New List of Peace Corps authors who have published 2 or more books

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• John,

  Wow, in total these 432 books have to be times by a factor of 2 for a total of at least 864 books! And, perhaps, there may be at least another 432 single books by PC authors. What is it in the Peace Corps experience that led to such an outpouring of literature.
  from so small a base of some 260,000 former Volunteers over the past 60 years!

  Well done, John.

  Jeremiah Norris
  Colombia 1963-65

  Reply

• PEACE CORPS HISTORY DRIFTS

  We these early volunteers
  New in so many following
  Early growth vanishing
  Spanning a century in our ages
  Bettering our worlds listening
  Time paper thin growing curious
  From fires facts fictions
  Drift stilling sailing away
  Followed into the wind
  Long gone voices
  New phantoms mustardstars
  Paper thin our world and its desolve
  Curious silences with a dream.

  (C) Copyright Edward Mycue 29 November 2021 Monday 8AM

  Note: remembering Mahlon Dewey then young Personnel professional loaned from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfage to the youthful agency The Peace Corps who was 97 yesterday still alive Washingon DC (born November 24, 1924)

  Reply

  • NIGHT THOUGHTS IN SAN FRANCISCO DURING COVID PANDEMIC, AN EMAIL TO A YOUNGER Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (I’m 84 in 2021)
    To Terri Schweitzer:
    So happy you are ok and still near-er (north in Sonoma County, CA) even though it’s just a feeling (and just may be weird to say). (Our nieces a couple of blocks away for many years moved across the Bay to the city of Richmond and it feels a loss even though they were able to get a whole house after many years, which is good certainly, but maybe — and this is a conundrum in the “friend and family” continuum.) I am glad for whatever is good for you and them is the “thought” and the congruous and incongruous response I’m am one of those old people experiencing the things that pass.*

    *OLD PEOPLE AND THE THINGS THAT PASS by Louis Couperus, reference of the novel

    (C) Copyright Edward Mycue 6 December 2021

    For Terrie Schweitzer, photographer (Peace Corps Volunteer (50 years after I’d gone Ghana in August 1961)

    Reply

    • TO THE SAN FRANCISCO MINT ON A LONELY ROAD

      Seven miles north from the Seven Mile House
      Into San Francisco to the Ferry Building while
      East a central California valley morning Tule fog

      Burned-off into a sun’s golden angel rushing over
      The clown face remembered as history westering
      Above the City and out over the Pacific Ocean’s

      Far scattered Island kingdoms into the Asian Orient.

      But first come back to San Francisco’s Bay edge
      To those flats where a pony express stopped and
      Might have stayed overnight at seven Mile House.

      It’s still there since 1853 on Bayshore still a lonely
      Boulevard at San Francisco’s southern end where
      Today Brisbane begins at Geneva Avenue. Go north

      Seven Miles to the Ferry Building and Mission street.

      Then go west up a mile to the Old San Francisco Mint
      Where Wells-Fargo stagecoaches changed the payloads
      Having first pawed and paused at seven Mile House

      Maybe stayed the night, delivered the mail, exchanged
      Passengers, fed and watered the hard-pressed horses
      Setting-out again into a night or dawn hooves pounding

      On that still lonely Bayshore road from and to San Francisco.

      (C) Copyright Edward Mycue 2013)For Kris Hemensley, Melbourne & Jorgen Hansen, Sydney Australia

      Reply

    • [ghana1] Terrie Schweitzer’s camera took a photo of us in Berkeyey at a Peace Corps RETURNED VOLUNTEERS big meeting in 2015 (I had gone to Ghana in 1961 and she went there exactly 50 years later) Terrie lives in Sonoma county and is a professional photographer who lost her heart to birds

      Reply

      • IL TRITTICO – (C) Copyright Edward mycue 3 poems 14 XII 2021 @ 12 noon Tuesday (1. BACK EVEN BEFORE THE TIME OF SET; .. 2. TO THE SAN FRANCISCO MINT ON A LONELY ROAD; 3. PEACE CORPS HISTORY DRIFTS

        1. BACK EVEN BEFORE THE TIME OF SET

        1. The most symmetrical objects seen
        Sideways look mainly asymmetrical.
        2. Sheep ate the shepherd, locked in
        A clarity of language connections.
        3. An egg is a splendid cage
        4. Failed we feel safe from Armageddon,
        From the wolf of the magic town.
        5. Identity loops dream to reality.
        6. Dark blossoms in the swimming night
        Keep the eyes out as the curtain as
        The curtain rises onto a lost world.
        7. We make all kinds of distress calls to
        Share something deeper to extend.
        8. Turning tables doing it now interning.

        (C) Copyright Edward Mycue December 4, 2021 San Francisco, CA 5:10pm Saturday

        for Anthony Rudolf poet publisher translator (his Menard Press, London 1979-80 published my volume of poems THE SINGING MAN MY FATHER GAVE ME)

        2. TO THE SAN FRANCISCO MINT ON A LONELY ROAD

        Seven miles north from the Seven Mile House
        Into San Francisco to the Ferry Building while
        East a central California valley morning Tule fog

        Burned-off into a sun’s golden angel rushing over
        The clown face remembered as history westering
        Above the City and out over the Pacific Ocean’s

        Far scattered Island kingdoms into the Asian Orient.

        But first come back to San Francisco’s Bay edge
        To those flats where a pony express stopped and
        Might have stayed overnight at seven Mile House.

        It’s still there since 1853 on Bayshore still a lonely
        Boulevard at San Francisco’s southern end where
        Today Brisbane begins at Geneva Avenue. Go north

        Seven Miles to the Ferry Building and Mission street.

        Then go west up a mile to the Old San Francisco Mint
        Where Wells-Fargo stagecoaches changed the payloads
        Having first pawed and paused at seven Mile House

        Maybe stayed the night, delivered the mail, exchanged
        Passengers, fed and watered the hard-pressed horses
        Setting-out again into a night or dawn hooves pounding

        On that still lonely Bayshore road from and to San Francisco.

        (C) Copyright Edward Mycue 2013)For Kris Hemensley, Melbourne & Jorgen Hansen, Sydney Australia
        3. PEACE CORPS HISTORY DRIFTS

        We these early volunteers
        New in so many following
        Early growth vanishing
        Spanning a century in our ages
        Bettering our worlds listening
        Time paper thin growing curious
        From fires facts fictions
        Drift stilling sailing away
        Followed into the wind
        As I hear in that wind
        Long gone voices
        New phantoms mustardstars
        Paper thin our world and its desolve
        Curious silences with a dream.

        (C) Copyright Edward Mycue 29 November 2021 Monday 8AM

        Note: remembering Mahlon Dewey then young Personnel professional loaned from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the The Peace Corps who was 97 yesterday still alive Washingon DC

        (C) Copyright for all 3 poems* of IL TRITTICO Edward Mycue, 14 December 2021 Tuesday at 12 noon
        *1. BACK EVEN BEFORE THE TIME OF SET 2. TO THE SAN FRANCISCO

        Note: remembering Mahlon Dewey then young Personnel professional loaned from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the The Peace Corps who was 97 yesterday still alive Washingon DC

        (C) Copyright for all 3 poems* of IL TRITTICO Edward Mycue, 14 December 2021 Tuesday at 12 noon
        *1. BACK EVEN BEFORE THE TIME OF SET 2. TO THE SAN FRANCISCO

        Reply

        • I WOULD NOT LIKE TO DIE BEFORE I HAVE EXPLAINED – SUITE OF 6 POEMS by Edward Mycue

          1. Old Jack Lyman 2. Rainbow Sunami Surviving and Sailing ABC’s Triage Lessons 3. Waiting To Sail Away 4. Rainbow ABCS Triage In our Times 5. Tapestry Is What I Have Seen As My Whole Writing Scope 6. Richard Steger: His Painter’s Life Sketched Briefly (

          1. OLD JACK LYMAN

          Thinking of my godmother and aunt Jane Delehant Ryan who died at 96 and of
          Old Jack as Ruth Witt-Diamant refered to Jack Lyman
          when he was in his 90’s in the 1970’s as “the oldest poet”
          during the times I was her gardener and she’d go up to Bayles Mill in St Helena in
          Napa County and bring him down for days at a time and worked it so we got together.
          He was almost 100 or 100 when he died. W.W. Lyman.
          And later when with Richard Steger I’d go up and stay in Calistoga at Dr Wilkinson’s spa/ motel we’d go down to St Helena (passing Bales Mill State Park)
          and go to the St Helena Library with the Silverado Museum (with all the Robt L Stevenson materials and the really swell paintings)
          and I’d go to the library where after surrendering my credentials (Dr Lic, etc) I’d go to the rare book room and read in the 3 volumes of closely typed carbons
          on onionskin pages of Jack Lyman’s memoirs. I think I only did that thinking back no more than 4 or 5 times. I’d a lot of writing.) I’ve written about him and of
          Helen Hoyt poet his wife
          and their son who was still alive into the 1980’s I (the R word) remember. He’d been Ruth Witt-Diamant’s teacher at UC Berkeley way back there. What lives!
          I maunder on, but sometimes within the blather is such real history and much of it in my tapestry of writing.

          2. RAINBOW SUNAMI SURVIVING AND SAILING ABCs TRIAGE LESSON
          INDIGO MIST>SCHILLER SHINE>TOURMALINE GLOW

          And still we seek
          beyond circles
          twisting,
          continuing,
          turning
          what was then
          back
          because then
          here returns,
          not here’s beginning.
          A word dreams motion.
          A motion
          makes life glorious
          puts raw silk to silence
          gives music tongue
          erupts nature –
          as it becomes—
          revealing
          the prairie garnet
          leaving the wind behind
          in all the rainbow colors.

          3. WAITING TO SAIL AWAY

          Childhood desire turns life’s wheels,
          these large hoops, propelling them with sticks
          under the tall park elm trees. Movement of wheels.
          Everyone there is here now
          within you and all of your
          kin and all of your kith are here now and it will take a lifetime to
          flower and to fly and to sail this sea of
          thickening light.
          Room-tone, mouth-feel, a reordering
          of parts, rationing of emotions: I hear voices:
          they live here now without forgetting the way
          back under the surface of consciousness, the
          bungled aspirations, of leprosy as a model,
          and grim ire. Life pushes, photography wins over
          life, death Charon, the ferryman, carries souls across
          Dante says there are five rivers and that Styx is for the
          greatest damned living their wrath cursing war with each other for all
          eternity My mischances shaped my apprenticeship-muscles
          When you are young you don’t know what’s coming. Life is
          not the same poetry now, just verse. My inner sanctum let joy
          become lost in Cairo as I grasped failures through a lengthy history.
          Wanting to learn dying before severing life’s link Welcome
          The far shore before you miss it and notice the far shore before you reach it.
          River of life life river the river life life a river bed all pass through Our
          earth is a riverbed our river of life River Styx forms a boundary
          between the compartmentalized and the streams of consciousness sailing away

          4. RAINBOW ABC’S – TRIAGE IN OUR TIMES

          A. INDIGO MIST
          1. We could never go home even when we had not left it. Home is a windsong in our hearts. These hearts have exploded, repositioned themselves, ending as much the mends themselves as the remaindered hearts. This then is ‘home’.

          2. You don’t need contrition for a condition. Maybe an explanation will do. Maybe it’s an act– not a crime. You don’t need permission to seek sublime. It’s the condition. Don’t ask vindication. Brighten the dark. No negatives first. Follow your thirst. Trust intuition. It’s the condition.

          3. I believed in progress, in the basic goodness of all persons. There was a stranger inside of me, an intruder, who was not me, yet part of me, who swallowed as I drank: I’ve lived as if he’ll die when I die.

          4. We now begin to see that our ‘strangers’ within us are the sharpie fine pointed pens we thought “we” wrote with, but really are the life force, forces who lead, encourage, lift us through our nights. What this is baffles me.

          5. You’re not mythic. It is here now. We pass out of history. This life force continues. While we live we are stewards, mechanics, actors, helpers.

          6. Our actions matter, our thoughts matter. Our beginnings organize into this great matter.

          . B. SCHILLER SHINE
          Here’s mind’s province. Beyond here worlds have no cause looking back. Out there becomes then a here. From personal to political to spires, further and higher to travel. What was here then, there, remains. Here, now, resting time, still we seek.

          C. TOURMALINE GLOW
          Beyond circles is twisting, continuing. Turning what was then back, forward, Here returns, but not here’s beginning. That words dream motion makes life glorious puts raw silk to silence gives music tongue reveals nature becomes the prairie garnet leaving the wind behind and in all the rainbow colors.

          5. TAPESTRY IS WHAT I HAVE SEEN AS MY WHOLE WRITING SCOPE
           its root, route, and range as a song, of minute, uneven, parts mostly lyrical in –something similar to a series of novels known as roman-fleuve, a French term that literally means “river-novel” and that I refer to my poetry that I see as a similar series of minute pieces, of poems, that are in some ways novels written by one author, me, Edward Mycue, in my life, and are about situations, ideas, characters (sometimes family members or friends)–a saga, where a historical backdrop plays a prominent role in the presentations, often sketching an era.
          Once I’d considered, in reveries, memorizing many sacred books: the Koran, the Bible old & new, the Book of the Dead, the Kaleval, plus the I Ching, that once seemed almost ‘like sacred, man’ during some San Francisco hippy days practiced by us on our nailed-down living room carpet with Connie, Vincent, Barbara, Margaret, Kevin, Ruth, Michael, Joe, Beverly, David, Elizabeth, Phil, Margo/Lee, Mom, Jane, Nick, Rachel, Richard/ me–drifting back into some Mime Troupe& New Shakespeare Company-San Francisco Haight & 1200 Masonic Street night/day recollections and has all come to seem hitting speed-bump apprenticeships some later pheromone breakdowns as lesson by lesson we found ways leaving paw prints on parchment.

          6. RICHARD STEGER: HIS PAINTER’S LIFE SKETCHED BRIEFLY

          The San Francisco poet Edward Mycue writes of his husband Richard Steger’s painting and drawings with their bold objects, rich and evanescent colors, landscapes, patterns, noises felt as elemental, windy, hot delicate
          Finishing to cover a cultural waterfront including the tough strong that flow the way fish in the Oakland Art Museum koi pond can be both physical and abstract as the towering and the delicate are built from pieces into spiritual entities as a new old master artist.
          He was born in Chicago, grew up in Cotati, Ca, and having studied first at Santa Rosa Junior College under Maurice Lapp and moved south to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, later receiving his Master of Art in Painting from San Francisco State University.
          His initial show was in 1974 at the Labaudt Memorial Gallery. His most recent was at the Richmond One Gallery in 2019.
          His lilting art lifts my spirits because here remains a new voice in these recent years. Without bowing to any reigning panjandrum styles and schools, here is a painter who just can kick the eagled out of their seven main heavens (nest).

          (C) Copyright Edward Mycue December 15, 2021

        • BACK TIME COMES FORWARD

          Back, time comes forward.
          Life, death sentences remain.
          Unfinished, some memories throb.
          Reveries, wheels, rush remembering.
          Cardinal directions play sorrow missions.
          We animals, who remember, smile a little too.

          © Copyright Edward Mycue Wednesday December 15, 2021 10:15am

        • WORD THUMB

          Sin and simple pleasures, reality and symbols
          person & personification, allegory & metaphor
          fables taught me about looking over a four-leaf
          clover, 3 coins in a fountain, about loving you
          eternally, and about loving a sailor’s bellbottom

          trousers and coat of navy blue and a lot of other
          songs my brother David sang and my dad sang
          and that I learned to sing and my little brother
          Peter and sisters Margo, Cookie, Janey, & Arda

          learned to sing, too. But not our mother Ruth
          Daddy (Jack) crooned his high baritone to her
          and us (he said “tenor”—tenors get the girl!)

          took us to movies with Rita, Ava, Veronica
          (Hayworth, Gardner, Lake–and Judy Garland)

          brought us a radiance of life’s simple pleasures

          I carry in me a singing man my father gave me.

          (C) Copyright Edward Mycue

• Great Work to all those who not only served but went on to write of their experience! And special thanks to all those involved in compiling such an incredible list and hosting this wonderful site that with its magic has me vibing with that energy that took me to Gabon 1981-83 and changed my worldview profoundly.

  Reply

• I looked on the list again and don’t find
  Stephen Vincent’s name — he was in Nigeria in the early 1960’s teaching in a college creative writing I recall — and he lives in San Francisco CA where I do and I met him in the Fall of 1970. He has published several book and been an editor and a publisher. I’m 86 this year (Ghana One 1961) & Steve is a few years younger than me. I saw him some months ago at an event for a late poet Laura Ulewicz for whom he is the literary executor and Steve is the collector/ author of the book of Laura’s selected poems.

  Edward Mycue

  P.S. I’ll put his email address in a post to John Coyne and Marian Hailey Beil and Joanne Roll.

  Reply

  • p.s. here is a memory about Steve Vincent’s mom and dad and their ilk (includes Josephine Miles)
    YOU DON’T GET IF OFF THE GRASS, –A JAZZ RIFF PARABLE about Barbara Vincent who was another brave “Barbara (Frietchie”, valorized by the poet John Greenleaf Whittier)
    Mrs Barbara Vincent 1916-2012 and others of her ilk saved San Francisco Bay many decades past now (she and they pop up in discussions on tv and in published memories, and Josephine Miles’ poems). Quoting from one the obituaries: “Barbara was one of a small but determined and persuasive group of women in post-WWII Richmond who battled incessantly to make Richmond a better place. Their most tangible legacy is the vast amount of public access and thousands of acres of shoreline parks on Richmond’s 32 miles of shoreline. Barbara was also a champion of environmental justice and social equity, and inspired many of younger generations to take up and advance those causes in Richmond. Barbara Moore Vincent 1916-2012 Resident of Richmond, Ca Her family and parents, Marie W. and Joseph H. Moore, were pioneers in Richmond’s early development. Barbara was born in Richmond on March 6, 1916 and died on September 24, 2012, quietly, at her home, in Richmond. “Barbara was educated in local schools, University of California, Berkeley, B.S. Economics in 1937, and at age 50, became a student again by attending Hastings College of Law, San Francisco. Her husband Jay predeceased her in 2005.
    An environmentalist and civic leader, she served on the Richmond Planning Commission, 1957 to 1969, and was the first woman chairperson in 1963. A Board Member of Save the San Francisco Bay Association, serving from 1963 to 1991. She and her cohorts of “little ole ladies in tennis shoes” were major forces in the development of Richmond shoreline for public use. The shoreline Bay Trail, and parks that include Point Isabel, Miller-Knox, Point Molate, East Brother’s Lighthouse, Point Pinole and San Pablo Reservoir, carry the imprint of Barbara’s research, writing and organization efforts. Barbara and her late husband, Jay, both shared and championed this vision of public access to the shoreline, which in 1960,_ had but a 64 foot boat ramp, now Boat Ramp Park. In recognition of both of their years of community service, the City, in 1997, honored their contributions with the naming of the Barbara and Jay Vincent Park on the Bay Trail at Marina Bay. Survivors are son’s J. Michael of Suisun Valley, Stephen of San Francisco, and David of Richmond; grandchildren Tracy Ylarregui, Cathleen Ellis, Lucas and Pearl Ann McGee-Vincent and Alek Gent-Vincent; and great grandchildren, Ryan, Matthew, Katelin, Brian, Magan, Luke and Mason. Son Christopher preceded her in death.”
    Most people these days wouldn’t know about her. But she was a person without a sash and a gun but with a light for right. She represents what a true citizen does. And she did it with others women and men (including her own husband).

    In late years such persons may be called “activists”, but that word is a faded generality versus who these great citizens were. There is an old saying from my birthplace, “the patch” in Niagara Falls on the American side, New York about all those successful children: YOU DON’T GET IT OFF THE GRASS. It is the parents who worked so hard to get here and made it all happen. Happily for these parents, their kids would do well, and that is what matters to these vanished heroes, vanished like the Avars, like the oak forest woodlands lost to the east Bay, Oakland also called Oak City.
    © Copyright Edward Mycue 3 April 2020 Friday

    Reply

    • STEPHEN VINCENT RPCV NIGERIA books: Piece by Piece (poems), Nssuka, Nigeria: Redberry/Okike Publications, 1967
      White Lights and Whale Hearts (poems), NY: The Crossing Press, 1971
      The Ballad of Artie Bremer (poems), Momo’s Press, 1974
      Five on the Western Edge (poems), with Beau Beausoleil, Steve Brooks, Hilton Obenzinger, and Larry Felson, Momo’s Press, 1977
      Now Everyone Knows Childcare (poems), Momo’s Press, 1980
      Passage (poems), San Francisco, CA: Meadow Press, 1983
      O California: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centure Landscapes and Observations (Buy this book), editor, Paul Mills and Vincent, Bedford Arts, 1989
      Walking (poems), Northhampton, MA: Junction Press, 1993
      A Walk Toward Spicer, Cherry On Top Press, no date
      Sleeping with Sappho, Faux Press, date unknown (faux ebook), no date
      Triggers, Exeter, England: Shearsman Books, 2005 (ebook)
      Exploring the Bancroft Library: The Centennial Guide to Its Extraordinary History, Spectacular Special Collections, Research Pleasures, Its Amazing Future, and How It All Works, editor with Charles B. Faulhaber, Signature Books, 2006 (Buy this book)
      Walking Theory, Junction Press, 2007 (to order)

      Reply

• This is about/ by Alice O’Grady up to 2008now living near Sacramento CA

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2020
  About the Book (See diary below)

  If you’re interested in Africa and want to know more about West Africa but don’t like non-fiction books, here’s an historical novel for you.

  It’s a story about Kofi, a 17-year-old member of the Ashanti tribe in what is now central Ghana. In 1900, when the story takes place, it is part of the British colonial system.

  Kofi goes to hear the British governor, who was visiting from the coast to give a speech. In it the governor tells the Africans they will have to pay certain fees, that their kidnapped chief will not be returned to them, and he demands to sit on the Golden Stool. These and other pronouncements infuriate the Ashantis, and they go to war.

  Kofi, who does not believe in violence, is caught up in the war with many misgivings. He is very fond of Trudi, a school friend and the daughter of one of the missionaries, and doesn’t want her to suffer.

  The Africans besiege the Kumasi fort in which the governor, his wife and son and British soldiers are residing and in which Swiss missionaries have taken shelter. In the fort, Trudi befriends Paul, the son of the governor, and the young man also is attracted to the self-centered girl.

  The siege continues for more than two months, after which most of the Europeans escape. Before they part, Trudi promises to wait for Paul to finish his college studies.

  Kofi has become intensely anti-European, and vows to spend his life as a freedom fighter.

  Most of the events and characters, with the exception of Kofi, Trudi and Paul, are historical. I was fortunate in that the British governor’s wife published a book in which she described life in the fort during the siege, so I have not only historians’ accounts of the Ashantis’ conduct of the war, but an insider’s view of the besieged.

  Ashanti Saga: The Fort is a Young Adult book, but adults of all ages enjoy reading it. It is available at Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com.

  BOOK TOUR

  I’m currently on a tour of Florida, Texas, California and the Pacific Northwest (and points in between) from mid-January to mid-April. I am speaking, giving PowerPoint presentations about West Africa and signing my book along the way.

  RETURN TO AFRICA

  I first went to Ghana in 1961 as a member of the first U.S. Peace Corps group to go to work anywhere in the world. I taught science there for two years, and in 1964 I became Deputy Director of the Peace Corps in Ibadan, Nigeria. In 1968 I went back to Ghana to teach in Accra, leaving in 1972.

  Early in 2008 I was contacted by some former students at the the high school in Accra, who informed me they were endowing a scholarship at the school and naming it “The Alice R. O’Grady Award for Excellence in Science.” They presented me with a round-trip ticket to Ghana so I could go to Accra and present the first award to a student at the school, which I did in September, 2008.

  Posted by Aliceat 1:02 PM7 comments:
  Labels: Alice R. O’Grady Award for Excellence in Science, Ashanti Saga: The Fort
  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2012
  Back at last
  Just to let you know that I AM working on the sequel to Ashanti Saga: The Fort. Its working title is Ashanti Saga: Change of Plans. This novel takes place in 1922, and the main characters are offspring of some of those we met in 1900 in the first novel. A young soldier travels to Ghana from his native England, and there he has the experiences that fill the remainder of the book. The story begins with his family in England, and you will recognize his parents if you’ve read The Fort. Then his trip by sea to the Gold Coast, and his adventurous disembarking at Takoradi. He is posted to Kumasi, where he falls in love. That’s all I’m going to reveal to you; the book should be published by spring of 2013.
  Posted by Aliceat 7:25 PMNo comments:
  SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2009
  Last Leg
  Can one in all honesty write a diary after finishing a trip? I think not. So, as I hope to be in Chautauqua tonight, I’d better write about my journey since Minnesota.

  Madison, WI is where my fellow Ghana 1 Bob Klein and former Nigeria PCV Phyllis Noble live. They had a party at which I spoke, and I also spent a morning at Sennett Middle School, talking to three groups of children about West Africa. Enjoyed both, but I do love speaking to children, though they generally don’t buy books.

  Klein/Noble’s neighborhood has a plethora of ethnic restaurants, and I enjoyed Indian and Thai meals there, as well as a surprisingly good pizza and Bob’s doctored spicy tomato soup.

  Spent my 75th birthday with them, a leisurely time with no schedule, no obligations. That’s the way a birthday should be.

  Took a slight detour to Milwaukee, where I stopped at the Omanhene Chocolate Company U.S. headquarters to meet Steve Wallace. He has a factory in Tema, Ghana that produces chocolate, which he sells in the U.S. and Japan. I bought a bunch of his small chocolate bars and have been giving one to everyone who buys my book.

  Had lunch near Chicago with my sister-in-law, Betty O’Grady, catching up with family news. A night in South Bend, IN and I’m now near Cleveland, and shall head home almost immediately.
  Posted by Aliceat 7:11 AMNo comments:
  Skirting the Blizzard
  After Ellensburg, WA I drove through Idaho: farmland with a great advantage.The names of the crops were posted on the fences along the highway! No more “I wonder what that is growing there” in Idaho! Even though, in March, there wasn’t much growing anywhere.

  The weather forecasts and my friends warned me that a big snowstorm had hit the Dakotas and Nebraska, so I stayed in Billings waiting to see which way was better: 90 through N.D. or 94 through S.D. The next day, south looked a little better, so I took off, through a corner of Wyoming and then east. The days were sunny and the roads perfectly clear, with an occasional wet spot.

  In Wyoming I was pleased to see a herd of antelope. I recall people hunting them when I lived in Thermopolis; brought back memories. Don’t think I ever ate one, for which I’m grateful after seeing these graceful animals.

  A lot of the driving in South Dakota was through hills (mountains?) that were bare and brown or tan. Maybe there were dead grasses. When one is at the crest of a hill, looking down at more hills, one has that on-top-of-the-world feeling. You can never get that when there are trees around.

  In Minneapolis I had a new speaking experience: I spoke in an art gallery. It was an exhibit of the beautiful metalwork of Rabi Sanfo from Burkina Faso, just north of Ghana. I had an interested crowd, and sold more books than usual.

  The gallery is owned by former Nigeria PCV Lynn Olsen and her husband Frank Stone, who is also a metal artist. They own the gallery building and rent space for other artists and craftsmen’s workshops. They’ve watched the somewhat run-down neighborhood change to one occupied by artists side by side with the ethnically mixed population. Had a great few days with them, had a look at the city and the Mississippi River, and went into the Guthrie theater complex. Interesting building.
  Posted by Aliceat 6:31 AMNo comments:
  SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2009
  Chimpanzees
  My friend Laura Damon has long been interested in chimpanzees, and she mentioned in an email that I was near the Chimpanzee & Human Communication Institute in Ellensburg, WA. I stopped there, attending a 1 1/2-hour “chimposium” in which I learned a lot about chimps and observed the three residents using American sign language to each other and to humans. What an experience that was!

  I encourage everyone to take advantage of this opportunity when possible. The Web site is http://www.cwu.edu/~cwuchci/.

  Driving east from Ellensburg I encountered snow–but not on the road. For much of the rest of my trip so far there has been snow on the ground. Seeing it among the conifers on the mountainsides was beautiful, and once a recent snowfall had dusted the branches. Such glorious sights I’ve seen!
  Posted by Aliceat 7:53 AMNo comments:
  Labels: chimpanzees
  FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2009
  Hail, Columbia!
  Visiting my niece Jessica Burstein in Seattle was fun, as I hadn’t seen her in years, and I enjoy her company. We ate (and drank) at several good restaurants in her neighborhood, and had a lot of conversations.

  I’d broken a tooth on the way there, and her dentist glued it back together (a temporary measure) that turned out to be QUITE temporary, as it came loose about an hour later as I gently ate. So now I’m gap-toothed again.

  With the help of Dr. Joe Appiah-Kusi I visited two schools, and another that Jessica had arranged for. Didn’t actually speak (except briefly to one class) at Seattle Girls’ School, but had a fascinating tour of the place. The syllabus is really interesting, and as it’s a private school it can make education more meaningful, environmental and effective than is possible in the public bureaucracy.

  Back to Portland for hosts Laura and Jonathan’s party and to again enjoy their one-year-old, Hadley. I spoke at the party and showed some of my artifacts.

  My drive to Ellensburg, WA was one of the most beautiful of the whole trip, through The Dalles along the Columbia River. At times the road and the river were at the same level, with cliffs enclosing us on both sides. Even an occasional waterfall!
  Posted by Aliceat 11:26 AMNo comments:
  MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2009
  Relaxing in the Woods
  In Auburn, CA, about an hour’s drive NE of Davis, I visited Arlene Bouman. We had been roommates in the late ’50s, and seen each other only once since then, about 39 years ago. What a treat to see old friends and catch up with THEIR lives!

  Arlene lives in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains, and from her deck all one sees is miles and miles of ponderosa pines and the mountains in the distance. I was able to unwind there after all my urban experiences.

  I spoke at a school library in Grass Valley that’s also a public library. I didn’t get any details on how that works, but it seems a reasonable arrangement in this era of library consolidations and closings.

  What followed was a LONG drive to Portland, Oregon, where I stayed the night with Laura and Jonathan Stanfill on my way to Seattle. Lots of orchards and nut farms along the way, many of them in bloom.
  Posted by Aliceat 7:10 AM

  p.s. I (Edward Mycue) found this online. I don’t know when Alice O’Grady published more than the Ashanti/ Ghanian series of books for children. You could write Susan Luccini who also was in the Ghana 1 (1961) group. Susan Luccini is writer, editor living in Oregon House, CA in the foothills.

  Reply

• A major volume DAWN OF DESEGRATION (Univ of South Carolina Press 2011 Columbia, SC 213 pp)
  that Ophelia De Laine Gona wrote (subtitle: “J.A. De Laine and Briggs v. Elliott)

  Fifi was in our Ghana One 1961 Peace Corps Volunteer contingent. Now retired as a medical school professor from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Most of her other publications are scientific publications. And she and Amos Gona now live in north central Florida. She and Amos met in Ghana in 1961 where they were both teaching, he having come up from South Africa and an Indian family living there.

  The NYTIMEESSundayReview “ERECT a STATUE of THIS CIVIL RIGHTS HERO” (by Carl Elliott Sept 16, 2017) begins: “If you look closely at Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954school desegregation decision, you’ll see that Brown wasn’t a single case. It was five cases consolidated into one. Briggs v. Elliott, the first of them, took place in…South Carolina….” Rev. Joseph De Laine was Ophelia (Fifi) De Laine Gona’s father.

  Edward Mycue

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• The spelling above is incorrect: the accurate spelling is THE DAWN OF DESEGREGATION that Fifi (Ophelia De Laine Gona) wrote a dozen years back. Edw Mycue

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