November 12, 2010 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Crime And The Peace Corps Volunteer–Not A Novel!

Nov 12 2010

Who’s protecting the PCVs overseas? Can PCVs be protected while overseas? These are questions that have plagued the Peace Corps from Day One. Way back in 1960 the Daughters of the American Revolution were warning us about what would happen to young PCVs living in “backward, underdeveloped countries.” Then in the 1965 civil war in the Dominican Republic, when Johnson sent five hundred Marines into the DR, supposedly to evacuate Americans and other foreigners, then added another 23,000 U.S. troops to keep, so thought Johnson, the DR from becoming another Cuba, there were PCVs in the middle of it all and living in Santo Domingo. Of the 108 Volunteers ini the country, 34 of them were in the barrios of the capital, 25 working as urban community development workers, 9 nurses running clinics. What happened to these “real heroines of the civil war’ as the New York Times correspondent Tad Szulc called the female nurses in his book . . .

Review of The Incarnation of CatMan Billy

Nov 12 2010

The Incarnation of CatMan Billy by Will Jordan (Senegal 1971–72; Liberia 1972) The Press of Light 2009 310 pages $12.99 Reviewed by Patrick Chura (Lithuania 1992–94) THE INCARNATION OF CATMAN BILLY, a first novel from Will Jordan, is about “practical energy work,” a metaphysical self-help concept intended to improve the understanding and following of our “human needs and energy channels.” The author is a spiritual counselor and full-time teacher of meditation and healing. He travels the country offering one-day CatMan Billy seminars and transformational workshops. Before and after the seminars he sells this book, which was written as a vehicle for his New Age philosophy. The novel is an elaborate fantasy-allegory, with Jordan’s take on the animal world serving as a tool for correcting human behaviors and attitudes. The short opening chapter has some good writing — it describes the birth of a litter of kittens in the rural Johnson . . .

Archive - November 12, 2010