Archive - November 18, 2013

Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy At 2:00 a.m. on October 14, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy addressed students on the steps of the University of Michigan Union. In his speech, he challenged the students to give two years of their lives to help people in countries of the developing world. The following is an excerpt of his short address to the students that night. I come here tonight delighted to have the opportunity to say one or two words about this  campaign that is coming into the last three weeks… How many of you who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, . . .

JFK Library Invites Public to Participate in Online Tribute to JFK AnIdeaLivesOn.org Puts a Modern Face on the Enduring Impact of America’s 35th President Boston, MA – The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Foundation today announced the launch of AnIdeaLivesOn.org, an online tribute to President John F. Kennedy that aims to create a multigenerational conversation about the many ways in which the legacy of our nation’s 35th president lives on today. Named for President Kennedy’s poignant observation that, “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on,” the project invites the public to participate in the creation of an interactive documentary, putting a modern, human face on the enduring impact of John F. Kennedy. Stories from Congressman John Lewis, comedian Conan O’Brien, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, actor Martin Sheen, House Leader Nancy Pelosi, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, journalist Luke Russert, and inaugural poet . . .

This Friday, November 22, 2013, as part of his remembrances surrounding the assassination of JFK, President Obama will meet  privately at the White House with the Peace Corps Staff and Volunteers from the Peace Corps. Have you been invited?

JFK was assassinated within a few weeks of our arrival in Nepal. I was posted with two other PCVs in a small, remote town in Nepal’s Himalayan mid-hills. We first heard the news early on Saturday morning (Friday night in the USA). Saturdays were government holidays, and most of the civil servants who worked in our town, the district headquarters, were at home for the weekend. For some of them, home was several hours walk away over the hills. But, to our astonishment, many of them showed up at our doorstep with the shocking news, expressing their grief. At the sound of loud knocking on our door, I opened it to a frantic villager shouting in Nepali that someone had shot Kennedy. We were dumbfounded. He was quickly followed by others. We I turned on our Zenith Transoceanic shortwave radio, but could find only one VOA station through the static, transmitting from . . .