Archive - November 2012

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Peace Corps Global Health Partnership represents a Radical change because?
2
The Partnership between Global Health and Peace Corps Response.
3
What Peace Corps Book Tells It Like It Is?
4
American Writers Museum Reveals List of Literary Works Named by Writers and Readers as Providing a Better Understanding of America
5
Review of Bill Hatcher's The Marble Room: How I Lost God and Found Myself in Africa
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Review of Marilyn Wheeler's Lost and Found in Macedonia
7
Eye On The Sixties: Rowland Scherman by Chris Szwedo
8
Our Jason Boog (Guatemala 2000-02) Reports on Simon & Schuster Opens Self-Publishing Service
9
RPCV Writer John Mundahl (Venezuela 1967-69)
10
Review of Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) The Incurables
11
Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Reports in The New Yorker on Tahrir Square
12
Peace Corps Volunteers not properly informed on health care compensation options
13
JFK's Last Morning in Texas
14
Review of Never Gonna Cease My Wanderin' Letters Between Friends
15
David Mather (Chile 1968-70) Discuesses His Novel "One for the Road"

Peace Corps Global Health Partnership represents a Radical change because?

The Peace Corps Global Health Service Partnership represents a radical change for Peace Corps and Peace Corps Response for two equally important reasons. The first is that these new “GHSPVS’ will receive generous financial compensation for a year of service, in addition to the allowances and benefits afforded the “traditional” PCV and PCRV. The second reason is that these GHSPVS will treat and provide clinical services, as well as training and teaching.  Let us look first at the “benefits package.”  From the concept paper: Historically, many health professionals interested in providing service – either domestically or abroad to socially and economically disadvantaged populations – face financial challenges from compounding educational debt and personal commitments. GHSC aims to build on the legacy of domestic federal programs such as the National Health Service Corps to assist with education indebtedness. GHSC will provide loan repayment support to eligible individuals for each year served . . .

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The Partnership between Global Health and Peace Corps Response.

There is now a  new and different role for Peace Corps Response.  The change is described in  “Concept Paper for the Peace Corps Global Health Service Partnership.” To download the PDF, use this link:_Concept paper on the Peace Corps Global Health Partnership

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What Peace Corps Book Tells It Like It Is?

Yesterday, Thursday, November 29, 2012, I posted the American Writers Museum list of literary works that their readers said world leaders should read to gain a better understanding of America?” Okay, today it is our turn! I ask this question! What Peace Corps book gives our  U.S. Leaders a better understanding of the world where we lived and worked as Peace Corps Volunteers? Send in your book(s) selection and comment why this writer ‘gets it right’ and why our political ‘eaders should buy a copy so that they will know what is really happening in the developing world. Thanks.

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American Writers Museum Reveals List of Literary Works Named by Writers and Readers as Providing a Better Understanding of America

American Writers Museum Reveals List of Literary Works Named by Writers and Readers as Providing a Better Understanding of America The Great Gatsby, Leaves of Grass, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Sun Also Rises Top List “Which works by American writers should world leaders read to help them gain a better understanding of America?” That is the question posed last May to 38 contemporary American writers and the reading public in the first online exhibition of the future American Writers Museum®. The exhibit, Power of the Word: Leaders, Readers and Writers, was curated to dovetail with the U.S. hosting this year of the G8 and NATO Summits, as well as the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. According to Malcolm O’Hagan, chairman of the American Writers Museum Foundation, many readers and writers chose books that grapple with the challenges of American life. Author . . .

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Review of Bill Hatcher's The Marble Room: How I Lost God and Found Myself in Africa

EDITOR’S NOTE: From the book description of The Marble Room:  “At 27 years of age, Bill Hatcher was at crossroads. Brought up in an evangelical household in the Bible Belt, his religion had provided no answers to his parents’ broken marriage, or, indeed, his own divorce. The key to his salvation would come from a most unlikely source: a Peace Corps flyer! A year later, Hatcher was in Tanzania as a geography teacher at an all-girls’ boarding school. It was here that he “challenged” himself by engaging in dangerous ascents on Mount Kenya, Kilimanjaro, and Mount Meru, and through tragedy and triumph, questioned the core of his being and he managed to escape the confines of his “marble room” and gain a new understanding of himself and God.” This memoir is the story one PCV’s self-discovery and proof that, as he says, “even the most naïve and insular American can . . .

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Review of Marilyn Wheeler's Lost and Found in Macedonia

Lost and Found in Macedonia: A Journey to Unexpected Places By Marilyn Wheeler (Macedonia 2004-06) 187 pages Park Place Publications $15.95 August 2012 Reviewed by Barbara E. Joe, (Honduras 2000-03) Lost and Found in Macedonia is the only recent Peace Corps narrative I know of, beyond my own, describing the experiences of a “mature” volunteer.  Although older volunteers may not be starry-eyed idealists, they are still beckoned by the unknown, which provides both the thrills and frustrations of Peace Corps service. The adventure of joining is precisely not knowing quite what to expect, finding surprises at every turn, with no two experiences being alike.  Like volunteers of any age, author Marilyn Wheeler found strength in her own resourcefulness in confronting new challenges.  Since I often talk Peace Corps with over-50 audiences, I’m delighted to have another book to recommend. Many parallels emerge between myself and the author.  Inspired originally by . . .

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Eye On The Sixties: Rowland Scherman by Chris Szwedo

[A note from Chris Szwedo, the producer/director/man behind Eye On The Sixties] We Did It. Last evening with a little less than an hour to go we crossed over the funding goal that we set up on the grassroots system known as KICKSTARTER. To everyone who made a contribution small, medium, or large– here’s what you did. You have via your donation virtually insured that our documentary will get a significant play on public television affiliates beginning in the summer of 2013. We now have a respectable war chest in which to operate from as marketing costs come at us. About 16 months ago Rowland Scherman and I met for the first time and without knowing each other very well made an instinctive decision to make a film about his incredible experiences and his creative output. We have been to hell and back as all creative journeys are. We have travelled to . . .

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Our Jason Boog (Guatemala 2000-02) Reports on Simon & Schuster Opens Self-Publishing Service

Simon & Schuster has created  Archway Publishing to help writers self-publish fiction, nonfiction, business and children’s books. They will run the new service with help from Author Solutions, the self-publishing company. Archway Publishing will include “editorial, design, distribution and marketing services” for its authors, all these tools coming from Author Solutions. Fiction options range from $1,999 Author package to the  $14,999 Publicist package.  The business book optons start at $2,199 and go as high as $24,999. Here’s more from the release: the following services will be Archway Publishing exclusives: Concierge Service – Authors will have the option to work with a dedicated publishing guide who will coordinate each step of the book production process. Bookseller Catalog – Archway titles will be included in Edelweiss, the leading, industry-wide online catalog available to major retailers, wholesalers, libraries, bloggers and thousands of industry professionals. The Archway Speakers Bureau, powered by Speakerfile, helps authors connect to a world of . . .

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RPCV Writer John Mundahl (Venezuela 1967-69)

RPCV writers keep writing and keep finding our site. We just heard from John Mundahl a former PCV and now a Crisis Corps Volunteer in Romania. Here’s a short bio on John and his books, most of which are published by the small and wonderful Monkfish Publishing. John Mundahl is a retired ESL teacher.  He taught for 32 years kindergarten-university at various places in the United States and throughout the world.  He has been a yoga teacher and practitioner for 30 years and was a resident at the original Kripalu Yoga Ashram in Sumneytown, Pennsylvania during Swami Kripalu’s four-year stay from 1977-1981.  He is also an Ayurvedic Health Care Educator and the author of nine books.  He served in Venezuela (1967-69) and joined the Peace Corps again in 2012 as a Peace Corps Response volunteer assigned to the Ministry of Education in Bucharest, Romania.  He can be reached at:  johnmundahl@yahoo.com.” . . .

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Review of Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) The Incurables

The Incurables by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991–93) University of Notre Dame Press $20.00 233 pages 2012 Reviewed by Susi Wyss (Central African Republic 1990-92) As a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic in the early 1990s, I once accidentally ingested a triple dose of Fasigyn to treat a case of giardia. That night, my mind slipped into an alternate world in which I hallucinated that rats were coming through my window and trying to crawl under my mosquito net. That experience instilled in me an enduring empathy for people struggling with mental illness, and taught me just how thin the membrane is that separates sanity from madness. In Mark Brazaitis’ fifth book, a deep and introspective collection of stories called The Incurables, this membrane seems especially thin and permeable, and his varied cast of characters manifests symptoms of varying degrees of madness. A school coach turns into a . . .

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Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Reports in The New Yorker on Tahrir Square

November 24, 2012 Tahrir Square Turns Against Morsi Posted by Peter Hessler On the edge of Tahrir Square, I met a twelve-year-old boy named Hassan Mohamed Abdel Hafiz who showed me an empty tear gas canister and a birdshot scar on his stomach. Scavenged canisters are a badge of honor for those who fight for the people who fight on the front lines of Egyptian protests; Hassan said he had acquired his after a battle with the police in front of the Lycée la Liberté, a block away from the square. He wore a filthy blue sweater with a thick collar that could be pulled up over his face whenever the tear gas got bad. Hassan was quick-eyed and alert; he spoke with the eagerness of a child but part of his attention was always directed at the street behind us, where injured protestors were carried past on their way . . .

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Peace Corps Volunteers not properly informed on health care compensation options

written by Eric Katz in Goverment Executive November 20, 2012 Peace Corps volunteer Megan Chandler worked with a women’s cooperative in Uganda from 2003 to 2006 on health education. The Peace Corps and Labor Department are not adequately monitoring access to and quality of health care compensation for volunteers returning home after serving, a report has found. As required by the Federal Employee Compensation Act, volunteers who serve abroad as part of the Peace Corps are entitled to reimbursement for health care costs resulting from service-related illnesses. Labor oversees FECA applications and payments, while the Peace Corps is responsible for informing returning volunteers they are eligible for the benefits. The Government Accountability Office report said the two agencies are failing to monitor and inform volunteers on the documents needed and application requirements to apply for the benefits. Labor is not tracking how long it is taking to review applications and . . .

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JFK's Last Morning in Texas

[Joanne Roll (Colombia 1963-65) one of our bloggers on the site sent me this piece by Carl M. Cannon Washington Editor of RealClearPolitics and suggested I share it with all of you on this Thanksgiving Day. Thanks, Joanne, and Marian Beil and I would like to thank all of you for your support as we remember JKF on this fateful November day.] By Carl M. Cannon Good morning. It’s Wednesday, November 21, 2012, the eve of Thanksgiving Day. Not much is scheduled in official Washington today, which is probably just as well. Even with the “fiscal cliff” looming in their immediate future, Americans have earned a holiday from politics. On this date in 1963, John F. Kennedy boarded the presidential helicopter on the South Lawn for a political trip to Texas. He was seeking to make peace between the feuding factions within the Lone Star State’s Democratic Party. Kennedy took . . .

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Review of Never Gonna Cease My Wanderin' Letters Between Friends

Never Gonna Cease My Wanderin’: Letters Between Friends by Ruth Kesselring Royal (Philippines 1962-64) and Beryl A. Brinkman (Afghanistan 1967-69) Peace Corps Writers $15.00 September 2012 Reviewed by  Douglas Foley (Philippines 1962-64) Never Gonna Cease my Wanderin’ is a lovely, heartfelt coming-of-age story of friendship between two female Peace Corps Volunteers. The principal author, Ruth Kesselring Royal (Philippines 1962-64) reconstructs her friendship with Beryl Brinkman (Afghanistan 1967-69) through their extensive correspondence. She supplements the letters with recollections from her journal. To her credit, the edited letters retain much of their original language and tone. I must forewarn the readers that a long string of raw letters may present some reading challenges. The letters meander over many topics and contain a great deal of mundane information. But if readers plunge into the detail, they will find the fascinating narrative threads I am about to suggest. First, Ms. Royal is telling a . . .

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David Mather (Chile 1968-70) Discuesses His Novel "One for the Road"

David Mather discusses his book, One for the Road, a fictionalized account of a young Peace Corps Volunteer living in Cufeo, Chile, and supervising a reforestation project to help save the community in Gainesville, Florida, at 1:30 p.m., on January 22, 2013 in the Headquarters Branch Library at 401 University Avenue. Mather, who served in southern Chile with the Peace Corps from 1968 to 1970, has lived off-grid for more than 40 years. He and his wife divide their time between Lyme, New Hampshire, and Florida’s Gulf Coast. David Mather grew up in Sarasota, Florida, before attending school in New England where he graduated from Deerfield Academy (’64) and Bowdoin College (’68). He then served in southern Chile with the Peace Corps from 1968 – 70. He was the most isolated volunteer in his program, and the two years in the Peace Corps strongly influenced him. Upon his return, he . . .

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