Archive - 2019

    Reading though George Packer’s (Togo 1982-83) 590 page book: Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and The End of the American Century I came across two paragraphs on Holbrooke’s brief career working for the Peace Corps. On page 144 of his book, Packer writes how Holbrooke left his position with Kissinger and the State Department and decides to leave the country. George writes, “After working on staffs for five years, he [Holbrooke] also wanted to be in charge of something. That was impossible for an FSO-4, which he had just become, on the normal unimaginative embassy career path. So he looked into the Peace Corps, asked for a country program to run, and studied Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute….” He was given Morocco by Joe Blatchford, the Peace Corps Director, and he lasted one year (1970-71) on the job. Packer writes: There isn’t much to tell you about the . . .

About the book: Set in the 1990s, the novel is about Aiken Alexander, the scion of Scots-Irish settlers who came to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in the mid-18thCentury. An Army veteran, Aiken is estranged from his wife, Soon-hee, a young Korean woman he fell in love with when stationed in Seoul. While Aiken is struggling to provide for Henry, their four-year-old, Soon-hee’s erratic behavior creates greater tension and her practice of traditional Korean shamanism is at odds with the Alexander family’s Appalachian folkways. On top of that, Aiken’s cousins seek to solve a Turtle Valley mystery that threatens to pull the family apart. Pre-publication Buzz: Amy Hawes of Book Club Babble calls The Shaman of Turtle Valley a “perfect book club read.”  If you or someone you know is in a book club and might be interested in choosing the book for one of your reads, Clifford would love . . .

A young woman accuses a prominent local college athlete of rape. Convicted with the help of undisputable DNA evidence, the athlete swears his innocence and threatens both his lawyer and his accuser as he’s sent to prison. Not long after, there’s another rape and the DNA test shows that the same person committed both rapes―which is seemingly impossible since the man convicted of the first rape was in prison at the time. Phillip Margolin (Liberia 1966-68)         A groundbreaking revisionist history of the last days of the Vietnam War that reveals the acts of American heroism that saved more than one hundred thousand South Vietnamese from communist revenge. Thurston Clarke (Tunisia 1968)           Drawn by a fascination with Egypt’s rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo’s . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) Richard Holbrooke, and the End of the American Century by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) Reviewed by Walter Isaacson The New York Times May 9, 2019 Richard Holbrooke was a large man with gargantuan appetites — for food and women and movies and acclaim and, above all, diplomatic and undiplomatic maneuvering — appetites that struggled to feed an outsize ego that was matched only by his insecurities. As the last great freewheeling diplomat of the American Century, Holbrooke, with his turbocharged zeal and laughable lack of self-awareness, earned fervent admirers and fevered enemies, including a few longstanding colleagues who fell passionately and paradoxically into both camps. In fact, Holbrooke himself was caught in this duality of being his own most fervent admirer and worst enemy (although when someone once commented that he was his own worst enemy, a national security adviser . . .

      WASHINGTON – Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen (Tunisia 1966-68) and Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Zoran Pažin signed a historic agreement May 6 establishing a new Peace Corps program in Montenegro, the agency’s 142nd country of service. “Today’s signing is a testament to the close partnership between the United States and Montenegro,” said Olsen, who met with the deputy prime minister in the capital Podgorica. “And it is a testament to our commitment to a common vision of a brighter future for Montenegro and its neighbors in the Western Balkans.” Deputy Prime Minister Pažin said the Peace Corps program in Montenegro is another confirmation of the partnership, support and friendship of the U.S. Government and American people to Montenegro and its citizens. “We see the service of the U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in Montenegro as another opportunity for Montenegrin and U.S. citizens to enrich their lives and to . . .

 ‘The Buried’ Review: Digging Into a Revolution Journalist Peter Hessler moved to Cairo in the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s ouster and was a witness to Egypt’s recent political convulsions. ​By John Freeman Wall Street Journal May 7, 2019 6:41 p.m. ET Seen from afar, tectonic political shifts often look as if they consume a society. But have you ever been someplace in the middle of momentous political events and found everyone around you getting on with daily life? Few reporters seem better placed to fathom the complexities of this dynamic—ripples of disquiet permeating routine existence—than Peter Hessler (China 1996-98). For nearly a decade Mr. Hessler reported from China for the New Yorker, eventually writing four books about an ancient society undergoing great change. Having moved back to the U.S, he and his wife, Leslie Chang, a former China correspondent for this newspaper, decided that it was time for a change . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) A Touching Portrait of Martha Cooper, a Legendary Chronicler of Graffiti Martha: A Picture Story, is the first documentary that focuses on the life and career of one of the most important urban photographers of the past half-century. by Christopher Lee Inoa May 1, 2019 Martha Cooper with young child in the 1970s (photo by Dan Brinzac) Martha Cooper didn’t set out to become a legend when she started taking photos of the graffiti-covered subways cars that made their way from the Bronx to the rest of New York City in the 1970’s and 80’s. She definitely didn’t think she would be considered an icon when she and fellow photographer Henry Chalfant presented what would become Subway Art to publishers in NYC. After many rejections, and later poor sales when it finally did get published, Cooper then thought that part of her life was . . .

    I had the pleasure of attending a pre-publication event this Monday evening in New York City for Peter Hessler’s (China 1996-98) new book, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution, set in Egypt. Drawn by a fascination with Egypt’s rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo’s neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos. In the midst of the revolution, Hessler often traveled to digs at Amarna and Abydos, where locals live beside the tombs of kings and courtiers, a landscape that they call simply al-Madfuna: “the Buried.” He . . .

    MS 204 Volunteer Conduct Effective Date: December 1, 2017 Responsible Office: Safety and Security (OSS); Counseling and Outreach Unit (OHS/COU)Supersedes: 09/08/17; 02/09/17; 06/25/15; 10/31/14; 7/10/14; 8/19/11; 06/28/11; 03/18/11; 5/20/05; 11/26/03; 2/04/93; 5/04/83; MS 237, 4/30/73 (Note:  I have copied the following section on drug use.  The link is to the entire section on T/V conduct.) “3.5 Drug Use 3.5.1 General Policy Except as described in section 3.5.2 below regarding Voluntary Self-Referral, a V/T found to be involved with drugs in a manner not authorized by the Peace Corps for medical purposes, in any way in any country, will be administratively separated immediately pursuant to section 3.5.4. The Peace Corps enforces this strict policy not only because the cultivation, manufacture, and traffic in and use of drugs, including marijuana, is illegal in most countries; but also because drug involvement by V/Ts in any country could seriously jeopardize the entire . . .

Late last March approximately sixty plus of the seventy plus PCVs currently in-country in Sierra Leone were sent home from Freetown by the Peace Corps Office of the Inspector General for smoking marijuana in-country. Much of the information I have received is from two Sierra Leone RPCVs currently back in-country visiting their host county. A group of approximately 15 PCVs were partying on Bureh Beach outside of Freetown and were smoking pot, at least according to a woman working for the U.S. Embassy. She reported the PCVs to Peace Corps Washington and they sent an agent out from the Peace Corps Inspector General Office to investigate. According to the RPCV, who served in the early days in Sierra Leone and were in Freetown, this IG agent, demanded that all the PCVs, approximately 74, come to Freetown by the next day. Of course, given their remote locations and limited transportation, most . . .