Archive - August 2020

  You Know You Want This: “Cat Person” and Other Stories by Kristen Roupenian (Kenya 2003-05) Gallery/Scout Press 240 pages January 2019 $10.99 (hardcover), $14.99 (paperback), $11.99 (Kindle) • “Cat Person’s” author’s bad-date story and her date with fame By Meredith Goldstein Boston Globe December 29, 2018, 7:13 p.m.    Last December, writer Kristen Roupenian was sitting at Cultivate, a coffee shop in Michigan, with her girlfriend of a few months. It had been a big year for the Plymouth native, who’d finished her master of fine arts at the University of Michigan in April. Her short story “Cat Person ” had been accepted by The New Yorker (the dream of many aspiring fiction writers) and was now up on the magazine’s website. Just then Roupenian’s girlfriend, writer Callie Collins, checked her phone. Something strange was happening. “She used to work in publishing so she has more of a finger on the literary pulse . . .

    Rowland Scherman was the Peace Corps’ first photographer beginning in 1961 traveling around the world documenting Volunteer’s lives and work. He was just beginning his career working for the Peace Corps as a photojournalist when the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) handed him an assignment in August of 1963: A civil rights march, they said. In Washington. Scherman didn’t realize that he’d been assigned to cover one of the most monumental events in U.S. history. But there was a catch: the photos wouldn’t belong to him, they would belong to USIA, whose purpose was to use media to help improve the United States’ image abroad. Nevertheless, he did his duty faithfully at the March on Washington on that hot August day, capturing the sandwich-makers and the children who arrived with their parents on school buses, as well as the celebrities who spoke from the podium. He shot from the top . . .

  THE PAUL COWAN NON-FICTION AWARD, first given 1990, was named to honor Paul Cowan, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Ecuador from 1966 to 1967. Cowan wrote ≈ about his time as a Volunteer in Latin America in the ’60s. A longtime activist and political writer for The Village Voice, Cowan died of leukemia in 1988.     Race across America: Eddie Gardner and the Great Bunion Derbies by Charles B. Kastner (Seychelles 1980-82) Syracuse University Press 360 pages December 2019 $75.00 (hard cover), $29.95 (paperback), $16.17 (Kindle)   On April 23, 1929, the second annual Transcontinental Foot Race across America, known as the Bunion Derby, was in its twenty-fifth day. Eddie “the Sheik” Gardner, an African American runner from Seattle, was leading the race across the Free Bridge over the Mississipi River. Along with the signature outfit that earned him his nick name white towel tied around his head, white shorts, and a . . .

  How Volunteers over 50 learned the news and are feeling about it now By David Jarmul (Moldova 2016-18) nextavenue.com August 14, 2020   To do something meaningful Kamana Mathur (Nepal), who’s in her early 60s, had just arrived at her Peace Corps post in Nepal shortly before the end of her training when she was told she needed to return home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time in its history, the Peace Corps was evacuating its volunteers worldwide. “I was busy chatting with my host family,” Mathur recalled. “Then my colleague called and told me we had to leave. I said, ‘You know, I just sat down to lunch.’” Mathur had left her federal job in Hawaii, she said, “to reinvent myself to do something really meaningful at this point in my life.” During her Peace Corps training in the Himalayas, she’d studied the local language and culture, used . . .

  August 13, 2020 Walter Carrington, former United States Ambassador to Nigeria and Senegal, has died at the age of 90 according to a statement by his wife, Arese Carrington, “It is with a heavy and broken heart but with gratitude to God for his life of selfless humanity that I announce the passing of my beloved husband Walter Carrington, former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria and Senegal. Further announcements will be made shortly,” she said. According to her, Walter was a loving husband, father, grandfather, cousin, uncle, friend and in-law. “Ralph Waldo Emerson said . . .. It is not the length of life but the depth of life. Walter was fortunate, his life had both length and depth,” she said.   Carrington was born in 1930. He served as the US Ambassador to Senegal from 1980 to 1981. He was appointed by US President Bill Clinton in 1993 as . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steven Boyd Saum (Ukraine 1994–96)   As the senior director of product at The Atlantic, I oversee the end-to-end story experience, from authoring tools and article page templates to reader-facing touchpoints across all platforms. Previously, as the head of product at HuffPost, I led strategic planning and oversaw the development roadmap for all of HuffPost’s digital products in the U.S. I grew the product team from one to four and coordinated with leaders throughout HuffPost’s newsroom, business, engineering and design teams to launch the brand’s first membership program, HuffPost Plus, and to deliver improvements to the reader experience on all platforms. Before HuffPost, as the mobile product manager for The Wall Street Journal, I oversaw feature development for our mobile apps, including virtual reality storytelling and a significant redesign of the iOS and Android apps that introduced personalized content in a dedicated “MyWSJ” section. . . .

from the Peace Corps   The Peace Corps welcomes Dr. Darlene Grant to her new role as senior advisor to Director Jody Olsen. In this role, Dr. Grant will work with agency leadership to increase and champion a diverse staff and volunteer corps. She will make recommendations aimed at increasing inclusiveness, removing barriers for underrepresented groups, and creating a more just and equitable Peace Corps. Dr. Grant’s path to the Peace Corps began after 18 years as a professor of social work at the University of Texas at Austin. There, she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in social justice, clinical practice, research methodology, and working with at-risk youth. She directed funded research projects focusing on juvenile probation, teen pregnancy prevention, and the domestic violence experiences of incarcerated women. Dr. Grant was named 2006 Social Worker of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers. In 2009, she took a . . .

  Australia is a country of superlatives, a land of “Wows.” Journey with explorer and author Steve Kaffen “Down Under,” through vast, geographically diverse, culturally rich, and extremely scenic Australia, the only country that is also a continent. Using 500 original photos accompanied by vivid descriptions and observations, the author captures in colorful detail the country’s naturally beautiful places, energetic cities with distinct personalities, thriving animal and sea life, historical sites, and multiple cultures including Aboriginal cultures dating back thousands of years. The coverage includes Sydney’s heralded New Year’s Eve celebration, the renowned Australia Zoo and its Wildlife Hospital, the Great Barrier Reef, the interior Outback, the Great Ocean Road, Australian Open tennis, and wine-tasting in South and Western Australia near Perth. Sufficiently detailed to plan a comprehensive visit to Australia’s far corners and deep interior, and lots of fun to read and enjoy. • Australia: Adventures and Encounters (Travel . . .