February 7, 2022 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Review — PADRE RAIMUNDO’s ARMY & Other Stories by Arthur Powers (Brazil)

Feb 07 2022

Padre Raimundo’s Army & Other Stories Arthur Powers (Brazil 1969–73) Wiseblood Books July 2021 201 pages $15.00 (paperback) Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (1963–65) • Recently I’ve read a number of works of fiction, written with a deceptive simplicity, so much so that one doesn’t realize at first how profound and skillfully constructed they are. Arthur Powers’ Padre Raimundo’s Army, a slim book of seventeen short stories set in Brazil from 1970 to the early 2000s is one such example. A little backstory: Powers joined the Peace Corps in 1969 and ended up staying for forty years working primarily as a community organizer in rural Brazil. Except for a few years stateside earning a Harvard law degree he returned to Brazil for decades more work. He had arrived in-country as a religious agnostic and eventually found deep faith and an activist home in the Catholic church. He married a woman . . .

Loom is a solution for saving traditional Pacific island weaving from extinction

Feb 07 2022

By Joyce McClure, The Pacific Island Times When the young women of Yap’s remote outer islands leave home to seek a college education, better work opportunities or medical care on the U.S. mainland, the risk of leaving their cultural traditions behind is very real. The art of traditional weaving is among the most important. Weaving has been passed down from mother to daughter for centuries on the small islands and atolls of Yap, one of four island states in the Federated States of Micronesia, originally known as the Caroline Islands. Scattered across 100,000 square miles of open water in the western Pacific Ocean, Yap is made up of four contiguous main islands and 134 atolls and islands of which 19 are inhabited. One commonality among the outer islanders is the oblong length of handwoven, fringed fabric called a lavalava that the women wear as a wrap-around skirt when they . . .

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