Archive - June 2024

In the news –   PressRelease — Wayne J. Arendt, PhD, has been selected for inclusion in Marquis Who’s Who. As in all Marquis Who’s Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process. For nearly half a century, Dr. Arendt has been a prominent figure in ornithology. His field research commenced in California, following a three-year tenure in the US Army (1966-1969), which included two years in Alaska as a 4.2 mortarman and Battalion mail clerk, and one year as a military policeman at Ft. Carson’s maximum-security stockade. In 1975, he investigated the life-history of the California Thrasher and its adaption to mesquite cover in the Anza Borrego Desert. Subsequently, he joined the Peace Corps (1976-78) serving in the Dominican Republic under the . . .

  The Showgirl and the Writer: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65)   The Showgirl and the Writer, A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration, by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65), is a hybrid memoir/biography. It encompasses Mueller’s own story, beginning at her birth to Caucasian parents in the Tule Lake Japanese American High-Security Camp in Northern California, and tells the tale of her long friendship with Mary Mon Toy, a Nisei performer who was incarcerated in the Minidoka Japanese American Camp in Idaho during WWII. The two met by chance in 1994. By then, Mueller was a published author, and Mary Mon Toy, by necessity of old age, had retired from an unusually successful career on stage and television, for an Asian American actor of her time. After Ms. Mon Toy’s death, Mueller penned the previously . . .

  WASHINGTON, DC— AmeriCorps and Peace Corps awarded the first Harris Wofford Joint Service Award to more than 200 individuals in Houston, Texas at the annual Points of Light Conference. Honoring the legacy of the late Senator Harris Wofford, who helped establish both the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, the award recognizes individuals who have already chosen to serve their country at home and abroad through both programs, as well as the thousands more who make that same commitment in the future. WATCH: Harris Wofford Award Ceremony “As we commemorate the inaugural Harris Wofford Joint Service Awards, I am proud and grateful for the more than 200 changemakers who have served their country at home and abroad through AmeriCorps and Peace Corps” said Michael D. Smith, AmeriCorps CEO. “These awards serve as a call to action in remembrance of Harris Wofford’s remarkable life and legacy, to find ways big and small to give . . .

  Silent Light by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80) OB Books June 2024 340 pages $18.95 (paperback)   At the start of Mark Jacob’s remarkable new novel ― his first book in thirteen years ― thirty-seven-year-old Smith wins a “stash” of diamonds in a poker game. The only catch: he has to find them. A Louisiana native, Smith is currently employed on an oil platform off the west coast of Africa, while the diamonds are somewhere in the immense, war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. But Smith’s grown tired of the platform and he hates the idea of wasting a full house. One last adventure, he tells himself, and then, diamonds or no diamonds, he’s heading home to Louisiana. In Kinshasa, Smith meets a young woman named Béatrice, who hails from a village on the other side of the country. But this village, she tells Smith, is where his diamonds are . . .

June 12, 2024 GBH • • •  Marco Werman, co-host of station GBH’s The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, has worked in journalism since he was a 16-year-old copy boy at the News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C. After graduating from Duke University in 1984, he joined the Peace Corps and went to Togo and Burkina Faso. While in Africa, he started freelancing for the BBC World Service, where he produced Network Africa. He has worked all over the world, joining GBH in 1995 to start The World, which is now heard on 377 public radio stations nationwide — a record number for the program.    An interview with Marco What are you reading or listening to now? I read a lot of current affairs and global news — daily reporting from multiple sources to long-form magazine articles — so I’ve been lately creating space to read more fiction. That’s recently included American Spy by . . .