January 26, 2010 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Review: Douglas Foley's The Heartland Chronicles

Jan 26 2010

Reviewer Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962-64) is a writer and policy consultant living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation outside Pendleton, Oregon. Here Tom reviews The Heartland Chronicles by Douglas Foley published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1995, then again in 2005. • The Heartland Chronicles by Douglas Foley (Philippines 1962-64) University of Pennsylvania Press 1995; 2005 with Epilogue 264 pages $29.97 Reviewed by Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962–64) Another book that really meets the Peace Corps’ Third Goal of bringing it all back home, let me here applaud Douglas Foley’s THE HEARTLAND CHRONICLES. In 1995 when Foley published the book he was an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. Now he be a full professor. “A tale of Indians and whites living together in a small Iowa community,” this tidily laid out book relates how Foley got inside Iowa’s tiny but old Meskwaki Indian culture just at the . . .

100 Days (Or Less ) Part Four:What Makes A Writer?

Jan 26 2010

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut once remarked that, “Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of a writer. It is like making wallpaper by hand for the Sistine Chapel.” How do you know if you are a writer? Perhaps it is a single incident – one that happens early in life and shapes the writer’s sense of wonder and self-awareness. Take the case of José Saramago, the first Portuguese-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The son of a peasant father and an illiterate mother, brought up in a home with no books, he took almost 40 years to go from metalworker to civil servant to editor in a publishing house to newspaper editor. He was 60 before he earned recognition at home and abroad with Baltasar and Blimunda. As a child, he spent vacations with his grandparents in a village called Azinhaga. . . .

Can you name this group?

Jan 26 2010

RPCVs Remember Kennedy At The Capital, November 21, 1988

Jan 26 2010

[In 1988 Tim Carroll (Nigeria 1963-65), the first Director of the National Council of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, (now the NPCA) staged an event in Washington, D.C. that would prove to be the most newsworthy and significant reminder of the Peace Corps connection with President John F. Kennedy. It would also be, in the words of Peace Corps Director Loret Miller Ruppe (1981-89), the event that generated the most attention ever given to the agency by the American media. Named Journals of Peace by Tim Carroll, this event consisted of continual readings by RPCVs for twenty-four hours in the U.S. Capital Rotunda. The Journals of Peace began at mid-day on the 21st of November in 1988 and continued through mid-day on the 22nd ending with a memorial Mass at St. Matthews Cathedral, the site of Kennedy’s funeral. Similar, smaller, memorial services were also held in other parts of the country on this anniversary of . . .

Archive - January 26, 2010