Archive - December 21, 2019

    Early Days — When the Peace Corps Had Innovative Training   One of the first and most unique Training site programs for the Peace Corps was in October of 1962 with 90 training for Colombia. They went to train in slum neighborhoods in New York City. Manhattan’s lower East Side, East Harlem, and Chelsea. Organized by the New York School of Social Work of Columbia University, the Training program had seven hours a day of community work with New York City welfare agencies, in addition to classes in social work and in Spanish. This phase of Training for Colombia followed eight weeks of training at the University of New Mexico and four weeks in Puerto Rico. The total Training program of 16 weeks at the time was the longest ever undertaken by the Peace Corps and the first to include fieldwork in a specifically urban environment. The New . . .

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/09/you-must-not-worry-about-santa.html   In 1961, immediately after overhearing her parents discuss the possibility of Soviet nuclear tests at the North Pole, 8-year-old Michelle Rochon grabbed a pencil and wrote a letter to U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in which she asked him to prevent the tests for one particular reason. Her letter, and the reply she soon received from Kennedy, can be read below. (Source: The Letters of John F. Kennedy, published by Bloomsbury Press on October 29, 2013; Photo above: 8-year-old Michelle holding Kennedy’s letter.) Dear Mr. Kennedy, Please stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole because they will kill Santa Claus. I am 8 years old. I am in the third grade at Holy Cross School. Yours truly, Michelle Rochon ————————– THE WHITE HOUSE October 28, 1961 Dear Michelle: I was glad to get your letter about trying to stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole and . . .