Short Works by PC Writers

  Why trees aren’t just colorful fall features for our region’s neighborhoods   by Roger K. Lewis (Tunisia 1964-66) President, Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation The Washington Post Oct. 25, 2019 • October’s changing leaf colors, along with intrusive leaf-blower noise, are signals every year that fall is definitely upon us and winter will be arriving in a few weeks. But these sights and sounds also remind us how wonderfully verdant the nation’s capital is. We are quite fortunate. Few cities match metropolitan Washington’s extraordinary amount of tree-covered, vegetated open space. Thousands of acres of interconnected, stream-valley parks thread around and through the region, which encompasses countless neighborhood public parks varying greatly in size, shape, topography, flora and function. Complementing our urban and suburban public parkland are hundreds of thousands of private outdoor spaces — front yards, backyards, courtyards — all contributing in different ways to the fall color display. Washington is . . .

    Wild Turkey Climbing the outside steps to Glynda’s apartment, Mick Garrity felt the gravity of experience slowing his step. The sky was spitting wet snow at him, paying him back for some screw up he could not put his finger on, just now. Glynda’s deadbeat boyfriend Murphy had beaten her up again. Dispatch said she was hysterical. She wanted the police to save her. Again. Across the universe a thousand cops were climbing the same steps hearing the same old story they had heard and told a thousand times. On the landing, Mick raised his hand to knock but Glynda was already opening the door to him. “I kept my word,” she snuffled. “I swear to God, Mick, I kept my word.” She looked terrible. The sleeve of her burgundy quilted robe was torn. Her hair was wild. She had always had a cute face, a sexy come-get-me . . .

  THE GROWNUP TRAIN By Chris Honore’ (Colombia 1967-69) They stood on the train platform, eyes narrowed, bodies angled to the right, looking down the track, waiting. A train had just passed through. Another would be along shortly. They were hardcore, their posture and dress conveying a self-conscious, determined insouciance: shoulders hunched, knees slightly bent, baggy denim shorts riding precariously low on their hips, their hair a shag carpet of stiff, uneven spikes. Both wore frayed black T-shirts, the seams separating, revealing startling white skin. The taller of the two held a skateboard cupped in his left hand, the flat side pressed against his hip, the undercarriage revealing neoprene, day-glo wheels and aluminum axels, called, oddly, trucks. An oval yin yang decal, centered, declared, “I Found Animal Chin.” The nose of the board was shredded, the rails and tail ground down to bare wood. The shorter of the two stood . . .

    The October issue of The Atlantic has a true and fascinating article by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) entitled “When the Culture War Comes for the Kids” with the subtitle of “Caught between a brutal meritocracy and a radical new progressivism, a parent tries to do right by his children while navigating New York City’s schools.” Having raised a son in the Big Apple, and having experienced the same system that George and his wife are now enduring, I feel their pain. It all begins this way, Packer writes, “places at the preschool were awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. At the front of the line, parents were lying in sleeping bags. They had spent the night outside.” And it continues through middle school and high school. It is no wonder young parents flee Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx for the suburbs. Read George’s tale of terror of the public . . .

A Writer Writes     Oral Traditions in Writing by Jeanne D’Haem (Somalia 1968-70) • Somalis are known throughout East Africa for their beauty and for their poetry. In this oral tradition, poems are used to communicate, to share news and even to settle disputes. A poet insults another clan in a poem. For example, “You have mistaken boat-men and Christians for the Prophet.” News and other communication had to be oral because the Somali language was not written even when I lived there in 1968.  This was due to a dispute over what kind of letters should be used. Religious leaders wanted an Arabic alphabet, business people wanted a modern Latin one. When Siad Barre, a military dictator, took over the county in 1969, his goal was rapid modernization under communism. He sent a delegation to China where Chairman Mao held similar views.  When Mao was informed about the dispute, . . .

      The Visit by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77)   Armando Votto Paz wasn’t just any Community Development foreman. He not only got us what we needed but stood by us whistling away the dark clouds. I didn’t want to let him down but being young, my genes were jumping. I was in love and had just slunk back from a clandestine trip to Mexico City. Secrets (like a Mexican girlfriend) are easier heard than kept. I feared the worst when Armando surprised me at my La Ceiba office where I was typing legends for my own maps. He paged through my report’s appendix, checking calculations and smiled before suggesting that I take the day off. He had to visit another volunteer in an isolated village. Since I had never been to the place and he could use some company, he thought it a good fit. We climbed . . .

A Writer Writes   The Paperboy by Chris Honoré (Colombia 1967-69)   My elementary school was called Allendale, a name I never gave much thought to. It was a massive, pale green, two-story Victorian building on a quiet neighborhood street. Two years before I headed off to Jr. High School, I suggested to my folks that being a paperboy would build character, or words to that effect, and solve my financial situation – I was always short of pocket change for, say, a comic or baseball cards wrapped in waxy paper along with a square of pink bubble gum. To sweeten my argument, I pointed out that the newspaper shack, where a cohort of boys gathered each afternoon after school, waiting for the bundles of newspapers to arrive, was less than a block away from Allendale. “Fine,” my parents said, with some reluctance. “Let’s see how it goes.” And so . . .

 A Writer Writes     When I tried learning a second language while traveling, I realized I was doing it all wrong By Paulette Perhach (Paraguay 2008-10)  Published on Matador Network April 8, 2016 BEFORE WORKING IN THE PEACE CORPS in Paraguay for two years, I had never even heard of Guaraní. Guaraní is not in the Latin linguistic family tree I was familiar with. In fact, to my ears, this language sounded like it was from another planet. “Hello” is “mba’éichapa.” “Goodbye” is “jajotopata.” There are nasal harmonies and glottal stops. The “Yes” sounds like saying “he” for a long time, while holding your nose. Water is just spelled “y,” but it’s pronounced like the last sound of a drowning man. There’s just one word for “he” and “she,” but two words for “we.” And, oh yeah, by the way, nouns change depending on who owns them. “House” is just . . .

A Writer Writes     Our Tax Dollars At Work by William Siegel (Ethiopia 1962-64) • I just moved from Boston to Washington DC. It feels like I walked on cobblestones most of the way, carrying my computer and a few hundred books. Otherwise, it’s fine. The weather’s good. I’m looking forward to less snow and more sunshine. There are many more city trees here than there. There are also many more bridges. In Boston, bridges tend to be utilitarian and future looking, with the exception of those crossing the Charles River, connecting to Cambridge, which still look like they were designed by Emerson. In Washington the bridges seem more stately and glide over parks and monuments adding to the mystery of the capital of the present day empire of the world. Somehow my wife and I landed in an apartment in the middle of the city. I think it . . .

    ERITREA’S INDEPENDENCE DAY – MAY 29 by John C. Rude (Ethiopia 1962-64) This week, on May 29, Eritrea celebrates its 28th anniversary as an independent nation. It will be the first independence celebration since Ethiopia’s reform-minded Prime Minister, Abiy Mohammed, announced a unilateral cessation of hostilities, less than a year ago, on July 9, 2018. This independence celebration may also mark the end of Eritrea’s long search for legitimacy. I happened to visit the country in 1992, shortly after Eritrea marked its first independence day. I shared the sadness of the people around me who mourned the war’s heavy sacrifices. Even so, I remember the first anniversary as a time of hoped-for new beginnings. I imagined the atmosphere in Eritrea to be comparable to the years after America won its independence from England in 1780. Then I realized that Eritrea came into being (as a colony, not a . . .

    Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi Travel with Phillip LeBel (Ethiopia 1965–67) • In the July of 1968, I finished spending three and a half years as a secondary school history teacher in Emdeber, Shoa, Ethiopia. Two and a half years were as a Peace Corps Volunteer, while the third was as a contract teacher with the Ethiopian Ministry of Education. Having taught a cohort of students passing through the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades, it was now time to return to the United States. With a graduate fellowship in economics awaiting me in Boston, I took a somewhat meandering trip across Africa, tracing some paths I covered in 1965 while still in the Peace Corps, while others were a journey of exploration. It marked an abiding attachment to Africa that has shaped my professional career ever since. I had traveled to East Africa during the summer of . . .

    This collection of stories is drawn from various decades of my life, starting back when I was a high school student. It has recently been published by Cemetery Press and is available now at Amazon.com. I wrote stories and published them in high school, college and graduate school publications, but my first sale didn’t happen until I was 33 years old. In 1972, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine bought “A Game in the Sun” for $150 — the first money I ever earned from writing fiction. My apprenticeship as a novelist was even longer; I wrote seven before I finally got one published, in 1979. That was an occult-horror novel, The Piercing. I followed it up with half a dozen similar books, some of which made best seller lists. I have also written golf novels, love stories, non-fiction and one family saga. In this collection I’ve compiled 13 stories and entitled them A . . .

  The Overwhelming Question By Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1963-65) • I grab the butt-ends of coffee spoons, roll up the bottoms of my trousers, drag my red wheel barrel along the shore, and dig for salt-washed shells tossed onto the sand; waves slap the shore, codes from lonely mermaids’ whispering. whistling winds from woods nearby wrinkles on the moon thirteen blackbirds observing. flashes from another world pillows of gray sky ancient gnarled oaks cast shadows. tear-drops squeezed from willow trees maelstrom of colors La Mer’s quarreling white caps Singing dolphins’ lure me out to dance. Leaves of grass float past effortlessly. Yes! the brain is wider than the sky and I dare disturb the universe, incite another Big Bang, hurl stars and spin the moon like a top; hunt white whales with Ahab in the South Pacific. • This poem originally appeared at andreazurlo.wixsite.com/andreazurlo/blog   Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1963-65) is . . .

  Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Peru 1962-64) first happened upon Mexico Beach in 1975 on her way to interview at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. She had just finished her doctorate at the University of Florida in Gainesville. In 1977, she moved to Pensacola in “Florida’s Great Northwest,” where she taught at the University of West Florida until retirement. During her family’s time in Florida’s western Panhandle, there were many family reunions on St. George Island, a gorgeous sweep of barrier island off of Apalachicola, not far from Mexico Beach. Patricia remembers . . . •   Mexico Beach Hurricane Michael flattened Mexico Beach in Florida’s eastern Panhandle on October 10, 2018. Was it a fluke in the temperature of the Gulf? A nudge from a high pressure system from the north? God’s unleashed breath, punishment for a covey of sinners living in recreational vehicles back from the beach? Until the . . .