Archive - 2010

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Mad Man # 9
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2010 Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award for 2009 Won by Laurence Leamer
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Review of Leita Kaldi's (Senegal 1993–96) Roller Skating in the Desert
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Mad Man # 8
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2010 Maria Thomas Fiction Award goes to In An Uncharted Country by Clifford Garstang
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Mad Man # 7
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Mad Man # 6–The Wisconsin Plan
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Details on the University of Michigan Events For the 50th Anniversary, Beginning in 2010
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Mad Man # 5
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Mad Man # 4
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Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996-97) Plays Games
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University of Michigan Events, At a Glance
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Mad Man # 3
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Screenplay by Edmisten (Peru 1962-64) Finalist at Alaska International Film Festival
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# 20–A–The Mad Man NEW

Mad Man # 9

Jay Rockefeller had no interest in going out on a blind date with Lennie Radley when he arrived at the University of Michigan. As he emphatically told Gale. “Bob, I’m not seeing her. I have traveled fifty thousand miles in the past five weeks. And now I am going to bed.” You can’t, Gale insisted, begging Rockefeller, grabbing the young man by the shoulders. Gale had promised the young woman. She had lost her brother in the Peace Corps.  It was as if the whole future of the Peace Corps depended on getting Rockefeller to go on this blind date. “Okay, Bob,” Jay answered. “I’ll do it. But only if you take out her roommate and go with me.” “I can’t! I’m a married man!” “I don’t care.” “Besides, she might not have a roommate.” “She’s got a girlfriend. If I’m going; you’re going.” The two recruiters double dated for the sake of the future of . . .

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2010 Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award for 2009 Won by Laurence Leamer

PEACE CORPS WRITERS is pleased to announce that Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach by Laurence Leamer (Nepal 1965-67)  has won the 2010 Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award for the outstanding non-fiction book published by a Peace Corps writer during 2009. Leamer will receive a framed certificate and a prize of $200. • Laurence Leamer has had a lifelong career as a freelance writer following a one-year stint as an associate editor at Newsweek. His first book, The Paper Revolutionaries: The Rise of the Underground Press [Simon & Schuster 1972], was written with a grant from the Twentieth Century Fund. Upon publication, Leamer left New York City to live in a trailer park in Lanark, West Virginia where he worked in a coal mine and wrote an article for Harper’s about his experience. That led to other assignments for the magazine including covering . . .

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Review of Leita Kaldi's (Senegal 1993–96) Roller Skating in the Desert

Reviewer Tony D’Souza’s  new novel The Mule, will be released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt next year. His other novels, Whiteman and The Konkans, won many prizes including the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Maria Thomas Prize from Peace Corps Writers, and Florida gold and silver medals for fiction. Tony has contributed to The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, Outside, Granta, McSweeney’s, the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Fantasy, and has received an NEA, a Japan Friendship NEA, and a Guggenheim. He lives in Sarasota, FL, with his wife Jessyka and their two young children. Here he reviews Leita Kaldi’s memoir Roller Skating in the Desert. • Roller Skating in the Desert Leita Kaldi (Senegal 1993–96) PublishAmerica 2007 $24.95 Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000–02, Madagascar 2002–03) WHAT’S MOST ENJOYABLE about Roller Skating in the Desert, Leita Kaldi’s unique memoir about her three . . .

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Mad Man # 8

“What do you mean, Sarge?” Bob Gale asked, alone in the conference room with Shriver. “The school year is over. It’s the end of April. The students spend May studying for finals. It’s a tense time on campus. I don’t think we should impose ourselves. We hit Wisconsin at a perfect time. But there won’t be another perfect time until next fall.” Shriver wasn’t having any of that. “What’s the nearest equivalent of a school like Wisconsin?” Shriver wanted to know, disregarding Gale’s protests. “We need a big, liberal-learning place where you have contacts?” Shriver was on one side of the long conference table, leaning back in his chair, asking questions. Gale was on the other side, keeping his distance, pacing back and forth. A moving target was harder to hit, he kept thinking. “Michigan,” Gale finally answered, sighing. He had to say something. There was no turning back. Haddad had abandoned . . .

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2010 Maria Thomas Fiction Award goes to In An Uncharted Country by Clifford Garstang

PEACE CORPS WRITERS is pleased to announce that In An Uncharted Country by Clifford Garstang  (South Korea 1976–78) has won the 2010 Maria Thomas Fiction Award for the outstanding fiction book published by a Peace Corps writer during 2009. Clifford will receive a framed certificate and a prize of $200. In An Uncharted Country showcases ordinary men and women in and around Rugglesville, Virginia, as they struggle to find places and identities in their families and the community. This collection of short stories is Garstang’s first published book, and it has also won the Independent Publisher’s IPPY Gold Medal this year for Best Fiction in the Mid Atlantic. Clifford Garstang grew up in the Midwest and received a BA from Northwestern University. After serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, he earned an MA in English and a JD, both from Indiana University, and practiced international law in Singapore, Chicago, and . . .

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Mad Man # 7

Returning to D.C. after their Madison trip Gale and Kiker walked into a senior staff meeting and were greeted by cheers and applause, a standing ovation for what they had achieved in Wisconsin. Howard Greenberg was the first to speak up at the senior staff meeting that morning after the round of applause and words of congratulations from the Mad Men & Mad Women. This old tough government bureaucrat was the Associate Director for the Office of Management. He controlled the funds appropriated by Congress, and was a long time government employee. He had seen it all. He wasn’t easily impressed by a couple of guys wet behind the ears when it came to “Washington ways.” He began the meeting by saying: “Gale and Kiker here, went out to Wisconsin two weeks ago and they broke more rules and regulations than anyone in the United States government, as far as I know. Thought I won’t go so far as to say they’ve broken . . .

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Mad Man # 6–The Wisconsin Plan

Following Sarge’s ‘T’riffic!’ and approval for the new recruitment campaign, Gale went up to his rabbit warren of rooms and started to call everyone he knew at the University of Wisconsin. “They were all old pals of mine, and they were going ape over the phone about my plans for the Peace Corps at the university. But it wasn’t an easy job of recruitment. In 1963, the campus covered nine hundred acres on the shores of Lake Mendota. There were over 17,000 undergraduates, another 7,000 grad students. Gale realized early on that he (and the Peace Corps) had to see the recruitment trip as a presidential campaign. There were two of them, Doug Kiker and Bob Gale, assigned by Sarge to do the first campaign–neither of them knew each other at HQ, both were new to the Peace Corps. They couldn’t do it all, so Gale decided on a second team to arrive in . . .

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Details on the University of Michigan Events For the 50th Anniversary, Beginning in 2010

Events Looking forward to this year’s 50th anniversary, the university is planning many events, including a national symposium on the future of international service and a commemoration of Senator John F. Kennedy’s speech on the steps of the Michigan Union. Sign up for email event updates » The events that have been planned to date include: •·         October 11-21, 2010 “As I See It” Photo Competition Michigan Union Lobby, Beanster’s at the Michigan League, and the Piano Lounge in Pierpont Commons In honor of the Peace Corps’ 50th anniversary, “Peace” is the theme for October’s “As I See It” photo competition. Students should submit photos by October 7. The exhibit will be up from October 11-21. Cast your vote for your favorite photo on-line through the Arts At Michigan website or in any of the three Unions, and help a student photographer win cool prizes! All current University of Michigan . . .

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Mad Man # 5

Speaking up in the Conference Table on the 5th floor in the Maiatico Building, surrounded by the Mad Men & Mad Women,  Bob Gale told Shriver and the others that Sam Babbitt’s ‘gentleman’ approach to recruiting wasn’t working. In a way (to use today’s terminology), the Peace Corps wasn’t a ‘brand’; it had not established its value with college students where most of the recruits for the new Peace Corps were to be found. “Off the top of my head,” recalled Gale, “I said, I’d get the college administrators and the faculty fully on our side, get them involved. I’d alert the campus newspaper and the campus radio station. I’d co-opt office space in the Student Union–that’s where a lot of the action is at a big university. I’d send out from Washington senior staff and famous names….” Shriver stopped him. He pounded the table with his fist, startling Gale who wasn’t use to Sarge’s ways. Then  came, as Coates Redmon says in her . . .

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Mad Man # 4

Bob Gale began his life at the Peace Corps working in a “rabbit warren of four oddly shaped offices” on the 11th floor of the Maiatico Building. He had one of the best views in Washington, looking out (and down) at Lafayette Park, the White House, the Executive Office Building, the Washington Monument, the Tidal Basin, the Jefferson Memorial, and the landing pattern at National Airport. (Most of us who worked in HQ in those early years had similar views. I was on the 10th floor with a clear view of the park and the White House, and I was a lowly Liaison Officer in the Division of Volunteer Support.) Gale first job was to edit the Congressional Presentation.  Haddad had decided Gale, with “his editorial experience and his mellow, jocular personality,” could rescue this document from prolonged interoffice squabbling. He did just that, but his real gift to the agency came in April of ’63 . . .

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Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996-97) Plays Games

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996-97) has just been published by Random House. Publishers Weekly ( in a starred review) called it “a scintillating meditation on the promise and discontents of video games.” In his book, Tom looks at not just his own passion for video games but also the games themselves. What separates good games from bad? Where do video games fit on the sliding scale of art? Keith Gessen, author of All the Sad Young Literary Men writes, “The last thing I ever thought I’d do in this life is read a book about video games. And yet Extra Lives is sharp, critical, very funny, and Tom Bissell’s description of killing zombies in the first iteration of Resident Evil is simply a tour de force.” Tom, who has also written Chasing the Sea; God Lives in St. Petersburg and Other Stories; and The Father of . . .

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University of Michigan Events, At a Glance

These are the events–in short form–that the University of Michigan is staging this coming October and November.[ The Peace Corps is not involved in these events, nor is the NPCA.] The University of Michigan is doing these celebrations for  its students and RPCV alums.] In the next few days, I’ll give out more details of what U-M has planned for the fall. October 11-21 “As I See It” Photo Competition October 13 National Symposium: The Future of International Service Paul Theroux: How the Peace Corps Changed My Life October 13/14 Challenges and Opportunities of International Service: A Student Symposium October 14 First Ceremony on Michigan Union steps Second Ceremony on Michigan Union steps Spending Your Days in Ghana: Responding to JFK’s Challenge Reception for U-M Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) October 15 History of the Peace Corps: From the Michigan Union Steps to the Present Peace Corps Authors Happy Hour . . .

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Mad Man # 3

Bob Gale was six foot two, blue eyed, and owned a big personality. People who didn’t like Bob Gale eventually ended up, if not liking  him, appreciating what he did for the Peace Corps. He was another academic, like Babbitt, coming to the Peace Corps from being the  vice president for development at Carlton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and a Humphrey supporter. He had decided he wanted to go to Washington with the New Frontier and work for the Peace Corps and got in touch with Hubert Humphrey, who he knew, and a meeting was arranged with Bill Haddad (another early Mad Man) who was already working at the agency. William F. Haddad was the Associate Director for the Office of Planning and Evaluation. (I’ve written about him before, how at the age of 14 in post-Pearl Harbor, he had enlisted in the Army Air Corps pilot training program and advanced to cadet squadron commander when . . .

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Screenplay by Edmisten (Peru 1962-64) Finalist at Alaska International Film Festival

Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Peru 1962-64) won a finalist award in the Alaska International Film Festival (AIFF) competition for her screenplay Kennedy’s Children, based on her Peace Corps novel, The Mourning of Angels.  The Festival received several hundred submissions from over two dozen countries.   The AIFF is Alaska’s leading independent film and screenplay recognition platform and competition that awards innovative and diverse films that connect independent filmakers’ vision and the artistic process to the emerging global arts community.  Awards are presented to less than fifteen percent of total applicants.

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# 20–A–The Mad Man NEW

In 1962 the Peace Corps received 20,000 applications, compared with 13,000 in 1961. Nevertheless, Recruitment couldn’t keep up with the staggering period of growth. For example, in 1961 the Peace Corps was in 9 countries. A year later they were in another 32 countries. Then, in the early months of 1963, there was a dramatic decline in applications, and the Peace Corps suffered its first shortfalls. This happened just as more and more countries were asking for Volunteers. The head of Recruitment–called then ‘Chief of the Division of Colleges and Universities–was the former Dean of Men at Vanderbilt University, Samuel F.  Babbitt, Sam Babbitt was a low-key kind of guy. His idea for recruitment was to set up a single Peace Corps faculty contact on campuses all across the country with instructions to conduct a continuous but unaggressive information program. Babbitt wanted to win the Peace Corps a  reputation for honesty and thoroughness which, he told everyone, “would produce . . .

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