Peace Corps writers

  THE PEACE CORPS EXPERIENCE AWARD was initiated in 1992, and it has been presented annually to a Peace Corps Volunteer or staff member, past or present for the best depiction of life in the Peace Corps — be it daily life, project assignment, travel, host country nationals, other Volunteers, readjustment. Initially entries were short works including personal essays, storys, novellas, poems, letters, cartoons, and songs. In 1997, this award was renamed to honor Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965–67) whose Living Poor has been widely cited as an outstanding telling of the essence of the Peace Corps experience. Since 2009, memoirs are also considered for The Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award.   Eradicating Smallpox in Ethiopia: Peace Corps Volunteers’ Accounts of Their Adventures, Challenges and Achievements Editors: Gene L. Bartley (Ethiopia 1970–72, 1974–76), John Scott Porterfield (Ethiopia 1971–73), Alan Schnur (Ethiopia 1971–74), James W. Skelton, Jr. (Ethiopia 1970–72) Peace Corps Writers 486 . . .

  Unexpected Journey, published in 2015, described my experiences in China, among many countries, in the mid-1980s. Several essays appearing in the latest WorldView from recently returned Peace Corps/China volunteers, and Peter Hessler’s Chengdu Covid-19 commentary, brought to mind two Chengdu encounters in Unexpected Journey that demonstrate, even back then in the region served by Peace Corps, the thirst for English language education and interaction with native English-speakers. — Steve   A Pow-er-ful Encounter by Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96) While exploring the old historic district located in the shadows of Chengdu’s imposing statue of Mao, I became lost in the maze of narrow streets crammed with wooden houses, sidewalk vendors and tiny restaurants. Turning into an alleyway, I was met by the huge brown eyes of a young boy. He smiled. “How do you do?” he greeted me, with a British accent. “Fine, thank you,” I responded. “What is your . . .

  Nancy S. Bercaw New Senior Director of Communications and Marketing at Johnston Community College. August 10, 2020 Nancy Bercaw (Kenya 1988-89) comes to JCC from her prior role as senior advisor for communications and marketing at Ajman University in the United Arab Emirates. During her three-year tenure at Ajman, Bercaw helped the institution attract significant global visibility and earn recognition as having the third most international student body in the world. Previously, she served the University of Vermont in multiple communications capacities over a period of 15 years, which included the initial creation of UVM’s Center on Rural Addiction funded by a $6.6 million federal grant. “I look forward to bringing my experiences from Ajman and Vermont to the work of JCC here in Smithfield,” she said. “Every community deserves to be celebrated and promoted for its own unique and compelling story. What impresses me most about JCC thus . . .

This article from Harvard’s “The Practice,” shines a light on ODR and its evolution using Colin Rule’s career as a guide. In building ODR systems for the world’s largest online marketplace and for court systems across the country, Rule’s career offers a window through which to observe and understand the larger ODR movement—a movement that is all the more important as the world grapples with the continued impacts of COVID-19.   Separating the People from the Problem The Rise of Online Dispute Resolution Colin Rule (Eritrea 1995–97) • When the Apple II was released in 1977, it was among the first computers marketed and mass-produced for businesses and individuals alike. Apple would later adopt the slogan “The computer for the rest of us,” hinting at its technology’s broad appeal among a nonexpert consumer base. It is fitting, then, that as a grade school student in 1980, Colin Rule first dabbled . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steven Boyd Saum (Ukraine 1994-96)   Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan C Slaght review – an extraordinary quest Drinking ethanol and saving the world … an old-school, tautly strung adventure in pursuit of the largest species of owl review by Helen Macdonald, 22 July,  The Guardian   Jonathan Slaght has the best author photograph I’ve ever seen. Pale, bearded, dressed in black, he gazes at the camera with forbidding intensity. Behind him are snowy woods and running water. Arms crossed, hands deep in a pair of unwieldy leather gauntlets, he holds against his chest a huge owl. Its feathers are shaggy and wet, and from its mouth protrudes the tail end of a silver fish. There’s something puppet-like about this creature, like a living Jim Henson creation, but it also resembles a beast pulled straight from the pages of a medieval bestiary – . . .

  by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978–80) The Oddville Press Summer 2020   NOBODY HITCHHIKED ANY MORE, not through this America so full of dread and bad history. That did not necessarily mean the thing could not be done. Thumb out. If a person were leaving Broadhope County in south Virginia headed toward a destination he was as yet unable to visualize, it could not hurt to try for a lift. Not on the highway, where police prowled, just a plain old country road. Thumb out. He put the odds at slim to none that somebody would stop and pick him up, this close to a dense wood of loblolly pines, under a gray sky in late October, a quarter mile from a broken-armed scarecrow in a field of corn- stalk stubble. Guilt by association. Slimmer still, those odds, that it would be a woman who stopped, but she did. He did . . .

  Explaining Elaine by Rex Nelson Arkansas Democrat-Gazette • Grif Stockley was born into the cotton culture of the Mid-South. His father, Griffin Jasper Stockley Sr., owned a cotton plantation at Lake Cormorant in the Mississippi Delta when the younger Stockley was born in October 1944. The family later moved across the Mississippi River to Marianna, where the father committed suicide during the final stages of cancer. Grif Stockley was 17 when his father died. Stockley excelled in school, serving as president of the student body and enrolling at what’s now Rhodes College at Memphis following high school graduation in 1962. Stockley entered the Peace Corps in 1965 after completing his bachelor’s degree in three years. He worked in Colombia for two years before being drafted into the U.S. Army. After his two-year tour of duty, Stockley began law school at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He went to . . .

  Jesse La Follette, an imagined social reformer, advocates for a program of transformative political change for Wisconsin in the mid-twentieth century that is eerily reminiscent of the early Christian Prophets. When he threatens too many of the powers that were then, though, he escapes the fate that Jesus Christ suffered two thousand years before only by the skin of his teeth and flees to a surprising and ironic refuge nearby to quietly continue his teaching. While in India as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Will Michelet learned about language as a means of connection to others and as a result became able to communicate to all of its various castes. This facility affected a commitment to the equal importance of each and every person in him. You will see this thread in his Jesse, a Man Good Enough. www.gloryboundpublishing.com • Richard M. Grimsrud writing as Will Michelet practiced employment and . . .

  An interesting look into Gen. John J. Pershing’s time in the Philippines Greeley resident Ron Edgerton recently penned the biography “American Datu” which highlights John J. Pershing’s military campaigns in the Philippines.   By TAMARA MARKARD | tmarkard@greeleytribune.com | Greeley CO Tribune July 16, 2020 Fans of the history of war have the opportunity to learn unique stories about Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing through a new book penned by University of Northern Colorado professor emeritus of history Ron Edgerton. “American Datu,” released May 19, looks at the part Gen. John J. Pershing had on creating counterinsurgency methods used by U.S. officers as well as his time in the Philippines. The U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide, publish in January 2009, defines counterinsurgency as “comprehensive civilian and military efforts taken to simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes.” Many times these actions are taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionaries . . .

  Next year, as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Peace Corps, Rosetta Books will publish We Called It a War by Sargent Shriver. This book was an unfinished memoir of Shriver’s about his work with the War on Poverty, and also much about starting and developing the Peace Corps. It had been edited by a partner in his law firm, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, LLP. Bill Josephson, Special Assistant to the Director and then General Counsel during the Shriver years, wrote in the Foreword of the book, “The manuscript of We Called It a War came to light, after nearly fifty years, in a box of Sargent Shriver documents that the Sargent Shriver Peace Institute received from Special Olympics International. When We Called It a War is published, Marian Beil and I– through our website that focuses on the Peace Corps and Peace Corps writers– want . . .

  The last day of my Peace Corps training, I entered the main hallway of the high school where I had spent the past three months. Each day, Craig Storti, an RPCV, and the Director of our training in Morocco, had posted an inspirational quote. As I prepared to set off on an overnight bus to the southern town of Taroudant, I stood before the corkboard, pondering the last bit of advice that I would receive before my journey: “Always remember, no-one is going to look out for you out there, except for Jiminy Cricket. You can be as good a Volunteer or as bad a Volunteer as you want. And chances are, after two years, the way that you feel about your Peace Corps service will be the way that you feel about yourself.” Words, like an inner symphony, that still resonate with me today. This week, I began . . .