground to a halt, or even close to it.  The British may have left in theory, but India today looks exactly like what Gandhi was vehemently opposing, which was the intense centralization of power and wealth at the expense of the common man.  He advocated basing economic and political power at the local level–an achievement none of world’s largest or most powerful nations have any interest in acquiring at all to this day.

In fact, it’s difficult to find among the mainstream media and whitewashed history any of the more objectionable of Gandhi’s beliefs.  It’s as if the world is completely willing to accept whatever the establishment wants to pass for history as the totality of history itself.

It reminds me of a famous quote by another famous man:  “Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind.” Shakespeare, King Lear

"Register your guns, folks, cause that always works in the people's favor!"

Revisionist history stronger than ever

http://www.naturalnews.com/038484_Gandhi_quote_Facebook_censorship.html