Archive - 2020

These 11 short essays — funny, touching, insightful — unique glimpses into the overseas experiences that in many ways shaped the lives and careers of these talented writers. Now that everyone has plenty of time to stay inside and sit in front of their computers I thought I would republish them so you might read them again, or for the first time. Read what RPCVs writers have to say from Guyana, Mongolia, Senegal, Cameroon, Mali, Ghana, Malawi, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Zaire, and Eastern Caribbean.n — JCoyne, ed. • Telling Time Katherine Jamieson (Guyana 1996–98) For two years I lived in a country with no seasons. We measured time by other means than falling leaves or snow, new buds on trees. There was a fresh breeze in the air, the ash of burned sugar cane floating in the window. There were times to go to work, times to stay home, an election, . . .

. . . for you to stream the Virtual Cinema premiere of director Alana DeJoseph’s (Mali 1992–94) wonderful movie: A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps via  60 theaters around the country. It’s easy to watch: Choose a theater closest to you on the Playdates page. Then click on “Ticket” to rent the film for three days. The ticket price is $10. Half of the proceeds go to the theater to help keep them alive during the COVID closure! Watch the trailer NOW.   “ENLIGHTENING AND UPLIFTING! A Towering Task puts a human face on the Peace Corps – and makes sense of its history of idealism, improvisation and politics. It is the most coherent and satisfying documentary I know of the Peace Corps, and I can’t imagine a better one. The film is enlightening, too, for being in large part the portrait of a period when America was . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Arnold Zeitlin (Ghana 1961-63)   As rural classrooms become more connected, students have to understand how to evaluate the content they consume Monika Bochert (Mongolia 2017-19) May 19, 2020 Inkstick publication • Last month, a hoax circulated online that people wearing shoes indoors led to a spike in coronavirus cases in Italy. Worldwide, rapidly spreading misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19 is negatively affecting people’s behaviors towards the virus. Action must be taken to curb the spread of false information on a global stage, and the Peace Corps has the capacity to do it. Media literacy, or the ability to critically evaluate media, is an integral tool that can be used to combat false information online. Despite the need for this skill to discern COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation, there is no formal program geared toward teaching digital skills and media literacy internationally. We need to implement a program to stymie . . .

  Thanks for the ‘heads-up’ from Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Cameroon 1965-67) — This is from Wednesday, May 20th PBS News Hour, which featured Judy Woodruff and William Brangham, of the PBS NewsHour talk with George Packer (Togo 1982-83). As Mary-Ann wrote to me about Packer’s presentation, “Brilliant indictment of the Trump administration.” — J Coyne, ed. • Judy Woodruff: Throughout this entire crisis, questions continue to be raised about why the U.S. government was not better prepared for such a challenge. As William Brangham tells us, those questions include how the Trump administration views the role of government and civil service broadly. William Brangham: That’s right, Judy. Most people would agree that the scale and speed of this pandemic would have taxed the resources and abilities of any administration and of any president. But the Trump administration’s response has certainly come under some intense scrutiny. Let’s turn now to two writers who . . .

  In 2017, the PC OIG followed up on the investigation and trial of the accused of the murder of Kate Puzey. The murder remains unresolved as of today. The OIG had monitored the implementation of the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011 and that was included.  Jody Olsen, the current Director of the Peace Corps was Acting Director in March of 2009 when Kate Puzey was murdered. Click for an update: https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.peacecorps.gov/documents/inspector-general/Interim_Update.pdf From the update: “Ultimately, all four defendants were acquitted. Three of the defendants had been incarcerated for eight years pending trial, and one had been incarcerated for three years. Despite the extensive investigative fieldwork conducted in Benin and other resources devoted to this investigation by the Beninese Gendarmerie, the Peace Corps OIG, the FBI, and the Regional Security Office of the U.S. Embassy in Benin, the case remains unresolved. OIG and our partners continue . . .

  Starting this Friday (May 22), you will be able to buy movie tickets from your local theaters and stream “A Towering Task” while at the same time supporting a local movie house. Go to “First Run Features” to learn if this his happening in your neighborhood. http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/toweringtask_playdates.html   If you don’t see your neighborhood theater in this list, send this link to your theater so that they can sign up to participate in this opportunity: https://bit.ly/AToweringTaskVirtualCinemaSignUp  

  By BRAD BIGGS CHICAGO TRIBUNE | MAY 16, 2020 | 6:51 PM Former Bears President Michael McCaskey, shown in this January 1999 photo, has died at 76.(JOSE MORE / CHICAGO TRIBUNE) Michael McCaskey, who took over the reins of the Chicago Bears from his grandfather George Halas in 1983 before the team achieved its greatest moment two years later, died Saturday. He was 76. McCaskey became the president and CEO of the Bears in 1983 and remained at the helm of the organization in a long run, serving as the chairman of the board from 1999 until 2011, when he stepped down and was replaced by his brother George. McCaskey battled cancer for a considerable time. The oldest of Ed and Virginia McCaskey’s 11 children, McCaskey is survived by two children, John and Kathryn, and one grandson, Jackson. “Mike was already successful in every sense of the word when he took over for . . .

Thanks for the ‘head-up’ from Matt Losak (Lesothe 1985-88) Carolyn and Richard Paul Thornell were married for nearly 50 years. (Family photo) By Tara Bahrampour In the 1970s and ’80s, when Richard Paul Thornell would go with his sons to the grocery store and return late, his wife would teasingly ask, “Did you run into someone from the Peace Corps?” Usually, the answer was yes. In the early days of President John F. Kennedy’s administration, Thornell had worked under Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver and future senator Harris Wofford, negotiating and setting up the first Peace Corps program in the world. In May 1961, the 24-year-old Thornell traveled to Ghana as director of the Peace Corps Africa Regional Office to help design educational, agricultural and job-training programs there. Although he had to return to the United States that summer after contracting tuberculosis, the experience marked him. “For him, it was . . .

Scott Galloway predicts a handful of elite cyborg universities will soon monopolize higher education by James D. Walsh New York Post, May 11,2020 In 2017, Scott Galloway anticipated Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods a month before it was announced. Last year, he called WeWork on its “seriously loco” $47 billion valuation a month before the company’s IPO imploded. Now, Galloway, a Silicon Valley runaway who teaches marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, believes the pandemic has greased the wheels for big tech’s entrée into higher education. The post-pandemic future, he says,  will entail partnerships between the largest tech companies in the world and elite universities. MIT@Google. iStanford. HarvardxFacebook. According to Galloway, these partnerships will allow universities to expand enrollment dramatically by offering hybrid online-offline degrees, the affordability and value of which will seismically alter the landscape of higher education. Galloway, who also founded his own virtual classroom start-up, predicts hundreds, . . .

Peace Corps Journal U. S. Capital Readings Remembered   Monday, November 21, 1965 Participant                                                                              Time Slot Letitia Morse Lladoc                                                             5:00 p.m. Philippines 1964-66 Leyte Island Teacher: ESL Imagine President Kennedy has been dead for two years, but it’s amazing how, here on the island of Leyte in the Philippines so many miles away from the United States, you visit barrio homes and there on the wall is President Kennedy’s picture. People here always want to talk about President Kennedy and it’s nice because they talk about him as if he was a close friend. I feel so honored to be . . .

The Journals of Peace Making it happen by Tim Carroll (Nigeria 1963-66) In 1988, as the first Director of the National Council of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (NCRPCV), now the National Peace Corps Association, I felt a considerable part of my mandate was to bring our disparate numbers together, to gather us up to celebrate those feelings we had in common. A number of special events given under my tenure accomplished this in varying degrees of success, but none held the hearts of Peace Corps family as did the Journals of Peace. As the 25th anniversary of the death of President John Kennedy — the founder and much-loved hero of early Volunteers — approached, I made a call to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, the church that had been the site of JFK’s funeral service, and asked if we might have a memorial Mass that would include not only the traditional Showing . . .

A 24-hour vigil at the U. S. Capital never happened before, or since. It was a day and night for America and for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers that should never be forgotten. I will over the next months publish a number of those addresses read by former Volunteers in the Rotunda of the U.S Capitol. All of these original essays I have and will give to the new NPCA museum in Washington, D.C. so that the history of the first generations of Volunteers will be kept, remembered, and understood by generations to come. In these sad days of the Trump Administration, we can now look back and read back what Volunteers did for America and the Third World as we approach the 60th anniversary of the Peace Corps in 2021. It is especially important at a time when Peace Corps Volunteers have been pulled out of service, and we have . . .