Archive - November 2018

The first program to be developed for Latin America was planned for the immense, mountainous country-side of Colombia. Co-administration of this rural community development effort as assigned to CARE in the first private agency contract to be signed by the Peace Corps. CARE offered extended experience in community development work in Colombia, and the agency once counted Derek Singer among its administrators there. When he set out to negotiate a Peace Corps program in Colombia, Singer turned naturally in the direction of his former employer. For both the Peace Corps and CARE, the first Colombia program was an exciting experiment, the first attempt at the kind of community action work which has come to occupy the full time of a fourth of all Volunteers overseas. The 60 Volunteers, all men, who turned this experiment into a practical program, entered training at Rutgers University on June 25, 1961. Together with the . . .

“I’m torn between going into high megaton, overkill, intercontinental ballistic missiles, or the Peace Corps.” Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, 1964 

Timmy Napolitano came to the Peace Corps in March, 1961, “on loan” from the National Institutes of Health. For her, the move was permanent—or as permanent as anything in the Peace Corps—although she remained “on loan” for two months after responding to directions to “come now. We’ll arrange your papers later.” If the Peace Corps is not as hectic now as it was then, a certain hectic quality has continued to linger around Mrs. Napolitano’s career. After helping to organize the Near East-South Asia Regional Office, she settled down to pay particular attention to South Asia when queries about the Peace Corps came from Ceylon. In answer to these queries, Mrs. Napolitano was dispatched on October 9, 1961, to the five-year-old island nation off the southern tip of India. In a stay of four months, she surveyed the island from Jaffna to Matara and from wet western coast to the . . .

(The Washington Post,1997)

 By Robert Fallert (Brazil 1963-65)

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Klaus Heimburg (Ethiopia 2012-14) We Need a High Wall With a Big Gate With Trump using immigration simply for political gain, Democrats need to be the adults and offer a realistic, comprehensive approach. By Thomas L. Friedman Opinion Columnist Nov 27, 2018 LIMA, Peru — Kamala Harris, the Democratic senator from California, recently raised eyebrows when she asked Ronald Vitiello, President Trump’s nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whether he appreciated the “perception” that ICE spreads “fear and intimidation” among immigrants the way the Ku Klux Klan did among blacks. Harris carefully worded her question around the “perception” of ICE — and it was raised in part because Vitiello had once shamefully tweeted that Democrats were “the NeoKlanist party.” Nevertheless, with Harris a likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, Republican media pounced on her with variations of: “Hey voters, get this: Democrats think the ICE . . .

  “The Congressional Research Service (CRS) works exclusively for the United States Congress, providing policy and legal analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation. … Its highest priority is to ensure that Congress has 24/7 access to the nation’s best thinking.”  Its current summary report on Peace Corps Issues, updated on October 12, 2018,  can be read at: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21168.pdf Peace Corps funding is discussed in detail and that is important.  The information helps to answer the question:  What happens to Peace Corps funding after December 7, 2018? The federal government’s budget runs from fiscal year beginning on October 1, and ends on September 30, of the next year.  Congress failed to pass a new budget by October 1, 2018 for fiscal 2019.  Instead, Congress passed a Continuing Resolution, funding agencies at the old 2018 level. For Peace Corps, this means funding continues at . . .

WASHINGTON – Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen joined USAID Counselor Chris Milligan to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Small Project Assistance (SPA) Program. The joint collaboration has supported more than 25,000 projects and 2,800 training activities in 116 countries over the past three decades. On Monday, at a co-hosted event held at Peace Corps headquarters, Director Olsen shared success stories and the results of a new, jointly-funded external report that evaluated the program’s effectiveness. “Whether increasing local water access in The Gambia, developing waste management solutions in Tonga, or mobilizing civic sector organizations around food insecurity in Macedonia, the SPA Program helps to catalyze community-led development,” said Director Olsen. “Time and again, we have seen the ripple effect of the program go well beyond a single grant, and last long after the end of an individual Peace Corps volunteer’s service. Now we have the hard data to prove it, thanks to . . .

Featherweight boxer Johnny Hood had 165 bouts in an amateur career which took him all over the U.S. in pursuit of expenses and eating money. Sometimes, he fought five and six nights in a row. In amateur tournaments, such as the Golden Gloves tournament in which he won the featherweight championship of Michigan, he sometimes had to take on three opponents in one night. Born and raised in Columbus, Mont., where the Yellowstone river pours out of the Rocky Mountains, Johnny Hood felt an early attraction toward Mexico. “I was bumming around Mexico one summer when I ran out of money,” he remembers. “I decided I would take my boxing and turn pro, but I didn’t know enough Spanish at the time to tell whether the agent said I would get 60 pesos for four rounds or four pesos for 60 rounds. You can guess which figure was correct.” Before . . .

Let’s see–four years prep school…Princeton, Magna Cum Laude…three years Harvard Law School….two years Peace Corps….” The Saturday Post, 1963

Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, Volume III Edited by Clifford Garstang (South Korea 1976-77) Press 53 Publisher October 2018 196 pages $19.95 (paperback)   Reviewed by Peter Van Deekle (Iran, 1968-70) During my Peace Corps in-country training I always remember that one of my expatriate guides distinguished between visiting (short-term travel) and living (extended immersion including residency and employment) in a foreign culture.  Despite what some erroneously called a “junket,” Peace Corps service represented an intensive cultural immersion that travel could not provide. Much of the short fiction in Volume III of  Everywhere Stories, edited by Clifford Garstang, is informed by that intensive immersion that only living in a society can supply.  This collection’s short story authors individually reflect that unique awareness particular to each tradition and circumstance associated with a country. The short fiction in Volume III is organized by five major geographic regions and countries within . . .

The turning in the road for Bill Moyers came when he took a summer internship in the office of Lyndon Johnson, then Democratic leader of the Senate. The inside glimpse into national politics that this experience gave him—as well as the relationship Moyers formed with the man who became president—set in motion a chain of events which brought him finally to the Peace Corps. If he hadn’t come to Washington in that summer of 1954, Moyers would probably become a professor of ethics at Baylor University. “I was all signed up at Baylor when an offer came from Mr. Johnson to join his staff as a special assistant working for the Majority Leader in his relations with the Senate,” Moyers said. “To me, the offer was irresistible.” The young special assistant became Johnson’s executive assistant during the Senator’s 1960 campaign for the Vice Presidency. In this capacity, he lived in the . . .

  “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.” John F. Kennedy May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963