Author - John Coyne

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New Chicken Soup Book Has RPCV Writer
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Establishing The Peace Corps: Tenor Of The Times, Post 22
3
A Peace Corps Book Is A Journey
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Establishing The Peace Corps: Making Lemonade In The Maiatico Building, Post 21
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What I Say To RPCV Writers About Getting Published
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Establishing The Peace Corps: America Responds, Post 20
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Margaret Mead Weights In
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Josephson and His Executive Order, Post 19
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REVIEW: Avoid Mosquitoes and Other Impossibilities
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Who is Bill Josephson And What Does He Have To Say About "The Midnight Ride of Warren Wiggins"? Post 18
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Dumb Things I Did in the Peace Corps
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Not an April Fool's Joke!
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Establishing The Peace Corps: 7 Basic Differences, Post 17
14
More On So Damn Much Money
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Establishing The Peace Corps: LBJ Saves The Agency, Post 16

New Chicken Soup Book Has RPCV Writer

Cristina T. Lopez – O’Keeffe ( Ukraine 2003-05) has an essay in the new Chicken Soup for the Soul:  Power Moms. These collection of  101 Stories “celebrate the power of choice for stay home, or work from home, while  raising their families.” These high-performing women are now called “Power Moms”! (We use to just call  them, ‘Mom.’) This latest book in the Chicken Soup series was published in March, 2009. RPCVs writers have had quite a few essays over the  years in this popular series. Perhaps all those writers should lobby for their own collection entitled, Chicken Soup For the Peace Corps Soul….just a thought.

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Establishing The Peace Corps: Tenor Of The Times, Post 22

What continues to surprise me is how few people–since that morning in the Mayflower Hotel–have read “A Towering Task.” It was the first draft of defining the Peace Corps; it was the bible of the Peace Corps. When I asked Warren Wiggins about this, he commented wryly, “It’s marvelous that nobody has read it because, you see, in most ways I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. In some ways I was dead on, but I did recommend that we ship air-conditioned trailers to the Philippines to house the Volunteers. It’s a far cry from the theology of the Peace Corps that evolved, but then, those were the early days.”      What is clear now from the safety of time and distance is that being anti-establishment, amateurish, anti-professional was the reason for the success of the Peace Corps. This attitude permeated the whole organization and PCVs overseas expressed the same sort . . .

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A Peace Corps Book Is A Journey

A friend who is a successful writer/editor/creative writing professor has been reading my blogs sent me these wise words about what would-be Peace Corps writers should do and think about while writing their novels. Peace Corps writers should take writing courses from reputable instructors to learn the basics and to have the opportunity to workshop their writing among peers. They should also read lots of good How-To books on the craft. There are a gazillion of them out there. They should avoid at all costs: exclamation points, stereotyping, clichés, and all other proofs of lazy writing. They should plan on revising each chapter or piece at least ten times. Quality writing is all about revision. They should NOT confuse explicit, titillating, borderline-pornographic sex scenes with “intimacy” with the reader.  A writer of worthwhile prose must work harder and dig deeper to achieve emotional intimacy with his/her reader. I would add that a good . . .

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Establishing The Peace Corps: Making Lemonade In The Maiatico Building, Post 21

The third recommendation that Shriver made to Kennedy in his memorandum was the appointment of a Peace Corps Director. That is, someone besides himself. Shriver listed people he thought should be the Director. Included in this list where Eugene Rostow of Yale, Carroll Wilson of MIT, Gilbert White of the University of Chicago, and Clark Kerr of UCLA. All of these men had had experience with small overseas service programs involving the training or replacement of American students in the Third World. Kennedy rejected all of them. According to Gerard T. Rice in his book The Bold Experiment, Kennedy wanted “the Peace Corps to be an adventurous foreign policy initiative and he did not feel that a bookish type of leader would be consonant with that ethos.”      The Peace Corps in these heavy days was being covered closely by the press, especially by David Halberstam and Peter Braestrup of . . .

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What I Say To RPCV Writers About Getting Published

Agents Yes, it is difficult to find an agent. But you can start here and have a list of names, addresses, and what these agents want to see. http://www.1000literaryagents.com. Remember, if an agent says he or she only publishes YA novels then don’t send them your Peace Corps story, unless, of course, it is written for Young Adults. Agents are in the business (and it is very much a business) of making money so if they think your book will sell, they will represent you. If they think your book is wonderful but won’t sell to a publisher, they won’t represent you. Very few agents are in the business of literature. They leave that work to the academics. Editors & Publishers You have heard, I’m sure, how Catch 22 went to more than 50 publishing houses before it was published back in 1960. That novel is still selling! There are . . .

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Establishing The Peace Corps: America Responds, Post 20

The question now was would anyone apply to the Peace Corps? Could the United States produce enough Americans of high quality and character to make the Peace Corps successful?      Between March 1 and June 1, 1961, after the Peace Corps preliminary policies were set, approximately 10,000 Americans filled out and mailed in Peace Corps applications. From June to December 31, 1961, Americans volunteered at the rate of 1,000 per month.      In those early months, the Peace Corps made little effort to attract Volunteers, preferring to wait until it had a clear mandate from the Congress both in terms of authorization and appropriation. That mandate came on September 22, 1961. With bipartisan national endorsement, the Peace Corps took the initiative in explaining its program and the opportunities for Peace Corps service. October and November 1961 were taken up in preparing an adequate public information and public affairs program for . . .

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Margaret Mead Weights In

One of the seminal books on the Peace Corps was published in 1966 and entitled Cultural Frontiers of the Peace Corps. It is a collection of fifteen essays by social scientists who visit Peace Corps projects to observe and write about Peace Corps activities. It was edited by Robert B. Textor, who was then an anthropologist at Stanford and a consultant to the Peace Corps. Textor is important in Peace Corps history and mythology if only for drafting the original memorandum that detailed the “In, Up & Out” personnel policy of the new agency. I’ll discuss that in a later blog, but now I just want to reprint a quote from the Foreword  written by Margaret Mead who at the time was in Aghios Nikolaos, Crete. This was July 1965, very early in the life of the Peace Corps. Mead writes in summing up her views of the Peace Corps: “…the Peace Corps . . .

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Josephson and His Executive Order, Post 19

Shriver created the Peace Corps in twenty-one days (from February 7, 1961–the day after he got The Towering Task– to March 1, 1961, when the Executive Order was signed by President Kennedy.) According to Wiggins, “That’s a record for a government agency. Something like a year or two is usually the case. But he got it together that fast; he created its laws, its principles, and he staffed it up.”      “Staffing up” meant appropriating three rooms on the sixth floor of 806 Connecticut Avenue, the Maiatico Building, [the first Peace Corps Office, now replaced by a slick building housing law firms, I’m sure] where Wiggins and Josephson already worked at ICA. Both of them soon would be working full time for the Peace Corps, Wiggins doing planning, and Josephson figuring out how to make the agency become a government agency. Josephson found the way in a little used President’s . . .

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REVIEW: Avoid Mosquitoes and Other Impossibilities

Avoid Mosquitoes and Other Impossibilities by Nancy Sellin iUniverse 2009 Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-96) Nancy Sellin’s Avoid Mosquitoes and Other Impossibilities is a memoir of her Peace Corps service in Liberia in the 1960s and her life in general, with vivid insights into what it meant to be a young woman of that era.  Being of “a certain age” myself I was painfully reminded of the pressures put upon young women by a male-dominated white society, the experimental phase of contraceptives when we all got fat and grouchy, the naïvete of sexual encounters that were either wanton or wanting, and the secret longing for adventure and liberation. Nancy’s husband, Dale, convinces her to leave Alaska with him to join Peace Corps shortly after their marriage. They both have teaching assignments and while Dale is fulfilled in his structured high school, Nancy struggles with sporadic elementary classes where . . .

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Who is Bill Josephson And What Does He Have To Say About "The Midnight Ride of Warren Wiggins"? Post 18

Among the large cast of characters who created the Peace Corps Administration in the very early days of the agency was Bill Josephson who came to the agency as the Deputy General Counsel when he was 26 or 27. Josephson is most important in these early days as he worked with Warren Wiggins in the drafting of The Towering Task. Here’s a little of Josephson’s background.      In September, 1958, he went to England to write a doctoral dissertation in history at St. Antony’s College, one of the two graduate colleges at Oxford University. He dissertation was on what the other Americans, other than President Wilson and Colonel House, were doing at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The thesis never got written as Josephson met and married a young lawyer from London.      Josephson was from South Orange, New Jersey, and with the help of a scholarship, went through the . . .

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Dumb Things I Did in the Peace Corps

This is a piece by Dick Lipez  who after his Peace Corps tour (Ethiopia 1962-64) worked in the famed Charlie Peters Evaluation Division of the Peace Corps. He then went on to become a successful novelist and editorial writer at the Berkshire Eagle and author of gay detective novels. • • • Attention Peace Corps authors: Here’s a good idea for an anthology.  I don’t have the time to edit it — I have two other books I keep telling people I’m writing—but I’m a prime candidate to contribute to the collection.  It would be called Dumb Things I Did in the Peace Corps. We all have lists.  I get chills when I run down mine.  Some of these blunders are amusing, but others are so excruciatingly dumb that no one else should ever be allowed to know about them.  Unless, of course, other volunteers were there at the time, and maybe even participated in the . . .

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Not an April Fool's Joke!

This is not an April Fool’s Joke. We are looking for a few good bloggers, RPCVs who have a special background, experience and knowledge that they want to share with the Peace Corps Community. We want to add to our collection of bloggers who now are sharing their experience with PCVs, the families of PCVs, and RPCVs.      We began this site: www.peacecorpsworldwide.org, a project of the non-profit Peace Corps Fund, to provide a community of resources for RPCVs, PCVs and their family, and others as they make their home in the world.  We are writing to see if you want to join our group of experts.      In the coming weeks we will add three more bloggers, one is an RPCV who will write a travel column for women traveling alone overseas; a former Peace Corps Recruiter who will give advice on how new applicants can handle the recruitment . . .

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Establishing The Peace Corps: 7 Basic Differences, Post 17

What strikes anyone reading about the creating of the Peace Corps was 1) how creatively it was organized; and 2) how fast it was put into operation. The reason was that the ‘founding fathers’ (and they were only fathers) took chances. Wofford remarks in Of Kennedys & Kings how a management consultant said to him one evening, “You guys had a good day today. You broke fourteen laws.” Then the consultant promised to straighten out the paper work and urged then all on, saying, “Keep it up, we’re making progress.”      Wiggins in his interview with me listed 7 reasons why the Peace Corps was so successful in those early days of the Kennedy administration.      1)  Bill Josephson and Warren Wiggins kept the idea of a “Peace Corps” simple. At first, the PCVs were only to teach English. As Wiggins told me, “Our cardinal rule in crafting ‘A Towering . . .

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More On So Damn Much Money

A footnote on yesterday’s long blog about, So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government by Robert G. Kaiser. In his book, Kaiser points out that 283 former Clinton administration officials have become lobbyists, along with 310 Bush appointees. They do it, of course, for the money and to stay in D.C. For example, a member of Congress can go from making $162,500, and a staff person’s $95,000, to a salary of $300,000 or more on K Street almost overnight. As Dylon said long ago, “money doesn’t talk, it brags.”      President Obama on is first full day in office issued an executive order saying they can’t participate for two years in any matter they worked on in prior employment in the government. They can’t lobby Congress for two years upon leaving the administration, and they can’t lobby the Obama administration ever.      One . . .

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Establishing The Peace Corps: LBJ Saves The Agency, Post 16

The signs that the special role for the Peace Corps in foreign aid was in trouble were all over Washington. Wofford ran into Ralph Dungan in the White House mess (Wofford was then a Special Assistant to the President on Civil Rights) and Dungan told him the Peace Corps would be a subdivision of the new AID. “Not if Sarge has anything to say about it,” Wofford tossed off, half joking, but also firmly believing Shriver walked on water. The truth was that all these “new guys” Shriver brought in to work for the Peace Corps believed Sarge could get anything he wanted from the White House. But Shriver was scheduled to leave D.C. and the U.S. Who would carry the fight that was developing in D.C.? Before leaving for his ’round the world trip to secure placements for PCVs, Shriver lobbied Sorensen, Dungan, and Labouisse, trying to persuade them . . .

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