Archive - May 2009

1
New Play in NYC By RPCV From Kyrgyzstan
2
Self-Published Books Up 132 %
3
RPCVs Rally Around Frank Fountain (India 1966-68) For Peace Corps Director
4
Review: RPCV Barbara Joe's Triumph & Hope
5
RPCV Books For Summer Reading
6
Bellamy Receives Honorary Degree From Her College
7
RPCV From Kazakhstan Publishing Widely
8
A Worrisome Possibility: The Candidacy Of James Arena-DeRosa
9
The Fabulous Peace Corps Book Locker, Part III
10
RPCV Writer Wins 2008 Interzone Reader Poll
11
The Fabulous Peace Corps Book Locker, Part II
12
The Fabulous Peace Corps Book Locker, Part I
13
In, Up and Out!
14
Wofford Welcomes Specter into the Democratic Fold With Peace Corps Tidbit
15
RPCV New Assistant Secretary Of State For Africa

New Play in NYC By RPCV From Kyrgyzstan

Twin Towers, a play by Damian Wampler (Kyrgyzstan 1999-01) will premiere at The Planet Connections Theater Festivity on Friday, June 12th through Sunday, June 28th for six  performances only at the Robert Moss Theater at 440 Studios, 440 Lafayette, in New York’s East Village. Set in the Bronx Twin Towers focuses on the lives of two best friends who have chosen very different life paths– Trevor and Jamal, the Twin Towers of the title, were once inseparable schoolyard buddies. Now, years later, Trevor has returned from Iraq a war hero, while Jamal has returned from years of overseas in the Peace Corps. The two clash as the fantasy of their childhood innocence fades to reveal the truth of their character. Twin Towersis a coming of age story not only for two young men but for our country as well., It incorporates music, dance, a Brazilian dance-like martial art called Capoeira, . . .

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Self-Published Books Up 132 %

Self-publishing continues to climb according to Bowker, the bibliographic company. In 2008 285,394 new books were published by print-on-demand companies, a 132% increase compared to 2007. U.S. publishers printed 275,232 new books and editions in 2008–a 3.2 % drop compared to the year before. On Demand and short-run books exceeded the number of traditional books last year. It is the first time that has happened. What does it mean? Well, if not else, people might be reading less, but they are certainly writing more, avoiding the traditional gatekeepers, i.e., agents and editors, and slapping down hard cash to see their names and words in print. I’m all for it. I’d just remind everyone to get an editor and find objective readers to read and comment on your manuscript before you pay for the printing. At the end of the day, you’ll be glad that you did.

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RPCVs Rally Around Frank Fountain (India 1966-68) For Peace Corps Director

The RPCVs from India are rallying around Frank Fountain (India 1966-68) for the Peace Corps directorship. He looks like a very good candidate for the position, being an RPCVs, coming from a corporate and non-profit background. Here’s a little of his history. Frank Fountain grew up in Tunnel Springs, Alabama, a rural segregated community typical of the times. He earned a BS in History and Political Science at Hampton University in Virginia and trained at the University of Missouri at Columbia, MO, and served as an Ag Volunteer in West Bengal. After India, Frank was a Peace Corps Training Staff member in California, then worked two years with Robert Nathan Associates in Washington, DC as a consultant to the Neighborhood Improvements Project of the Office of Economic Opportunity’s Community Action Agency. He taught management skills and techniques of community organizing at a time when these powerful non-violent tools for fighting poverty were . . .

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Review: RPCV Barbara Joe's Triumph & Hope

Triumph & Hope is reviewed by Bob Arias. Bob has had a long history with the Peace Corps, first as a PCV 1964-66, then at the Puerto Rico Training Center 1966-68; as an APCD in Colombia 1966-68; then Special Assistant to the Director, ACTION 1976-77, CD in Argentina-Uruguay, 1993-95, and finally as a consultant to the Peace Corps Safety and Security Office 2002-03. Triumph & Hope: Golden Years With The Peace Corps in Honduras by Barbara Joe (Honduras 2000–03) BookSurge December 2008 316 pages $18.99 Best new non-fiction finalist, National Indie Excellence Awards Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964–66) There’s more than triumph and hope going on here, this is a complete “journal” of life as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Central American country of Honduras!  Barbara believes she is telling you the story of her success and failures as a senior citizen in this lush banana country, when in reality she is describing what most . . .

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RPCV Books For Summer Reading

Before you leave for the long week end, and the long summer, here are a few books to order to take with you. All of these books were written by RPCVs. Support the Peace Corps Community and read some great books! The Italian Summer: Golf, Food, and Family at Lake Como By Roland Merullo (Micronesia 1979-80) Touchstone 272 pages 2009 Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach (Non-Fiction) by Laurence Leamer (Nepal 1965-67) Hyperion Press 368 pages 2009 Hippie Chick (young adult) By Joseph Monninger (Burkina Faso 1975-77) 204 pages Front Street Press 2008 The Mind Dancing (Poems) By Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1962-64) Art and Calligraphy by Vivian Lu 76 pages Plain View Press 2009 The Disappearance (Novel) by Efrem Sigel (Ivory Coast 1965-67) Permanent Press 264 pages 2009 Triumph & Hope: Golden Years With The Peace Corps in Honduras (Memoir) Barbara Joe (Honduras . . .

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Bellamy Receives Honorary Degree From Her College

Carol tells this story about how she decided to join the Peace Corps. As a senior at Gettysburg College in 1963 she fell asleep while studying in the college library. Waking late at night in the dark, she found herself locked inside the library. She spent the time reading and one of the items she found, was information on the ‘new’ Peace Corps. By dawn’s early light, she had decided to join the Peace Corps. She went to Guatemala as a health volunteer, had her own radio program teaching health, then came back to New York and became a lawyer, state senator, investment banker, and in 1994 the first RPCV Director of the Peace Corps. After that she was appointed head of the United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF), and now is a college president. On Sunday, May 17, she returned to her college to receivean honorary degree along with Judy Woodruff and Al Hunt of Washington, D.C.

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RPCV From Kazakhstan Publishing Widely

Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 20002-04) has recently had several pieces published or accepted for publication. Two poems appeared in the online journal Protestpoems.org, while a personal essay appeared in Etude: New Voices in Literary Nonfiction. [http://etude.uoregon.edu/spring2009/essay]  He has poems forthcoming in If Poetry Journal and The Los Angeles Review as well as short stories forthcoming in Eureka Literary Magazine, Cantaraville, and Arroyo Literary Review. Fearnside is managing editor of the literary journal Alligator Juniper at Prescott College , where he also teaches writing.

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A Worrisome Possibility: The Candidacy Of James Arena-DeRosa

I met David Searles back in the mid-nineties in PC/HQ. He had just written his book about the Peace Corps and was visiting the agency and come to see me as I was then editing Peace Corps Writers & Readers in those pre-internet years. David has had careers in international business, government service and education. He was with the Peace Corps for five  years, 1969-71–three years as the country director in the Philippines, and two years at headquarters as a Regional Director for North Africa, Near East, Asia, and Pacific (NANEAP), and as Deputy Director under John Dellenback. He went onto earn a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky and published two books: A College For Appalachia (1995) and The Peace Corps Experience  (1997), both by The University Press of Kentucky. He lives now with his wife in Owensboro, Kentucky. David wrote me after seeing the news about the possible appointment of James Arena-DeRosa. Here is what he had . . .

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The Fabulous Peace Corps Book Locker, Part III

The Peace Corps dropped the ‘book locker’ in the mid-sixties because of the expense of the books and shipping overseas and perhaps they decided that books weren’t needed in Peace Corps countries. It is true that in some post-colonial African nations book stores are better than what you find in most towns in America. In Ethiopia, for example, when we arrived in 1962, there was a wonderful bookstore, Giannopoulos, located on Churchill Road off the Piazza, and when I was in Ibadan, Nigeria in 1968, I found a great book store there that was connected to the university. Nevertheless, I still hear from PCVs longing for books. If we were reinventing the Peace Corps today, (and it seems that everyone want to do that), I’d say equip all PCVs with laptops for their schools and villages. Giving laptop to the developing world is already being done, of course. And it . . .

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RPCV Writer Wins 2008 Interzone Reader Poll

Jason Sanford ( Thailand 1994-96) has won the 2008 Interzone Readers Poll for his short story “When Thorns Are the Tips of Trees.” The award is voted on by readers of the British speculative fiction magazine Interzone. A second Interzone story by Jason, “The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain,” placed #4 in the Readers’ Poll and will be reprinted a few weeks from now in the anthology Year’s Best SF 14.  Interzone has also accepted a 20,000-word novella from Jason for publication later in the year. For more information check out Jason’s web site.

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The Fabulous Peace Corps Book Locker, Part II

In the summer of 1964, Jack Prebis (Ethiopia 1962-64) returned from overseas and was responsible for putting the books together for the 3rd edition of the Peace Corps locker. Here is Jack’s recollection of that job and his collection of books for the famous Peace Corps book locker. Developing the Peace Corps booklocker was the best job I ever had. As sometimes happens with fun jobs, this one fell in my lap. Returning in 1964 from my secondary school teaching stint in Ethiopia, I headed to Our Nation’s Capital, hoping to land stateside Peace Corps work. Back in those days, the Peace Corps was fresh, free-wheeling and unbureaucratic, shot through with idealists. (Thanks in part to the five-year rule, it remains staffed with idealists.) To my good fortune, as I was being interviewed-was it by fifteen people?-the person who had begun work on “the booklocker” was heading back to Chile on staff. . . .

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The Fabulous Peace Corps Book Locker, Part I

For a short period of time in the very first years of the Peace Corps all Volunteers were given book lockers by the agency. The lockers were to be left behind in schools, villages, and towns where PCVs served as seeds for future libraries. There is some mystery of who first thought to give PCVs these lockers and one rumor has it that the idea came from Sarge Shriver’s wife, Eunice. The first locker was put together by a young foreign service officer who left the agency in the very early days of the agency to teach at Claremont College in California. In a letter that Shriver wrote to the early PCVs about the locker, he said, “We know you need books. This Booklocker of paperbacks and inexpensive publications is designed to meet that need. It includes classics and contemporary writing by both American and foreign authors, as well as . . .

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In, Up and Out!

One of the unique and special policies from the very early days of the Peace Corps was the principle of  “In, Up and Out” that was outlined in a December 11, 1961 memo to Franklin H. Williams, then chairman of the Talent Search Panel for the agency. It was written by young consultant named Robert B. Textor. Textor was an anthropologist at Stanford University working at PC/HQ and his memo put into words a plan to keep the Peace Corps “Permanently Young, Creative, and Dynamic.” His memo did not originate the idea; it simply gave the idea a name, formulated it in actionable terms, and provided it with a specific rationale.” The memo grew out of the talk around 806 Connecticut Avenue that reflected Shriver’s opinions about bureaucratic tendencies toward sluggishness and complacency. The memo is reprinted in full as Appendix 3  in the book Textor edited in 1966 entitled, Cultural Frontiers of the Peace Corps. This . . .

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Wofford Welcomes Specter into the Democratic Fold With Peace Corps Tidbit

In today’s (May 12, 2009) issue of Roll Call, Harris Wofford–architect of the Peace Corps and Senator from Pennsylvania from 1991-95– has an open letter to Sen. Arlen Specter welcoming him into the Democratic fold. “Over the yers I’ve appreciated your advice,” Wofford writes Spector, then adds with his typical humor, “even when I didn’t take it.” Wofford then goes onto link Arlen’s shifting political parties to an old Peace Corps story. Harris recalls: “The current preoccupation with motives reminds me of a moment in the shaping of the Peace Corps in 1961 when Sargent Shriver assembled an eminent group of psychologists to develop a selection process for Peace Corps volunteers. We added respected Harvard University sociologist David Riesman. “After listening to the experts propose tests designed to weed out volunteers who were not dedicated altruists and select only those whose motive was purely service, Riesman spoke up. “Stop it, you are . . .

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RPCV New Assistant Secretary Of State For Africa

Johnnie Carson was officially sworn in as assistant secretary of state for African affairs this month, making him the Obama administration’s top official charged with directing U.S. policy toward Africa. Carson is a career diplomat, and a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania (1965-68), and a lifelong friend of Africa. His 37-year Foreign Service career includes ambassadorships to Kenya (1999-2003), Zimbabwe (1995-1997), and Uganda (1991-1994); and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs (1997-1999). Earlier in his career he had assignments in Portugal (1982-1986), Botswana (1986-1990), Mozambique (1975-1978), and Nigeria (1969-1971). He has also served as desk officer in the Africa section at State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1971-1974); Staff Officer for the Secretary of State (1978-1979), and Staff Director for the Africa Subcommittee of the US House of Representatives (1979-1982). In the mid-nineties in the Clinton Administration Carson was offered the deputy slot for the . . .

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