Author - John Coyne

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The Peace Corps' First Photographer: Rowland Scherman Special Screening At Washington D.C. Newseum
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Norm Rush (CD Botswana 1978-83) New Novel Subtle Bodies Coming In September
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Susan Kramer O'Neill's (Venezuela 1973-74) Calling New Delhi for Free: and other ephemeral truths of the 21st century
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PIRATING PEACE CORPS BOOKS
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Congressman John Garamendi (Ethiopia 1966-68) Speaking Up For The Peace Corps
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Obama Selects Nominee For Top Peace Corps Job
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Shriver Stories: The Ambassador Will Vouch For Me
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Hessler (China 1996-98) and Packer (Togo 1982-84) In Current New Yorker
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Shriver Stories: Sarge in Debre Markos
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Is the Peace Corps Now on the Scrapheap of History?
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RPCVs Third Goal Projects: Letting Others Know
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The storySouth Million Writers Award is Now Open
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Review of Greg Alder’s (Lesotho 2003-06) THE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL
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Shriver Stories: Sarge's First Words
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Review of Anthony Simeone's (Burkina Faso 1971-73) Connecting Two Worlds: An Environmental Journey from Peace Corps to Present

The Peace Corps' First Photographer: Rowland Scherman Special Screening At Washington D.C. Newseum

“Eye on the Sixties: The Iconic Photography of Rowland Scherman” Guests: Rowland Scherman and Edith Lee Payne Date: Sunday, August 25, 2013 at 2:30 PM Location: Documentary Theater, Washington, D.C. Newseum Note: A Q&A with Scherman and Payne will follow the program. The Newseum presents a special screening of the new documentary “Eye on the Sixties: The Iconic Photography of Rowland Scherman.” The film is an intimate portrait of Scherman and documents his work during the 1960s, one of the country’s most transformational eras. Among his many assignments, Scherman was the primary photographer of the 1963 March on Washington, which he shot for the United States Information Agency. The Newseum screening takes place just three days before the 50th anniversary of the march. One of Scherman’s most iconic photographs from the march is of 11-year-old Edith Lee Payne. Payne will be part of a panel discussion following the film to . . .

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Norm Rush (CD Botswana 1978-83) New Novel Subtle Bodies Coming In September

The book jacket copy on Subtle Bodies reads: In his long-awaited new novel, Norman Rush, author of three immensely praised books set in Africa, including the best-selling classic and National Book Award-winner Mating, returns home, giving us a sophisticated, often comical, romp through the particular joys and tribulations of marriage, and the dilemmas of friendship, as a group of college friends reunites in upstate New York twenty-some years after graduation. When Douglas, the ringleader of a clique of self-styled wits of “superior sensibility” dies suddenly, his four remaining friends are summoned to his luxe estate high in the Catskills to memorialize his life and mourn his passing. Responding to an obscure sense of emergency in the call, Ned, our hero, flies in from San Francisco (where he is the main organizer of a march against the impending Iraq war), pursued instantly by his furious wife, Nina: they’re at a critical point in . . .

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Susan Kramer O'Neill's (Venezuela 1973-74) Calling New Delhi for Free: and other ephemeral truths of the 21st century

Susan O’Neill is the author of Don’t Mean Nothing (Ballantine 2001; UMass Press 2004; Serving House Books 2010), a collection of short stories based loosely on her hitch as an Army Nurse in Viet Nam. She has edited Vestal Review , an ezine/print literary journal for flash fiction, since it began, literally at the turn of the century. Her stories and essays have appeared on line and in print, in commercial and literary magazines, professional journals, Spoken Word zines and, in the Old Days, in real newsprint. She has worked as a reporter, a freelance writer, an RN, a storyteller, an envelope-stuffer, and a wedding singer. Susan’s more-or-less monthly essays, under the heading Off the Matrix, can be found on this site at PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org/off-the-matrix, and she wastes a shameful amount of time on Facebook and Twitter (@oneill_susan). Susan’s new book — Calling New Dehli for Free (and other ephemeral truths . . .

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PIRATING PEACE CORPS BOOKS

Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) sent in the following note on what is happening with Peace Corps books: File sharing has been in the news for many years, usually about pirated movies and music. The result was a new governmental investigative team called the Internet Crime Claim Center (IC3) and a formatted complaint form to warn computer pirates to cease and desist (see DMCA Notice). Books can also be shared. If you have a copyrighted book and wish to give it away, file sharing might be a valuable tool. However, if you sell your book, you might unexpectedly find others giving it away. Recently three of five of my Peace Corps books were offered for free downloads without my permission. The site had no listed address or name of a contact person. According to a web search, the host was a company worth more than four million dollars, without an . . .

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Obama Selects Nominee For Top Peace Corps Job

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has nominated the deputy director of the Peace Corps to be the agency’s director. The White House on Thursday announced the nomination of Carolyn Hessler Radelet to the top Peace Corps post. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Western Samoa in the early 1980s and held various positions with a public health management firm, John Snow Inc., before becoming the agency’s deputy director in 2010.

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Shriver Stories: The Ambassador Will Vouch For Me

Charlene Duline (Peru 1962-64) had just moved to Paris in 1969 and Christmas was approaching when she read in the newspapers about a Christmas Eve Mass that the new Ambassador was having in the ancient Sainte Chappelle Church. Well, why don’t I let Charlene tell her story of meeting up with Sarge once again, this time in Paris. The Ambassador Will Vouch For Me It was 1969 and Christmas was approaching. I was settling into life in Paris, France after moving there two months previously. I saw an article in the newspaper about a Christmas Eve Mass Sargent Shriver, U.S. Ambassador to France, was having in the tiny, ancient Sainte Chappelle church and inviting diplomats, friends and family. It was going to be an intimate and elegant affair, and I decided that I would like to attend. A friend who was a volunteer in Morocco was coming to spend Christmas . . .

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Hessler (China 1996-98) and Packer (Togo 1982-84) In Current New Yorker

Staff writer for The New Yorker George Packer (Togo 1982-84) who in May published The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, which was reviewed recently on the site, has a comment on page 21 of the July 22, 2013, issue. Packer writes about the double standards of American foreign aid in the Middle East, given what is happening in Egypt. Meanwhile 0n the streets of Cairo is our own Peter Hessler (China 1996-98). Peter, who is also a staff writer for The New Yorker, also has a new book out this spring:  Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West. Peter’s Letter From Cairo in on page 26 of the current issue and is entitled, “The Showdown: winners and losers in Egypt’s ongoing revolution.” Peter and his family live now in Cairo, only blocks from Tahrir Square, and his view of the military ‘coup’ is an eye-witness account from . . .

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Shriver Stories: Sarge in Debre Markos

Jon Ebeling (Ethiopia 1962-64) spent five years with the Peace Corps as a PCV and APCD in Ethiopia. Upon returning he entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International where he earned his Ph.D. in Economic and Social Development. As he graduated from the University, he came down with a severe case of juvenile diabetes and could not return to Africa. He taught statistics and public finance in the Department of Political Science at CSU, Chico for 32 years while directing over 200 master’s degree thesis until his retirement. He has done extensive consulting with governments and private industry in the area. He specializes in revenue forecasting, evaluation research, and public opinion research. He has taught off and on in the Economics Department as needed since the early 1970’s. Jon and his wife, Frederica Shockley, Chair of the Economics Department now have a . . .

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Is the Peace Corps Now on the Scrapheap of History?

Watching the event this afternoon, Monday, July 15, 2013, where the President and  former president George Bush, honored an Iowa couple as part of Point of Light Awards, I was struck again how the Peace Corps has been cast aside by the current cast of characters in Washington. Obama wouldn’t even meet with RPCVs during the 50th celebration, and here we have been ‘volunteering’ for 50 years, way before 1989 when George H.W. Bush talked about “points of light” in his inaugural address. Bush said he wanted citizens who make a difference through their volunteer work. Hello! What about us? RPCVs, some 220,000, have been volunteering since 1961, and continue to ‘do good’  in the world, as well as at home, fulfilling the Third Goal of the Peace Corps Act. One reason Marian and I wanted to focus part of  www.peacecorpsworldwide.org website on Third Goal Projects is because RPCV projects . . .

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RPCVs Third Goal Projects: Letting Others Know

Third Goal Projects Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) and John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) in the late 1970s published a newsletter RPCV Writers & Readers that developed by early 2000s into the website:www.peacecorpsworldwide.org. Today, this is an online community and resource for RPCVs, Peace Corps Volunteers, their friends and families, and all who share a desire for international understanding. Peace Corps Worldwide is not officially connected with the Peace Corps or the National Peace Corps Association. As the publisher and editor of this site, we are continually impressed by the Third Goal activities of RPCVs back in their host countries, the projects that RPCVs have developed in-country over the last fifty-plus years, from school and community libraries to health initiatives, to peace keeping efforts, to scholarships for students, and many other such efforts on behalf of their former hosts and the lifelong friends that they have made. We would like to . . .

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The storySouth Million Writers Award is Now Open

Jason Sanford is the author of a number of short stories, essays, and articles, and an active member of the SFWA. While he was born and raised in the American South, he currently live in the Midwestern U.S. with his wife and sons. His life’s adventures have included working as an archeologist and a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand in the 1990s. He has published a dozen of his short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which devoted a special issue to his fiction in December 2010. His fiction has also been published in Year’s Best SF 14 , Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, The Mississippi Review, Diagram, Pindeldyboz, and other places. Among the awards and honors he has received include being a finalist for the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novella, winning both the 2008 . . .

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Review of Greg Alder’s (Lesotho 2003-06) THE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL

The Mountain School by Greg Alder (Lesotho 2003-06) CreateSpace, $13.00 250 pages 2013 $13.00 (paperback), $5.00 (Kindle) Reviewed by Deidre Swesnik (Mali 1996-98) • If you’ve been to Peace Corps, especially if you have been to Peace Corps in Africa, you know the feeling – the feeling of being dropped off at your site by a white Peace Corps truck.  Peace Corps drops you off with your stuff and they drive away.  And there you are.  Alone. And even if you weren’t in Africa, you will have that feeling at some point on your first day at your new site.  Even if you are surrounded by people almost all the time – like I was for most of my service in Mali – you can’t avoid those moments of feeling totally apart.  It’s a universal feeling. Greg Alder has mastered portraying those (what I believe to be) universals of the . . .

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Shriver Stories: Sarge's First Words

This is from Ronald A. Schwarz (Colombia 1961-63). After the Peace Corps he became an anthropologist and spent 12 years in research and training undergraduates in Colombia and Africa. He  taught at Williams College and the Johns Hopkins University and later established a development consulting firm in Africa where he lived for 20 years. He has been writing a book about Colombia One PCVs since their Termination Conference. If you have ever met a Colombia One RPCV, the first thing they will say is their name, and then they’ll  say: “We were the first PCVs. I think that they must have been inoculated with this phrase by their Peace Corps Doctors.) This is Ron’s great piece about Shriver’s first visit to a Training Site in the summer of ’61. Sarge’s First Words “Looking more like the freshman football team than America’s latest weapon in the cold war, the first contingent . . .

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Review of Anthony Simeone's (Burkina Faso 1971-73) Connecting Two Worlds: An Environmental Journey from Peace Corps to Present

Connecting Two Worlds: An Environmental Journey from Peace Corps to Present By Anthony Simeone (Burkina Faso 1971-73) A Peace Corps Writers Book, $19.95 124 Pages 2013 Reviewed by Mike Tidwell (Democratic Republic of the Congo 1985-87) The cover of Anthony Simeone’s memorable but bumpy new book says it all. It shows photographs taken from outer space of Earth and Mars, side by side. One orb has a fertile blue-green hue, radiating the aura life. The other is dark-orange, shadowy, and lifeless. Simeone spends much of the next 124 pages of this short work explaining how environmental degradation inflicted by humans could push the lush green orb to one day more closely resemble the barren-orange orb. Simeone writes in the prologue that his book, Connecting Two Worlds, is also about the “contrast between my life and experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa and my life in the more . . .

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