Archive - August 2020

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REASONABLE DOUBT by Phillip Margolin (Liberia)
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MY LIFE ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM by Tracey Cohen (Namibia)
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Bob Frank (Nepal) retires from Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management
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George Packer (Togo) . . . “This Is How Biden Loses”
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See the Documentary, Support the Museum
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Tim McCollum (Madagascar) builds a chocolate factory
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THE UPSHAWS OF COUNTY LINE: An American Family by Richard S. Orton (Liberia)
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Review — EVERY HILL A BURIAL PLACE by Peter H. Reid (Tanzania)
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Review — JESSE, A MAN GOOD ENOUGH by Will Michelet (India)
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Review — OWLS OF THE EASTERN ICE by Jonathan Slaght (Russia)
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ERADICATING SMALLPOX: another time, place, virus — Award Winning Book
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2020 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Book of Poetry — STRANGE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD by Bill Preston (Thailand)
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Review — MARK TWAIN, DETECTIVE by Joseph Theroux (Western Samoa)
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2020 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Peace Corps Memoir — WOVEN by Nancy Heil Knor (Belize)
15
2020 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Travel Book — EUROPE BY BUS by Steve Kaffen (Russia)

REASONABLE DOUBT by Phillip Margolin (Liberia)

  A Reasonable Doubt (2020) is the third book in the series of legal thrillers featuring defense lawyer Robin Lockwood by The New York Times bestselling American author Phillip Margolin (Liberia 1965-67). I enjoyed this book and recommend it for your reading list. Click on the links to learn more about the author and his many books. About Philip Margolin I grew up in New York City and Levittown, New York. In 1965, I graduated from The American University in Washington, D.C. with a Bachelor’s Degree in Government. From 1965 to 1967, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. In 1970, I graduated from New York University School of Law. I went at night during my last two years in law school, and worked my way through by teaching junior high school in the South Bronx in New York City. My first job after law school was a clerkship with Herbert M. . . .

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MY LIFE ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM by Tracey Cohen (Namibia)

  In her third book Tracey Cohen (Namibia 2003-05) gets more personal about her own journey living on the autism spectrum. Her goal of exposing herself so candidly is to help others know that they are not alone in their journey and to help smooth their path. She aims also to help neurotypicals more clearly understand life on the autism spectrum. Full of pictures from Tracey’s childhood and adult life, this book will help anyone gain a much greater understanding of people on the autism spectrum. Chapters Include: Bewilderment and Difficult Relationships; Institutionalized as a Preteen; Education and Employment — Challenges and Achievements; My Journey to Diagnosis; My Top Six Challenges; Running — My Heart and Soul; and Best Practices for People with Autism. Tracey’s other books are Six Word Lessons on Female Asperger Syndrome: 100 Lessons to Understand, and Support Girls and Women with Asperger’s and Six-Word Lessons on the Sport of . . .

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Bob Frank (Nepal) retires from Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management

  Robert H. Frank (Nepal 1966–68) taught his first college course before graduating from Georgia Tech in 1966. A Cornell professor and influential teacher of economics since 1972, Frank retired from Cornell on July 1, 2020, after more than a half-century of teaching. A pioneer and champion of behavioral economics, Frank has written and spoken extensively in his many books, essays, and media interviews about moral sentiments, positional goods, expenditure cascades, the ever-widening income gap, the role of luck in our lives, and, most recently, the power of behavioral contagion. •   Bob Frank’s Legacy as a Teacher, Behavioral Economist, Economic Naturalist, and Author by Janice Endresen Ethical Systems August 25, 2020     In 1966, when Robert H. Frank arrived in Nepal to teach high-school math and science as a Peace Corps volunteer, he was surprised at how quickly he felt comfortable in his modest new home, even though conditions . . .

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George Packer (Togo) . . . “This Is How Biden Loses”

George Packer (Togo 1982-83) Staff writer for The Atlantic   Here is a prediction about the November election: If Donald Trump wins, in a trustworthy vote, what’s happening this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, will be one reason. Maybe the reason. And yet Joe Biden has it in his power to spare the country a second Trump term. Events are unfolding with the inevitable logic of a nightmare. A white police officer shoots a Black man as he’s leaning into a car with his three sons inside — shoots him point-blank in the back, seven times, “as if he didn’t matter,” the victim’s father later says. If George Floyd was crushed to death by depraved indifference, Jacob Blake is the object of an attempted execution. Somehow, he survives — but his body is shattered, paralyzed from the waist down, maybe for life. Kenosha explodes in rage, the same rage that’s been igniting around the . . .

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See the Documentary, Support the Museum

  The Museum of the Peace Corps Experience will host a screening of “A Towering Task,” the award-winning Peace Corps documentary, viewable September 18 – 30, 2020. Income from ticket sales will allow us to create Museum exhibits next year during the 60thAnniversary of Peace Corps. Please help us get the word out. Distribute this message as widely as possible. Help us expand public awareness of the Peace Corps and its history-making impact. By selling tickets for an online showing, Cinema 21 theater in Portland, Oregon will donate all its earnings to the Museum. Ticket purchases will begin after September 1. Then you’ll receive another message including links to purchase $10 tickets from Cinema 21 for online streaming. The message will also invite viewers to a Zoom panel discussion on September 30 with Alana DeJoseph, documentary Producer, Glenn Blumhorst, President, National Peace Corps Association, and other returned Peace Corps Volunteers. It’s a win-win proposition—but . . .

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Tim McCollum (Madagascar) builds a chocolate factory

  Breaking the mold: How Beyond Good is reinventing the chocolate business   Building a chocolate factory has been part of Tim McCollum’s  (Madagascar 1999-2011) plan since he founded Beyond Good, formerly Madécasse, in 2008. On its own that’s not an easy feat, but the location for the company’s first state-of-the-art production facility added another layer of difficulty. Beyond Good set up shop in Madagascar, where it sources rare, wonderfully fruity Criollo cacao directly from farmers. Though Africa — West Africa, in particular — supplies 70 percent of the world’s cocoa, the “statistical equivalent of 0 percent” of the world’s chocolate is produced there, McCollum says. There are several reasons for that, ranging from a lack of infrastructure, the need to ship and install manufacturing equipment, employee training, and ultimately, the distribution of profits. “They all add up to it being a very difficult proposition,” McCollum says. “But creating serious value . . .

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THE UPSHAWS OF COUNTY LINE: An American Family by Richard S. Orton (Liberia)

    Guss, Felix, and Jim Upshaw founded the community of County Line in the 1870s in northwest Nacogdoches County, in deep East Texas.  As with hundreds of other relatively autonomous black communities created at that time, the Upshaws sought a safe place to raise their children and create a livelihood during Reconstruction and Jim Crow Texas. In the late 1980s photographer, Richard Orton visited County Line for the first time and became aware of a world he did not know existed as a white man.  He met some remarkable people there who changed his life. The more than 50 duotone photographs and text convey the contemporary experience of growing up in a “freedom colony.” Covering a period of twenty-five years, photographer Richard Orton juxtaposes his images with text from people who grew up in and have remained connected to their birthplace.  Thad Sitton’s foreword sets the community in historical . . .

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Review — EVERY HILL A BURIAL PLACE by Peter H. Reid (Tanzania)

  Every Hill a Burial Place: The Peace Corps Murder Trial in East Africa By Peter H. Reid (Tanzania 1964-66) University of Kentucky Press 332 pages September 2020 $35.10 (Kindle); $36.95 (Hardcover) A review by John Ratigan (Tanzania 1964-66) • Fifty-four years ago, in March 1966, in a small village in Tanzania, a young American woman died when she fell from a rocky hill where she and her husband of 16 months were picnicking. Peverly Dennett Kinsey, known to everyone by the descriptive nickname of “Peppy,” was a Peace Corps upper primary school teacher from Riverside, Connecticut, who had met and married her husband, Bill Kinsey, also a PCV upper primary school teacher, while they were in Peace Corps training at Syracuse University. Peppy had graduated only a few months before from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Bill was a ‘64 graduate of Washington and Lee University. At first, . . .

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Review — JESSE, A MAN GOOD ENOUGH by Will Michelet (India)

  Jesse, A Man Good Enough by Will Michelet [Richard Grimsrud] (India 1965-67) Glorybound Publishing 114 pages January 2020 $10.00 (Paperback), $0.00 (Kindle); Reviewed by, Bob Arias (Colombia (1964-66) • “One cannot patch an old shirt with new material, for the repair will not adhere to it!” Author Will Michelet [the nom de plume of Richard Grimsrud] served in India from 1965  to 1967), where as a Peace Corps Volunteer he developed an awareness and appreciation for the diversity of the communities in India. His compassion is shared with the readers as we walk the fields of Wisconsin, his home. In the story, Jesse La Follette is the community social worker who brings Christianity to the present time, but claims that he is not the Messiah. Jesse denies that he was the long-awaited Messiah. None the less, Jesse seems to be following the path as practiced by St. Luke . . . .

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Review — OWLS OF THE EASTERN ICE by Jonathan Slaght (Russia)

  Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl By Jonathan Slaght (Russia 1999—02) Ferrar, Straus and Giroux August 2020 358 pages $28.00 (Hardcover)   Reviewed by Fuller Torrey, MD (Staff/Ethiopia 1964-66) For those of us whose Peace Corps experience involved villages in countries such as Bolivia, Ethiopia, India and Thailand, placing Peace Corps volunteers in Russia seems like a disconnect. But indeed between 1992 and 2003 722 Peace Corps volunteers served there, including Jonathan Slaght, the author of this most interesting book. He spent three years in Russia’s Far East, 4,000 miles from Moscow in remote villages, a full day’s drive north of Vladivostok. In fact, he was among the last volunteers to leave when Russia kicked the Peace Corps out after accusing it of using volunteers as spies. The only disappointing thing about this book is that the author writes almost . . .

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ERADICATING SMALLPOX: another time, place, virus — Award Winning Book

Houston lawyer James Skelton recalls his stint with the Peace Corps  By Andrew Dansby  Houston Chronicle  August 23, 2020 James Skelton finished his book about a deadly virus long before a global pandemic put epidemiology in the news. His intention, rather, was to tell the story of a group of Peace Corps volunteers dealing with all manner of health and logistical challenges. The book’s title covers it well: “Eradicating Smallpox in Ethiopia: Peace Corps Volunteers’ Accounts of Their Adventures, Challenges and Achievements.” This month, the book won the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award, an annual honor for Peace Corps volunteers or staffers who best depict life in the Peace Corps. “Eradicating Smallpox in Ethiopia” proved a complicated task for Skelton and his co-authors and co-editors. It comprises 18 essays written about efforts between the World Health Organization and the Peace Corps to rid the African nation of the disease . . .

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2020 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Book of Poetry — STRANGE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD by Bill Preston (Thailand)

  Strange Beauty of the World: Poems Bill Preston (Thailand 1977–80) Peace Corps Writers 148 pages August 2018 $14.00 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle)   Reviewed by Peter V. Deekle (Iran 1968–70) Bill Preston (Thailand, 1977-1980) began his professional encounter with his native language, English, during his Peace Corps TEFL assignment, as did this reviewer. But Bill continued his formal engagement with English well beyond Peace Corps. This engagement has strengthened his expertise as a writer and poet. Strange Beauty of the World is a collection both personal and universal in its appeal, organized in broad sections of Bill’s experience and recollections. The universality of each poem enables the reader to find a unique voice and vision of the expressed sentiments and events. Regardless of style and form (mostly extended narrative forms, but a few, often playful, rhyming) the poems seem to this reviewer both appropriate to the themes and evocative of each subject’s meaning. . . .

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Review — MARK TWAIN, DETECTIVE by Joseph Theroux (Western Samoa)

  Mark Twain, Detective by Joseph Peter Theroux (Western Samoa 1975 – 78) Self Published 212 pages June 2020 $10.00 (paperback), $0.00 (Kindle)   Reviewed by Sue Hoyt Aiken (Ethiopia 1962-64)  • The author provides a look back to a period of history involving famous good guys and the famous not so good guys.  The Editors Note: Introductory is as interesting as the story itself leaving the reader eager to unearth more about Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson and the whole sugar-dominating force, the Speckles’ family. Their flamboyance is in stark contrast to the undercurrent of trafficking in human souls, opium and more. The mystery unfolds and plays out in Hawaii in the late 1800s when Twain sails to Hawaii to give a lecture. While a pandemic supposedly prevented him from coming ashore to deliver the lecture, materials later discovered would say otherwise. Did he join Lloyd Osborne, did he witness the Georgia . . .

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2020 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Peace Corps Memoir — WOVEN by Nancy Heil Knor (Belize)

  Woven: A Peace Corps Adventure Spun with Faith, Laughter, and Love Nancy Heil Knor (Belize 1989-91) Peace Corps Writers November 5, 2019 322 pages $12.95 (paperback)   • Talking with Nancy Heil Knor (Belize), author of Woven an interview by Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) Nancy, where and when did you serve in the Peace Corps? I had the privilege of serving in the village of San Pedro Columbia in Belize, Central America, from 1989–1991. I loved it! The village is inhabited by K’ekchi Mayan families who are mostly subsistence farmers. When I lived there, the population was about 1,000 people; it was one of the larger Mayan villages in the southernmost district of Belize. What was your Peace Corps project assignment? Originally, I was sent to the village to teach the villagers how to plant carrots in order to increase their intake of Vitamin A. Vitamin A helps prevent vision . . .

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2020 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Travel Book — EUROPE BY BUS by Steve Kaffen (Russia)

  Europe By Bus: 50 Bus Trips and City Visits Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96) 371 pages SK Journeys Publisher May 2019 $16.00 (paperback)   Reviewed by Craig Storti (Morocco (1970-72) Europe by bus? Really? Does anyone travel by bus who doesn’t have to? Aren’t buses for commuters? OK, tour buses, for sure. But Steve Kaffen is not talking about tour buses; he’s talking about buses as in the way go to from one city to another—all across Europe, for heaven’s sake! Who would do that when you can take a nice, comfortable train? I was skeptical. Can you tell? But then I’m an American, and intercity bus travel is not nearly as common in the US; we have cars for that sort of thing. But one of the revelations in Kaffen’s book is how well-developed intercity bus travel is in Europe, within the same country and from one country to . . .

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