September 27, 2018 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Ethiopia’s First Peace Corps Staff, Part Seven (Final)

Sep 27 2018

Born in Castleton, Va., Don Romine was raised at the base of the Blue Ridge. He attended Winchester Business College while working summers as a carpenter’s helper in Culpeper. For two and a half years, beginning in January, 1954, he ran a farm in Castleton. After working as a stock clerk for the Merrill Motor Company in Washington, Va., he joined the government as a clerk for the National Security Council. In March, 1961, he became a statistical clerk for the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. He was enthusiastic enough about the Peace Corps to take a drop of two civil service grades in order to get into the Washington staff, which he did on August 23, 1961. Two months later, he became an administrative aide to Bill Moyers, then Associate Director for Public Affairs. In this role, he was named supervisor of all Peace Corps publications, a job he . . .

Review — GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR by Paul Theroux (Malawi)

Sep 27 2018

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar By Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 511 pages August 2009 $8.32 (paperback), $10.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971–73) • Follow Theroux as he embarks on a 25,000-mile epic journey through Asia retracing the steps of a trip he’d taken thirty years before. Since then, Theroux records phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed and China has risen; India grows, while Burma is mothered by a military dictatorship and, most interestingly, Vietnam flourished despite the havoc the United States had unleashed on it. No one describes the texture, sights, sounds and the flavors of this changing landscape better than Theroux. Thirty years after the epic journey chronicled in his classic work, The Great Railway Bazaar, the world’s most acclaimed travel writer re-creates his 25,000-mile journey through eastern Europe, central . . .

Archive - September 27, 2018