Search Results for “Mad woman Part Three” – Page 19

Review of From Southern Belle to Global Rebel: Memoirs of an Anthropologist and Activist

Aug 14 2012

From Southern Belle to Global Rebel: Memoirs of an Anthropologist and Activist by Mary Lindsay Elmendorf (PC Trainer/Consultant – Puerto Rico 1962–63) Sharon Fitzpatrick Publications $12.00 342 pages 2012 Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993–96) PEOPLE LIKE MARY LINDSAY ELMENDORF SHOULD ALWAYS write memoirs because, though we may know them for years, we don’t know everything about them. Reading about Mary’s life is like accompanying her on a long and fascinating journey. Mary’s personal life is a story of challenges and joyful adventures, while her professional life reflects over seventy years of international history and global issues. Mary’s memoir is replete with photos that show her as a charming child, as a long-legged, lovely woman, and a mature, gracious lady. Her smile is always there, genuine, exuding a joie de vivre that marks her life. Mary was born in 1917 and raised in North Carolina in the bosom of . . .

Review of William J. Hemminger's African Son

Jul 01 2012

African Son William J. Hemminger (Senegal 1973–75) University Press of America, $24.95 104 pages 2012 Review by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993–96) WILLIAM HEMMINGER, PH.D. IS LEARNED AND GIFTED in many areas, as a poet, pianist/composer, teacher, translator and gardener. He has a great mind, yet what comes through in African Son is his heart. This is a man who knows how to love. He writes tenderly about his wife, Jill, his daughters Molly and Johanna and, most delightfully, he writes with sympathetic love about the many Africans he meets on his journeys, from Senegal, where he was a Peace Corps Volunteer, to Malawi and Cameroon, where he was a Fulbright scholar, and to Zimbabwe and Madagascar as a visiting academician. Hemminger is a poetic, masterful writer. The opening sentence in African Son is “The death of a child is the worst, and I felt somehow responsible.” He’s talking about . . .

Soutine and Dr. Maisler

May 31 2012

Stan Meisler writes about his story “Soutine and Dr. Maisler”: Hona Maisler, my father’s brother, was a Parisian doctor who was murdered in Auschwitz during World War II. Chaim Soutine, the painter, was a very distant relative, through marriage. He died in France during the war. Both lived in France from the turn of the century. I thought it would be interesting to imagine the two knowing each other in Paris during the 1930s when France was regarded as the most powerful country in the world. To do so, I used the device of a memoir, putting myself into Paris at that time as well. But I actually was a little child in the Bronx then and never met either of the two men. When I sent this around to a few literary magazines, I labeled it carefully as “a short story, not a memoir.” But I guess I wasn’t . . .

Under Blossoming Boughs

Apr 24 2012

John Givens writes about his story: Peace Corps for me was transformative. My wife Gail and I were in Pusan, Korea from 1967 to 1969. We later lived in Kyoto for a few years and separated there. A couple of years later, I was accepted by the Iowa Writers Workshop, as was Dick Wiley, another K-III RPCV, who also lived in Japan. After teaching in San Francisco and publishing three novels, I returned to live in Tokyo for eight years. I have never written directly about my Peace Corps experience (other than a couple of puerile workshop stories). My second novel, A Friend in the Police, is very loosely based on what it might feel like to be thrown in at the deep end of an unfamiliar culture although the narrative is so heavily distorted by use of an unconventional point of view that it would never be classified as . . .

Claim

Apr 13 2012

Lauri Anderson (Nigeria 1965–67) writes about his story: For many years I have lived in and written stories about a very impoverished part of America, Michigan’s Copper Country. I’ve written three collections of stories set in the very isolated backwoods community of Misery Bay. “Claim” is set there. The characters are fictional versions of real people from the Copper Country. Their desperate circumstances are, in many ways, not that different from the despairing situations that I found during my Peace Corps service in Nigeria just before and at the birth of Biafra. Claim by Lauri Anderson Am I angry? You’re damned right I am. I’ve watched my life slip toward oblivion on this useless farm at the dead end of a gravel road in the isolation of Misery Bay. Sometimes in summer, weeks go by without a single car or pickup daring our road’s potholes, creating a roiling cloud of . . .

Under the Elms

Mar 29 2012

Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963–65) writes about her story: Though not immediately obvious there is a link between my story, Under the Elms, and my reasons for joining the Peace Corps. Ever since I was born, a half-Jewish, white child in a Japanese American Internment camp, my life has been inextricably entwined with issues of race, class, ethnicity and religion in our country. My parents were highly educated with advance d degrees from major universities, but because my father was a community organizer and because, as a result, we were poor, I grew up in poor and working class neighborhoods. My friends were German American farm children in southeastern Ohio whose parents blamed “the Jews” for WWII, French Canadian children of factory workers in Winooski, Vermont who were looked down upon by the dominant New England population, and, as in this story, children of working class poor, and single-mother families in . . .

Talking with Jane Albritton, Editor of the Peace Corps at 50 Project

Mar 09 2012

Interview by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) WHILE MOST OF US STRUGGLE with our own Peace Corps memoir, Jane Albritton undertook a herculean task: to gather enough Peace Corps personal experience essays to fill a multi-volume anthology. After four years of intense work, she completed the task in 2011 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps’ inception. The four volumes include more than 200 essays that describe the Peace Corps Experience in 88 of the 139 nations served during the past half century. The principal and founder of a writing and editing firm (as well as a university writing instructor), Jane began the Peace Corps at 50 Project with the posting of a very unusual website and an all-call for personal experience essay submissions. As the series editor, she recruited editors, oversaw editing, negotiated publication, supervised formatting, cover design and finally manages marketing. What on earth inspired . . .

Innocent RPCV Imprisoned in Nicaragua

Feb 19 2012

By Ashley Fantz, Jason Puracal, a 34-year-old American, is seen in this image shot last year, imprisoned in Nicaragua. Well-known human rights attorneys, FBI agent, Iran hikers defend imprisoned American Jason Puracal, 34, was a real estate agent working in Nicaragua No evidence was presented to support his conviction and 22-year sentence, defense says Supporters: Puracal has been behind bars for 15 months, is seriously ill (CNN) — Since last summer, a former Peace Corps volunteer from Washington state has been wasting away in a Nicaraguan prison, wrongfully convicted of international drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime, his supporters say. A growing chorus of defense attorneys, investigators, human rights activists and lawmakers is calling for 34-year-old Jason Puracal’s release. Puracal’s advocates include the director of the California Innocence Project, the human-rights attorney who helped win freedom for Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and an ex-FBI . . .

Heather Kaschmitter — A Writer Writes

Feb 18 2012

A Writer Writes Heather Kaschmitter was a Youth and Community Development Volunteer on the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. She was in the 69th group of PCVs to be sent to Micronesia. While there, she started a library at an elementary school and taught English part time, and all the while, she gathered stories of the island that someday she hoped to build into a book. Here is one of the stories she’ll tell. • Sakau Moon Ring by Heather Kaschmitter (Micronesia 2002–04) Disclaimer For me to write about sakau, I beg the forgiveness of the Pohnpeians, and any other culture that drinks kava. As an American, there is no way I will ever be able to understand or appreciate the importance of this beverage completely. My understanding is that sakau was historically a sacred beverage. In the past, women were forbidden from drinking, and it is still looked down upon, even though women . . .

RPCV Jerry Rust Writes Murder Mystery

Jan 08 2012

This is a article from Sunday’s local Eugene, OR newspaper on the self-published book, published only as an ebook, and written Jerry Rust, who served in India. Not sure of his years in-country. If you lived in Eugene, it is your kind of book, and you might know Jerry. • A Murder Mystery of Lane County Former politician’s first novel is steeped in local history by Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard, Eugene, OR (Sunday, Jan 8, 2012 ) He started out as a Peace Corps volunteer, became a tree planter and then won election as a Lane County commissioner. After five terms in office, from 1977 to 1997, Jerry Rust worked as a carpenter before getting the yen to go off to China to teach English as a second language and, at the same time, improving his own grasp of Chinese. Now 68, Rust has added another line to his résumé – . . .

University of Oregon Alum Magazine Highlights Their Grads in the Peace Corps

Dec 24 2011

Corps Values The UO and the state of Oregon have been long and lasting contributors to the international vision of the Peace Corps. By Alice Tallmadge It was October 1972. The East African country of Uganda was in the grip of the brutal dictator Idi Amin and twenty-two-year-old Peace Corps volunteer Ernie Niemi ’70 was in a tight spot. The Peace Corps had decided to pull its volunteers out of the country, but to avoid retaliation it scheduled a conference in Kampala, the country’s capital and site of its major airport, and said all volunteers were required to attend. On Niemi’s way to Kampala, 300 miles from the boarding school where he had been teaching chemistry and physics for eighteen months, he had to pass through several roadblocks. At one, he was confronted by a security guard whose son was a student of Niemi’s. “He said, ‘You cannot leave. My . . .

Review of Leslie Noyes Mass' Back to Pakistan: A Fifty-Year Journey

Nov 09 2011

Back to Pakistan: A Fifty-Year Journey by Leslie Noyes Mass (Pakistan 1962–64) Rowman and Littlefield Publishers $32.95 212 pages (paperback) 2011 Reviewed by David Day (Kenya 1965–66; India 1967–68) IN THIS ACCOUNT of her initial Peace Corps assignment in rural western Pakistan from 1962 to 1964, and a return visit forty-seven years later, in 2009, Leslie Mass gives us tightly-focused access to the lives of women and a range of attempts to educate them in arguably one of the world’s most dangerous countries. It’s a glimpse not often seen in terrorism-haunted media coverage of this troublesome, strategically important Muslim nation. As part of her titular “journey,” we are taken — with the aid of numerous excerpts from letters written to George (a close friend and later, husband), and verbatim transcripts from tape recordings of conversations — from the dusty alleys of small villages to the snow-capped peaks of the Karakoram . . .

Washington Post Writes….

Aug 22 2011

Crimes against volunteers vex Peace Corps By Lisa Rein Published: August 20 A Peace Corps volunteer had been raped in Bolivia and wanted justice. Within hours, Julie De Mello was on an airplane from Washington to meet the victim. De Mello, employed by the Peace Corps inspector general as a senior federal agent investigating crimes against volunteers, worked with the 23-year-old victim, Erin Bingham, to sketch the attacker. De Mello went with Bingham to a police lineup, hired a lawyer to represent her and worked with local police to track down witnesses. De Mello believes her advocacy helped convict the rapist in 2008. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Today, a Peace Corps volunteer who is the victim of a violent crime is likely to get a far less aggressive U.S. government response. De Mello quit three years ago, after the agency grounded her and the four other investigators . . .

Review of Peter Bourque's Tarnished Ivory

Aug 18 2011

Tarnished Ivory: Reflections on Peace Corps and Beyond by Peter Bourque (Ivory Coast (1973–75) Xlibris 224 pages $19.99 2011 Reviewed by P. David Searles (PC staff/Philippines CD 1971–74; PC Dep Dir 1974–76) TARNISHED IVORY REALLY HAS TWO AUTHORS — one is twenty-something-year-old Peter Bourque, who provides the main text, and the other is sixty-year-old Peter Bourque, who provides editing and commentary. That would be a more accurate description of who wrote what in this fascinating look at Peace Corps service in Ivory Coast in the 1970s. During his service in Ivory Coast Bourque kept a journal and a diary and also wrote “hundreds of pages” (his count) to friends and family in the U.S., especially to a “significant other” back at the University of Michigan. Thirty-five years later the now older, more mature, and wiser Bourque has edited this material, made interesting and revealing comments on it, and provided some . . .

Two Dozen RPCVs Assist Washington-Area Peruvian Consulate

Jun 11 2011

Two Dozen RPCVs Assist Washington-Area Peruvian Consulate With June 5th Run-off Election for Peru’s Presidency Twelve Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who had served in Peru or who served as Volunteers elsewhere but also worked in Peru (albeit with other agencies), answered the call from Deputy Consul General Maria Eugenia Chiozza de Zela of the Peruvian Consulate to report to the Consulate’s Mid-Atlantic Regional polling place on Sunday, June 5th. They were recruited to help with Peru’s Presidential run-off election. Another dozen Spanish-speaking RPCVs from Metro Washington supplemented the first 12. The contingent was headed by RPCV Mike Wolfson (Peru, 1964-66) who made and adjusted assignments throughout the day. Mike also walked the rounds to the six polling locations spread out over the sprawling campuses of a high school and an adjacent middle school, distributing water bottles to volunteers assisting voters while sweltering under the noonday sun. Most RPCVs were stationed outside explaining to over 13,500 voters where to find their correct building, room, and . . .

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