John Coyne – Page 287 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Merry Christmas from the United Arab Emirates

Dec 16 2011

[In our series of blogs from RPCVs around the world, we have this update from the United Arab Emirates and Darcy Munson Meijer (Gabon 1982-84) who lives now with her family in Abu Dhabi and teaches English at Zayed University. She recently published Adventures in Gabon: Peace Corps Stories from the African Rainforest, a collection of the best stories submitted by Gabon RPCVs to the quarterly “Gabon Letter.” We asked Darcy how the world looked from her side of the world this Holiday Season.] • IT’S WINTER NOW, so the weather is ideal: clear, sunny and in the mid-60s to 70s Fahrenheit. We are on winter break at Zayed University where I teach and at my children’s schools, and my family and I will spend 2 of the 3 weeks in Greece! We’ll divide our time between Athens and Crete. The abiity to travel in the region is one of the nicest parts of living in . . .

In some ways, she is the most famous RPCV of us all

Dec 15 2011

The Death Notice Reads: Heffron, Margery M. 73, of Exeter, N.H. on Friday, Dec. 9 of cancer. Until her death, she was at work on a biography of Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of the sixth U.S. president. She was a graduate of Smith College and earned a master of arts degree from Columbia University. She was press secretary to Rep. Edward J. Markey, 1979-80; associate director for media relations at the Harvard University News Office, 1981-89; and associate vice president for university relations at Binghamton University (SUNY), 1989-95. A native of Foxboro and a longtime resident of Westwood, she is survived by her husband of 49 years, Frank H. Heffron; daughter Anne Heffron (Chris) Sigler of Palo Alto, Calif.; sons John Heffron of Providence, R.I., and Samuel (Ashley) Heffron of Kittery Point, Me.; three grandchildren: Keats Iwanaga of Los Gatos and Palo Alto, Calif.; and William and Phineas Heffron of Kittery . . .

Hessler Writes About Egypt in current New Yorker

Dec 15 2011

The New Yorker in the December 19 & 26, 2011 issue has a long insightful piece by Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) entitled “The Mosque on the Square” Two weeks inside the Egyptian revolution. You can find it on page 46. As many of us know, Peter, his wife, and their toddler twins, are living now in Cairo where Peter is reporting on that nation’s Arab Spring for The New Yorker and for all of us. In November of this year, Peter sent us a quick report from Egypt; it was shortly after his family arrived in-country. Once again, our website www.peacecorpsworldwide.org is ahead of the Times, on top of the News, and before the New Yorker when it comes to keeping track of RPCV writers! Here’s what Peter had to say a month ago. (But you may also want to read his longer piece in the current issue of the . . .

Volunteers — The Movie. The Subplots. The RPCV.

Dec 14 2011

In James Jouppi’s (Thailand 1971–73) long, rambling and detailed memoir — Wars of Hearts And Minds — about his time in-country in Thailand and readjusting to the U.S. — there are a seven pages, 565 to 572, that focus on the cult (to some people) movie, Volunteers released in 1985. For those who missed Volunteers this is briefly the plot: Lawrence Bourne III, played by young Tom Hanks, is a spoiled rich kid in the 1960 with a large gambling debt. After his father, Lawrence Bourne Jr. (George Plimpton), refuses to pay his son’s debt, Lawrence escapes his angry debtors by trading places with his college roommate Kent (Xander Berkeley) and jumps on a Peace Corps flight to Southeast Asia. In the Peace Corps Lawrence is assigned to build a bridge for the local villagers, working with two other PCVs: Washington State University graduate Tom Tuttle (John Candy) and the beautiful, down-to earth . . .

Review of Tyler McMahon's (El Salvador 1999-02) How The Mistakes Were Made

Dec 13 2011

How The Mistakes Were Made Tyler McMahon (El Salvador 1999-02) St. Martin’s Press 342 pages $14.99 (paperback), $26.99 (hardcover), $9.99 (Kindle) October 2011 Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) TYLER MCMAHON HAS TAPPED the history of underground rock music and its most tragic players to craft a moving tale of art, fame, passion, love, and the blind drive to leave a legacy no matter the cost to the artist during his or her lifetime. Centering on the rise of the fictional “The Mistakes,” a two-man, one-woman grunge band at the forefront of the early ’90’s Pacific Northwest music revolution, How The Mistakes Were Made‘s double entendre title perfectly describes what the novel is about: the rise of the band from obscurity to worldwide fame, but also the literal mistakes made by the band members as they explore love with one another. Ultimately, the life-mistakes they make as . . .

Robert Textor Remembers Writing the In-Up-and-Out Memo

Dec 12 2011

Fifty Years Ago Today, Sunday, December 11, 2011 Today I find myself reminiscing about this day fifty years ago, when I was serving as the first full-time cultural anthropologist in Peace Corps/ Washington. I had begun my consulting role the previous June, at the request of various officials of the then-fledgling organization. Since I was a Thailand specialist, my original assignment was to help plan the training program for Thailand One. Pretty soon, however, “mission creep” set in, and I was working on other assignments as well — notably for the Talent Search, to find linguistically, culturally, and otherwise qualified people to serve overseas as ” Peace Corps Representatives,” or “Reps.” By December, 1961, after six months of the most frenetic work imaginable, it had become clear to me that I ought to plan to leave soon, and return to academic life. (I had a nice grant waiting to be . . .

How to Sell your e-book

Dec 12 2011

In The Wall Street Journal (Friday, December 8, 2011) I read an article about Darcie Chan, a full-time lawyer who drafts environmental legislation during the day and at night, after she has put her toddler son to bed, writes novels. Finishing her first novel, and after dozens of publishers and more than 100 literary agents rejected, she had a decision to make: quit writing or get published someway. Not giving up, and reading about e-book publishing, she decided to publish the book herself and went ahead and bought some ads on Web sites that target e-book readers, paid for a few reviews, and priced the book at .99 cents. She has (so far) sold more than 400,000 copies. What gives? According to the Association of American Publishers digital self-publishing has serious drawbacks. While e-books are the fastest-growing segment of the book market, they still make up less than 10% of overall trade book . . .

Review of Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero by Chris Matthews

Dec 09 2011

Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero by Chris Matthews (Swaziland 1968-70) Simon & Schuster 496 pages $27.50 (hardback); $26.39 (audio cd) November 2011 Reviewed by Don Schlenger (Ethiopia 1966-68) I WAS A SENIOR in a suburban,New Jersey high school when John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960. Staunchly Presbyterian and Republican like my parents and many of my classmates, I was sure that the White House would soon become Vatican West. Six years later, my wife, Jackie, and I were on a charter flight to Addis Ababa to begin our two year service as Peace Corps Volunteers in Ethiopia. As I made my way through Chris Matthews’ new book, Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero, I was able, after almost five decades, to formulate answers to Matthews’ questions, ‘What was he like?” and “How did he do it?” I’m not sure why, after five decades, these questions were important to me, but I do know, . . .

The Peace Corps' First Book About the Peace Corps

Dec 08 2011

In the mid-sixties, the Peace Corps as an agency realized that they had a lot of Volunteer stories that they could use for Recruitment so the Office of Public Information, as it was then called, began its own publications. In September 1968 they published The Peace Corps Reader with the declaimer, “The opinions expressed in the Peace Corps Reader are those of the authors and may or may not coincide with official Peace Corps policy.” Ain’t that the truth! This Peace Corps book, which, by the way, was given away free as a government publication, republished several copyrighted pieces including Jack Vaughn’s “Now We are Seven” published in 1968 in the Saturday Review; and Sargent Shriver’s 1966 essay, also published in the Saturday Review, “Five Years with the Peace Corps.” There was “The Quiet-mouth American” by Donald Lloyd, published in 1963 in Harper’s Magazine. Lloyd was the founder of Resources Development . . .

Reports of My Death:Beyond-the-Grave Confessions of North American Writers

Dec 08 2011

This isn’t the Christmas Season or the Holiday Season as much as it is the Season of Big Books by RPCVs! Having received last week: War of Hearts and Mind: An American Memoir, which comes in at 618 pages and written by James Jouppi (Thailand 1971-73), this week in the mail came: Reports of My Death: Beyond-the-Grave Confessions of North American Writers by Girard R. Christmas (Thailand 1973-76; Western Samoa 1976-78). This tome is 660 pages! Both of these books are self-published. And, by the way, what’s with these Thailand RPCVs? Do they have too much time on their hands and that is why they are writing such long books? Reports of My Death, aka, ROMD, is the labor of love of Gerry Christmas. It took him twenty years to research and write. “As a teenager,” he wrote me, “I always hated the way authors were presented in textbooks. Reports of . . .

First Book About RPCVS

Dec 07 2011

Before there were Returned Peace Corps Volunteers there were books about them. In the very early days of the agency everyone was caught up with enthusiasm for these young Idealists going off on their own to do good in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To the best of my knowledge, the first book–paperback, of course, and selling for .50$ (those were the days)–was published by Paperback Library and done with the ‘full’ cooperation of the agency. It is entitled simply, The Peace Corps. Sargent Shriver wrote the Introduction and the photographs were taken by Rowland Sherman and Paul Conklin, the first two great photographers of the Peace Corps. There is one photo in particular that I remember. It was taken of my roommate, Ernie Fox (Ethiopia 1962-64). He is with children of whose parents who were in the leprosarium outside of Addis Ababa. We would go out of town on Saturday mornings to play games . . .

You Can Publish It!

Dec 07 2011

[ First posted on Peace Corps Writers in September, 2008, Lawrence F. Lihosit pushes and shoves RPCVs towards sharing their experiences in print.] You Can Publish It By Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras, 1975-77) Within three years, this nation will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Peace Corps’ inception with parades, speeches, and book sales. It is very rare that a government program captivates the American imagination. In the first half of the twentieth century only two programs did, the WPA and the CCC. In the second half, it was NASA and the Peace Corps. As we near this anniversary, there will be incredible interest in the program and us, the foot soldiers. If you have a story to share, this is a great time to write it down. Keep your dreams humble. After all, you write for your children and grandchildren. If you really cared so much about fame, glory, . . .

How to Format Your Peace Corps Book

Dec 06 2011

by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) After extensive editing but before sending your Peace Corps Experience book to a publisher, consider presentation. Your book will be on the Library of Congress shelf (as well as other libraries) for many years, representing a nugget of history-your experience. This book will aid our children and grandchildren to understand what this American experiment was like. Regardless of who prints it, why not consider quality befitting this role? Just as you did not embark upon a cheap tourist junket but an arduous trek perhaps inspired and most definitely sustained by true grit, this sort of unusual adventure deserves a like presentation. The majority of books published are mass market paperbacks, tiny paperbound books printed with small letters on cheap paper. Although inexpensive, they are more difficult to read, fall apart faster and generally look like a plastic flip-flop. Your book should be more like . . .

RPCV Anthropologists

Dec 05 2011

If there is one career that the Peace Corps has fostered (besides that of a writer!) it is the one of Anthropology Scholar. The classrooms of colleges teaching Anthropology are full of RPCV professors. (You can hear them saying right now, “When I was in (fill-in-the-blank)…etc. Ron Schwarz (Colombia 1961-63) is an anthropologist, and he was kind enough to send me the link to the December print and online publication of the American Anthropology Association – Anthropology News – features stories about Anthropology and the Peace Corps. It is online at: http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/category/in-focus/ Read what Ron and: Ralph Bolton (Peru 1962-64); Michael Sheridan (Kenya 1988-90); Frank Hutchins (Ecuador 1983-85); Scott Freeman (Dominican Republic 2005-07); Veronica Muoiro (Jordon 2011–) and others RPCVs have to say about the transition from being a PCV to that of a scholar studying their host countries, as well as, other parts of the world. You don’t have to be a PCV to be an . . .

Lawrence F. Lihosit on “Self-Published Quality Format”

Dec 05 2011

Self-Published Quality Format by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) After extensive editing but before sending your Peace Corps Experience book to a print-on-demand publisher or printer, consider presentation. Your book will be on the Library of Congress shelf (as well as other libraries) for many years, representing a nugget of history-your experience. This book will aid our children and grandchildren to understand what this American experiment was like. Regardless of who prints it, why not consider quality befitting this role? Just as you did not embark upon a cheap tourist junket but an arduous trek perhaps inspired and most definitely sustained by true grit, this sort of unusual adventure deserves a like presentation. The majority of books published are mass market paperbacks, tiny paperbound books printed with small letters on cheap paper. Although inexpensive, they are more difficult to read, fall apart faster and generally look like a plastic flip-flop. . . .

Author - John Coyne