Archive - September 2014

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Peace Corps Applications UP
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John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) Interviewed
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Review: Breathe by Kelly Kittel (Jamaica 1985–87)
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Sharon Alane Abramowitz (Cote d’Ivoire 2000-02) publishes study on life in post-war Liberia
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Talking with David Mather (Chile 1968–70)
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Review: The Mystery of Money by Harlan Green
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Review: Young Widower: A Memoir by John W. Evans
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Clifford Garstang edits travel story collection
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Dead Calm by Carole Sojka (Somalia 1962-64)
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JOBS for RPCVs
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New Book On Golf's Ryder Cup by Neil Sagebiel Published Today
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John Coyne's novel Child of Shadows reissued as e-book
13
Tom Miller on Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67)
14
RPCVs in Congress form the Peace Corps Caucus
15
Michael Varga (Chad 1977-79) wins Glimmer Train Fiction Award for June

Peace Corps Applications UP

Applications to Peace Corps in 2013 were at a historic low.  In response, Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet launched a campaign to increase applications by streamlining the application process and touring college campuses to promote Peace Corps service. The strategy is winning. From the Peace Corps website: “With our new, shorter application process, we’re seeing record numbers of Americans apply for Peace Corps service,” Hessler-Radelet said. “While the school year may have just begun, I want to make sure college seniors considering the Peace Corps apply as soon as possible so they can secure the volunteer position of their choice and leave for service shortly after graduation.” Read the entire press release at: http://www.peacecorps.gov/media/forpress/press/2439/ And from the Twitter feed posted on the Peace Corps website: We’re so close to setting application numbers history! Will yours be the one that pushes us over? ‪http://1.usa.gov/1rYeC3Nb ‪#ApplyPC Last fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, applications numbered 10,091.  . . .

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John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) Interviewed

Long Ago And Far Away — Travel Through Time in John Coyne’s Latest Novel by Alex Wolff Pelham Weekly Renowned Pelham author John Coyne’s latest novel “Long Ago and Far Away” draws on his life and experience to tell a tale of star crossed lovers, spanning several decades and traveling across four continents. Revolving around the tragic 1973 death of a young woman in Ethiopia, Long Ago and Far Away uses a series of flashbacks in that country, Spain, New York, Washington and elsewhere to tell the story of Parker Bishop and Irish McCann, lovers who were driven apart by the death of their friend and the resulting trial which left questions as to whether the death was a murder or an accident. Bishop and McCann reconnect in the present day and set out to confront the man who knows the truth about what happened. “I’m a big fan of . . .

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Review: Breathe by Kelly Kittel (Jamaica 1985–87)

Breathe: A Memoir of Motherhood, Grief and Family Conflict by Kelly Kittel (Jamaica 1985–87) She Writes Press May 2014 369 pages $18.95 (paperback), $7.69 (Kindle) Reviewed by Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 1976–78) Shortly before I received Kelly Kittel’s wrenching memoir in the mail, I read a piece in The New Yorker about the poet Edward Hirsch, whose book length elegy to his son, dead at 24 of an overdose, has just been published. Hirsch says he didn’t want to write that book. He was mired in mourning and obsessed with the circumstances of his son’s life and death. But ultimately, the writing won out. ” . . . You become resigned,” he says. “Your job is to write about the life you actually have.” In a prologue to her book, Kittel offers a similar insight. She describes her childhood love affair with books and her lifelong hope of becoming a writer. What she . . .

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Sharon Alane Abramowitz (Cote d’Ivoire 2000-02) publishes study on life in post-war Liberia

In July, the University of Pennsylvania Press  published Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War by Sharon Alane Abramowitz (Cote d’Ivoire, 2000-2002), who teaches anthropology and African studies at the University of Florida. Searching for Normal . . . “explores the human experience of the massive apparatus of trauma-healing and psychosocial interventions during the first five years of postwar reconstruction. Sharon Alane Abramowitz draws on extensive fieldwork among the government officials, humanitarian leaders, and an often-overlooked population of Liberian NGO employees to examine the structure and impact of the mental health care interventions, in particular the ways they were promised to work with peacekeeping and reconstruction, and how the reach and effectiveness of these promises can be measured. From this courageous ethnography emerges a geography of trauma and the ways it shapes the lives of those who give and receive care in postwar Liberia.” For more about the . . .

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Talking with David Mather (Chile 1968–70)

David Mather (Chile 1968–70) has published his second novel with Peace Corps Writers. One for the Road, David’s first novel, published in 2011, tells the story of Tom Young, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Chile, and how that experience changed his life. Now in 2014, David has published a sequel, When the Whistling Stopped, that finds Tom going back to Chile 30 years after his service to resolve past heartaches. Once there he finds himself in the middle of tackling big-company pollution and the endangering of species. I talked with David about his Peace Corps experience and both of his books. — Marian • David, tell us about you educational background. I attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine and received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in History, and a minor in English Lit.. . What was your Peace Corps Assignment? I was a “B.A. generalist” doing . . .

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Review: The Mystery of Money by Harlan Green

The Mystery of Money: Understanding the Modern Financial World by Harlan Green (Turkey 1964–66) Publishing by the Seas 126 pages May 2014 $12.95 (paperback), $8.95 (Kindle) Reviewed by Leo Cecchini (Ethiopia 1962–64) This book is not about “mystery,” but about how to invest your money. The author says in the second sentence it is about “. . . how to make money work for us. . .” As such it is a very useful and reasonably priced guide to investing. The other objective of the book is to warn how financial markets are “. . . so opaque to the uninformed eye . . . that it is easy for insiders to manipulate and mislead investors.” While also useful, the author is a little too given to casting this part as a matter of “them,” the unscrupulous financiers, versus “us,” the gullible investing public. The book starts with the “sub-prime” fiasco that caused the “Great Recession.” This is . . .

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Review: Young Widower: A Memoir by John W. Evans

Young Widower: A Memoir by John W. Evans (Bangladesh 1999–2001) Winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize University of Nebraska Press March, 2014 185 Pages $19.95 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) John Evans has written an unusual and superb memoir of mourning in the aftermath of a devastating death. Five years into his marriage, his wife Katie, whom he met in the Peace Corps, is mauled and killed by a brown bear in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. They have been living in Bucharest on Katie’s fellowship when they decide to go for a trek with Sara, a friend. They are athletic, experienced hikers, too young to worry about personal destiny, never expecting the possibility of disaster, thinking themselves “invulnerable to trauma and tragedy,” when with a few misjudgments and unforeseen happenstance, the impossible occurs. They had planned to stay overnight on the mountain in . . .

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Clifford Garstang edits travel story collection

Clifford Garstang (Korea 1976–77), author of the collection of short stories In An Uncharted Country — winner of the 2010 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award, and “a novel in stories,” What the Zhang Boys Know — winner of the 2013 Library of Virginia Award for Fiction, is the editor of a newly published book of travel stories, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet [Press 53]. . Everywhere Stories includes three stories by RPCVs: “A Husband and Wife Are One Satan” set in Kazakhstan was written by Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002–04), author of Lake: And Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land that won the 2012 Peace Corps writers Award for Best Poetry Book; “International Women’s Day” by Jennifer Lucy Martin (Chad 1996-98); and “Eggs” set in set in Central African Republic is by Susi Wyss (Central African Republic 1990–92) who won the 2012 Peace Corps . . .

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Dead Calm by Carole Sojka (Somalia 1962-64)

This short story by Carole Sojka takes place in Kenya in the early sixties. As Carole wrote me, “My husband and I were Peace Corps Volunteers in the Somali Republic from 1962 to 1964. We were with the first Somalia group. There were, I think, seven other Peace Corps groups sent to the Republic  before the coup in 1969 that sent the country hurtling into its current state of chaos. I taught English in the secondary school in Merca, a town about forty miles south of the capital, Mogadiscio, where the language before independence was Italian. My husband taught English to the local officials, i.e., the D.C., the police chief, the harbor master. He also took photographs for the Ministry of Tourism. It was a hopeful time in Somalia. “The story of ‘Dead Calm’ came from an experience my husband and I had on a train trip in Uganda in . . .

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JOBS for RPCVs

Peace Corps  has a webpage with job and career information on its official website. Here is the link to the Peace Corps  jobs information: http://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/returned/careercen/ The Peace Corps Returned Services for Volunteers team  emailed the following: “All Peace Corps jobs are listed on www.avuecentral.com. You will need to register and create an account to view the jobs, just as you would with USAJobs.gov.” Peace Corps staff pioneer, Dr. Robert B. Textor, crafted the policy of limited tenure at Peace Corps. His dream was a Peace Corps agency with an almost all RPCV staff. Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, (The Gambia 1987-89) Erica Burman is the Director of Communication at the National Peace Corps  Association, Erica Burman – Communications.  She reports that the NPCA also maintains a job page. Anyone can access the page, you do not have to be a member of the NPCA.  Thanks to Erica for the following link: http://www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org . . .

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New Book On Golf's Ryder Cup by Neil Sagebiel Published Today

The United States had dominated the Ryder Cup since the beginning in 1927, but in 1969, the English team, led by Tony Jacklin, fought to a historic draw.  The outcome was not decided until the last two men on the golf course arrived at the final green encircled by their 22 teammates, two captains and thousands of excited spectators. It was then that Jack Nicklaus conceded a short but miss-able putt to Tony Jacklin that resulted in the first tie in the 42-year history of the event. Draw In The Dunes is the complete untold story of a thrilling Ryder Cup and why a conceded putt became a part of golf and sports lore. Draw In The Dunes was written by golf writer Neil Sagebiel. Neil is the founder and editor of Armchair Golf Blog, one of top golf blogs on the internet.  A former copywriter for a Seattle advertising agency and . . .

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John Coyne's novel Child of Shadows reissued as e-book

Social worker Melissa Vaughn is frustrated by the soullessness of urban life and the bureaucratic hoops she has to jump through to make a difference in the lives of the needy and downtrodden. Her only desire is to make a difference in one life and not have to follow rules laid out by people who know nothing about her job or how to help the indigent. Then a boy comes along. A boy found living in the dark, rat infested subways of New York City. A mute boy devoid of hair, without a family or a history. The only clue to his past is a name sewn into his underwear: Adam. Determined to help Adam, Melissa takes him to a remote section of the Blue Ridge Mountains to connect with him and possibly unravel the mystery of his past. She soon discovers his artistic genius and his ability to depict . . .

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Tom Miller on Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67)

Tom Miller has been writing about Latin America and the American Southwest for more than thirty years, bringing us extraordinary stories of ordinary people. His highly acclaimed adventure books include “The Panama Hat Trail” about South America, “On the Border,” an account of his travels along the U.S.-Mexico frontier, “Trading With the Enemy,” which takes readers on his journeys through Cuba, and, about the American Southwest, “Revenge of the Saguaro” (formerly “Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink” — which won the coveted Lowell Thomas Award for Best Travel Book of the Year in 2001). He has edited three compilations, “Travelers’ Tales Cuba,” “Writing on the Edge: A Borderlands Reader,” and “How I Learned English.” Additionally, he was a major contributor to the four-volume “Encyclopedia Latina.” This following piece on Moritz Thomsen ran in the Washington Post Book Section in October 2008. Recently the article way expanded and republished in Spanish and English . . .

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RPCVs in Congress form the Peace Corps Caucus

The voice for Peace Corps in Washington has become louder because now there is a Peace Corps Caucus. The dictionary definition for caucus is: A group of people who share concerns within a political party or larger organization. The larger organization is the US House of Representatives and the group of people who initiated the Peace Corps Caucus are the five Returned Peace Corps Volunteers currently serving in the House of Representatives – California Democratic Congressman Sam Farr (Colombia 1964-66) California Democratic Congressman Mike Honda (El Salvador 1965-67) California Democratic Congressman John Garamendi (Ethiopia 1966-68) Wisconsin Republican Congressman Tom Petri (Somalia 1966-67) and Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Joe Kennedy (Dominican Republic 2004-06). Representative Kennedy is the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy and the grand nephew of both President Kennedy and Sargent Shriver. The National Peace Corps Association describes in excellent detail the function of the Congressional Peace Corps Caucus; lists the . . .

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Michael Varga (Chad 1977-79) wins Glimmer Train Fiction Award for June

Glimmer Train June 2014 Fiction Open 1st Place Michael Varga receives $2,500 for short story “Chad Erupts in Strife.” After his tour in Chad, Michael Varga became a Foreign Service Officer serving primarily in the Middle East. He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Notre Dame and a Bachelor’s degree in English from Rider University. Michael is also playwright and actor. Three of his plays have been produced. “Collapsing into Zimbabwe,” a short story, earned him first prize in the competition sponsored by the Toronto Star. His columns have appeared in various newspapers and journals. This will be his first off-campus fiction in print. www.michaelvarga.com. Here’s what Mike has to say about his writing and himself, and the Peace Corps. I went to Chad in 1977 as a 21-year-old freshly minted college grad in the Peace Corps. Chad has been very much a part of my personal narrative . . .

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