January 2011 – Page 4 – Peace Corps Worldwide

First Response Action Coalition Meets with the Peace Corps

Jan 07 2011

[On December 9, 2010, four of the First Response Action Coalition members met with several Peace Corps officials in Washington, D.C., including the Deputy Director and Chief of Staff. Peace Corps shared several ways that they are moving forward with items on the 7-Point Plan, including a form of the Survivor Bill of Rights. Peace Corps committed to follow-up with materials and updates. Here is a report from that meeting, written by Casey Frazee.] It was a cold, snowy day in Washington, D.C. when four members of the First Response Action Coalition, the volunteer board which manges First Response Action, met with Peace Corps officials at Peace Corps’ headquarters. Representatives from the Office of Medical Services, Safety & Security and the Office of Special Services were in attendance as well as the Chief of Staff, Deputy Director and an official whose position is focused on examining Volunteer and staff sexual assault . . .

ABC News 20/20 Focus is on sexual assault, rape and Kate Puzey, all about 'life' in the Peace Corps!

Jan 07 2011

This comes to me from Casey Frazee of First Response Action advocates for a stronger Peace Corps response for Volunteers who are survivors or victims of physical and sexual violence. They envision a Peace Corps with policies that reflect best practices in all areas of training, prevention and response. For more information email firstresponseaction@gmail.com • ABC News has been working on several news pieces related to Peace Corps incidents of sexual assault, rape and Kate Puzey, the Volunteer who was murdered in 2009. The show is scheduled to air next Friday 1/14 on 20/20 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time. They will also have companion pieces posted on their website, which you can check out here: http://abcnews.go.com/2020. Coalition members and First Response Action supporters participated in interviews with ABC, which will be part of the show next week. None of the Coalition members have seen the finished piece, so we welcome . . .

Josephson and His Executive Order

Jan 06 2011

The Peace Corps actually ‘started’ the day after Kennedy inauguration. Kennedy telephoned Shriver and asked him to form a presidential Task Force “to report how the Peace Corps could be organized and then to organize it.” Shriver telephoned Harris Wofford and they rented two rooms for offices in the Mayflower Hotel, downtown in Washington, D.C. They were the “Task Force.” They began to call people they thought might know something about international development and living in the developing world. One name led to another. Shriver says that he had no long-term, premeditated vision of what the Peace Corps might be. “My style was to get bright, informative, creative people and then pick their brains.” The first official meeting of the Task Force was scheduled for February 6. Kennedy had requested a report from Shriver by the end of February. Shriver would later say, “I needed help badly.” On Sunday night, . . .

Where did the Three Goals of the Peace Corps come from?

Jan 05 2011

Scratch any RPCV or PCV and they’ll tell you the three goals of the Peace Corps. While the wording varies from one publication to the next, these are the goals: (1) Contribute to the development of critical countries and regions; (2) Promote international cooperation and goodwill toward the country; (3) Contribute to the education of America and to more intelligent American participation in the world. Now, those are the stated goals, and I know that they have been tweaked with by staff and PCVs over the last 50 years. For example, “living at the level of the HCNs” is often stated as Goal # 2. But the question is, who came up with these goals and why three? Well, at the famous Mayflower Hotel in the winter months of 1961 when the task force of Shriver/Wofford/Wiggins/Josephson and a handful of others began to draft the proposal to give JFK that would define . . .

Review of Labeled by Mark Salvatore (Paraguay 1989-91)

Jan 05 2011

Labeled by Mark Salvatore (Paraguay 1989–91) Create Space $9.99 $.99 ebook 231 pages 2010 Reviewed by Sharon Dirlam (Russian Far East 1996-98) HERE IS A COMING-OF-AGE STORY about a boy who doesn’t fit in anywhere and spends most of his time being stoned or drunk or otherwise in a less-than-lucid frame of mind. The rest of his time he spends trying to fit in, or rebelling against society, or berating himself for being inadequate and shy. Vinnie knows he’s smart. He has lots of interesting thoughts wafting through his mind: quotes from worthwhile books, lessons from mythology, memorized comments by admirable people. What he doesn’t have is any idea of what to do with the rest of his life or even with the moment at hand. The war in Vietnam is raging, high school sucks, the girl he likes rejects him. Life isn’t going well at all. People just don’t . . .

Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Talks About Rajeev Goyal (Nepal 2001-03)

Jan 04 2011

I put this video up last month but my friend Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962-64) missed it–mostly because he doesn’t read the site–and he recently wrote me to say that he had just read the article in The New Yorker and that it was the finest piece about the Peace Corps he had ever read. He wanted me to post something about it, and I said I did, and he said that most people were like him and never got around to reading or watching the video and that I should post it again. Tom wrote: “John, given my propensity for procrastinating on things I am supposed to read, I hadn’t really finished the New Yorker piece until last night. One word: Wow! That article, to my mind, is the single most important article ever written about the Peace Corps.” Now, Tom is the type to nag me until I put up something, so to ‘cut him off . . .

Earliest Mention of the Peace Corps in a Movie

Jan 04 2011

Here’s one you won’t know: What’s the earliest mention of the Peace Corps in the movies? No, it is not Volunteer! It isn’t Airplane in ’78. From http://www.vocaro.com/trevor/blog/ I learned it was from Pink Panther and way back in 1963. Playing a supporting role in the film was Robert Wagner, better known to today’s audiences as Number Two from the Austin Powers series. In one scene Wagner casually mentions the Peace Corps. Moments later, David Niven enters and also drops the Peace Corps name as if it were common knowledge. This might even have been the very first reference to the Peace Corps-ever-in mainstream popular culture. Perhaps even more surprising is how nonchalantly the Peace Corps is mentioned, as if everyone knows what it is. Check it out!

Review of A Wedding in Samar by John Halloran (Philippines 1962-64)

Jan 04 2011

A Wedding in Samar by John Halloran (Philippines 1962–64) Puzzlebox Press 2011 $16.95 Reviewer Reilly Ridgell (Micronesia 1971–73) A WEDDING IN SAMAR IS A MEMOIR by the late John Halloran published posthumously by a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, John Durand, who is the owner of Puzzlebox Press. Apparently Halloran started to write a novel while in-country, then became disillusioned with his own writing and gave up. Years later, when he was 63, he went back to his notes, and presumably his memory, and turned it into a memoir. I don’t know how good his novel would have been. But his memoir is excellent. Here is the Philippine’s Samar Island, just south of Luzon, and less than 20 years from the end of World War Two and the beginning of full independence. Here is the Peace Corps only a couple of years in existence, depositing young Americans into Third World countries . . .

Okay, if you are so smart: where was the Peace Corps Act Signed?

Jan 03 2011

Thanks to Bob Chudy (Korea 1972-77) who told me this fact the act of signing the Peace Corps Bill took place at Hammersmith Farm, a Victorian mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. It was the childhood home of Jackie Kennedy, and where the wedding reception was held for JFK and Jaqueline Bouvier. During his presidency, Kennedy spent so much time at Hammersmith Farm that it was referred to as the “Summer White House.” In late September 1961, during one of these stays, Kennedy signed Public Law 87-293, the Peace Corps Act of 1961.

Naming the Peace Corps

Jan 03 2011

Those of us who follow the history of the Peace Corps agency know the term “peace corps” came to public attention during the 1960 presidential election. In one of JFK’s last major speeches before the November election he called for the creation of a “Peace Corps” to send volunteers to work at the grass roots level in the developing world. However, the question remains: who said (or wrote) “peace corps” for the very first time? Was it Kennedy? Was it his famous speech writer Ted Sorensen? Or Sarge himself? But – as in most situations – the famous term came about because of some young kid, usually a writer, working quietly away in some back office that dreams up the language. In this case the kid was a graduate student between degrees who was working for the late Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Today, fifty years after the establishment of the . . .

Mike Meyer in China

Jan 03 2011

Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) author of The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Back Streets of a City Transformed had an op-ed in the New York Times on January 1, 2011. Mike is just back from China, living in New York, and he dropped me an email to say, “Just back from China this morning and had a great skate in the sun of Bryant Park. ” Ah, the writer’s life. China one day; the Big Apple the next. Here’s Mike’s piece on China’s Big Zhang. • January 1, 2011 China’s Big Zhang Harbin, China On the high-speed train from Beijing northeast to Harbin, passengers around me munch sweet popcorn and read books titled “Currency Wars,” “The Collapse of the Eurosystem,” and “The Upside of Irrationality.” Despite the raft of anti-inflationary measues introduced by the Chinese government in November, the lead article in the morning New Capital News . . .

December 2010 Peace Corps Books

Jan 02 2011

Weavings (Poetry) by Mary Ellen Branan (Poland 1994–96) Fairfield, Iowa: First World Publishing $15.95 74 pages December 2010 • The Piercing (E-book edition) by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) Necon E-Books $4.99 73,530 words December 2010 • The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (1st U.S. edition) by Denis Dutton (India 1966-68) Bloomsbury Press $15.00 288 pages February 2010 • Forty Wolves (Novel) by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80) Talisman House $19.95 256 pages June 2010 • The Nightingale of Mosul: A Nurse’s Journey of Service, Struggle, and War by Susan Luz (Brazil 1972-75) (with Marcus Brotherton) Kaplan Publishing $25.95 243 pages May 2010 • Labeled (Novel) by Mark Salvatore (Paraguay 1989–91) Create Space $9.99 (paper); $4.99 (ebook) 231 pages December 2010 • The Isthmus: Stories from Mexico’s Past 1495–1995 (Historical fiction) by Bruce Stores (Guatemala 1963-65) iUniverse $21.95 392 pages 2009 • 85 Days in Cuba: A True Story about . . .

RPCV Writers in the best travel writing for 2010

Jan 01 2011

Edited by Bill Buford The Best American Travel Writing 2010 published by Mariner came out in early September and I wanted to mention it now in the first day of 2011. Of the twenty-one essays, from three to sixty pages, we have three by RPCV writers. Peter Hessler (China 1996-98), “Strange Stones” is from The New Yorker and as always beautifully-written and detailed. His new book about China, Country Driving is reflected in this work. Our second writer in the collection is George Packer (Togo 1982-83). His story from The New Yorker is entitled, “The Ponzi State,” and is about the Florida housing boom and bust. The third travel piece is Tom Bissell’s (Uzbekistan 1996-97), “Looking for Judas” that was published in the Virginia Quarterly Review and is about his off-the-beaten path in Jerusalem looking for THE spot where Judas killed himself, but mostly focuses on his impressions of well-armed . . .

Writer/Philosopher/Digital-Media Guru Denis Dutton (India 1966-68) Dies in New Zealand

Jan 01 2011

DENNIS DUTTON, A PCV IN INDIA and a distinguished philosopher, writer and digital-media guru — he founded Arts & Letters Daily, one of the first Web sites to exploit the Internet — died on Tuesday in Christchurch, New Zealand. He was 66. The cause was prostate cancer. At his death, Dutton was a professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, where he had taught since 1984. Arts & Letters was an aggregator that linked to a spate of online articles about literature, art, science and politics, and Dutton was one of the first people to recognize the power of the Web to facilitate intellectual discourse. In 2005 TIME Magazine describe him as being among “the most influential media personalities in the world.” Arts & Letters Daily, which was acquired by The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2002, currently receives about three million page views a month. Professor Dutton also attracted wide . . .

Archive - January 2011