Archive - November 9, 2016

Mark Walker ((Guatemala 1971-73) wrote me this afternoon, saying: I think the election of Trump will represent some new challenges to the PC Writers group and was thinking of writing a commentary on the post-election implications of a new President with no overseas experience promoting mistrust of immigrants and refugees and what we need to do in order to promote the objectives of the Peace Corps. We can understand the election results as the growing impact of populism here and around the world so what does this mean? The most recent “Foreign Affairs”, The Power of Populism has some answers to that question and then we need to focus on how to focus our collective talents to respond to this trend. My guess is that someone else could make this commentary but if not I’d like to put something together if you think it would be appropriate. Please let me know what you . . .

Betty Harris was what we used to call a ‘a piece of work.’ She was thirty-nine-years old in 1961 and had been a political organizer and a public relations executive in Dallas, Texas, before arriving in D.C. She had also been a pioneering journalist in New York City before women had such jobs, working with among others, Newsweek and NBC. When she arrived at the Peace Corps in 1961 she had just gone through a bitter divorce with Leon Harris, the son of man whose department store in Dallas that became the model of Neiman-Marcus. Betty always, in fact, looked as if she had just stepped out of the pages of a Neiman-Marcus catalog. ‘Chic’ is the term that Coates Redmon uses to describe Betty in Come As You Are. Betty Harris knew Shriver longer than anyone else at the Peace Corps, having first met the man in the 1940s when they both . . .