Archive - September 2017

Thanks to a ‘heads up’ from Dale Gilles (Liberia 1964 & 67; PC/W 1968-73 & 1990-93) Trump cabinet member Elaine Chao, wife of Mitch McConnell, busted for financial corruption scandal by Bill Palmer Palmer Report Updated: 11:09 pm EDT Fri Sep 29, 2017 Donald Trump’s cabinet is fully awash in scandal this weekend, with HHS Secretary Tom Price having already resigned due to inappropriately taxpayer-funded private charter flights, and four other cabinet members caught up in similar scandals which may cost them their jobs. Now another member of Trump’s cabinet has been busted for financial corruption: Elaine Chao, who just happens to be married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Chao already had a history of scandal before Donald Trump picked her to be his Secretary of Transportation, a move which many have derided as an attempt on Trump’s part at ensuring McConnell’s loyalty. Now it turns out Chao is . . .

In April, 1989, Marian Haley Beil and I published a 4-page newsletter entitled RPCV Writers. I had — as a writer — been tracking other Peace Corps writers, and had already organized a panel discussion about Peace Corps books for the 25th Anniversary Conference in 1986. Marian Haley Beil, also an Ethiopia One Volunteer, agreed to help me. She designed, published and circulated the quarterly newsletter We saw our publication as a way of sharing information about publications, readings, writing grants, and teaching positions for RPCVs. To recognize and promote Peace Corps writers, in 1990, we established annual awards for outstanding writing in a variety of genre. We funded the award prizes ourselves and have (so far) given out 143. In July of 1991 we changed the publication’s name to RPCV Writers & Readers and increased the number of issues to six a year. In November 1998, we published our . . .

  This is data from the Peace Corps Performance Report for FY2016. Thanks  to the “heads up” from Joanne Roll (Colombia 1963-65). — J.C. • FY 2016 Progress Update: In FY 2016, the Peace Corps saw its second-highest number of applications for the two-year Volunteer program in 40 years—21,600 applications for Volunteer service (23,987 applications total, when including Peace Corps Response applications). This is only 6 percent less than the record-breaking 22,956 applications (24,848 total, including Peace Corps Response applications) in FY 2015. The dramatic influx of high-quality applications over the past three years indicates a strong desire among Americans to volunteer for service abroad. ”

Here is the current list of unofficial Resources describing the history of the Peace Corps.  It is unofficial and incomplete. The public  documents are available but not necessarily easily accessible. Few are  digitalized. Most are the property of the institutional archives, public, private and certainly university. For example, the training documents for Colombia I, the first Peace Corps group to enter training in June of 1961, are archived at Rutgers University.  RPCVs may visit the university and review the materials, a privilege otherwise reserved for students and faculty of the university.   RESOURCES An unofficial guide to the locations of resources describing the Peace Corps, and its history.    This list is a cooperative effort with Alana deJoseph, producer of the documentary in progress, A Towering Task, her team and the many archivists and librarians at the places cited. Thank you to all .   This is the latest information we . . .

This appeared recently in Narrative, a digital magazine dedicated to advancing literature. A MEMOIR By Bill Barich (Nigeria 1964-66) IN MY YOUTH I was chronically underemployed, always casting my lot with risky enterprises destined to fail, so when the illustrious firm of Alfred A. Knopf hired me as a book publicist, I thought my troubles were over. I had no idea how difficult writers can be. I imagined lofty literary chats with John Updike when he came to town, but I wound up steering hard-drinking authors away from bars and even rescuing one from an East Bay ashram. Updike I met only once by chance on the Sausalito ferry, and I was too tongue-tied to speak. The job came about by accident. An editor friend at Knopf hoped to open an office in San Francisco, but his wife chose to go to law school at Yale. Given my editorial experience at . . .

I have a minor disagreement with one comment in this entertaining recollection by John Long. He writes that Kennedy’s idea for a Peace Corps came in a “bull session” at the University of Michigan. It was far from that. I was on campus that long ago night in 1960 covering the event for a Kalamazoo radio station, my parttime job during my graduate school years when thousands of Michigan students cheered Kennedy call to do something for their country. It wasn’t a “bull session.” It was a significant moment in the JFK’s presidency and in the lives all of us who responded to Kennedy’s challenge to make a difference in the world. JC Note. Peace Corps’ early days: The day the FBI came knocking by John C. Long Courier Journal Published Sept. 14, 2017 John F. Kennedy founded the Peace Corps shortly after his inauguration to fulfill a promise he’d made to . . .

  Thanks to RPCV Alan Toth for this”heads up” on his facebook page. — JR Reuters reports the following: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cambodia-usa/cambodia-pm-calls-on-u-s-to-withdraw-peace-corps-volunteers-idUSKCN1BQ0DB PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen called on the United States on Friday to withdraw Peace Corps volunteers in an escalating row over accusations that U.S. agents conspired with an opposition leader to plot treason. Hun Sen was responding after the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh issued a travel warning that urged citizens to show caution amid “anti-American rhetoric by officials”. “Are you scaring Cambodians?” Hun Sen said of the United States in an address to garment workers at factories which export much of their production to the United States. “Are you prepared to invade Cambodia and that’s why you told Americans to be careful? It’s good if you pull out the Peace Corps,” Hun Sen said. The U.S. embassy declined to comment. It has previously dismissed . . .

  The fiscal year for the federal government runs from October 1 from one year to September 30 of the next year. Each year, Congress must approve a budget to fund the federal government for the fiscal year beginning October 1. The President proposes a budget and sends it to the House of Representatives.  The House is free to disregard it, if it wishes. Congress has the sole authority to fund the federal government. The Budget must begin in the House of Representatives. The Senate will also compose a version of a budget. When the two Houses are not in agreement on the budget, then there is a negotiation to arrive at a final budget. The final version goes to the President for his signature. When the two Houses of Congress cannot reach a compromise bill by September 30, then Congress may pass a Continuing Resolution. A Continuing Resolution, or . . .

In the spring of 1962 I was a graduate student in English at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We all know Kalamazoo if we know the poet Carl Sandburg. The sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab. And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. The run to drabs and grays–and some of them sing they shall be washed whiter than snow–and some: We should worry. Well, I wasn’t sinning in Kalamazoo! (We never sinned back in the early Sixties.) I was a grad student and I had just been selected to go to Ethiopia. A country I couldn’t at first find on a map of Africa. (Oh, there it is!) I wasn’t the only Western student joining the Peace Corps in 1962. Bill Donohoe, a history major at Western, also had . . .