The New York newspapers, as well as other papers, and cable news stations, have been spinning stories on “what happened with Caroline?” Did she or didn’t she want to be the next senator from New York? Why did she bail at the last moment just when her number was about to be called by Governor Paterson, or was she edged off stage by Paterson’s people?

The governor certainly has suffered from the ineptness of his senatorial decision-making.

Well, now right-winger, Blue Dog Democrat, Iraq war supporter, friend of Al D’Amato, daughter of a GOP lobbyist Kirsten Gilibrand, is the new senator-designate from New York - a woman who supports all “right-leaning” positions on gay marriage, immigration and gun rights, will take over Hillary’s seat.

But what about the Camelot’s kid, the last of our royal family, early supporter of President Obama, a woman who never spoke up in politics, but did do so for Barach and rallied the Kennedy clan early in his campaign.

Caroline has been out of sight since the governor picked Rep. Gillibrand as the junior senator, but what about our President giving Caroline more than a political appointment, what about giving her an agency that is worth of her name and passion. The job of Peace Corps Director.

No one else comes to mind that could bring the spotlight back to our agency. She could recruit for Volunteers on any campus of America, be given time on any news station, and walking the halls of Congress and rally the congressional votes to increase both the numbers and budget of the Peace Corps.

Not a bad idea.

Pass it on.

For over twenty years, Congress has been voting to double the size of the Peace Corps. They vote yes, then they don’t vote on the separate bill to fund the increase.

What is important is not that the Peace Corps is bigger, but that more Americans have the opportunity to serve, and that host countries learn what Americans are really like. President Obama has the opportunity to make change happen with the Peace Corps.

Peace Corps Volunteers are a different breed of Americans. They come into a village or community and live at the level of the people. They learn the language and they learn the host culture. They unpack their bags and they stay for two years. They become part of a village, a community, a host family. They learn more than they teach or give. Then they return home to America and teach Americans about the village where they lived, the people that they knew as neighbors and as students and family. They are ambassadors from America with a small ‘a’ and a big heart.

They are not missionaries selling a religion, or foreign service officers selling a political philosophy. They are young people and old people and women and men not trying to prove anything; they are just being themselves. Moreover, the more Americans we can send into the world, the more the world will know that ‘Americans’ are just like them. It is such a simple idea. Why is it so difficult to understand and put into practice?

I first met Harris Wofford at Georgetown University in the summer of ’62 when I went to Washington D.C. for Peace Corps Training to Ethiopia. Striding across the quadrangle, his jacket hooked Kennedy-like over his shoulder, and carrying a brown briefcase wedged with folders and papers, Harris introduced himself as our Peace Corps Director.

He was working at the White House then, going to late night meetings on civil rights with JFK, then coming to jog with us in early morning PT training, and all the while talking endless about the Peace Corps being a “university in dispersion.”

He envisioned a Gandhi-like world where everyone would volunteer for something to help man kind, and we’d all gather around campfires later at night for great-book-discussions on the poems of Robert Frost and the writings of Solzhenitsyn.

Harris hasn’t stopped talking since. We had monthly book seminars in Ethiopia over those two years, then I was lucky enough to work with him at Peace Corps HQ, and later at Old Westbury, Long Island, where Harris was the president of a new experimental college in the SUNY system. Here, he proved that it was easier to be a liberal in a conservation world then a college president on a campus full of radical students.

[As we often said of Harris, he had many faults but none of them were human.  Also, he would have a hundred new ideas a day, and while 99 of them were hopeless, the one good one was priceless.]

From those years, Harris went onto be president of another college, and then a U.S. senator, all the while talking world peace and volunteer service.  And he saw clearly into our future. He was with Obama when no one east of the Illinois Central had heard of Barack.

Here’s an interview that fills in where Harris has been in life and what he is doing today. For those of us who know Harris, we always know he is up to something new — now pushing 80, Harris has just begun to jog.

Zhan Yimei, who was a beloved and long-time employee in the Peace Corps office in China, died after a battle with lung cancer. She had worked since 1993 for the Peace Corps and was a staff member with enormous responsibilities, serving as the main conduit of messages between Chinese officials and the Peace Corps. (In many instances, at least in the early days, Chinese officials refused to communicate directly with the Peace Corps.) She also played a key role in drafting the country agreement that enabled Peace Corps to go into that country, which was one of the few positives attached to President Bill Clinton’s visit in 1998. She ran the program for a year in 2003-04, when the Peace Corps was evacuated because of SARS. There was no American who worked for Peace Corps/China as long as Zhan Yimei did.

Zhan Yimei lacked the benefit of Peace Corps health insurance - none of the Chinese staff could qualify for that. Her cancer treatment was enormously expensive, cost her family dearly, and has delayed her son’s education. Last year the RPCV China group raised $14,000 to be donated for her care, and they are currently raising additional of funds. Her family faces a shortfall of more than $12,000. Thus far, Peace Corps Washington has contributed nothing, which annoys me. While it’s great that former volunteers are willing to raise funds, it seems inappropriate for her employer to offer no financial assistance. It’s a young program, so most RPCV’s are in their twenties and thirties; it’s hard for them to donate much. And when Zhan Yimei passed away, her main concern was about the debt she was leaving her family. It seems a shame that the Peace Corps did not take greater steps to put her at ease during her final months, but if you are interestedin contributing funds to pay for the ’shortfall’ let me know.

I heard from Stephen Buff (Ethiopia 1964-66) who is one of 200 marchers selected by the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Washington, D.C, to represent Peace Corps volunteers in the Inaugural Parade on January 20, 2009.

Members of the Peace Corps Community will carry the flags of the 139 countries where nearly 200,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have served during the 48-year history of the agency.

Representatives of the Peace Corps Community have applied for each Inaugural Parade in recent history and last participated in 1997.

Notable marchers will include Senator Harris Wofford, Ethiopia Peace Corps Director with the first group to the Empire. Wofford will be marching with two grandsons, and children and grandchildren of the agency’s first director, Sargent Shriver.

I watched a documentary yesterday entitled “Once in Afghanistan” that was produced by Jill Vickers (Afghanistan 1968). The documentary was done by Jill’s company Dirt Road Documentaries, and it is about 17 women who survive 3-months of Training (36 started) on an Indian reservation in Arizona and then they went to Afghanistan to vaccinate woman against small pox. The film is basically a series of quick interviews of these women. They recall themselves as young woman fresh out of college and off on this new adventure, the Peace Corps.

It is a wonderful case history; it is a long conversation; it is a reflection of another time and place, and it is a look at how these women-now in their sixties — had their lives shaped and changed by having once upon a time been Peace Corps Volunteers.

For those of us who made similar journeys there is not a lot new in what the woman say, but there is a lot of nodding in agreement at their comments about their PCV lives, and a lot of whispered, “me too” when we hear what they went through as Volunteers.

None of them think that they did anything special. They just did at the time something very different. They didn’t get married right after college, as so many other women did. They didn’t have children and a family and settle down like many generations of women had done before them. No, they went into the Peace Corps, which was still brand new and exciting and difficult and no one knew really what it was all about. They were pioneers. But still today, they are very humble about what they achieved, and what they went endured to save women and children in remote and isolated villages half way around the world. This was a difficult Peace Corps assignment, but you don’t hear that in their voices.

The documentary is 70 minutes long. It is like watching PBS all afternoon. But that’s okay. The women have a lot of good things to say that Americans should hear today.

“Once in Afghanistan” is a wonderful and effective Peace Corps training film. It is a wonderful film for high school and college students, for women’s groups, for anyone who is thinking about the Peace Corps. It is a film Michelle and Barack might want to show their daughters, and their daughters’ friends.

For more about the film go to Dirt Road Documentaries.

The film is for sale if you are interested in it, for yourself, school, or women’s group, I would suggest you contact Jill Vickers.

The address of Dirt Road Documentaries is:
4409 Town Line Road
Bridport, Vt 05734
You can also reach Jill at: jvickers [at] gmavt [dot] net

Tell her, “Coyne sent you.”