Peace Corps writers

  India is the epitome of a continent-in-a-country. It is a living museum of ancient towns, moated forts, colonial hill stations, desert outposts, and frenetic cities. It is the birthplace of Hinduism and Buddhism and with Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, and Christians playing important spiritual roles. Indeed, opportunities for spiritual awareness, including group and individual meditation, exist throughout the country. India’s extremes stretch the emotions. Its economic and social issues of poverty and wealth assault one’s sensitivities, while its natural beauty — the Himalayan mountains, Rajasthan desert, forested northern hill towns, and sprawling beaches and winding canals of the southwest — is visual overload. The energetic and uninhibited lifestyle of the residents — never a dull moment — seems to transform the country into an improvisational stage show. Using some 400 representative pictures complemented by descriptions and narrative, Steve takes us on a grand tour of the best of India: its . . .

  The hot flash blush is familiar to any woman going through the hormonal roller coaster of menopause. This unpleasant, rapid warming can strike any time, heating the upper body, the face, neck and chest. The insidious hot flash is a direct result of hormonal effects on the hypothalamus, the area of the brain responsible for managing your appetite, sleep cycles, sex hormones, and body temperature. When estrogen levels drop, the body’s temperature turns erratic. However, there is hot flash hope. Good, midlife nutrition includes many delicious foods that help to calm the hot flash. Cathy Luchetti’s well researched cookbook, filled with mouthwatering recipes, is a crash course on menopause. “The Hot Flash Cookbook: Delicious Recipes for Health and Well-Being through Menopause” delights the reader’s palate and the stomach. She presents the product of her extensive research to help people, especially women, understand the changes in the body during the menopausal . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Ted Vestal (PC Staff /Ethiopia 1964-66)   Herm writes — I thought readers might be interested in who I am and something about why I write. Much of my working life was with the US Government spending time in Germany with the Army in the ’50s, when Cold War tension was at its peak. I was one of the many young college graduates unable to find a job and chose to enlist for two years. It was a fortunate choice that gave enlistees a view of the world outside America, and believe it or not, $100 a month “spending money” that was more than most of us ever had. As to Cold War tension, it was easily dispelled by 5 cent bottles of Beck’s beer at the PX, and nights out in Butzbach, where we were stationed. We had a chance to travel all . . .

  Aaron Williams (Dominican Republic 1968-71) has devoted his life to public service and the betterment of others. His life story reveals fascinating glimpses into the complex interactions of international development and US foreign policy, but also into the American myth of anyone becoming anything through the power of hard work, determination, and drive. The remarkable journey of this leader in international development, foreign policy, and global business began on Chicago’s South Side. He attended Catholic schools, participated in the Boys Club and Boy Scouts, and read science fiction books at the Chicago Public Library. A graduate of Chicago State University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he spent time as a public school teacher before serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. Finding his time there transformative, he turned his energies in direction, and joined the US Agency for International Development (USAID) working on projects in Honduras, . . .

  Modern Parable with a Prose Poem overcoat about the Peace Corps, Endless Wars, and the End of the planet Earth February 19, 2022 at 4:28 a.m. by Edward Mycue (Ghana 1961) • This is from an early PC Volunteer Ghana 1961, old now — 85 on March 21, 2022: It seems so long ago and yesterday when in 1960 I came up for more graduate study from North Texas State in Denton to Boston University and as a Lowell Fellow an intern at WGBH-TV the then New England Television station on the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge just over the Charles River from Boston on Massachusetts Avenue above a former roller rink and as Louis Lyons assistant on his twice weekly 14:28 second programs of News and the other of profiles and special subjects. In the summer June 1960 as the technical assistant I began on his many programs about Senator . . .

  Take a girl with an iffy start in life. Mix in wanderlust and cooking. And lots of books. Add a dollop of yearning for home and belonging. Knead in a pinch of self-discovery. Let rise and ripen. The result is Cynthia D. Bertelsen’s Stoves & Suitcases: Searching for Home in the World’s Kitchens, a reflective and rollicking saga that begins in an incubator. Cookbooks soon pique her wanderlust and her longing to be elsewhere. A semester abroad in Mexico and a stint in the Peace Corps ignite those embers of wanderlust. That fire never stops burning. Years of living and working and cooking in the developing world follow, with long-term sojourns in Honduras, Haiti, Morocco, and Burkina Faso. It’s an age-old tale of leaving home to find home. Stoves & Suitcases has been named Best in Food Writing in the USA for 2022 by Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. Cynthia  has also written: Mushroom: . . .

  In Girls of Tender Age, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Cameroon 1965-67) fully articulates with great humor and tenderness the wild jubilance of an extended French-Italian family struggling to survive in a post-World War II housing project in Hartford, Connecticut. Hanging over this American childhood is the sinister shadow of an approaching serial killer. The menacing Bob Malm lurks throughout this joyous and chaotic family portrait, and the havoc he unleashes when the paths of innocence and evil cross one early December evening in 1953 forever alters the landscape of Smith’s childhood. Mary-Ann, who wrote the first published Peace Corps novel, Lament For A Silver-Eyed Woman in 1985, writes in this memoir of her childhood friend who was killed by a serial killer in her hometown, and how Mary-Ann helped to achieve justice for her childhood friend Pidgie D’Allessio who identified the killer who had also attached her. What follows is Mary-Ann’s account of . . .

The Lake Mystery: Secrets of the Crossroads is engrossing detective fiction about two young girls who dig into the buried secrets of their hometown   Fulton Books author, Nancy E. Crofts (Congo 1974-75), a licensed pilot, an adjunct professor for three decades, a former Peace Corps volunteer, a foster care provider, a wife and mother, has published The Lake Mystery, a gripping novel about the Spenser twins, Robin and Cresselley. The twins enjoy spending time at their grandmother’s house in the little, eastern Connecticut town of Stonington, where a beautiful lake can be seen. But things get more exciting and risky as they explore more on the mysterious occurrence on the north side of the lake. Crofts shares, “Nine flights up in the fire tower’s small observation cubicle, with only stars in the night sky, the twins spotted lights moving suspiciously on the north shore of the lake. Could these lights . . .

  The Journey Home: Portraits of Healing is a memoir narrated through 35 engaging vignettes involving the renewal of a son’s relationship with his parents during their final year of life. Using amplified recollections (including of the author’s time in the Peace Corps), vivid dreams, and impressionistic illustrations, The Journey Home leads the reader on a personal pilgrimage of discovery and healing. Starting with the onset of his mother’s Alzheimer’s and proceeding through the eventual admission of both his parents’ to a nursing home and their eventual passing, The Journey Home explores the complex and intimate process of evolving relationships in the final passage of life. The novel is divided into four metaphorical parts, corresponding to phases of a “rasa yatra,” or “destined life journey”: entering into an unknown domain, listening to voices from the past for clues to this new world, connecting with guides who will help heal past wounds . . .

Mark Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) has an essay in homage of Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67)  in the February issue of ELAND press in London. ELAND Press follows the mantra, “Keeping the best travel writing alive” by republishing some of the best classic travel works which have been forgotten by the public. They’ve already republished Thomsen’s Living Poor and The Saddest Pleasure.  Walker learned about them from Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) who informed him they were republishing The Saddest Pleasure and asked to use his introduction, which Theroux did for free in honor of Thomsen who he considers a friend and one of the best travel writers in the U.S. Other authors they’ve published include Martha Gellhorn, Hemmingway’s third wife, and an accomplished war correspondent — who met Thomsen and wrote an obituary after he passed away in 1991. Read Walker’s essay and more in this February issue of Eland Newsletter.    

  A young boy waves at passing cars on a dusty rural road in Upper Michigan, and dreams of the wide world. Then step by step he follows his dream, becoming his family’s first college graduate, and studies in Europe help him realize the excitement and diversity of the wide world. Peace Corps service brings him to Senegal on the edge of Africa’s Sahara Desert where he experiences first-hand the hardships of the world’s poorest people – who teach him important lessons about generosity, sufficiency and luxury. In Africa, he finds love and discovers a career that opens the world to him, eventually visiting 90 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, working to make the world a better place. His adventures lead him to ride wild stallions, camels, and elephants. He gets into and barely out of trouble in the Grand Canyon. He climbs mountains and . . .