Archive - September 19, 2016

  In some 135 countries, over the last 55 years, Peace Corps Volunteers have worked at the grassroots crossroads of the past and the future. Volunteers have witnessed the end of colonization, the rise of modernity and its cultural blowback, climate change and its environmental consequences, political violence and terrorism. Volunteers have intervened and interfered in other peoples’ lives, sometimes with outstanding success and sometimes not. Peace Corps Volunteers have opened a window on the lives of people of the world. There are great Peace Corps books, blogs, websites, videos, archives, and oral histories, public, private and personal. There is a treasure of invaluable information in all of Volunteers’ work and observations. Perhaps clues to solving some of the world crises of today might be found in this work. But for these materials to be accessible to researchers and historians, as well as the general public, they have to be preserved . . .

By Barbara Marshall – Palm Beach Post Staff Writer  Sunday September 18 Stop us if this sounds familiar: Vincent Victor, a pugnacious businessman, playboy and bombastic developer of discount shopping malls called “Victor’s Golden Castle” creates a Miss Universe-like pageant called The Great American Breast Contest which leads to a starring role in a reality TV show called The Vigilantes, which he parlays into a run at the presidency. If that reminds you of Donald Trump, it’s meant to, says author and historian Laurence Leamer, author of “The President’s Butler,” a new satiric novel. Related by Victor’s butler, Billy Baxter, the story portrays Victor as a proudly anti-intellectual attention junkie who spews conspiracy theories and Twitter put-downs. After pummeling his mainstream political opponents to grab the GOP nomination for president, he faces a Democratic opponent he belittles as Blundering Belinda Ball. Any doubts about the object of Leamer’s lampooning are . . .

(Thanks to the ‘heads up’ from Barry Hillenbrand (Ethiopia 1963-65) In the Philippines, Jim Turner’s heartbroken ‘hobbits’ mourn the loss of their patron by William Branigin (c) 2016, The Washington Post. All over Manila, the “little people” are in mourning. Jim Turner (Philippines 1961-63), a former Peace Corps volunteer from Iowa who established the renowned Hobbit House, died on Steptember 8, 2016, at 77 of heart and lung ailments, leaving generations of Philippine dwarfs bereft. The Hobbit House was founded in 1973 as a theme bar and restaurant – a tribute of sorts to Turner’s favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien – and it soon became a haven for the dwarfs he rescued from the capital’s streets and from carnivals and variety shows that demeaned them. He employed dwarfs as waiters, bartenders, cashiers, entertainers, even bouncers. Eventually, they became managers and owners. Over the years, children and grandchildren of the original staff . . .