Archive - 2012

In late 1962 a guy from Peace Corps Washington arrived in Addis Ababa to visit the first PCVs in-country. We Volunteers were getting a lot of ‘official’ visitors in Ethiopia then. I mean, Shriver came to Ethiopia, came right into my classroom at the Commercial School in Addis Ababa with a big grin and a handshake and said, “Hi, I’m Sarge Shriver.” I remember responding with something stupid, like, “No, kidding!” But this other guy was different. First, he was young. He was our age.  He had a camera.  And he had a real professional job.  He was travelling all over the world for the Peace Corps.  He was the official Peace Corps photographer….Wow! But I want you to know, we treated him like, well, you know how we treated him. He hung around for weeks in Addis Ababa, eating our food, drinking our beer, telling great stories. And then he went all over the Empire, just another guy taking photographs of PCVs doing what we all . . .

While we focus mostly on Peace Corps writers, those who tell the tales of their overseas experiences, we also like to write about other RPCVs of talent: artists, scholars, film makers like Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963-65 ) who just finished a wonderful film on RPCVs entitled, Waging Peace, and those who realize their secret passion and follow their dreams and continue to make a difference in the world. I especially like to draw attention to the artists who work as crafts people. Having edited a few books on crafts in my writing lifetime, I am partial to artists/crafts  people who work with their hands. One such person is a dear friend of mine, a woman who was with me a decade or so ago at the New York Peace Corps Recruitment Office. She was the Recruitment Coordinator and an RPCV from Morocco. She left Peace Corps Recruiting to earn a masters in education . . .

The Chicago Humanities Festival began in 1989 by a group of Chicago’s cultural leaders eager to extend the riches of the humanities in the Mid West and around the world. Under the aegis of the Illinois Humanities Council the notion of a humanities day was proposed and then expanded into a festival. The first Chicago Humanities Festival, a one-day affair, was held on November 11, 1990 at the Art Institute of Chicago and Orchestra Hall before an audience of 3,500 people and included a memorable keynote address by playwright Arthur Miller, and inaugurated one of Chicago’s most culturally rich annual events. Founding co-sponsor institutions included the Art Institute, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera Chicago, and the University of Chicago. Since that first year, some of the world’s most interesting thinkers, artists and performers have come to Chicago each fall for a festival that celebrates ideas in the context of . . .

I think that we can be assured of massive changes in the Peace Corps Administration, the size and scope of the agency, and where PCVs will go next,  given a Romney Administration. Unlike some former presidents, Romney has no historical connections to the Peace Corps. Yes, he was a missionary for the Mormon Church as a young man, but not to a developing country. He was in France! He didn’t, therefore, see the world where Peace Corps Volunteers lived and served. He did not share the adventures of being a young person in another society, though some might say the Left Bank had a lot to teach Mitt. Also, as a Republican, he had no ‘Kennedy Legacy’ blowing at his back. The Peace Corps was ‘their’ program, Romney might say, not ours. During the Nixon Administration, Fat Pat Buchanan and others Right Wingers attempted to close the agency down, given . . .

Aaron Williams is returning to RTI International from which he came as Executive Vice President of the International Development Group. The announcement was made to the employees of RTI this afternoon. Aaron Williams became director of the Peace Corps on July 14, 2009. The Senate confirmed him on August 7, 2009, and Williams was sworn in as Director on August 24, 2009. Williams served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic from 1967 to 1970. Before joining the agency, Aaron had over 25 years of experience in the design and implementation of worldwide assistance programs. As USAID Mission Director in South Africa, Williams led a billion dollar foreign assistance program during President Nelson Mandela’s administration. In addition to his work in South Africa, Williams has extensive experience in the strategic design and management of assistance programs in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East; including long-term assignments . . .

Tino Calabia studied at Georgetown, Columbia, and the University of Munich, was a Peace Corps Volunteer (Peru, 1963-65), then headed a Bronx antipoverty agency. He directed planning projects with residents of New York’s poverty neighborhoods, and authored numerous federal studies with topics ranging from the rights of female offenders to bias on college campuses. He has served on national Asian American boards, and presented seminars in former Eastern bloc countries for exchange students he had mentored while they lived in the U.S. Tino wrote Marian and me this note, and responding to it, Marian has established a petition at SignOn.org that we hope you will sign. • This is what Tino had to say: Last month’s tragic deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens (Morocco 1982–85) and three American colleagues in Libya have been turned into fuel for the firestorm of partisan attacks during the closing national campaigns to win the White . . .

This is a short piece on Training that Marian Beil and I published years ago on our www.peacecorpswriters.org site. It is  another view on Training, this time on a college campus. John Krauskopf (Iran 1965-67) served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two year in Ahwaz, the provincial capital of the province of Khuzistan, part of the Mesopotamian Delta. He taught English in a boy’s high school, ran a language enrichment program, and organized English instruction for more than 400 teachers and staff of the provincial office of education. Later he worked as a Peace Corps Trainer for two Iran TEFL programs, in the U.S. and Iran. — J. C. • Tequila and Temblors by John Krauskopf (Iran 1965–67) PEACE CORPS TRAINING was intensive and stressful. Superficially, it seemed a lot like the college culture most of us had recently left. Walking around the University of Texas campus in Austin had a . . .

Family, friends, dignitaries pay tribute to Ambassador Stevens By Scott Johnson Oakland Tribunemercurynews.com SAN FRANCISCO — Several hundred mourners from around the world, including a former secretary of state, a former bishop of California and the Libyan ambassador to the United States, gathered in the elegant rotunda of San Francisco City Hall Tuesday to honor the life and work of former U.S. Ambassador John Christopher Stevens. The memorial, called “A Celebration of Life,” included remembrances and appreciations by more than a dozen family members, former colleagues and government dignitaries, a video montage narrated by Stevens himself, as well as songs by the University of California Men’s Glee Club Alumni. “He’s always been with me, he was my most important mentor,” said a younger sister, Anne Stevens Sullivan. “The world needs a lot more big brothers like Chris Stevens.” “Christopher Stevens stood out as extraordinary in an already extraordinary group of . . .