Search Results for “Eres Tu” – Page 102

New Film By RPCV Jack Niedenthal (Marshall Island 1981-84)

Feb 27 2010

[Here is a glowing review of Jack Niedenthal’s (Marshall Island 1981-84 ) new film Yokwe Bartowe. The review appears in Film Threat.com.] “Are you having problems locating a genuinely original, intriguing and entertaining independent film? Then set your sights on the Marshall Islands. Yes, that far-flung corner of the Pacific Rim is home to one of the most remarkable little films to fly in under the proverbial radar Yokwe Bartowe, a no-budget/high-imagination fantasy that can sincerely lay claim to being among the most original cinematic endeavors to emerge in quite some time. “Yokwe Bartowe involves the interconnected fates of two siblings: the 20-year-old college student Bartowe and his kid sister Lijiamao. One fine afternoon, Lijiamao disappears while swimming in a lagoon. It is assumed that she drowned, even though her body is never recovered, and Bartowe – who was supposed to be watching her – is blamed for her death by their parents. Poor . . .

Writing Your Book Is Just The First Step

Feb 19 2010

It takes more than prose to get your book published. First, there is the competition, other writers who have written books they want to sell. For example, more than 5,000 students graduate every year from creative writing programs. Most, if not all of them, have collections of stories or a novels ready to be sent to an agent. Any agent. On top of that you have all those would-be writers who attend literary festivals and conferences all summer long. Plus, and let’s not forget, those silent novelists steadily (we might add cunningly, too) writing away in backrooms of homes somewhere in the world, churning out stories while living in garrets, hovels, or Third World countries. You can’t stop anyone who wants to write. Writing a book, however, is the easy part. You write your book on your own, at your own pace, enjoying (for the most part) the process of creating on paper, or on . . .

100 Days (Or Less) Part Fourteen:Day Nine

Feb 18 2010

Day Nine 1. Write. 2. Write more. 3. Write even more. 4. Write even more than that. 5. Write when you don’t want to. 6. Write when you do. 7. Write when you have something to say. 8. Write when you don’t. 9. Write every day. 10. Keep writing. Brian Clark www.copyblogger.com You now have made: A commitment to writing your book Developed a working schedule Know what your story is Have developed a number of characters Thought of a plot of the entire story Have a short narrative of what your book is about Take the day off. This is the first of the Coyne Holidays. Time to let your book brew in your subconscious while you decide if you want to continue the course, invest money and yourself in How To Write A Novel In 100 Days or Less. To help you decide, I am including now a . . .

100 Days (Or Less) Part Twelve: Day Seven

Feb 12 2010

Day Seven When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away-even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. Kurt Vonnegut Figure out who you need in the story and what they do together or to one another, and what the story does to them. Are they all pulling together in one direction? Are they pulling in six different directions? Ask yourself the critical question: Which would be most interesting to the reader? That’s the real litmus test of character development and plotting. Will the reader be interested? Will the reader care? To be successful in character and plot development, you need to make hard choices. You need to be ruthless with your characters and your story. Who’s in, who’s out? What’s in, . . .

Review of RPCV Jesse Lonergan's Joe and Azat

Feb 07 2010

Born in Manhattan, reviewer Ian Kreisberg is older than MTV but younger than Etch-A-Sketch, making him contemporary with Lite-Brite. Like his contemporary, Ian exists to entertain others; a skill he has been honing for over 2 decades. Ian is a calligrapher, graphic designer, comedian, and amateur maker of comics. He lectures on the subject of comics as a medium at colleges and art galleries. While he has never been in the Peace Corps, his best friends have! And to prove that he could be a PCV, he spends time with friends, plays punk ukulele, reads comics, and tries desperately to keep track of his ideas. To get him ready to serve, I asked if he would review Jesse Lonergan’s (Turkmenistan 2005-07) graphic novel. • Joe and Azat by Jesse Lonergan (Turkmenistan 2005–07) ComicsLit, November 2009 95 pages $10.95 Reviewed by Ian Kreisberg Before I praise Jesse Lonergan for the use . . .

100 Days (Or Less) Part Nine: Day Four

Feb 04 2010

Day Four Begin with an individual and you find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you find that you have created-nothing. F. Scott Fitzgerald For the novel that you are writing pick your characters first, as they are harder to pick than a story. In his book on writing the legendary book editor Thomas McCormack writes, “There is no doubt in my mind that the choice of the cast of characters is the most important decision the novelist makes, and that the choice cannot be optimally informed without attention to how they plug into one another, their circuitry.” When writing, the plot may or may not change, but the characters will develop and have lives of their own. As your characters develop, they’ll take on distinct personalities, and as with good friends, you’ll know in certain situations what they will or will not do. Mystery . . .

100 Days (Or Less) Part Eight: Day Three

Feb 03 2010

Day Three Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. Mark Twain Most novels are written to a formula, especially big best sellers. For example, John Baldwin, co-author of The Eleventh Plague: A Novel of Medical Terror, developed a simple formula that he used to structure his novel. His ten-step formula is: 1. The hero is an expert. 2. The villain is an expert. 3. You must watch all of the villainy over the shoulder of the villain. 4. The hero has a team of experts in various fields behind him. 5. Two or more on the team must fall in love. 6. Two or more on the team must die. 7. The villain must turn his attention from his initial goal to the team. 8. The villain and the hero must live to do battle again in the sequel. 9. All deaths . . .

Peace Corps At Day One, # 4

Feb 03 2010

In the very early days of 1961, the experts had concluded that a Peace Corps of 300 to 500 Volunteers would be a realistic and worthwhile pilot program. The estimate was revised when Shriver and a Peace Corps “team” (then Presidential Assistant Harris Wofford and Peace Corps Assistant Franklin H. Williams and Edwin Bayley, among others) returned from a trip to Africa and Asia in May of 1961. Requests from world leaders for Peace Corps Volunteers, plus demonstrated interest at home, led to a revised estimate of 500 to 1,000 Volunteers by December 31, 1961, and 2,400 by June 30, 1962, the end of the Peace Corps’s first fiscal year. The governments of Ghana, Nigeria, Tanganyika, India, Pakistan, Malaya, Thailand, Colombia, Chile, St. Lucia and the Philippines were the first to request Volunteers. These requests covered much of what, in the first years, had come to be considered the Peace Corps . . .

100 Days (Or Less) Part Seven: Day Two

Feb 02 2010

Day Two It’s very excruciating life facing that piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them. Truman Capote In the first week, you will decide the story you are going to tell. My guess is that you have been thinking of your story for quite some time. It is the book you have always wanted to write. It doesn’t matter what kind of novel or memoir you write. There are no rules other than that the book has to be interesting. It can be exciting, scary, fun, funny, romantic, sad, or true down to the very last word – but it must not bore the reader. You will not know every detail of your book, or even how it ends, but today you are going to begin the process of finding out. You are not going to . . .

E-Mail Letter Sent To RPCVs By Crisis Corps (a.k.a. Peace Corps Response)

Jan 31 2010

[The Peace Corps, as an agency, was created in 30 days, but those were the days when the Kennedy Kids knew how to get things done! By the time this Response Corps gets its act together and sends its first RPCVs to Haiti the children needing food and medical attention will be in college. “It will take time for us to assess what Peace Corps can do in Haiti,” writes Laura Smail in her form e-mail to RPCVs calling the Peace Corps. Really? Don’t tell that to Shriver, Wofford, and Wiggins. In February of 1961 they met in two-rooms at the Mayflower and with a handful of people inside and out of government created a whole new organization that was signed into law by March 1, 1961. Maybe if the Peace Corps saw the situation in Haiti as a ‘crisis’ and now simply something to ‘response to’ we’d have some action at HQ.] Laura’s . . .

Peace Corps At Day One, # 1

Jan 31 2010

Over the next year, leading up to the 50th Anniversary, I’ll be blogging short pieces of background information on the creation of the agency. I’ve done some of this already, as you know, but what follows is more details and facts on the ‘idea’ of a Peace Corps, and the first group of staff and PCVs. So, here’s # 1 Beginning in March of 1961, the Peace Corps had no Volunteers, little staff, no application form, no tests or testing centers, no selection process, no training program, no projects, no evaluation system, and no agreements with nations wanting Peace Corps Volunteers. There was intense interest–30 to 40,000 letters following the JFK’s speeches outlining the idea for a Peace Corps. There was authority, the March 1, 1961 Presidential Executive Order, 10924. And there was some research. Remember the Colorado State study Congress had conducted? There were also criticism, skepticism, disbelief and fear. It was between . . .

RPCV Damian Wampler Documents Darfur Refugee In Brooklyn

Jan 27 2010

Photographer Damian Wampler (Kyrgyz Republic 1999–01) graduated from Boston University and served as an English teacher in the Kyrgyz Republic. He then earned a Master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Russian, Eastern Europe and Central Asian Studies with a concentration in Human and Political Geography. He was a Fulbright researcher in the Kyrgyz Republic from 2005–2006. In 2006 he moved to New York City to recruit for the Peace Corps and earn a Master’s degree in digital photography from the School of Visual Arts. Recently some of Damian’s work was part of a group exhibition called Face Time, where he showcased intimate portraits of New York City’s homeless. He has been a volunteer photographer for the Red Cross of Greater New York and for Heartgallery in New York City. Damian has been accepted into the U.S Foreign Service and is currently preparing to go to Tajikistan. • Darfur . . .

Review: Douglas Foley's The Heartland Chronicles

Jan 26 2010

Reviewer Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962-64) is a writer and policy consultant living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation outside Pendleton, Oregon. Here Tom reviews The Heartland Chronicles by Douglas Foley published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1995, then again in 2005. • The Heartland Chronicles by Douglas Foley (Philippines 1962-64) University of Pennsylvania Press 1995; 2005 with Epilogue 264 pages $29.97 Reviewed by Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962–64) Another book that really meets the Peace Corps’ Third Goal of bringing it all back home, let me here applaud Douglas Foley’s THE HEARTLAND CHRONICLES. In 1995 when Foley published the book he was an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. Now he be a full professor. “A tale of Indians and whites living together in a small Iowa community,” this tidily laid out book relates how Foley got inside Iowa’s tiny but old Meskwaki Indian culture just at the . . .

RPCVs Remember Kennedy At The Capital, November 21, 1988

Jan 26 2010

[In 1988 Tim Carroll (Nigeria 1963-65), the first Director of the National Council of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, (now the NPCA) staged an event in Washington, D.C. that would prove to be the most newsworthy and significant reminder of the Peace Corps connection with President John F. Kennedy. It would also be, in the words of Peace Corps Director Loret Miller Ruppe (1981-89), the event that generated the most attention ever given to the agency by the American media. Named Journals of Peace by Tim Carroll, this event consisted of continual readings by RPCVs for twenty-four hours in the U.S. Capital Rotunda. The Journals of Peace began at mid-day on the 21st of November in 1988 and continued through mid-day on the 22nd ending with a memorial Mass at St. Matthews Cathedral, the site of Kennedy’s funeral. Similar, smaller, memorial services were also held in other parts of the country on this anniversary of . . .

Crisis Corps (a.k.a. Peace Corps Response) Looking For RPCVs

Jan 19 2010

The Peace Corps has created a questionnaire to find out how many RPCVs are willing to go to Haiti with the Crisis Corps (a.k.a. Peace Corps Response.) If you are an RPCVable to volunteer in Haiti, please copy fill out your responses and email them to: pcresponse [at] peacecorps.gov. The Crisis Corps (a.k.a.) Peace Corsp Response is the agency’s program that engage RPCVs to serve in short-term, high-impact volunteer roles. Peace Corps Response – Haiti Response Questionnaire Thank you for your interest in assisting Haiti during this time of emergency. To help us gauge the current level of interest among former Peace Corps Volunteers, please fill out this questionnaire. This is NOT an application. Please keep your answers brief (no more than 3 sentences). Please email your completed questionnaire to pcresponse@peacecorps.gov. [NOTE: please only use this form if you are a former Peace Corps Volunteer.] Name: ______________________________ Country of Service (when you were . . .

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