Miscellany

[From the Harvard Crimson, we get this piece on Tom Petri (Somalia 1965-67)] Congressman Thomas E. Petri ’62 got his first taste of the life of a politician when he was still an undergraduate living in Quincy House. His senior year, Petri was mistaken for Congressman Frank B. “Brad” Morse, who was scheduled to give a talk at the College. “Tim came down there, and they thought that he was the Congressman because Congressman Morse hadn’t shown up yet, and he played along with it,” said Bruce K. Chapman ’62, his Quincy House roommate. “Finally the real Congressman came in, and it dawned on the crowd around Tim that he was not the Congressman.” Petri, now a 17-term congressman for Wisconsin’s 6th district, remains a Wisconsinite at heart. Originally from the small town of Fond du Lac, friends and family say that Petri remains distinctly un-Washingtonian. “Most people don’t swim . . .

The Cortez Journal Peace Time Montezuma County residents recall their experiences as former Peace Corps volunteers Former volunteers tell stories By Michael Maresh Journal Staff Writer Stories from local residents who formerly served as Peace Corps volunteers follow: BILL SOUTHWORTH (Nigeria 1962-64) Bill Southworth joined the Peace Corps in 1962 and spent two years in Nigeria to teach a variety of different subjects there, including history, health and science, and basketball. After joining, he learned not only about the United States but also about himself. Southworth said being in another country for two years gave him a different perspective – from the eyes of another country. During his down time, he tried to get other Peace Corps volunteers to teach African history to the people since this was their history, but mentioned he was sent to Nigeria to teach English there. Southworth said he would have liked to stay, but . . .

Lost in the pages of golf  history is a remarkable story of an unknown municipal golf professional who won the 1955 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Author Neil Sagebiel’s account of the courage and determination of Jack Fleck, who late on a Saturday afternoon came out of the pack to tie the legendary Ben Hogan, and then go on to defeat him in an 18-hole playoff, is dramatically recounted in The Longest Shot. It is a Cinderella story of a young professional from Iowa who against all odds wins the U.S. Open. It is also the bittersweet account of Ben Hogan’s last hurrah. Hogan in his day was the Tiger Wood of golf, unbeatable and unapproachable, a man who had overcome a terrible 1949 automobile accident to come back to golf. Nearing the end of his long career, Hogan was seeking his fifth Open championship. Jack . . .

[The Kate Puzey (Benin 2007-09) Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act was signed into law by President Obama on November 21, 2011. Named after Kate Puzey who was murdered after telling authorities about sexual abuse by a Peace Corps employee, the law requires the Peace Corps to improve Training to reduce risk of abuse and hire regional victims’ advocates, and protect whistle-blowers. Casey Frazee, who served in South Africa, and now works for the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, wrote this blog for Cincinnati.com. It was Casey’s efforts, and her organization of RPCV women, First Response Action, that largely brought about the Kate Puzey Protection Act.] A Journey from Trauma to Triumph I am proof of the American dream. Not in the house-in-the-suburbs-two-point-five-kids-two-car-garage kind of way, but that I was so passionate about making something happen and I did it. In 2009, I was sexually assaulted as a Peace Corps Volunteer in . . .

The University of Redlands has named Collin Tong ( Thailand 1968-69) the recipient of its 2012 Distinguished Alumni Service Award for outstanding achievement in public service. Past recipients include the late U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and CBS News White House correspondent Robert Pierpoint, both U of R alumni. President James R. Appleton will confer the award at a special Presidential convocation on Oct. 20, during Homecoming weekend. Collin is a Seattle-based freelance journalist and contributing writer for Crosscut Public Media and the New York Times. Collin is the coauthor of a forthcoming book, Profiles in Caregiving: Journeys with Alzheimer’s Disease.

This morning’s NYTIMES  edition has a piece in the “Scene City” section about all the parties after the White House correspondents’ Association Dinner, including one at the French ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C. Bob Morris writes: “If the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is a prom, as President Obama called it in his speech last Saturday night, then the mosh of parties here last weekend was something between Oscars Week and spring break. There were dozens around town, with old media companies like The New Yorker joined by new ones like The Huffington Post, each airlifting stars in to upgrade the glitter quota.” Here is our own Maureen Orth (Colombia 1964-66) with the Mayor New York Michael Bloomberg. Maureen is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

The double-eagle that Louis Oosthuizen scored on the second hole of Augusta National Golf Course on Sunday afternoon of this year’s Masters has already faded into history and golf trivia. It was the fourth such feat at Augusta, and remarkable as it was, that shot was not heard around the world, and was quickly over shadowed by Bobba Watson’s brilliant 52-degree wedge played from deep in the pines on the second play-off hole that won the tournament for him. Nevertheless, for a brief moment in the final round, Oosthuizen’s 4-iron on No. 2 brought back to mind the most famous double-eagle in golf’s history. Gene Sarazen’s fairway wood on No. 15 in 1935 catapulted him forever into fame, thanks to sports writer Grantland Rice who coined the phrase, “The Shot Heard Round the World.” Rice’s clever description made Sarazen’s career. It also made the Masters Tournament. Grantland Rice was, for . . .

More stories from the streets of Cartagena. HCNs are saying that the SS agents refused to pay the young ladies (?) for the ‘services’ they performed when they found that they were transvestites! I doubt that is true. It appears that one lone SS agent ‘overslept’ and when his ‘guest’ wasn’t out of his room at 7 a.m. in accordance to rules of the hotel, the police were called (the agent didn’t answer his door) and then the police, as required, reported the incident to the Embassy and all ‘hell broke loose!.” Much more serious (for the Peace Corps) is the belief within the PCV Community of Colombia that the Ambassador may have played a role in keeping the President away from the Volunteers. The Embassy has never been happy about the Peace Corps being back in Colombia. They, for example, restrict Volunteer travel, keep their thumb down on anything that PCVs . . .

The President did not meet with the new PCVs while in Colombia this weekend. His trip to Latin America was, as we know, overshadowed by the Secret Service who managed to make the President and the US look bad. The story in Cartagena, I hear from PCVs in-country, is that “Americans came to Cartagena to bed our women.” What the Secret Service agents did not know, I’m also told, is that Cartagena is the capitol of the Transvestite community in Colombia. The in-country joke is that the agents may have had one or more transvestites in their rooms. No wonder they didn’t want to pay the ‘guests’ fees! According to news reports, the agents were “relieved of duty Thursday — prior to the president’s arrival in Colombia.” Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post reporter who has written a book about the Secret Service, called the incident “clearly the biggest scandal in Secret Service history.” . . .

This week on The Daily Beast, political guru Paul Begala, who worked on Harris Wofford’s (Country Director/Ethiopia 1962–64) senatorial campaign in Pennsylvania, and then worked on Clinton’s Presidential campaign, and now teaches at Georgetown and writes political pieces for Newsweek Magazine and  The Daily Beast had an opinion piece on who Romney might pick for his Vice President. Begala writes: “When Bill Clinton was choosing his running mate in 1992, I made a pitch for Senator Harris Wofford a visionary  who had worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. Wofford seemed perfect because he would have balanced the ticket, and that’s what conventional wisdom considers most important: Clinton was young, Wofford was older; Clinton was a Southerner, Wofford was from Pennsylvania; Clinton was a governor, Wofford served in Congress; Clinton was a Protestant, Wofford was a Catholic; Clinton was a moderate, Wofford was a liberal. But Clinton was . . .

Back in mid-March we wrote about a Peace Corps film under production entitled, The Whole of the Moon (You can read about it here: https://peacecorpsworldwide.org/a-peace-film/ We have been in touch with Charles Portney (Zaire 1988-90) who is making the film. Portney was a PCV in the fisheries program. After coming home, he spent many years working in film/video production including on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Return of the King as Production Manager for the music department. He wrote and directed the classic short film The Shop Below the Busy Road which screened at South by Southwest, Madrid Int’l, Black Mariah, San Francisco Int’l. The initial script for this project was finalist in the Nichol Fellowship. He has continued doing volunteer work as well. In 1998 he worked with Mary Knoll Relief Org. In Bangkok, Thailand as an English instructor to refugees from Burma. In 2001-2002 . . .

We are happy to announce that we will have a new blogger on www. peacecorpsworld.org.  Travis Hellstrom (Mongolia 2008-11) will be blogging at: Unofficial Peace Corps. Travis was a PCV and PCV Leader in Mongolia and a year before he left for Peace Corps he began writing what would become the Unofficial Peace Corps Volunteer Handbook which he added to here and there for 4 years until, after his 27th month of service in Mongolia, he published it on Amazon.com. The Unofficial Handbook is the only book available which gives 100% of its profits back to Peace Corps projects worldwide.  Travis is also founder of Peace Corps 101,  a worldwide online course led by Peace Corps Volunteers from around the world, which also donates all proceeds back into Peace Corps through the Peace Corps’ Partnership Program and NPCA’S Global Community Fund! After completing his Peace Corps service, Travis published a second book called  Enough and created the websit Advance . . .

It takes more than a village to fight malaria in Zambia By Michael Gerson Published: April 5 The Washington Post MONGU, Zambia In a global anti-malaria movement I saw begin in Oval Office meetings and international summits, Mongu is at the end of a very long road. Located in western Zambia, about 75 miles from the Angolan border, the town is not close to anywhere. The rivers of the region are more like swamps filling a flood plain, their courses hidden by tall grasses – from the air, wide, serpentine bands of lime green. If rivers are like arteries, these are clogged. Post columnist Michael Gerson and actor Ben Affleck heard tales of atrocities during a visit to the town of Dungu. Standing water breeds mosquitoes, which carry the malaria parasite, which takes the lives of children in seasonal waves. In this part of the world, some parents don’t officially name . . .

As some of  you may know, I’m a Ben Hogan fan (What! You haven’t read my novel, The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan? ) But more importantly, forty-five years ago Hogan turned back the clock at the Masters when in 1967 he shot a back-nine 30 in the third round at Augusta. Hogan had won the Masters in ’51 and ’53 but now at the age of 54, suffering still from the 1949 car accident that nearly killed him, he had bad legs and a left shoulder that was plagued with bursitis, scar tissue and calcium deposits, and now in the morning he had  cortisone shots just to be able to swing a golf club. Hogan shot 74-73 to be seven shots off the lead but he made the cut to play on the weekend. He teed off with Harold Henning of South Africa and turned the corner on the front . . .

The Huffington Post has a piece on line today that Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) emailed  me about on how the military scrambled to limit the use of the notorious anti-malaria drug called mefloquine (you might have known it as  Lariam) after that soldier’s attack on innocent children. Are you at risk,  we might ask? Remember how we took that drug in Africa and elsewhere? Here’ is the Huff Post article written by Mark Benjamin, an investigative reporter in D. C.,  that points the finger at mefloquine as a possible cause of Bales’ tragic behavior. WASHINGTON — Nine days after a U.S. soldier allegedly massacred 17 civilians in Afghanistan, a top-level Pentagon health official ordered a widespread, emergency review of the military’s use of a notorious anti-malaria drug called mefloquine. Mefloquine, also called Lariam, has severe psychiatric side effects. Problems include psychotic behavior, paranoia and hallucinations. The drug has been implicated in numerous . . .