Archive - 2024

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I am Maria, by Maria Shriver (On sale April 1,2025) Pre-Order Now
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Happy Birthday, Sargent Shriver!
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Ah, Where the Light Shines Through, First of four volumes of poetry by Patricia Waak (Brazil 1966-68)
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Chile and Pinochet focus of new memoir from CT author and former Peace Corps Volunteer
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New books by Peace Corps writers | September–October 2024
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Big Black Hole-New Year’s Addis Ababa 1966
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Bob Dylan Enters the World…by Rowland Scherman (First PC/W Staff Photographer)
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Peace Corps Volunteers celebrate decades-old ties with Korea during 2024 Revisit program
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Dorothy Crews Herzberg New Book (Nigeria)
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The Pen that Created the Peace Corps For Sale!
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New Executive Director named for White House Initiative on AANHPI
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The Peace Corps—Our Story Alone To Write
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Human Rights Watch Mourns Middle East Expert RPCV Joe Stork. (Turkey)
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Diary of the Ouagadougou Doctor by Milt Kogan (PC Staff Doctor Burkina Faso)
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    Trump will End the Peace Corps

I am Maria, by Maria Shriver (On sale April 1,2025) Pre-Order Now

A book like no other, I Am Maria weaves Shriver’s hard-earned wisdom with her own deeply personal poetry. I Am Maria reminds readers there is strength and love on the other side of all of our hardest days. I am Maria is a powerful collection of Maria Shriver’s own poems that grapple with identity, grief, love, loss, longing, heartbreak and healing. Her deeply personal poems address life’s transitions, challenges, successes and failures. Vulnerable and deeply moving, Shriver’s words are a collection of her life experiences woven into poetry to inspire everyone on their own journey, It is also an invitation for readers to write their own personal poetry, reclaiming the art as accessible to everyone and a tool to look within. I Am Maria is a roadmap for anyone trying to shed the labels, layers, and armor that holds us back from creating a wildly authentic and meaningful life. “I . . .

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Happy Birthday, Sargent Shriver!

Rowland Scherman (PC/W Staff photographer 1961-64) writes: “Here’s the guy who started and ran the Peace Corps, R. Sargent Shriver. I was the first PC photographer, 1961-63. There will be more about this wonderful guy in future Substacks.”

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Ah, Where the Light Shines Through, First of four volumes of poetry by Patricia Waak (Brazil 1966-68)

A walk through the snow, attention to the life that is bursting forth around you, reading the ancient signs of life in the past are some of stories captured series of poems that illuminate the relationship between one’s self and the natural world. The epiphanies that come from being aware of the spiritual unfolding that is possible when you pay attention to the other beings that we share the earth with. Ah, Where the Light Shines Through speaks to the reader of what is always present around us if we but take notice. Available on Amazon.com

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Chile and Pinochet focus of new memoir from CT author and former Peace Corps Volunteer

Connecticut Public Radio | By Katherine Jimenez Published November 4, 2024 at 5:00 AM EST   Two things brought writer Tom Hazuka to Chile: Spanish and baseball. Hazuka, a retired professor of English and writing at Central Connecticut State University, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile during the rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose decades-long dictatorship resulted in the death, internment and torture of tens of thousands of people. Hazuka’s award-winning memoir, “If You Turn to Look Back,” details his time in the country during the Pinochet years and his return 25 years later following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Hazuka left Connecticut for Chile in 1978 to take a position as a coach teaching young children how to play baseball. He was a recent graduate of Fairfield University and said the initial draw to the country was learning the language. “I already knew French. I was hoping to go to . . .

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New books by Peace Corps writers | September–October 2024

New books —  To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — CLICK on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards. We include a brief description for each of the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers  to order a book and maybe  VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW IT.  See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at marian@haleybeil.com, and she will send you a free copy along with a few instructions. PLEASE  join in our Third Goal effort and volunteer to review a book or books!!!    Make Room for Healing:40 Tips from a Breast Cancer Survivor by Travis Brady (China 1994) Hay House LLC 176 pages October . . .

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Big Black Hole-New Year’s Addis Ababa 1966

  Submitted by John Coyne for Peace Corps Worldwide Big Black Hole-New Year’s Addis Ababa 1966 by Charlie Ipcar (Ethiopia 1965-68) The “big black hole” reminds me of a New Year’s Eve celebration I and some Peace Corps friends were celebrating in Addis Ababa back in 1966. There was folk music, Ethiopian beer, and curious stuff being smoked in the pipes being passed around. Our new British friend Colin Figue, who had managed to hitchhike into Ethiopia with his friend Bob Herbison, was treating us to his rendition of Bert Jansch’s guitar solo “Angie” which we’d never heard before and which seemed to go on forever. Some time in the early morning we were making our way out the compound gate when one of us remembered the hole, the large black hole freshly dug for the cesspool, and we thoughtfully hollered out “Watch out for the hole!” and Colin actually . . .

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Bob Dylan Enters the World…by Rowland Scherman (First PC/W Staff Photographer)

Rowland Scherman (PC/W Staff photographer 1961-64) was like any other PCV as he traveled the world, photographing PCVs at work. I met him in 1962 in Ethiopia. He would go onto become a nationally known photographer, famous for many of his photographs. This gallery of photographs by Rowland includes images of iconic figures from the 1960s, from musicians Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan, to public figures Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. He has now created a website. Here is one of his first publications with a few of Rowland’s famous photographs..  Bob Dylan Enters the World… In his 1961 inaugural speech, President Kennedy asked us what we could do for the country; and I, like thousands of others, responded. In those days I was what one might call an “advanced amateur.” I knew what an f stop was, and the other basics, but not really much more. By answering . . .

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Peace Corps Volunteers celebrate decades-old ties with Korea during 2024 Revisit program

  Posted by Glenn Blumhorst for Peace Corps Worldwide Excerpted from The Korea Times By Jon Dunbar Alan Taylor first arrived in Korea in 1966, as part of K-1 the first dispatch of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers. He and his wife spent two years in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province, which he described as a “pre-industrial countryside.” “Gongju of the mid-1960s had no private automobiles, and one TV. Farming was done with oxen plowing, and there were few mechanical sound, and so… much physical labor for men and women,” he recalled. “We were immediately struck by how vital and animated Koreans were. I saw more smiling and less rushed pleasure in conversation than it seemed in the U.S. The Korean Peninsula had seen so much tragic violence and dislocation, but the energetic spirit of Koreans was striking to us.” He gave these remarks many times last week, while on a week-long . . .

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Dorothy Crews Herzberg New Book (Nigeria)

It’s a Small World After All by Dorothy Crews Herzberg (Nigeria 1961-63) IndependentlyPublished 132 pages October 2024 $12.00 (Paperback)   When Dorothy Crews Herzberg joined the Peace Corps in 1961, she was unaware that the program had not yet been approved by the U.S. Congress. The Corps’ proponents were hedging the strategy that having four hundred volunteers already working overseas would strengthen their case. While serving in the Peace Corps Dorothy Crews married Hershel Herzberg, and from 1961 to 1963 they wrote letters to her parents. Dorothy’s father saved and carefully preserved the fragile blue air letters. Every page of “Me, Madam” illuminates the energy of Nigeria immediately after independence. The author’s letters convey with intimacy what it was like to be there as the people struggled to create a new democracy.  

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The Pen that Created the Peace Corps For Sale!

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Wm Evensen (Peru 1964-66) Description John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson: Collection of Presidential Bill Signing Pens. Likely the finest collection of Bill Signing Pens ever assembled. A set of 50 fountain pens, used by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, housed in a 27 1/2″ x 38″ frame with green backing, the presidential seal at the top center, and with the caption “With these fifty pens, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the foundation of the great society which was passed by the historic and fabulous first session of the 89th Congress” at the bottom of the frame. The opened pens measure out to 5.25″ long and the closed capped pens measure out to 6.25″ long. Each pen has a caption box beneath it with the name of the act signed into law and the date of when it happened. While the presentation does . . .

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New Executive Director named for White House Initiative on AANHPI

New Executive Director named for White House Initiative on AANHPI WHITE HOUSE Helen Beadreau takes over the helm of the Biden administration’s WHAANHPI. The White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANHPI) and the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders announced Helen Beaudreau  as its new executive director. Beaudreau succeeds Krystal Ka‘ai, who was appointed by President Biden in May 2021 as the first Native Hawaiian to lead both the WHIAANHPI and the President’s Advisory Commission. Ka‘ai stepped down from her role as Executive Director on Oct. 5, 2024 and joined the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders on Oct. 7. “Helen Beaudreau has spent her career working to advance equity for underserved communities.” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.  “WHIAANHPI has important work to do – addressing anti-Asian bias, expanding language access, promoting equitable access to . . .

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The Peace Corps—Our Story Alone To Write

During the 1950s, two societal impulses swept across America. One impulse that characterized the decade was detailed in two best-selling books of the era: the 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and the non-fiction book, The Organization Man, written by William H. Whyte and published in 1956. These books looked at the “American way of life” and how men got ahead in their work and in society. Both are bleak takes on the corporate world. These books were underscored by Ayn Rand’s ideas as expressed in the novel Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957. Her philosophy of Objectivism proposed reason as man’s only proper judge of values and his only proper guide to action. Every man, according to Rand, was an end in himself. He must work for rational self-interest, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. Objectivism rejected any form of . . .

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Human Rights Watch Mourns Middle East Expert RPCV Joe Stork. (Turkey)

Human Rights Watch Mourns Middle East Expert Joe Stork Human Rights Watch 26th October 2024, Joe Stork, a beloved mentor and friend to human rights activists across the Middle East and a treasured colleague whose career at Human Rights Watch spanned more than three decades, died unexpectedly on October 23, 2024, at his home in Washington, DC. He was 81. Stork, who joined Human Rights Watch in 1996 as the Middle East and North Africa Division’s advocacy director and later became the division’s deputy director, played a pivotal role in shaping the division into what it is today. One of his first assignments with Human Rights Watch was to document rampant abuses in Bahrain, a country on which he continued to do research and advocacy for decades. “Anyone who had the pleasure of crossing paths with Joe will remember him not just for his brilliant mind and shrewd advocacy, but . . .

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Diary of the Ouagadougou Doctor by Milt Kogan (PC Staff Doctor Burkina Faso)

Diary of the Ouagadougou Doctor A Peace Corps Experience Author House Publisher by Milt Kogan, M.D. (Burkina Faso 1969-72) Published in 2010 $16.71 (Paperback); $22.49 (Hardback) The book is a collection of excerpts from a diary written while serving as a Peace Corps Physician in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso).     Milt Kogan, M.D. has been working as a doctor and an actor in Hollywood for 50 years. He is best known for playing the desk sergeant, Officer Kogan, on the television series Barney Miller in 1975. Medically, he has been working in geriatric psychiatry. He is Board-Certified in Family Medicine and has an MPH in Epidemiology from U.C.L.A. As an actor, he is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and votes for the Oscars and is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and votes for the Emmys. He has amassed . . .

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    Trump will End the Peace Corps

                      If Trump Is Elected– End the Peace Corps In his few years as President (2017-2021), Donald Trumps did not think much about the Peace Corps. In his very first year as president, in 2017, he eliminated more than 20 percent of the staff. In 2017, newspaper columnist Gene Michol, visiting his Peace Corps daughter in the Gambia, wrote in an ob-ed piece how Trump was trying to eliminate the Peace Corps, writing, “In Trump’s world these young heroes are losers. They toil in obscurity. They come home broke. They put others’ comfort and prospects above their own. They don’t want the world to quake in fear at America’s greatness. Their patriotism calls them to use marked skills, boundless energies and opened arms to forge partnership with less generously blessed peoples across the globe. “To our president, they’re chumps. For . . .

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