The Peace Corps

  I Am a Fact Not a Fiction: Selected Poems by Edward Mycue (Ghana 1961-63) 58 pages October 2023 $10.00 (Paperback); $2.99 (Kindle) “Ed Mycue’s poetry is a lifetime of surprises. He was born surprised, grew up on wonder, and now surely lives under the ever crashing waterfalls of amazement. His language is pure chirp, flip and rouse. It never ever sleeps. Savor his lines — like memory — for as long as you dare” — Hiram Larew, author of More Than Anything and Part Of “The precision of Ed Mycue’s dreamscape is laser-sharp and as warm as chocolate. Images rush pell-mell across the page, jumbling and tossing each other aside as one supplants the other in a rush to break the barrier between words and meaning, perception and feeling.” — Laura Kennelly, Ph.D., Associate Editor, BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider, Bach Institute • San Francisco poet Edward Mycue was born in Niagara Falls, . . .

•   A Short Story by Patricia Edmisten (Peru 1962-64) I had just left the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. looking for a restaurant before my 2:00 P.M. reservation at the Holocaust Museum. A light rain fell, but I had my umbrella. I was on 14th Street and New York Avenue, walking by kiosks run by East Indians and many other ethnic minorities. It was an international bazaar, specializing in souvenirs from our capital city. I loved it. I continued to browse when a middle-aged man, probably homeless, grabbed me around the waist. I was so startled that I hit him with the plastic bag of note cards I carried from the Women’s Museum. It was instinctive. The man shambled off and I, feeling angry and confused, entered Old Ebbit’s Grill where I ordered a glass of white wine and some lunch. It was not . . .

BY: HELEN BOYLE  | PUBLISHED: JULY 30, 2018    Florida State University will launch a new program this fall that will prepare students to volunteer in the Peace Corps or work abroad. The Peace Corps Prep program will help undergraduate students explore and discover the Peace Corps service opportunities that interest them and the skills they need to be a competitive applicant for those positions. “FSU is delighted to extend its ongoing work with the Peace Corps through this program,” said Helen Boyle, associate professor of education and program coordinator. “It will be invaluable for undergraduates who are thinking about international careers in government, development or teaching abroad.” Through a partnership with the College of Education, FSU’s Peace Corps Prep will assist new graduates through the application process to the Peace Corps Education volunteer program. The Peace Corps established the preparation program in 2007 to support universities’ efforts to provide substantive, globally focused . . .

    By  Stephanie Zimmermann Nov 7, 2023 Julie and Bill Heiderman display a portrait of their daughter Bernice at their home in suburban Inverness in 2020. A settlement was announced Tuesday in their federal lawsuit alleging negligence. Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times A suburban Chicago family won a $750,000 settlement Tuesday from the Peace Corps after their daughter died in 2018 of undiagnosed malaria while serving in East Africa. Bernice Heiderman, 24, of Inverness, was volunteering in the island nation of Comoros, when 18 months into her tour she sought medical attention for what turned out to be classic symptoms of malaria — signs that a local Peace Corps doctor and the agency’s director of medical programs in Washington, D.C., apparently missed. Heiderman’s mother, Julie, said the settlement “gives us the sense that the Peace Corps is taking some responsibility. That’s what we’ve wanted all along — that the Peace Corps thinks twice . . .

    BRATTLEBORO — For more than 90 years, people from all over the world have come to Southern Vermont to live and learn, starting with the Experiment for International Living in 1932 and later known as the School for International Training. In the early 1960s, alumnus Sargent Shriver asked the Experiment, then located on Black Mountain in Brattleboro, to train the first wave of volunteers for the nascent Peace Corps, a training program that evolved into the School for International Training and the SIT Study Abroad program, which enrolled at its height more than 2,000 people every year. In 2008, World Learning, SIT’s parent organization, renamed the program in Brattleboro the SIT Graduate Institute, offering master’s degrees in eight areas of study, as well as certificate and professional development programs. In 2018, World Learning announced it was scaling back its programs in Brattleboro, while offering the same courses at locations around the . . .

Countryside: Kitchen Medicine: Herbalist Chooses the Plants at Our Doorstep By Theresa Curry November 3, 2023 Kat Maier (Chile 1978-79) loves the types described in Ayurvedic medicine and has studied plant traditions in Chile as a Peace Corps volunteer, went to an internationally known herb school in England, spent time in the lush hedgerows of Ireland and learned from herbalists all over the world. But, “Don’t go online and order exotic powders and tinctures from afar,” she said. “Let’s start with the local plants that are appropriate for us.” Maier, owner of Sacred Plant Traditions in Charlottesville, and the author of the best-selling book Energetic Herbalism, spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at the Rockfish Valley Community Center late last month as part of  public radio WMRA’s Books and Brews series. She said our fertile mountains are known for high-quality, potent plants that grow wild and thrive. “People all over the world . . .

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) (The materials for this Profile were drawn heavily from Wikipedia)  • In 1964, after graduating with a B. A. in History from Antioch College, Laurence spent a year in France at the University de Besancon and worked in a factory. He then joined the Peace Corps and was stationed in the mountains of Nepal. After returning home, he studied at the University of Oregon and Columbia University’s School of Journalism. When he graduated from Columbia second in his class in 1969, he was named a Pulitzer International Fellow.  Laurence then worked as an associated editor at Newsweek before turning to writing magazine articles for a range of other publications, including Harper’s The New York Times Magazine, and Playboy. During this period, he also worked in a West Virginia coal mine while researching an article. During the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971, he was the only journalist . . .