The Peace Corps

    I was among the first Peace Corps Volunteers, a new concept of international cooperation crafted by Sargent Shriver and Harris Wofford together with Warren Wiggins, Bill Josephson and others in two rooms of the Mayflower Hotel just days after the election of John F. Kennedy in the winter of 1961. We were in our twenties for the most part, volunteering without any real idea of what we were doing but following Kennedy’s challenge “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Harris Wofford became our leader, our guide, our father confessor and our friend. Little did we know about him or his family when we first arrived in Africa. He was less than a decade older than most of us. I remember once, just days after arriving in-country, walking with a handful of other PCVs from the university dorms at . . .

RSVP AT: info@voicesforservice.org> Saturday, March 2, 2019 2:00pm Cramton Auditorium – Howard University 2455 6th Street NW, Washington, DC 20059

Tacoma Stories by Richard Wiley (Korea, 1967-69) Bellevue Literary Press, 2019 270 pages $16.99 (paperback)   Reviewed by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80) I can’t get through a day without it. Reading, that is. Sometimes, I have a hard time going pageless for a couple of hours. I’m so habituated to reading, I can forget why I do it. Tacoma Stories just reminded me why: one reads in the hope of delight. And that’s what Wiley’s new book provides. The linked stories that make up the collection are deeply pleasureful reads. How does he do it? One way is with the sentences. Wiley writes nothing like Kafka, but the unexpected leap from one sentence to the next in Tacoma Stories can evoke Kafka’s extraordinary, nerve-jangling transitions. Apposite sentences end paragraphs where they need to be ended. They describe a character. They figure in dialogue. Real readers, true recidivists who cannot resist . . .

    Honorable Exit: How A Few Brave Americans Risked All To Save Our Vietnamese Allies at the End of the War e by Thurston Clarke (Tunisia 1968) Doubleday Publisher April 30, 2019 448 pages $30.00 (hardback), $14.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1965-66) • In wars we expect to read about heroes in combat. In Honorable Exit Thurston Clarke’s mines the depth of emotion that drove dozens of Americans in Vietnam to acts of heroism by risking life and careers to find ways to evacuate South Vietnamese who had connections with Americans and who would have been imprisoned or killed by the North Vietnamese. Clarke tells the story of A Few Brave Americans who during the last weeks of April 1975 smuggled 130,000 Vietnamese co-workers, secretaries, orphans, families — anyone who might become victims of North Vietnamese revenge through the perilous streets of Saigon and other cities. Don’t let the subtitle fool . . .

    NY RPCVs Art Show The 5th “Peace Corps Creates . . . Art by Returned Volunteers” Art Show, will have it opening reception on March 7th. The reception (and show) is free and open to the public. Venue: 14th St Y, in Manhattan Venue address: 344 E 14th St, New York, NY 10003 (between 1st and 2nd ave) Nearest subway: L train at 14th Street and 1st Ave. Reception date and time: March 7th, 7pm–9pm Free and open to the public Telephone number: (212) 780-0800 Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/246447406231683/ Contact: info@peacecorpsnyc.org The art show will run for five weeks, March 7–April 11. People visiting New York during that time are encouraged to come and see the show. Peace Corps is based on community and connecting. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we serve abroad in very different places than where we grew up, but end up embedded in the fabric of our surroundings. These experiences have shaped us . . .

    H.J.Res.31 – Consolidated Appropriations Act 2019 • For the Peace Corps (including transfer of funds) For necessary expenses to carry out the provisions of the Peace Corps Act (22 U.S.C. 2501 et seq.), including the purchase of not to exceed five passenger motor vehicles for administrative purposes for use outside of the United States, $410,500,000, of which $6,000,000 is for the Office of Inspector General, to remain available until September 30, 2020: Provided, That the Director of the Peace Corps may transfer to the Foreign Currency Fluctuations Account, as authorized by section 16 of the Peace Corps Act (22 U.S.C. 2515), an amount not to exceed $5,000,000: Provided further, That funds transferred pursuant to the previous proviso may not be derived from amounts made available for Peace Corps overseas operations: Provided further, That of the funds appropriated under this heading, not to exceed $104,000 may be available for . . .

    February 7, 2019 WASHINGTON – Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen released the following statement on the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) initiative introduced today during a launch event at the White House with President Donald J. Trump, Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump, leaders from across the U.S. government, and global stakeholders. “Since its formation in 1961, the Peace Corps has advanced the empowerment of women as a pillar of development, recognizing that expanding opportunities for women can transform their futures and the futures of their families. Having served the Peace Corps in various capacities, I am especially honored to reaffirm this commitment through the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity initiative, a whole-of-government approach to advancing workforce development, promoting women’s entrepreneurship and access to capital, and removing barriers that prevent women from fully participating in the economy.   “I want to thank Ella Zande for joining us . . .

Birds of Passage Is a Knockout By David Edelstein Photo: Orchard The Colombian-born director Ciro Guerra makes films about the brutal corruption of what First Worlders call the Third World but Guerra would call the essential one: of indigenous peoples who can recognize their ancient origins in the families and objects and landscape around them and then — suddenly, dizzyingly, catastrophically — can’t. His new film (co-directed by Cristina Gallego), Birds of Passage, is part ethnographic documentary, part The Godfather. People who seem (to us) strange and primitive metamorphose into a familiar breed of gangster — the kind that pop culture (American, Mexican, Chinese, you name it) gives undue stature. As in Guerra’s last film, Embrace of the Serpent, the disjunction between enduring ways and modern, ephemeral fashions and equipment and stuff is not just jarring but toxic, a shock to the system that will almost certainly kill the host. Guerra and Gallego frame Birds of Passage with the breathy . . .

Encounters with Harris Wofford By Neil Boyer My first encounter with Harris came in the spring of 1962, when I was a third-year student at New York University School of Law. I stopped in the dormitory where I lived (Hayden Hall) and found in my mailbox a message asking me to call Harris Wofford. I had no idea who he was, and there was no return phone number or any other reference to anyone of that name. So I began a search of the white pages in the Manhattan phone directory, found a listing for a Harris Wofford and called the number. The man who answered was pleasant but as puzzled about this call as I was. I guessed that this had something to do with the Peace Corps since I had applied but not heard anything in return.  Aha, the man said, “I think you want my son. He’s . . .

    The Man Who Defined National Service by Steven Waldman, Washington Monthly contributing editor January 23, 2019 • When I went to work for Harris Wofford in 1995, I knew him only as a legend. By that point, he had already achieved more in his career than all but a tiny fraction of senators or governors in the last century. Wofford, who died over the weekend, had mentored Martin Luther King on the art of non-violent civil disobedience; he marched in Selma; he prodded John F. Kennedy to call Coretta Scott King when the civil rights leader had been imprisoned, probably tipping the election to JFK; he helped create the Peace Corps and ran its Africa program; he was elected senator from Pennsylvania in a campaign that convinced the Democrats, for the first time in decades, that universal health care was a winning issue; and as a senator, he was a . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Bob Arias (Colombia 1964-66) Review: “Birds of Passage,” the Tragic Story of an Indigenous Colombian Family’s Involvement in the Drug War By Richard Brody New Yorker February 11, 2019 The cultural richness of “Birds of Passage” is overwhelming, its sense of detail piercingly perceptive, and its sense of drama rigorously yet organically integrated with its documentary elements. Photograph Courtesy The Orchard The Colombian film “Birds of Passage,” directed by Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, is an ethnographic thriller—a drama set in rural northern Colombia, centered on one indigenous group, the Wayuu, and based on the true story of a drug war that, from the late nineteen-sixties through the early nineteen-eighties, inflamed the region and engulfed a Wayuu family. It’s a movie involving a wide spectrum of experience, but its elements are nonetheless profoundly integrated. It’s not a thriller with some local color adorning the action or . . .

WASHINGTON– In honor of Black History Month, today the Peace Corps recognizes the important contributions African-American Volunteers and staff have made to the agency’s mission and promoting cross-cultural understanding around the globe with a Press Release. The news release published today, February 11, 2019, honors African-American Volunteers and a number of noted staff members, including, of course, Carolyn R. Payton, the first female Director of Peace Corps, as well as the first African-American Director, and writes about a few other African-American staff members. (By the way, the Peace Corps Press Release  has a type with Carolyn’s first name under her photograph.) However, the Press Release never mentions the most recognized African-Americans on the first Peace Corps staff, Franklin Williams, who began his ‘international’ career at the Peace Corps in 1961, and was at HQ as Chief of the Division of Private Organizations, and then head of the African Region. In 1965 . . .

DERVISHES By Steve Horowitz  (Iran 1968-71) It was a long walk from the Workman’s house to this other part of town, where the monthly meetings and rituals took place.  Early evening but already dark , through the maze of winding high-walled alleys; few people were outside and all the mud walls seemed to look the same. Three of us -John, myself and Mustapha, John’s friend who had set everything up for us- made our way slowly with Mustapha following the directions someone had provided him. What they did at these ritual gatherings was private, secretive and pretty bizarre to outsiders, so there was no interest in encouraging visitors- especially foreigners- to attend, but if there was an intermediary to make contact and the patience to wait for permission to be granted, it could be arranged John and his wife were English teachers in this Kurdish city not far from the . . .