Dick Lipez’s (Ethiopia 1962-64) review of George Packer’s (Togo 1982-83) new collection of essays got me thinking about the early evaluators of the agency. Lipez was one of the first RPCVs to be hired by Charlie Peters in the Office of Evaluation, back in the summer of ‘64. Maureen Carroll (Philippines 1961-63) and Mick McGuire (Pakistan 1962-64) were already working for Charlie, but I can’t recall other RPCVs in the Office of Evaluation. These three RPCVs were the first PCVs to end up working for Charlie. I believe Peggy Anderson (Togo 1962-64) also came on board that summer of ‘64. Peggy is the author of Nurse and The Daughters: An Unconventional Look At America’s First Fan Club, among others books of non fiction. I remember meeting Peggy in the fall of ‘64 when I went to work at the agency and thought she was the prettiest woman in Washington.

The truth was, if you were a newly returned PCV, and you were smart enough to stay on the elevator at the Maiatico Building until it reached the eleventh floor–where the Office of Evaluation was located–you got the job any RPCVs who love to write wanted to have. Charlie Peters would leave the Peace Corps to establish the Washington Monthly, and be the mentor to generations of fine journalists, but when he was ’starting out’ at the Peace Corps he had come out of West Virginia where he had been a country lawyer and a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates.

Peters went to work for the Peace Corps in March, 1961, as a consultant to the General Counsel. He was the staffer who negotiated with the government of Puerto Rico for the establishment of Camp Crozier at Rio Abajo, and by February he was promoted to Chief of the new Evaluation Division, as it was then called, and came into his own.

When someone gets around to writing the story of journalism in D.C. in the 1960s & 1070s, they better begin with Charlie, and not Woodward and Bernstein.

Charlie had a habit in the early days of the agency of hiring good journalists to evaluate Peace Corps programs. In his first years he hired Richard Rovere, Calvin Trillin, James Michener, Fletcher Knebel, Mark Harris, and Stan Meisler among others.

By hiring these journalists and novelists, for short term assignments, they then became advocates, fans, constituents, and supporters of the Peace Corps as Shriver told Charlie, “Get the opinion makers on your side!” Peters did. Coates Redmon tells all of this story in her book on the early days of the Peace Corps, Come As You Are.

But hiring talented reporters to do the evaluations was actually Bill Haddad’s idea. Haddad was the Associate Director of the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Research. He was Charlie’s boss. Haddad was known as the guy who at the age of 14  joined the Army Air Corps to be a pilot and got as far as cadet squadron commander before his true age was found out. Later, at a much older age, (18) he would become the youngest U.S. officer in World War II. After the war and after college, he went to work for Estes Kefauver, worked on Kefauver’s run for the presidency, and then for the Kennedy presidential campaign as a special assistant to Bobby Kennedy. It was while he was working for the AG that Shriver found Haddad and brought him into the Peace Corps as the Associate Director for the Office of Planning and Evaluation.

Haddad wanted an Evaluation Office. He told Shriver: “Let’s get our own guys to go out there and find out what’s goin’ on, and if there’s something wrong, we’ll be the first to know and can correct it before the press gets onto it and starts screamin’.”

Haddad wanted the evaluation reports to be read, and most (if not all) academics and bureaucrats can’t write, he said. Haddad wanted writers who made a living from their prose. Again, Shriver told Peters, “We want people to look forward to getting these reports, not dread them. We want them to be read eagerly and thoroughly because the true story of the Peace Corps will be in these reports.”

The first full-time, on-staff evaluators were David Gelman from the New York Post, Philip Cook of the New York Herald Tribune,  Tim Adams of the San Francisco Examiners, then Dick Elwell who had been with the San Francisco News.  These were the days of great newspapers and great newspaper writers.

I never worked for Charlie Peters. I never was lucky (or smart enough) like my fellow Ethiopian Volunteer, Dick Lipez, to ride the elevator to the eleventh floor. But let  me end this long blog by telling another story from Coates Redmon’s book, and that is how Charlie Peters came to the Peace Corps.

Peters sailed into the Peace Corps in late March of 1961. Kenny O’Donnell had called Shriver from the White House saying he was sending over Charles Peters from Charleston, West Virginia. Peters had organized the president’s successful primary campaign there. He (Peters) was ready to give up an exceptionally promising political and legal career to be part of the Peace Corps, O’Donnell said. Everyone in the White House: O’Brien, Sorensen, and Bobby Kennedy, all of whom had been impressed with Peter’s performance on the campaign. By the time Shriver passed the word to Moyers, Peters had become a miracle worker and a genius.

Moyers told his assistant, Nancy Gore, the Peace Corps’ resident Scarlett O’Hara and female political sage (as the daughter of  Tennessee’s Senator Albert Gore), to go out to the elevators and greet “the man who carried West Virginia for Jack Kennedy.”

Gore, expecting someone on the order of John Wayne, glanced at the short, vaguely roly-poly man with the raccoon like eyes and eyebrows, whose cigarette was dripping ashes on his tie, and dismissed the possibility that he was Peters the Powerhouse of recent legends. But Peters asked Gore  for directions to Moyer’s office, and Nancy realized that this was the man they were waiting for.

Peter was offered a job as a consultant in the general counsel’s office, which Pete describes as “a position of almost pathetic obscurity when you consider the structure of a bureaucracy. I thought I was a patronage case pure and simple–you know, the poor idiot who had worked hard in some essential capacity. I figured Sarge had been ordered to take me. But what the hell, I thought. I had landed where I wanted to land. I had my foot in the door.”

But in the early days of the Peace Corps, if you were an RPCV just home from the Third World, you came to realize that if you could make it passed Charlie Peters’ door, you had made it to the promised land.

President Harry S. Truman is the only U.S. president who vacationed regularly in Key West. He spent 175 days at the Key West Naval Station Commandant’s house from 1946 to 1952. In the Keys, Truman wrote his State of the Union addresses, drafted legislation, fine tuned the national budget and issued an Executive Order on Civil Rights. He loved the weather and late night poker games at this winter White House which was cheek by jowl to Mallory Square, about as far south as you can get on U.S. 1. What Truman didn’t do was play golf, not that there was much golf to be played on an old nine-hole course located five miles up U.S. 1 on Stock Island.

There is the story told that when Truman assigned General Dwight David Eisenhower to perform a series of military tasks around 1948-49 and the General came down with ileitis, the doctors suggested Ike get some rest.  So Truman put the General on the Presidential plane and sent him to Key West. After a week Ike had had enough of the hot weather and no golf. An aide to the General called Clifford Roberts at Augusta National and asked if Ike could rest up in Georgia. Thus began Eisenhower’s long love affair with Augusta National.

The lack of a good golf course in Key West lost a presidential visitor to Margaritaville, though President Eisenhower would return once again to Key West in 1955 while recovering from his heart attack.

It is a shame that Augusta National’s most famous member didn’t have a chance to play the new Key West Golf Club on Stock Island. It is the southernmost golf course in the United States, the first of what we might call a Caribbean course which favors dense mangroves, lakes, nesting egrets and the trade winds of the Gulf of Mexico.

Redesigned in 1983 by Rees Jones the course is 18 holes, 6,531 yards long and from the back tees plays to a par 70. It has 51 bunkers, greens seeded with SeaDwarf Seashore Paspalum, and water just about everywhere. The public club is owned by William Smith, who also owns Deer Creek in Monee and Rail Golf Course in Springfield, both in Illinois. The course is run by the head pro Eric Favier with Matt Harris as his teaching assistant. And it is opened 365 days a year. Last year over 50,000 rounds were played by tourists and club members.

True, most people don’t go to Key West for the golf. It is famous more for fishing and sunsets, Hemingway’s home, and bar hopping down Duval Street in Old Town, but according to Eric Favier when the winds blow and fishing is put on hold the players flock, like the egrets, out to Stock Island for a round of golf.

Paul Azinger turned up one day at the club. He had come south to go fishing but when the winds picked up, he stopped by the pro shop, not to play but to say hello, and spent a few hours talking golf with Eric and Matt. He even answered the phone and booked tee times for the members. PGA pro Charles Howell III, in town for a friend’s wedding, was another golfer to stop by the club. He played twice in his long week in Key West, just like any other snowbird who traveled south to the Keys for the warm weather.

Unlike the more famous Central Florida courses in Brooksville, Lake Wales, and Deland Ridges (Southern Hills, Diamondback and Sugarloaf to name three) the Keys offer limited places to play golf. The next closest to Key West is back up north on Highway 1, at Marathon, this big town in the stretch of Florida Keys, has a private club.

But, in Key West, the Key West Golf Club has clubs to rent, a pro shop, lockers and a short, but challenging 18 holes. The two toughest holes are No # 8, a 143 yard, par-3 that is a tee shot over thickly intertwined tropical mangroves, and # 6, a par-4 that is only 434 yards in length, but has mangroves left and right down the fairway for 250 yards. Anything off line is a lost ball.

So, the next time you are down in the Keys, or off one of those cruise ships that dock near the Westin Marina, grab a Friendly Cab and head out to Stock Island. There are 200 acres of foliage and wildlife and always an available tee time.

Let me begin by saying that I don’t believe the Peace Corps gives any PCV 2000 condoms on arriving in any Peace Corps country. Just do the math.  However, my new RPCV friend from Estonia tells me, “we were issued the standard PC medical kit with a few clean syringes and 2000 condom in it, and we were encouraged to come back for more.”

True, there was a high risk of AIDS in the north of Estonia, but nevertheless. ..that sounds like a lot of male bragging. I emailed back to Eastern Europe, saying:  Do the math!

After a few more exchanges, he admitted, “Truth be told, probably 30 condoms were issued with our medical kit. But then Volunteers could get re-stocked at the Riga office. We were all ambitious and thought highly of our prowess, so we grabbed huge bunches each time. Certainly, 2,000 would have been a feat. I never had more than 200.”

God, I remember when if you wanted a condom in the Peace Corps, you were ETed. How times have changed. Progress is a comfortable disease, as e.e.cummings phrased it.

Speaking of disease and Peace Corps doctors, we had a wonderful one in Ethiopia, Dr. Ed Cross. Back in ‘62 Cross didn’t give anyone condoms or anything else for that matter. Not even pills! Ed was an old school doctor and a  long time public health official who knew more about  government health policy than  curing the ailments of young PCVs, but we loved to go see him and tell him of our illnesses and hangups, and whatever else was bothering us just so that we could hear him say in  his easy, unconcerned gentle way, “you know, my wife had that.”

He cured a lot of PCV right on the spot. Those of us who knew Ed Cross as our doctor when we were PCVs  in Ethiopia would have gone to the ends of the earth for the man.

In time, President Carter would appoint Ed Cross his Surgeon General.

The truth was in Ethiopia you really didn’t need a doctor. You could buy anything you wanted over the counter at any Addis Ababa pharmacy….. I had a hideous toothache one Sunday afternoon  and went looking for relief and and got ’something’ that not only stopped the pain, I think, it nearly stopped my heart. God knows what it was.

And we also had a ‘local’ dentist. Now that’s a tale.

I went to see him one day up in the Piazza, as the ‘downtown’ of Addis is called. He was German, a real German, in his mid fifties, I remember he ran a few fingers around my gums and declared my tooth had to come out. End of the story. So much for saving teeth!

In our second year in country I picked up a copy of the The Ethiopian Herald and there was an account of how this dentist had been found dead, shot to death, on the banks of the Awash River, some 100 kms south of Addis Ababa near the town of Nazareth. No one knew why or how, but a rumor soon surfaced that the dentist had been a concentration camp dentist during WW II and escaped to Africa in ‘45. The Israeli secret police, it was told,  found him practicing dentistry in the mountains of Ethiopia. No trial was necessary.

But 2000 condoms! Wow, that’s a better story.

Not sure if anyone reads Parade Magazine (but you’ll read anything on a vacation!) and last week while in Key West I picked up a copy and there was Aaron Williams being interviewed (briefly, only three questions) in the IntelligenceReport page of this Sunday newspaper supplement.

There was the standard (no brainer) question: Who can join the Peace Corps? But the reporter then asked: Why is the Peace Corps roughly half the size it was in 1966?

Aaron replied how funding has gone “up and down” but the Peace Corps now has bipartisan support in Congress “plus the administration’s commitment to expand.” He sums up, “We plan to add a couple thousand volunteers over the next two years.”

Of course, President Obama has already said the Peace Corps should double in size, but then every president has said that and it never happens.

Aaron made one interesting closing comment. He was saying how “tech-savvy” PCVs are and that there was a Volunteer in Nicaragua who had developed a stove that people can use to cook with compost instead of wood. Aaron wants to put this PCV’s blueprints and techniques online so that Volunteers in Africa, Asia, and Latin American can see what he’s doing.

Well, that’s all fine, and I agree, but back in 1997 I dropped into Associate Peace Corps Director Patricia Garamendi’s office in D.C. and she showed me a cooking stove a PCV had invented that used the sun for heat, no compost required.

The book shelves of what was once called in the agency, “Center For Field Assistance and Applied Research” are full of nifty ideas for PCVs to use and develop, and all of them should be on line, but no one in D.C. has yet to grab onto the most obvious idea, and that is to equip PCVs with inexpensive laptops. Half the Peace Corps Volunteers in the world teach, give them computers and students in Africa, Asia, and Latin America can go on line themselves in the classrooms of the developing world and get their own blueprints.

I’d suggest that Aaron call up Maureen Orth (Colombia 1965-67) and let Maureen tell him how she is already using inexpensive laptops at her school in Medellin, Colombia. This school that she supports with her K12 Wired Foundation was one she first built as a School-to-School project when she was a PCV. (By the way, I suggested this idea last year as # 4 Step for what the new Director should do when it took over.)

But to make my point once more! The One Laptop per Child computer is an XO-1 which costs about $200. If 3,500 Volunteers each year took one overseas to use and leave behind in their Peace Corps school or village, I think the cost could drop to $100. This purchase might be paid for by the PCV from either cost-of-living allowance or readjustment money, with another $50 tossed in by the agency.

It  is an investment that keeps on giving. As Aaron rightly say, “PCVs are tech-savvy.” Well, let them  prove to the world.

Ellen Urbani (Guatemala 1991-93) is working with Saturday Academy and Mercy Corps to convene a week-long camp (June 28-July 2, 2010) in Portland, Oregon, designed to introduce high school students to the issues and demands of careers in the field of international aid and development work. This week-long immersion camp will combine traditional and hands-on learning, public service opportunities, and the mentoring process to motivate participants toward further study or volunteerism in global relief efforts. Ellen is currently looking for instructors (8hrs/day for one week, paid positions) to teach each of these modules: Shelter, Water/Sanitation, Small Business, Global Health, Appropriate Technologies. She is also looking for experts/guest lecturers (from 1-8hrs/day, one day, unpaid) to cover topics of interest and application to the entire group, including: Action Planning: Designing interventions, rallying local support, project implementation, fund-raising Leadership Development: How to garner local buy-in, identify and collaborate with local/indigenous leaders, make best use of existing resources Media Relations: Promoting projects globally and locally, benefits of public relations, use of Internet and developing technologies in remote locations Global Politics: Understanding the role of existing aid organizations and their network of support, identifying how to structure aid in varying political climates, ensuring safety of personnel and programs Cross-Cultural Issues: How religion and superstition can impact programmatic implementation, the pitfalls encountered when translating programs across international borders, the benefit of fluency in local customs and belief systems

If you’re able/willing to be in Portland next summer at the end of June/beginning of July and are interested in participating, please contact Ellen directly at: ellen@ellenurbani.com

www.ellenurbani.com

This is an interview done in South Africa by Andre van Wyk for allAfrica.com that appeared today, November 11. Aaron Williams, the new Peace Corps Director, was on a world tour visiting Peace Corps countries on one of those famous ‘all/see’ trip all PC/W staff take. I thought that you’d like to see what the Director is thinking, two or so months into his new job.

The Obama administration earlier this year named a former United States Peace Corps volunteer, Aaron S. Williams, as the program’s new director. The Peace Corps, which will soon celebrate its 50th anniversary, draws thousands of Americans who want to work abroad and under the new administration, it is looking at its areas of focus and how best to continue implementing its programs most effectively. Williams spoke with AllAfrica during a visit to South Africa.

Is this your first visit to Africa since your appointment, and what role does the Peace Corps currently play on the continent?

Yes, this is my first visit since I was appointed two months ago as director… As you know, the Peace Corps is all about trying to promote world peace and friendship. That’s our principal mission and it has continued to be that way for nearly 50 years. We’re about to celebrate our 50th anniversary in 2011 and right now we have 7,500 volunteers in 74 countries around the world and we’re in 23 countries in Africa.

Which countries have you already visited on this trip, and what issues have arisen which you believe to be the most important?

I’m only going to visit one country on this trip to Africa: South Africa. I’m here primarily to meet with the country directors of all our programs in Africa and from here I go on to Bangkok to meet with our directors in Asia and the Middle East.

One of the things that I do when I visit a country is of course go out and visit our Peace Corps volunteers. I went to visit volunteers in Mpumalanga [province] and the North West [province] to look at volunteers who are working in programs in health and education. Those are the two principal sectors in South Africa.

Can you tell us what differences in policy or emphasis the Obama administration will bring to the activities of the Peace Corps?

This is a marvelous time for the Peace Corps as we approach our 50th [anniversary]. President Obama has issued a call to service to Americans and Americans have really responded in an extraordinary manner. Applications this year are up 18 percent. We have approximately 15,000 applications for about 4,000 positions right now so we’re seeing extraordinary interest on the part of Americans.

We also teach about 250 languages worldwide and the reason for that is so that Peace Corps volunteers can really reach out and work as partners in communities, with grassroots organizations around the world. One of the things that we try to do is that we want to be a responsive to partnerships. We’re a people-to-people organization. We work directly with communities.

Which African countries have benefited the most from Peace Corps assistance?

I think nearly all African countries have benefited… Historically, the first country that the Peace Corps went into was Ghana. Ghana is going to be the first country to celebrate its 50th anniversary and we have had uninterrupted service… [there] for nearly 50 years.

I think certainly here in South Africa we’re working in areas that are of great interest to the South African government and to South African society, civil society and business. We’re focused on education, we work on HIV/Aids. I had a chance to speak to South African government officials while I was here, in the ministries of health and education, and we want to support national priorities and we will continue to do so. Of course, our role is to work at the community level.

What are the Peace Corps’ biggest achievements, and its failures, in Africa over the last five years?

I think our biggest achievement has to be capacity development. We work with young people throughout the continent in terms of improving their learning ability. For example, we work with deaf children in many countries in Africa. We work with orphans who have been orphaned because of the HIV/Aids epidemic. We work in areas of small businesses and development with young people. As a matter of fact, probably two-thirds of all the people that we reach in Africa are children…

And now a new departure has been the new food security initiative. Secretary [of State Hillary Rodham] Clinton is very interested in food security; it’s going to be one of her primary initiatives and has the full support of course of the Obama administration. It is a priority at Peace Corps, and we’re going to do more to expand our work in agriculture. Agriculture has always been an important part of Peace Corps’ involvement in working at the community level.

What would you like the Peace Corps in Africa to be doing in three or four years?

I would like to see us continue our program in education; we’re very much involved in teacher training … hands-on involvement with teachers in the schools. I want to see us continue to expand our work in health, not just in HIV/Aids, but also in malaria and tuberculosis. We have trained skilled volunteers who work at the community level, really strengthening the capacity of NGOs at the grassroots to work in these areas.

I want to see us having a broad, expanded role in food security, especially because in Africa women play an instrumental role in the agricultural sector. I want to see us reach out to women who are involved in agriculture. I want to see us reach out to young people and introduce them to the importance of agriculture and food security. So those are the areas [where] I’d like to see us really establish a broader presence and deeper involvement at the community level.

Copyright © 2009 allAfrica.com. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

(Pictured: Lloyd Mangrum) 

“From the first days of World War II, players put away their sticks and picked up rifles to defend America.” 

By John Coyne
Special to ARMCHAIR GOLF

WORLD WAR II WAS CALLED the last “good” war and Tom Brokaw wrote of the men and women who fought in it as, “America’s greatest generation.” They came of age during the Great Depression and served their country in World War II.

Many of this greatest generation were golf professionals. Herb Graffis, founder of Golfing magazine, in his history of the Professional Golf Association (PGA) writes how golf professionals served in combat during WW II, and did a hundred other volunteer jobs relating to golf to help the war effort. From the first days of World War II, players put away their sticks and picked up rifles to defend America.

They would not be the first players to fight in a war. At the outbreak of World War II, it is estimated 900 members of the PGA were veterans of World War I. By the end of WW II, 20 percent of the members of the PGA had served in the armed forces, another 15 percent in war production jobs. Eleven pros were killed in action, three more died while in the service.

PGA pros, throughout the war years, were involved in construction, equipping and operating practice putting greens, practice tees, courses and indoor nets at more than 62 armed services hospitals. Professionals and superintendents often got together and built small golf installations at hospitals, and the pros kept going back to instruct patients and maintain the golf playgrounds.

In addition to that work, tournament circuit prize money during the war was in government bonds. In 1945, prize money was approximately $500,000 in war bonds. That year exhibitions by PGA members raised over $100,000 for hospitals, the USO and the Red Cross. According to Graffis, “Those wartime tournaments and exhibitions had a great deal to do with establishing the pattern of today’s tournament circuits, since most of the events have hospitals, boys’ clubs, and other welfare operations as promoters and beneficiaries.”

Not to be overlooked was the celebrity drawing power of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby at golf events. In 1943, Hope and Crosby took to the road for six weeks of exhibition matches with pros and amateurs. Joining them on tour were Sam Byrd, Byron Nelson, Joe Kirkwood, Gene Sarazen, Harry Cooper, as well as early LPGA stars Louise Suggs, Patty Berg and Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Hope and Crosby started at the Dallas Country Club with a gallery of about 5,000 who bought $4.5 million in war bonds and an ambulance for the Red Cross. They finished at the Edgewater Golf Club in Chicago. Bob and Bing paid their own expenses through out the tour, and the PGA gave them money clips as tokens of appreciation. 

War Toll

The war took a toll on the PGA. By the end of 1945, dues-paying membership was down to 1,565. That was 570 fewer members than when hostilities began. When the war was over, there were 4,817 courses in the U.S. and roughly 2,250,000 golfers, but few of these players had ever been to a golf tournament.

But all of that was about to change. Lloyd Mangrum, while training for the D-Day landings, was offered the professional job at the army’s Fort Meade golf course, which would have kept him out of combat, but he declined and went to the front lines in Europe. He would receive from his combat tours two Purple Hearts, and was wounded a final time at the Battle of the Bulge. However, when he was discharged from the army, he immediately won the 1946 U.S. Open, the first Open held after the war.

Other name professionals who served in the army and were back on tour within days of being discharged from service were Tommy Bolt; Jack Fleck who was in the Navy and also part of the D-Day invasion; Herman Keiser; Ted Kroll, who earned three Purple Hearts, and was wounded four times; Ed “Porky” Oliver; and the great amateur Smiley Quick, who won the ‘46 U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship and then turned pro.

The golf professionals of the greatest generation were home from the war and back on the links. It was the start of the modern PGA Tour that we know today. 

John Coyne is the author of The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan and The Caddie Who Played with Hickory. Learn more at John Coyne Books.

Partners of the Americas, the International Volunteering Project at Brookings, and the Building Bridges Coalition will host the 2009 Higher Education & International Volunteer Service Conference on November 12-13, 2009 in Washington, D.C.  The conference will drive efforts for assessing and influencing national policies related to service, study abroad programs and service learning, and citizen diplomacy. 

The first day of the conference will conclude with a special Capitol Hill Reception in the Hart Senate Office Building hosted by Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.). The reception will celebrate international volunteer service and recognize legislative leaders for their contributions.

WHO:  Partners of the Americas, the International Volunteering Project at Brookings, and the Building Bridges Coalition.

Invited speakers include: Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.); Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio); Judith McHale, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy; Aaron Williams, Director, Peace Corps ; John Bridgeland, President and CEO, Civic Enterprises; Senator Harris Wofford, former senator from Pennsylvania;  Ann Schodde , President and CEO, U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy; Vic Johnson,  Senior Advisor, Public Policy, NAFSA: Association of International Educators; and Steve Rosenthal, Chair, Building Bridges Coalition and Founder, Executive Director, Cross Cultural Solutions.

WHAT: The 2009 Higher Education & International Volunteer Service Conference, and Capitol Hill Reception hosted by Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.).

WHEN: The Conference will take place November 12-13, 2009; the Capitol Hill Reception will be held the evening of November 12, 2009 from 6-8 p.m.

WHERE:  The Conference will take place at the Liaison Capitol Hill Hotel, 415 New Jersey Avenue NW, Washington DC 20001. The Capitol Hill Reception will be held at the Hart Senate Office Building.

For more information regarding event details or media requests, please contact Amy Cantu at (202) 973-1325 or acantu@levick.com.

PeaceCorpsWorldWide will be at this event and we will report on it on our website.

 

Check out The New Yorker on line today and the piece by Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) who is also a serious runner, writing about the surprise winner of the New Yrok Marathon on Sunday, an American named Meb Keflezighi who happens to be from Eritrea.

November 2, 2009
Last year, Meb Keflezighi’s Olympic dreams ended on the Fourth of July. Nobody would have predicted that a year later he would win the New York City Marathon. At the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, where I interviewed him for my article on American long-distance runners, he finished thirteenth in the ten thousand metres, nearly a full minute behind the winner. Eight months earlier, at the marathon trials in New York City, he had also failed to make the team. He was thirty-three years old, and he suffered from nagging injuries; most people in the sport believed that his best races were behind him. (read on at:http://www.newyorker.com

Peter also has an article “Chinese Barbizon” in the October 26, 2009, issue of  The New Yorker. It is a section from his next book on China–his third–entitled Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory. This book will be published in February 2010.