Miscellany

Tino Calabia (Peru 1963-65), who rallied all of us in support of honoring  Ambassador Christopher Stevens, sent me a note about our collective efforts to reach 1000 signatures. He pointed out that we have currently 959 signatures and suggested we rally our friends from the Peace Corps–after the encouraging words today from the Peace Corps Acting Director–to sign this petition and reach 1,000 names before the end of the year, if not before the end of this week! Tino also suggested that we ask Acting Director of the Peace Corps, Carrie Hessler-Radelet, to invite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to join us at the Peace Corps dedication ceremony regardless of Secretary Clinton’s official government status in May 2013. These are great ideas. So, go to this page and sign our RPCV petition, and if you have already signed it, thank you and please forward the request to other RPCVs and Peace Corps staff from your . . .

[On Friday I received the following e-mail from the Acting Director of the Peace Corps Carrie Hessler-Radelet concerning honoring Ambassador Chris Stevens. She asked me to share it with all of you who read our blog items. John Coyne] November 30, 2012 Dear Members of the Peace Corps Family: I recently met with Ambassador Chris Stevens’s sister, Anne, to offer condolences and support on behalf of the Peace Corps community.  Her graciousness and her desire to help further the important bridge-building work of her brother is both moving and inspiring. In response to your petition, I committed to keeping you informed about the dedication of the Ambassador Stevens photo in History Hall of Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C.  We were originally thinking that we would have a dedication ceremony in mid-December at the same time as the State Department memorial service for Ambassador Stevens.  We heard from Anne Stevens . . .

Some 39 years Tom Gallagher (Ethiopia 1962-64) became the first Foreign Service Officer, and the first officer of any government in the world, to voluntarily come out of the closet. That was no small moment in time. It cost Tom his career in the State Department. Now it is  Wednesday, November 28, 2012 and Tom and other are gathered in the diplomatic reception room at the State Department -arguably the most beautiful room in the Western Hemisphere  where the Secretary of State welcomes visiting kings, presidents, etc. Tom is there to celebrate the 20th anniversary of GLIFAA, the gay organization for foreign affairs agencies in Washington.  The Washington Gay Mens’ Chorus has just finished singing the Star Spangled Banner in four part harmony.  Next, the Secretary of State speaks out about her solid support for gay rights at the State Department and worldwide, and Tom is thinking:  “Wow, we’ve come a long way, baby!” In . . .

[A note from Chris Szwedo, the producer/director/man behind Eye On The Sixties] We Did It. Last evening with a little less than an hour to go we crossed over the funding goal that we set up on the grassroots system known as KICKSTARTER. To everyone who made a contribution small, medium, or large– here’s what you did. You have via your donation virtually insured that our documentary will get a significant play on public television affiliates beginning in the summer of 2013. We now have a respectable war chest in which to operate from as marketing costs come at us. About 16 months ago Rowland Scherman and I met for the first time and without knowing each other very well made an instinctive decision to make a film about his incredible experiences and his creative output. We have been to hell and back as all creative journeys are. We have travelled to . . .

November 24, 2012 Tahrir Square Turns Against Morsi Posted by Peter Hessler On the edge of Tahrir Square, I met a twelve-year-old boy named Hassan Mohamed Abdel Hafiz who showed me an empty tear gas canister and a birdshot scar on his stomach. Scavenged canisters are a badge of honor for those who fight for the people who fight on the front lines of Egyptian protests; Hassan said he had acquired his after a battle with the police in front of the Lycée la Liberté, a block away from the square. He wore a filthy blue sweater with a thick collar that could be pulled up over his face whenever the tear gas got bad. Hassan was quick-eyed and alert; he spoke with the eagerness of a child but part of his attention was always directed at the street behind us, where injured protestors were carried past on their way . . .

written by Eric Katz in Goverment Executive November 20, 2012 Peace Corps volunteer Megan Chandler worked with a women’s cooperative in Uganda from 2003 to 2006 on health education. The Peace Corps and Labor Department are not adequately monitoring access to and quality of health care compensation for volunteers returning home after serving, a report has found. As required by the Federal Employee Compensation Act, volunteers who serve abroad as part of the Peace Corps are entitled to reimbursement for health care costs resulting from service-related illnesses. Labor oversees FECA applications and payments, while the Peace Corps is responsible for informing returning volunteers they are eligible for the benefits. The Government Accountability Office report said the two agencies are failing to monitor and inform volunteers on the documents needed and application requirements to apply for the benefits. Labor is not tracking how long it is taking to review applications and . . .

[Joanne Roll (Colombia 1963-65) one of our bloggers on the site sent me this piece by Carl M. Cannon Washington Editor of RealClearPolitics and suggested I share it with all of you on this Thanksgiving Day. Thanks, Joanne, and Marian Beil and I would like to thank all of you for your support as we remember JKF on this fateful November day.] By Carl M. Cannon Good morning. It’s Wednesday, November 21, 2012, the eve of Thanksgiving Day. Not much is scheduled in official Washington today, which is probably just as well. Even with the “fiscal cliff” looming in their immediate future, Americans have earned a holiday from politics. On this date in 1963, John F. Kennedy boarded the presidential helicopter on the South Lawn for a political trip to Texas. He was seeking to make peace between the feuding factions within the Lone Star State’s Democratic Party. Kennedy took . . .

Rowland Scherman and Chris Szwedo were interviewed this past Sunday on Cape Cod’s Ocean 104 FM “Sunday Journal”. They discuss the making of the documentary and offer insights and previews of the many things to come. http://www.szwedo.com/INTERVIEW.mp3 Interview Length: approximately 24 minutes. Just click the above link and it will stream. Thanks for listening! Chris Szwedo has made a movie of Rowland Scherman’s life with Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and JFK and Bobby, and, of course the Peace Corps. The movie title is “Eye on the Sixties: The Iconic Photography of Rowland Scherman” Rowland’s first professional job was as the Peace Corps’ official photographer. He started in the spring of  1961.

Tino Calabia (Peru, 1963-65) who rallied all of us RPCVs in support of Ambassador Christopher Stevens sent me this note over the weekend. The 2012 elections are history.  Finally.  Yet the tragic deaths of RPCV/Ambassador Chris Stevens and his three colleagues in Benghazi, Libya remain part of the controversy fueling partisan wrangling on Capitol Hill.  Besides ensnaring U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, the dispute has now dragged in former CIA Director David Petraeus; even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has had to accede to requests that she soon come before a Congressional committee. Meanwhile, Senator John McCain last Wednesday, Sept. 14th, roundly dismissed Susan Rice as “not qualified” to serve as the next Secretary of State, the post for which President Barack Obama is reportedly considering Rice.  Tying Rice to the increasingly heated controversy over what actually transpired in the 9/11 attack on two diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, McCain further urged . . .

Howard joined the Peace Corps in 1973, right after he graduated from the University of Texas in Austin. He went to Costa Rica for Training for the Dominican Republic, then in February ’73 was reassigned to Colombia.  His site in Colombia was Bucaramanga and in June of that year he met another new PCV, Mary Cedarleaf, the woman he would marry. In October Howard was sent to Cali, a major sugar and manufacturing center in the tropical Cauca River valley, fifty miles from the Pacific. He COSed on August 31, 1974 and then worked for a few months as a  Peace Corps recruiter out of the Dallas office. He would have another brief Peace Corps recruitment job in St. Paul, met up again with Mary Cedarleaf, dated, and when he returned to graduate school in business administration at America University they would get married in D.C. Now, as Paul Harvard would say . . .

All of the recent talk about inappropriate emails from General John Allen and the end of CIA Director David Petraeus’s career because of his affair with Paula Broadwell brought back to mind a short item I read recently in the back pages of the Washington Post, there was an obit on Eric H. Biddle, Jr. noting that he was a CIA during the early Cold War days who later became an outspoken critic of the discrimination he said he faced in later employment because of his espionage career. He died at the age of 84. Briddle was with the CIA from 1952-60, specializing in Soviet intelligence. In 1960, he became involved with a Greek woman while working in Greece, but CIA employees are prohibited from marrying foreign nationals, and while he did not marry the woman, he quit the agency. He returned to the U.S. and thought about joining the Peace . . .

[Today’s Chronicle of Higher Educationhas an article by Katherine Mangran entitled “Would-Be Doctors Will Get More Opportunities to Study and Teach Abroad.” It is about  the Association of American Medical Colleges new Global Health Learning Opportunities,  directed by Dr. Janette Samaan. In the large world of the Peace Corps connections, Dr. Samaan is the older sister Laurette Bennhold-Samaan  the Peace Corps’ first Cross-Cultural Specialist (1996-2001). Janette is also married to an RPCV. Another session at the recent San Francisco meeting featured a new Peace Corps for doctors and nurses program which will send its first participants to teach in medical schools in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda next summer, 2013. Here is the full article by Katherine Mangan] Fourth-year medical students would find it easier to spend a year abroad, and recent graduates could have student loans forgiven while training medical faculty in developing countries, under two new programs highlighted here at the annual meeting of the Association of American . . .

Ann Stevens was interviewed on CNN’s “Out Front” last night. Joanne Roll (Colombia 1963-65) one of our bloggers on this site captured the link to the “Out Front” program. Ann mentions the Peace Corps towards the end of the interview. Briefly, she said that the Peace Corps Community, Volunteers, staff and RPCVs are looking for the best way to honor her brother by increasing cross-cultural awareness and appreciation.  That is not a direct quote; but the efforts of the Peace Corps Community were acknowledged by her. She said this in the context of a conversation she had with a high ranking official in the State Department. Here is the link: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2012/11/09/erin-bts-anne-stevens-intv.cnn  

Dear Members of the Peace Corps family: Given your continued outpouring of support and concern for honoring U.S. Ambassador and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) Chris Stevens, I would like to reiterate the essence of my earlier message to those who have written more recently and to update everyone on our plans for honoring and remembering Ambassador Stevens. Through your support and concern for Ambassador Stevens, you have made evident that his tragic death was keenly felt within the  Peace Corps community, and you have reminded me of how close a family we are at the Peace Corps.  You have also heartened the Stevens family by your outpouring of support. As I mentioned in my earlier email message to you, the Peace Corps has been in touch with the Stevens family since just after Ambassador Stevens’ tragic death.  With them, we have begun a conversation on the most appropriate manner . . .

Joe Kennedy III won the race to replace retiring Representative Barney Frank in the Fourth Congressional District of Massachusetts. Kennedy, a Democrat (of course!), is the great-nephew of JFK and Senator Edward Kennedy. He went to Harvard Law School and was in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. Most recently he was an assistant district attorney in Massachusetts’ Middlesex County. Kennedy, 32, is among the youngest members of Congress. He won easily. Kennedy joins two term Congressman, John Garamendi (Ethiopia 1965-67) of California third District, who also won by more than 10 points. RPCV Sam Farr (Colombia 1964-66) won in California, as did Mike Honda (El Salvador 1965-67), also of California, and Republican Tom Petri (Somalia 1966-67) won in Wisconsin. It is possible that I missed an RPCV in the house and senate, if so, let me know.