May 1, 2012 – Peace Corps Worldwide

With Hemingway–Virtually

May 01 2012

A dear friend, Carol Senese, emailed me a few months ago to say she was going to Cuba and would be visiting Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s home. She also volunteered to send me some photos. We had been discussing Paul Hendrickson’s recent book Hemingway’s Boat, 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for biography as well as a New York Times best-seller. Hendrickson, like Carol and myself, had been students at St. Louis University. Carol decided she had to see Cuba after taking a class last winter in Naples, Florida on Cuban art and, as she wrote me, “became hooked.” This was not Carol’s first “art trip” overseas. Since 1995, she has been going with an art history professor from a college near where she lives in Louisville; this time she convinced the professor and other students to go to Cuba, not for the fishing, but the art. They made arrangements with Carol Damien of Florida . . .

RPCV has Kindle Single–The Playground by Terrence McCoy (Cambodia 2009-11)

May 01 2012

Terrence McCoy (Cambodia 2009-11) is, I think, the first RPCV to publish an Amazon Kindle Single. It is the story of how China is trying to buy Cambodia and one woman’s quest to stop it. Called, The Playground, the e-book is ’36-pages’ long (sells for $1.99) and McCoy mentions the Peace Corps several times. Here’s a quick summary: We’ve heard of China’s buying sprees. That it’s plowed billions of dollars into some of the poorest nations in the world. But the story we don’t know is what this money means for the people there. In Cambodia, the cost has been devastating. More than 700,000 people have lost their homes – others their lives – while China buys the former killing fields for resorts, hotels, and exclusive residences. And as this country of genocide descends into another era of chaos and violence, some whisper it’s the second coming of Pol Pot. But one woman . . .

Archive - May 1, 2012