Archive - 2021

This week, we celebrated a special moment in Peace Corps history. It was on November 2, 1960, that John F. Kennedy first gave a name to the idea that would become the Peace Corps. Running for president, in a speech at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, he declared, “I am convinced that the pool of people in this country of ours anxious to respond to the public service is greater than it has ever been in our history.” We know what it means to meet historic moments. Since March 2020, we have seen how the Peace Corps community has met unprecedented times with an unparalleled response. From working to support evacuated Volunteers to helping amid the COVID-19 pandemic, from advocating for a better and stronger Peace Corps to helping refugees, we’ve seen time and again how Peace Corps ideals make an impact. Just last week, the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee convened . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steve  Kaffen (Russia 1994-96)   from The Hill 10/30/21 by Daniel F. Runde, Opinion Contributor     The Peace Corps celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic there are currently no Peace Corps volunteers serving abroad. As the Peace Corps program practices resiliency and adapts to a post-COVID landscape, it should also use this moment to answer long-existing questions that can redirect the Peace Corps to a more impactful and relevant future. About the Peace Corps The book “The Ugly American” caused a sensation in foreign policy and national security circles when it was released in 1958. It painted Americans as arrogant, out of touch, and insensitive to the needs of the rapidly de-colonizing developing world. It was so influential that then-Senator John F. Kennedy bought 99 copies of the book and gave it to every other Senator to read. “The . . .

No Ghosts in the Graveyard: The Life-Time Adventures of A Small- Town Oregon Boy by Bob Crites (Brazil 1964-66) Independently Published 2021 428 pages $12.99 (Paperback)     When Bob Crites was in the seventh grade in Drain, his social studies teacher Art Biederman showed the class pictures of his summer travels. It sparked what would become a lifelong passion for helping children in other countries. Crites would grow up to help feed school lunches to children in Brazil, form a charity to provide scholarships for children in Brazil and Tanzania, and bring one young athlete to Oregon, where she trained for the Olympics. Crites recently self-published his memoirs, “No Ghosts in the Graveyard: The Life-Time Adventures of a Small-Town Oregon Boy” on Amazon. Crites was born in 1940 in Drain on a farm that had been in his family since his maternal great grandfather Augustus Hickethier founded it in . . .

  Mildred D. Taylor (Ethiopia 1965-67) is our Peace Corps Writer of 2021. Millie is also the winner of the 2021 Children’s Literature Legacy Award presented by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, honoring an author or illustrator, published in the United States, whose books have made a significant and lasting contribution to literature for children. Her numerous works include “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” (Dial, 1976) and “All the Days Past, All the Days to Come” (Dial, 2020). “Taylor’s storytelling shows how courage, dignity, and family love endure amidst racial injustice and continues to enlighten hearts and minds of readers through the decades,” said Children’s Literature Legacy Award Committee Chair Dr. Junko Yokota. Mildred’s story(s) Mildred Taylor was born in Mississippi, grew up in Ohio, and now lives in Colorado. A childhood of listening to family stories told by . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Kay Dixon (Colombia 1962-64)   Tales from student immigrants in Spokane share their hardships and triumphs  By Shawn Vestal shawnv Spokesman-Review Sun., Oct. 24, 2021 Meet the Author Victorya Rouse, author of “Finding Refuge: Real-Life Immigration Stories from Young Readers,” will be featured at an event for The Spokesman-Review’s Northwest Passages Book Club on Nov. 9 at the Montvale Event Center. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the event starts at 7. Proof of vaccination required for entry. Click for more information. • When Fedja Zahirovic fled with his family from the Bosnian War to Spokane in the 1990s, he was “confused and angry,” uprooted from all he’d ever known, and didn’t know the language or the culture. The first steps in his American education occurred at the Newcomers Center at Ferris High School. “It was a safe place,” he said this week. “It was a . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’  from Jim Wolter  (Malaysia 1961–66) . . .    We also celebrate, Bob Hoyle (Philippines 1962-63), another RPCV life well-lived. One of the stories Bob loved to tell about Sarge Shriver was of the time Sarge was Ambassador to France and Bob was working with Palestinian Refugees (an emotionally draining experience). Bob was courting a woman (not his eventual wife Karen) working in London. Bob and she decided to meet in Paris for a long weekend. Bob saved to take her to the best restaurant in Paris (I don’t recall the name). During lunch, Sarge and his entourage entered and Bob, wanting to impress his date, said, “There’s Ambassador Shriver.” She said something to the effect, “It couldn’t be. How do you know?” He told her, “I know it’s him. I met him when he came to visit Peace Corps Volunteers in the Philippines. He actually . . .

  WorldView magazine, published by National Peace Corps Association, earned both an EDDIE and OZZIE in the 2021 FOLIO Magazine awards. These awards recognize magazine editorial and design excellence. WorldView earned EDDIE top honors for a series of articles in the Summer 2020 edition that tell the stories of Peace Corps Volunteers who were evacuated from around the world in 2020. These stories capture the Volunteers’ experiences and the communities in which they were serving, and the unfinished business they left behind. The magazine earned OZZIE top honors for the cover of the Fall 2020 edition, featuring an illustration by award-winning artist David Plunkert. With a dove of peace inside a cage-like COVID-19 molecule, the cover asks: “What’s the role of Peace Corps now?” Plunkert’s work has appeared in the pages and on the covers of The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, and elsewhere. The awards were presented on October . . .

  Glowing red lines split their faces. Shock-red hair and clothes warn people to flee their approach. They are plague birds, the powerful merging of humans and artificial intelligences who serve as judges and executioners after the collapse of civilization. And the plague birds’ judgement is swift and deadly, as Crista discovered as a child when she watched one kill her mother. In a world of gene-modded humans constantly watched over by benevolent AIs, everyone hates and fears the plague birds. But to save her father and home village, Crista becomes the very creature she fears the most. And her first task as a plague bird is hunting down an ancient group of murderers wielding magic-like powers. As Crista and her AI symbiote travel farther from home than she ever imagined, they are plunged into a strange world where she judges wrongdoers, befriends other outcasts, and uncovers an extremely personal . . .

  In early 1911, Isabel Cooper, 17, and her 15-year-old brother, Frederick. they leave their Georgetown home after the sudden death of their Mexican mother. They are determined to find their father, a college professor who – like many American leftists – had joined the Mexican revolution a few months earlier. They travel by train, stagecoach, and wagon, at first put off by what they see of turn-of-the-century American South. But they soon learn of the quiet dignity of their mother’s homeland. After an ugly incident not of their making, they escape the federales with the help of Pepe, a lad of many talents. He leads them to refuge with a ragtag militia on its way to join Carranza’s Army of the North, commanded by a woman known as La Maestra. • After service in the Peace Corps in Colombia, Jerome Adams went to work for The Charlotte (NC) Observer, . . .