Miscellany

[Larry Lesser, a retired FSO, served as DCM in Bangladesh and Rwanda and as deputy executive director of the Department’s NEA Bureau. Other overseas tours were in Belgium, Burkina Faso, India, and Nigeria – the latter as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Since retiring he has been a re-employed annuitant, chiefly for the Office of Inspector General, as an editor of human rights reports for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), and teaching mediation at the Foreign Service Institute. Lesser has been an OSCE supervisor or observer for numerous elections in eastern Europe. He was an appointed member of the Foreign Service Grievance Board 1997-2003, and an elected member of the American Foreign Service Association board of governors 2005-07.This piece appeared in American Diplomacy. They gave permission to republish it. ] Marry an Asian Woman by Larry Lesser (Nigeria 1963-65) I’m thinking about a man I saw when . . .

By Joel Goldstein, For the Michigan Daily Published March 26, 2014 Fifty-four years ago, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy, then presidential candidate, held an impromptu election speech on the steps of the Michigan Union, where he proposed to more than 5,000 students the idea of the Peace Corps, a volunteer organization to help impoverished nations. One year after Kennedy’s speech, the Peace Corps was established through an executive order. Since the establishment of the program, the University has supplied the fourth most volunteers to the organization, with 2,556 graduates serving in the Peace Corps. Carrie Hessler-Radelet, acting director of the Peace Corps, spoke at the Ford School of Public Policy Wednesday, discussing the future of the organization. The talk was part of a series of policy talks held at the Ford School this year. Recently, Hessler-Radelet has focused on improving efficiency and safety within the organization. The Peace Corps experienced . . .

Terri Rupar writes today in the Washington Post: Another African country is expected to pass an anti-gay law… Ethiopia’s legislature is expected to pass a bill that would take away the president’s ability to pardon people convicted under laws banning homosexual acts, the Associated Press reports. The move comes on the heels of the passage of harsh anti-gay laws in Uganda and Nigeria that drew condemnation from around the world. Same-sex acts were already illegal in Ethiopia, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. But during the Ethiopian New Year, the president often pardons thousands of prisoners, the AP said. The new law, endorsed last week by the Cabinet, would take away his ability to pardon people convicted under anti-homosexuality laws. When Uganda enacted its law last month, the Ethiopian minister for women, children and youth affairs sent out a tweet that seemed to criticize it. Subsequent tweets disowned . . .

Mark G. Wentling spent nine years with the Peace Corps (Honduras, 1967-69; Togo, 1970-73; Peace Corps Staff, Togo, Gabon and Niger, 1973-76) before joining USAID in 1977. As a U.S. Foreign Service Officer he served in Niamey, Conakry, Lome, Mogadishu, Dar es Salaam and Washington, D.C before retiring from the Senior Foreign Service in 1996. Since his retirement he has worked for USAID as it Senior Advisor for the Great Lakes and Country Program Manager for Niger and Burkina Faso. He is a 1992 National War College Graduate. He has also worked in Africa for U.S. Non-Governmental Organizations and he is currently Country Director for PLAN in Burkina Faso. On September 20, he marked 41 years since arriving in Africa in 1970. He has worked in, or visited, 53 African countries. This piece appeared in American Diplomacy. They gave permission to republish it. • Africa’s Hunger by Mark Wentling “Cram-cram,” . . .

I heard from a friend in D.C. about a close neighbor, a young woman studying at New York University, who applied to the Peace Corps, via the Peace Corps Recruiter, a grad student, working on the NYU campus. The woman writes: “My neighbor’s daughter applied to the Peace Corps. She waited for months to get a response from her NYU PC recruiter. Then she found out that the campus recruiter had left campus months earlier and no one had given her a ‘heads up.’” The young woman was seeking a slot in the Ukraine program last year and it was so mishandled by the New York Peace Corps Recruitment Office, and the NYU campus based Recruiter that she didn’t get appointed. She asked to be considered for the next Ukraine program, as she speaks Russian fluently, and the Peace Corps Placement person at PC/HQ in D.C. told her to ‘take another . . .

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 Peace Corps Announces 2014 Top Volunteer-Producing Historically Black Colleges and Universities Howard University earns top spot after becoming first-ever HBCU to appear on Peace Corps’ national college rankings WASHINGTON, D.C., March 18, 2014 – The Peace Corps today announced its 2014 rankings of the top volunteer-producing Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). For the third consecutive year, Howard University in Washington, D.C., claimed the top spot among HBCUs with 18 undergraduate alumni currently serving as Peace Corps volunteers. Howard made Peace Corps history earlier this year as the first-ever HBCU to appear on the agency’s national list of top volunteer-producing colleges and universities, ranking No. 16 among medium-sized undergraduate schools. Since 1961, 213 Howard alumni have served with the Peace Corps. For the first time, Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Va., made this year’s list, ranking No. 3 among HBCUs with five alumni currently . . .

John Slattery (Morocco 1994-96) began work in television writing and hosting a pilot for a social-issue TV series at the Moroccan National Institute of Television. While at UCLA he received the Macgowan Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking, the Drown Award for Motion Picture Production as well as the Edgar Brokaw Scholarship in Film Production-and even worked as an assistant to the French actress Isabelle Huppert. John also worked in the UCLA Dept. of Film, Television as a teaching assistant to Marina Goldovskaya, one of Russia’s best known documentary filmmakers, in her year long Advanced Documentary Workshop. While living in the “big, ugly and often misunderstood” city of Los Angeles he realized the many connections to the “big, ugly and often misunderstood” city of Casablanca. This U.S./Morocco connection – and more are explored in his first film. John’s feature directing debut, Casablanca Mon Amour had its world premiere at the . . .

[This piece that appeared on 3/15/14 on the Huff Post was written by one of the founders of the Peace Corps. Former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford served as President Kennedy’s Special Assistant for Civil Rights and Special Representative of the Peace Corps to Africa. While in the Army Air Corps in World War Two, he wrote It’s Up to Us: Federal World Government in Our Time (Harcourt Brace 1946) Harris is also the author of Of Kennedys & Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties (Farrar. Straus.Giroux 1980). Co-author Tad Daley, who directs the Project on Abolishing War at the Center for War/Peace Studies, is the author of Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (Rutgers Press 2012). He served as a policy analyst and speechwriter for both former Congressman Dennis Kucinich and the late U.S. Senator Alan Cranston. Thanks to Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) publisher of . . .

Alana (Horrigan) deJoseph (Mali 1992-94) was involved in rural small enterprise development as a PCV and today she makes films. She has worked in video and film production for over 20 years and has worn many hats as producer, director, videographer, and editor. Her latest involvement was in the production of The Greatest Good, a documentary about the US Forest Service. Now she wants to do an in-depth, comprehensive documentary on the Peace Corps. As she says on her website:  “In a time when the American public either has a very antiquated notion of Peace Corps, informed by an almost mythological awe of the 60s, or is not even aware that the agency still exists, it is high time to bring this unique organization back into the public discourse, to raise the level of the discussion from quaint to crucial.” Alana goes onto say, “Many books have been written and . . .

Hal Fleming, who headed the Peace Corps Public Affairs and Recruitment in the mid-’60s and later was the Country Director in Cote D’Ivoire, died suddenly of heart failure on February 4, 2014 at his home in Great Falls, Virginia. As a Peace Corps writer, he published several short stories, poems, and two novels: The Brides’ Fair, set in Morocco, and Once Upon A Storm, a Civil Rights era mystery. In 1978 he joined USAID as Mission Director in Morocco, later was a counselor for development at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. From 1994 – 97 he was at the State Department as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations. A memorial gathering for family, friends and colleagues is scheduled for April 27 from 4 to 6 p.m., at DACOR Bacon House, 1801 F Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20006. Contributions in Hal’s memory may be made to the DACOR . . .

Carrie Hessler-Radelet (Western Samoa 1981-83), Acting Director of the Peace Corps, on the 5th and 6th of February, held the first Senior Staff Meeting of this new Administration. Aaron Williams (Dominican Republic 1967-70) did not hold any such meetings in his tenure (August 24, 2009 – September 17, 2012) as Director. Fifty plus Peace Corps ‘Directors’ met for two days in Eastern Maryland to chart the future of the agency. They went down to the shore in freezing winter weather because the hotel rates were cheap. As we know, the Peace Corps loves cheap! At the meeting Carrie Hessler-Radelet evoked Sargent Shriver’s credo that the Peace Corps was a “bold experiment” and told her senior staff, “the time has come for us to recapture that sense of purpose and idealism, the energy, the innovation…the passion.” Since become Acting Director in 2013, Carrie has made many major changes in politics and . . .

Marnie Writes: The Fickle Voter In late December 2013, I received an invitation to meet and greet the Mayor-elect of New York City, Bill de Blasio, in his new home-to-be, Gracie Mansion. I almost deleted the invite because I was still smarting over the fact that my first choice for Mayor hadn’t made it through the primary. I had voted for Christine Quinn because I thought, even though she was more conservative than I am, she’d earned the right to be Mayor, knew her way around the city’s political system, and was tough. You need to be tough for the second most difficult job in America. Also, I’m tired of super competent women being pushed out of the way when the next tantalizing upstart male comes onto the ballot. And I liked the idea of a married lesbian couple living in the above mentioned Gracie Mansion. As far as de . . .

The March 10, 2014, issue of The New Yorker carries a long “Letter From Cairo” piece by Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) from Egypt entitled, Revolution On Trial: The strange world of the Muslin Brotherhood court cases. Peter and his wife, Leslie, and their two babies live in Cairo. His most recent book is Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West.

Dear Peace Corps Colleagues, I wanted to make folks across the agency aware that, in the coming week, we expect The New York Times to publish an extensive multi-media story about the Peace Corps both in print and online. The Office of Communications has been working with the paper extensively on this story, which  will include commentary from Acting Director Hessler-Radelet, along with both supporters and critics of the agency. The Times has solicited a wide variety of stories from current Volunteers and RPCVs, and we expect the piece will include both positive and negative sides to it.  Finally, it is our strong hope that agency reforms to enhance support for Volunteers and enhance their experience in the years ahead will be highlighted throughout. Because of the depth of this story, I fully expect that it will go viral quickly in the Peace Corps community and beyond.  To help Peace Corps . . .

Novelist, rancher, and country music singer, Kinky Friedman, got one step closer Tuesday to adding another line to his résumé: agriculture commissioner of Texas. Kinky made the  Democratic primary runoff for the position. He’ll compete against cattle farmer Jim Hogan in that May 27 contest. A Republican is favored to win the general election. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/richard-kinky-friedman-texas-agriculture-commissioner-runoff-104270.html#ixzz2v5cIHl5B