Miscellany

Ellen Urbani (Guatemala 1991-93) is working with Saturday Academy and Mercy Corps to convene a week-long camp (June 28-July 2, 2010) in Portland, Oregon, designed to introduce high school students to the issues and demands of careers in the field of international aid and development work. This week-long immersion camp will combine traditional and hands-on learning, public service opportunities, and the mentoring process to motivate participants toward further study or volunteerism in global relief efforts. Ellen is currently looking for instructors (8hrs/day for one week, paid positions) to teach each of these modules: Shelter, Water/Sanitation, Small Business, Global Health, Appropriate Technologies. She is also looking for experts/guest lecturers (from 1-8hrs/day, one day, unpaid) to cover topics of interest and application to the entire group, including: Action Planning: Designing interventions, rallying local support, project implementation, fund-raising Leadership Development: How to garner local buy-in, identify and collaborate with local/indigenous leaders, make best . . .

This is an interview done in South Africa by Andre van Wyk for allAfrica.com that appeared today, November 11. Aaron Williams, the new Peace Corps Director, was on a world tour visiting Peace Corps countries on one of those famous ‘all/see’ trip all PC/W staff take. I thought that you’d like to see what the Director is thinking, two or so months into his new job. The Obama administration earlier this year named a former United States Peace Corps volunteer, Aaron S. Williams, as the program’s new director. The Peace Corps, which will soon celebrate its 50th anniversary, draws thousands of Americans who want to work abroad and under the new administration, it is looking at its areas of focus and how best to continue implementing its programs most effectively. Williams spoke with AllAfrica during a visit to South Africa. Is this your first visit to Africa since your appointment, . . .

(Pictured: Lloyd Mangrum)  “From the first days of World War II, players put away their sticks and picked up rifles to defend America.”  By John Coyne Special to ARMCHAIR GOLF WORLD WAR II WAS CALLED the last “good” war and Tom Brokaw wrote of the men and women who fought in it as, “America’s greatest generation.” They came of age during the Great Depression and served their country in World War II. Many of this greatest generation were golf professionals. Herb Graffis, founder of Golfing magazine, in his history of the Professional Golf Association (PGA) writes how golf professionals served in combat during WW II, and did a hundred other volunteer jobs relating to golf to help the war effort. From the first days of World War II, players put away their sticks and picked up rifles to defend America. They would not be the first players to fight in . . .

Partners of the Americas, the International Volunteering Project at Brookings, and the Building Bridges Coalition will host the 2009 Higher Education & International Volunteer Service Conference on November 12-13, 2009 in Washington, D.C.  The conference will drive efforts for assessing and influencing national policies related to service, study abroad programs and service learning, and citizen diplomacy.  The first day of the conference will conclude with a special Capitol Hill Reception in the Hart Senate Office Building hosted by Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.). The reception will celebrate international volunteer service and recognize legislative leaders for their contributions. WHO:  Partners of the Americas, the International Volunteering Project at Brookings, and the Building Bridges Coalition. Invited speakers include: Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.); Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio); Judith McHale, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy; Aaron Williams, Director, Peace Corps ; John Bridgeland, President and CEO, Civic Enterprises; Senator Harris Wofford, former senator from . . .

Check out The New Yorker on line today and the piece by Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) who is also a serious runner, writing about the surprise winner of the New Yrok Marathon on Sunday, an American named Meb Keflezighi who happens to be from Eritrea. November 2, 2009 Last year, Meb Keflezighi’s Olympic dreams ended on the Fourth of July. Nobody would have predicted that a year later he would win the New York City Marathon. At the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, where I interviewed him for my article on American long-distance runners, he finished thirteenth in the ten thousand metres, nearly a full minute behind the winner. Eight months earlier, at the marathon trials in New York City, he had also failed to make the team. He was thirty-three years old, and he suffered from nagging injuries; most people in the sport believed that his best races were . . .

This is a letter that Larry Lihosit, who served in Honduras, is sending around to congress and the senate seeking to establish at the Library of Congress a Special Collection of Peace Corps books. He is particularly interested in books that are self-published and have limited circulation. This is a very good idea, I think. We need ‘places’ where researchers someday might turn to find out who, what, where, when and how of  the Peace Corps. With the disappearance of books in our world, the Library of Congress is a good location. Or as Hemingway said, “a clear, well lighted place.” Larry wrote me: “I am taking this opportunity to continue my campaign to cajole for the creation of a Peace Corps Experience Collection at the Library of Congress. I sent the attached letter to my congressman, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer,  Dianne Feinstein, and Barack Obama. I intend to resend it . . .

I like this question–Does the Peace Corps Really Matter?– and the conversations and discussions that it provokes. It brings the idea of the agency back to mind. I have been hearing people since the Nixon years trashing the Peace Corps, all of us were ‘draft dodgers” Tricky Dick said. Eisenhower called us a “juvenile experiment,” and the Daughters of the American Revolution warned of a “yearly drain” of “brains and brawn…for the benefit of “backward, underdeveloped countries.” (A year after all of these “wise” pronouncements, Time magazine declared in a cover story that the Peace Corps was “the greatest single success the Kennedy administration had produced.”) It is good for the agency when the whole idea of ‘The Peace Corps” is in the public currency. The problem today is that while the agency is  ‘Mom’s apple pie’ in the minds of most Americans, the next question most Americans ask is: ‘Does the Peace Corps still . . .

[Jim Sheahan (Sierra Leone 1963-65) was kind enough to send me this list of the first National Advisory Council to the Peace Corps. I thought you’d like to see who what was where when.] NATIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL Honorary Chairman The Honorable William O. Douglas, Associate Justice I Supreme Court, United States Chairman The Honorable Lyndon B. Johnson, Vice President, United States Vice Chairman Dr. Mary Bunting, President, Radcliffe College David E. Lilienthal, Chairman, Development and Resources Corp. Rev. James Robinson, Director, Operation Crossroads Africa Thomas J. Watson, Jr., President, IBM Corp. Members Dr. Leona Baumgartner, Comm. of Health, New York City Joseph Beirne, President, Communications Workers of America Harry Belafonte, New York City Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Chaplain, Yale University LeRoy Collins, President, Natl. Assn. of Broadcasters Rev. John J. Considine, M.M., Director, Latin America Bureau National Catholic Welfare Conference Colonel Henry Crown, General Dynamics Corp. Dr. Albert Dent, President. . . .

Over the last year we have had a number of meetings taking place within the Peace Corps regarding the 50th Anniversary, meetings organized by  the old administration and now with the new director, Aaron Williams. Some of these proposals for what to do on the Anniversary are on the Peace Corps website. Take a look. Representatives of the NPCA have been asked to attend the Peace Corps  meetings, but unfortunately they have not been able to bring much influence or many ideas to the table. While the NPCA has a limited membership (maybe 4k) they have a good database of recent RPCVs. The Peace Corps’ lists are longer and more accurate, however. The Peace Corps didn’t track RPCVs until RPCV Carol Bellamy came into the office in 1993. She put together a data base then of about 90,000 names and addresses of  RPCVs. The NPCA (since the 25th Reunion in 1986) has had reunions, but not since Kevin Quigley, the CEO and President . . .

I am not sure how many of you had the opportunity to read “His Long War” by Dexter Filkins in the magazine section of the New York Times today, Sunday, October 18, 2009. Filkins, who first reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan more than a decade ago, is a staff writer for the NYTIMES and the author of The Forever War. He writes about our General Stanley A. McChrystal who has been actively lobbying for a dramatic increase of troops to ‘get the job done’ in Afghanistan. There is a photograph of McChrystal on the magazine cover. He looks gaunt, tired and pathetic, as if he had just run the Boston Marathon, or is playing an extra in one of Stephen King’s Movies, say The Dead Zone! It is a long article and must be read until the very last line, which has the real kicker to the piece. Filkins spent a lot . . .

There has been a great deal of buzz lately about Steven Spielberg and Norman Rockwell. Spielberrg owns something like 20 of Norman Rockwell paintings and in July 2010 there will be a special exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in  Washington, D.C.. Spielberg’s paintings by Rockwelll will join some 30 other Rockwells from the collection of filmmaker, George Lucas. Like almost everything else in life, there is always a Peace Corps connection. Spielberg owns, “Peace Corps in Ethiopia” a painting that now hangs in the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, New York. It is on loan from Spielberg as part of “Norman Rockwell: American Imagist,” a traveling exhibition curated and organized by Judy Goffman Cutler. The Ethiopia Peace Corps and Norman Rockwell connection began in 1963 when Rockwell traveled to Ethiopia, and, I believe, to visit the PCVs in India, at the invitation of the agency. While in Ethiopia he . . .

Recently the National Peace Corps Association hustled some money from the Gates Foundation and started up Africa Rural Connect. ARC began its operation by asking the question: “Where should development agencies spend their money? That’s what you, as a returned Peace Corps volunteer, can help us figure out.” Well, ARC — why don’t you ask Florence Reed? Take a look and see how this woman has already achieved in Central America what you want to do. This is just one RPCV who with little organizational help (or funding from Gates!) has managed to establish Sustainable Harvest International (SHI). In her bio on the SHI website it says that Florence Reed (Panama 1991–93) believes that when people work together, things change for the better. In 1997, she founded Sustainable Harvest International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to working with rural Central American communities to implement sustainable land-use practices. As president of the organization, Florence spends her time guiding SHI forward . . .

RPCV Photographer Nathan Fitch (Micronesia 2004–06) works as the studio manager for a National Geographic photographer, and is also a photographer with a brilliant new show —  “Double Vision” — that is currently at AS220’s Main Gallery, 115 Empire St. in Providence, Rhode Island. Nathan writes, “The “Double Vision” show came out of my interest in working with people with disabilities and in the arts.” A while back Nathan was looking for an organization with which to do some volunteering when he found Top Drawer Art Center, a nonprofit visual art center providing art programs for adults with developmental disabilities. By chance they had a part time job they needed to be filled. During the nine months he spent at Top Drawer he took photographs of the adults as they worked, and he started thinking that a show might evolve from the photos. “Rather than only having my outside perspective . . .

Neil Sagebiel, the editor of the wonderful blog Armchair Golfer just published this short piece I wrote for him on Arnold Palmer. Here it is, story about the King. The iconic Palmer brought golf to the masses (and breakfast table). By John Coyne Special to ARMCHAIR GOLF GOLF MAGAZINES THIS PAST month were filled with remembrances of Arnold Palmer on the occasion of his 80th birthday. I read Boo Weekley’s account in the September 14, 2009 issue of Golf World about how Arnie said he always signed an autograph so people could read it. It reminded me of seeing Palmer at the PGA Championship at Congressional Country Club back in the ’70s. Arnold was coming into the press room for an interview and was stopped by a 10-year-old for an autograph, and I watched as he carefully wrote out his full name for the young boy. However, the best story . . .

This morning on NPR Garrison Keillor, as a part of his writer’s almanac series, honored Peace Corps and read part of Kennedy’s speech in Ann Arbor, MI.  Click the link here for the text or option to download the audio. http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ Kennedy first spoke about the idea of a Peace Corps in his final weeks of campaigning for the presidency. At 2 a.m. on October 14, 1960, after a long day of campaigning, the young senator stood on the steps in front of the student union at the University of Michigan. The journalists had gone home, thinking that nothing more would happen that day, but 10,000 students remained, hoping to see and hear Kennedy. He gave a short speech, in which he said: “I think in many ways it is the most important campaign since 1933, mostly because of the problems which press upon the United States, and the opportunities . . .