Archive - November 2010

1
Korean RPCV Writers Write Up A Storm
2
Records of Peace Corps offices in Host Countries
3
Crime And The Peace Corps Volunteer–Not A Novel!
4
Review of The Incarnation of CatMan Billy
5
Bonnie Black's Brilliant Book
6
Check Out The Job Listing On Our Site
7
Stone Soup
8
Reading more of When The World Calls
9
If You Haven't Seen It, This Says It All
10
Information Collection and Exchange: ICE
11
Words Of Wisdom From "When The World Calls"
12
Review of William V. Timmons' Becker's Farm
13
More On How To Write Like John O’Hara

Korean RPCV Writers Write Up A Storm

You’ll find fiction by two Korean RPCVs Richard Wiley (Korea 1967-69) and  John Givens (Korea 1967-69) in the new issue, now on line, of Prime Number Magazine. http://www.primenumbermagazine.com/ The editor of the on-line and print publication is another Korean RPCV, Clifford Garstang (Korea 1976-78). This year Garstang won the Maria Thomas Fiction Award given by Peace Corps Writers for  his short story collection, In An Uncharted Country.  As editor of Prime Number Magazine, Cliff  is looking for short stories and essays under 4,000 words, including flash fiction and non-fiction. He is also looking for poetry of various lengths, reviews, short plays, interviews, even cover art.  To learn more, visit their site.  Prime Number Magazine is published by Press 53, a terrific small press helping to keep literature alive. http://www.press53.com/ Another Korean RPCV writer I’ve discovered is David L. Meth (Korea 1971-72) a novelist, an award-winning playwright.  David spent three years on researching his book A Hint of Light, including a year in . . .

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Records of Peace Corps offices in Host Countries

  “It is foolish for us to work here and never have or leave any records or data on what we are doing or have done…This eliminates any follow-up after we leave.” – Departing CD Volunteer: Colombia 1965. Evelyn Reed, on assignment from Charlie Peters legendary PC Evaluation Unit, quoted from this Volunteer’s memo in her report entitled “Peace Corps Community Development in Colombia,” November 28, 1967. (All the Peace Corps records at the National Archives have been renumbered since I made a copy of that report. The old citation is: Record Group 490; Entry 20; Country Program Evaluations; Colombia 1967; Box 23). To quote Reed further from that report, I found a chaotic jumble of old and recent records scattered all over Colombia…my concern grew about what such a lack of record-keeping did to program planning and current Volunteer work…(From a visit to a storage warehouse) The warehouseman ground . . .

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Crime And The Peace Corps Volunteer–Not A Novel!

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 . . .

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Review of The Incarnation of CatMan Billy

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 . . .

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Bonnie Black's Brilliant Book

Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) was a writer/editor and chef/caterer in New York City  before she joined the Peace Corps. Since returning home, she has written two memoirs about her time in Africa. How to Cook a Crocodile: A Memoir with Recipes published by our new imprint, Peace Corps Writers, has just come out. You can order her book at Amazon.com and have something really new to cook for Thanksgiving! Black is a graduate of Columbia University and has an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles. She teaches English and creative nonfiction writing at the University of New Mexico in Taos and we recently discussed her memoir, the writing of it, and what’s next. • Bonnie, let me start with something simple: What’s your book about? I like to think this book answers the questions, Why in the world would a successful New York writer-editor-caterer decide to chuck it all . . .

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Check Out The Job Listing On Our Site

David Sears on our site has been faithfully listing jobs for RPCVs and Staff. Today he has 6 new postings by Sustainable Bolivia and United Planet on our site.  They can be viewed:  http://www.cambridgedata.com/search_jobs.htm   David started Cambridge Data Systems to provide on-line tools for recruitment for development projects in 1997 and continues to manage that enterprise. And we are lucky he blogs for our site. Thanks, David.

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Stone Soup

  If Peace Corps history were a meal, Stone Soup would head the menu. In the fable, a poor village had nothing to eat but the people had a pot, water, fire and a stone.  They heated the water using the ancient technique of heating the stone and dropping it into the pot. Soon someone tossed in a carrot. Somebody else had a small piece of meat. Little by little, they made soup. The RPCVs who have made such giant efforts at preserving Peace Corps history are the water, the fire, the pot and the stone.    I am speaking, of course, of  RPCVS such as John Coyne and Marian Haley Bell (Ethiopia) who created “Peace Corps Readers and Writers” many years ago to showcase literature written by Peace Corps Volunteers. Now they publish this blog.  Robert Klein (Ghana I) author of Ghana I – Being First.  Bob started the . . .

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Reading more of When The World Calls

Over the weekend I finished reading Stanley Meisler (PC/Evaluator 1963-67) new history of the Peace Corps. It was a bit nostalgic to be reading it while in D.C. for a meeting with the Deputy Director, and being in what is called the Paul D. Coverdell Peace Corps Headquarters (the naming of this building is really a miscarriage of justice,) a building located at 1111 20th Street N.W. where at 5:30 in the evening you could hear a pin drop. Where was everyone? I asked myself. PCVs overseas were working 24/7, but the staff had split by 5 o’clock and gone home like any other government bureaucrat! I will say that on this Friday night Aaron Williams was still working in his 8th floor office, and Carrie, the Deputy, was rushing back from New Jersey for our late meeting. The only other staffers I ran into in the empty hallways was Carrie Hessler-Radelet’s aide-de-camp, former four-year PCV in Paraguay, Dan Westerhof, and Bruce Cohen, who has been around the Peace Corps . . .

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If You Haven't Seen It, This Says It All

The first Peace Corps Volunteers to Colombia (but not the first PCVs; they went to Ghana), are interviewed at their Peace Corps Reunion at their old Training Site. The guys, and they were all guys, gathered this weekend in New Jersey. A few of the RPCVs do look like Couch Potatoes, but don’t we all? Even the Peace Corps couldn’t keep us forever on the cutting edge. Take a look as NBC’s Ron Allen talks to them and a few of the other early PCVs who went to West Africa. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/40035062#40035062

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Information Collection and Exchange: ICE

“Sanitation through Innovation: the Tube Sock Toilet — Congo 1997” Wouldn’t that be fun to read!   Or,  “Peace Corps Tunisia: The Legacy 1962–1996 — Tunisia  1996”; or “Botswans: Preservice Training Re-entry Group 2 Final Technical Report, May 04  — Botswana”;  or,  “Peace Corps Tunisia: The Legacy 1962-1996 — Tunisia 1996”; or  “Reflecting Life: A Workshop on HIV/AIDS Education and Awareness  — Thailand 2004.” These are just a sample of a wide range of field generated materials found in the Peace Corps’ Information Collection and Exchange or ICE. Field generated materials are those created in the field by Peace Corps staff and Volunteers. Since the beginning, Peace Corps has provided technical information from all sources to Volunteers in the field. Sometimes this service was provided within the Publication and Information Center or PIC, sometimes within the Peace Corps Library. In 1975, this function was formalized as the Information Collection and Exchange or . . .

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Words Of Wisdom From "When The World Calls"

These last few days I have been having the pleasure of reading Stanley Meisler’s When The World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and its First Fifty Years. (The book will be published in February but you can go on-line now to Amazon.com and order your copy.) There are a lot of gems in Stan’s narrative, background stories on questions you might have had on ‘why in the hell is the Peace Corps doing this?,’ etc. that Meisler, a former foreign and diplomatic correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, now answers for you. What I liked especially is the way Stan summed up the story on the agency in a short and telling, and I believe, very true statement, writing in his Introduction: “The Peace Corps has one great inner resource. The strength of the Peace Corps has always depended on the energy and commitment of the Volunteers. No matter . . .

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Review of William V. Timmons' Becker's Farm

Becker’s Farm by William V. Timmons (Niger 1965–67) Create Space (Booksurge) $18.99 326 pages 2006 Reviewed by Darcey Meijer (Gabon 1982–84) BECKER’S FARM, BY WILLIAM TIMMONS, is a gratifying transformation story. A young German soldier is captured during World War II and sent to a POW camp in the United States. Through circumstance and by asking Jesus into his life, he is born again and effects major changes on the people and town around him. The glaring weakness in this otherwise good story is Timmons’ lack of proficiency in the use of quotation marks, which caused me to reread often. Timmons should also proofread for typos and verb tense errors. The protagonist, Helmut Sommerfield, is a prisoner in Camp Alexis, Nebraska. The prisoners are treated well, yet Helmut has no idea what the future will bring. When will the war end? Will he ever get back to Germany? What’s more, . . .

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More On How To Write Like John O’Hara

In Frank MacShane’s book on the Life of John O’Hara there is an interesting paragraph on style. O’Hara, says MacShane, thought of style mainly as a way of solving problems. For example, in fiction he believed that the way to create a convincing character was through dialogue. “Nothing,” he wrote, “could so quickly cast doubt on, and even destroy, the author’s character as bad dialogue. If the people did not talk right, they were not real people.” O’Hara had developed his gift for dialogue mainly in his short stories. The problem he faced in his novels was this: how to structure the book so that the narrative remained alive while the necessary information was presented?  He is not, of course, the only novelist to face this problem. O’Hara way of solving it came about (in part) from reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Reading these . . .

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