Search Results for “Mad Woman Part Six” – Page 2

Review | THE LAST BIRD OF PARADISE by Clifford Garstang (Korea)

Feb 22 2024

The Last Bird of Paradise by Clifford Garstang (Korea 1976-77) Black Rose Writing 340 pages February 2024 $6.99 (Kindle) $23.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Bill Preston (Thailand 1977-80) • • • Reading the Author’s Note following this remarkable novel, I was struck by several ways Clifford Garstang’s experience has resembled mine. He first visited Singapore, the setting of the novel, in 1978, “as a young backpacker, touring Asia after spending two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea.” I also traveled to Singapore in 1978–from Thailand, between Peace Corps teaching assignments. I too was fascinated by the emerging city-state, an oasis of calm and order compared to bustling, chaotic Bangkok or Jakarta. Six years later, he returned to Singapore, first as an associate and later as a partner of a U.S. law firm. Some years prior to Peace Corps, while working with Legal Aid attorneys as a VISTA volunteer, I . . .

“The Glamour” — a short story by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay)

Jan 30 2024

By Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80) Lace likes how Deed touches her tits. His hands, cupping and brushing, send electric squigglies through her body. But it’s not just that, really it’s how the touch is like talking. Deed’s touch is part of the conversation they are always having about Sausalito. They’ll live on a boat, eat fish, get tanned, fuck under the stars. They’ll be their own avatars. The pictures are so vivid in Lace’s mind, she’s pretty sure she’ll slit her wrists if something goes wrong and they don’t go there. “So is Calhoun this son of a bitch’s first name or his last name?” “I don’t know. I don’t care.” Calhoun is Rhonda’s latest mistake. Rhonda is Lace’s mother. She specializes in getting things wrong. Rhonda won’t come out and say it, but she intends to invite Calhoun to move in. The dude has no job and even . . .

Review | THE LAST BIRD OF PARADISE by Clifford Garstang (Korea)

Jan 01 2024

The Last Bird of Paradise by Clifford Garstang (Korea 1976-77) Black Rose Writing 340 pages $6.99 (Kindle) $23.95 (paperback) This novel is forthcoming in February 2024 Reviewed by Bill Preston (Thailand 1977-80) Reading the Author’s Note following this remarkable novel, I was struck by several ways Clifford Garstang’s experience has resembled mine. He first visited Singapore, the setting of the novel, in 1978, “as a young backpacker, touring Asia after spending two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea.” I also traveled to Singapore in 1978–from Thailand, between Peace Corps teaching assignments. I too was fascinated by the emerging city-state, an oasis of calm and order compared to bustling, chaotic Bangkok or Jakarta. Six years later, he returned to Singapore, first as an associate and later as a partner of a U.S. law firm. Some years prior to Peace Corps, while working with Legal Aid attorneys . . .

Establishing the Peace Corps

Dec 05 2023

Establishing the Peace Corps by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) Let me start with a quote from Gerard T. Rice’s book, The Bold Experiment: JFK’s Peace Corps: In 1961 John F. Kennedy took two risky and conflicting initiatives in the Third World. One was to send five hundred additional military advisers into South Vietnam; by 1963 there would be seventeen thousand such advisers. The other was to send five hundred young Americans to teach in the schools and work in the fields of eight developing countries. These were Peace Corps Volunteers. By 1963 there would be seven thousands of them in forty-four countries. Vietnam scarred the American psyche, leaving memories of pain and defeat. But Kennedy’s other initiative inspired, and continued to inspire, hope and understanding among Americans and the rest of the world. In that sense, the Peace Corps was his most affirmative and enduring legacy. Historical Framework . . .

9/11 at Peace Corps NYC

Sep 10 2023

“One Morning in September” — 9/11 Nov 11 2019 One Morning in September by Edwin Jorge (Jamaica 1979–81) Edwin Jorge was the Regional Manager of the New York Peace Corps Office and was at work in Building # 6 of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The building was destroyed when the North Tower collapsed. At a commemoration service held at Headquarters in Peace Corps/Washington a year after 9/11 Edwin spoke about the attack and what happened to the Peace Corps Office. His comments follow. ONE YEAR AGO TODAY, on the morning of September 11, 2001, I sat down at my office desk and turned on my computer. As the computer booted to life, I glanced up and looked out of the windows of my office on the sixth floor of the Customs House in the heart of the financial district of New York. From where I sat, . . .

Words of Wisdom from Wise Older Women | Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon)

May 22 2023

The WOW Factor: Words of Wisdom from Wise Older Women Martha is a Marvel Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) May 22, 2023 Martha Stewart is a marvel, don’t you agree? She’s a quintessential American success story, and Americans love success stories more than any other kind. From her modest beginnings as the second of six children in a working-class Polish-Catholic family in Nutley, New Jersey, Martha has risen to great heights, succeeding on every rung of her personal ladder, and climbing back up when she’s fallen off. She’s been a fashion model, a Wall Street stockbroker, an entrepreneur par excellence known worldwide as “the empress of domesticity,” a prison inmate, and now, at age eight-one no less featured in a bathing suit on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s just-published swimsuit issue. It takes your breath away. When I was a caterer in Manhattan from ’86 to ‘96, Martha was the caterer other . . .

To Die On Kilimanjaro by John Coyne (Ethiopia)

May 10 2023

I posted an earlier version of this essay on this site in 1997 To Die On Kilimanjaro When I first visited the Blue Marlin Hotel in Malindi, Kenya, in the summer of 1963, it was after my first year of teaching at a PCV in Addis Ababa. The hotel was located on the edge of the Indian Ocean and crowded with British families in the final days before Kenya’s independence from Great Britain. We were the only Americans in the hotel. I didn’t return to Kenya or the Blue Marlin until the early ’70s when the hotel was now filled with German tourists and the few English-speaking tourists gravitated to one end of the bar. It was there traveling through Africa and writing for Dispatch News when I met a British couple and their two little girls. Phillip and April were ‘on holiday’ as the English like to say. Phillip . . .

One Day in Ethiopia

Apr 26 2023

This is a letter I wrote when I was a PCV in Ethiopia. It was published in the collection Letters From The Peace Corps in 1964, selected and edited by Iris Luce. She wrote in her introduction to her book. It was my good fortune one evening to be seated with the wife of Senator J. William Fulbright, whose daughter was working here in Washington at Peace Corps Headquarters. Mrs. Fulbright suggested that someone should compile a collection of letters from Peace Corps Volunteers in the field to give Americans a firsthand report on the triumphs and the hardships that these people have experienced while working in the Corps “One Day in Ethiopia” was a letter I had written home to my family and friends, several at the agency in Washington that Iris Luce found and included. In her introduction to the chapter, “One Day in Ethiopia,” she wrote: . . .

A Conversation with Jody Olsen, Former Peace Corps Director

Apr 05 2023

Women’s Economic Empowerment and the Peace Corps – A Conversation with Jody Olsen, Former Peace Corps Director Interviewed Held on March 8, 2019 Edited for this blog Dr. Olsen served as a volunteer in Tunisia in the late 1960s, and she held various leadership positions throughout the agency in the ’80s, the ’90s, and 2000s. And between that time she spent time as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Social Work, as well as the director of the university’s Global Education Initiatives. The moderator is CSIS Senior Associate Nina Easton chair of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International Summit and the co-chair of the Fortune Global Forum. Nina Easton: OK, hands up: How many former Peace Corps volunteers do we have here? Ooh. (Cheers, applause.) OK. (Applause.) And, Jody, thank you for your service. Jody Olsen: Well, thank you. Nina Easton: I warned you that we . . .

“I Returned” by Jac Conaway (St. Lucia)

Mar 25 2023

A Writer Writes I Returned by Jac Conaway (St. Lucia 1961–63) Republished from PeaceCorpsWriters — 4/3/2004 I returned and it was like this. My son’s mother died suddenly. I hadn’t seen her for 22 years. It was strange to think of her dead or even to think of her as 44 years old. We were kids in so many ways. Now we are “old” and our son is “my” age. Hours after I heard of the Peace Corps I joined, in the spring of 1961. I had just returned from East Pakistan (Bangladesh) where I had my world turned upside down and my eyes opened so wide I couldn’t grasp what I was seeing. In six profound months as a foreign exchange student, I was so astonishingly different that I thought I could never return to my small rural southern farm community. I was wrong about that, but . . .

Author Interview—Lucinda Jackson (Palau)

Mar 20 2023

Interviewed by Heidi Eliason Lucinda Jackson–Palau 2016 Lucinda Jackson is the author of two memoirs: Just a Girl: Growing Up Female and Ambitious, about her struggles to succeed in the male-dominated work world, and Project Escape: Lessons for an Unscripted Life, an exploration of freedom after leaving a structured career. Jackson is a PhD scientist and global corporate executive who features on podcasts and radio and has published articles, book chapters, magazine columns, and patents. She is the founder of LJ Ventures, where she speaks and consults on energy, the environment, and empowering women in the workplace and in our Next Act. Connect with Jackson or find her books at: www.lucindajackson.com. Who or what inspires you to write? I get inspired by having something to say. I feel this burning concept or thought inside me and I just have to get it out! It is this need to express myself, to make sense of something, . . .

A Cold War Tale That Ended Peacefully by George Brose (Tanzania)

Mar 15 2023

. . . or I’ll Show You My Country’s Nobel Laureate if You Show Me Yours by George Brose (Tanzania 1965-67) After my two years of Peace Corps service in Moshi, Tanzania and Loitokitok, Kenya, I was drafted into the US Army in April, 1968. We had been told in Peace Corps training that former Peace Corps Volunteers could not serve in intelligence units and likewise former intel specialists could not go into the Peace Corps for a number of years after leaving either service. It was supposedly federal law. After a year of training in German at the Army Language School in Arlington, VA, I was sent to Germany, but not yet assigned to a unit over there. When I got to Heidelberg I was told I would be sent to an intel unit on the East German border. When I heard that I politely told the . . .

Once Again: Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience

Mar 13 2023

Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience The Mending Fields by Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975–76) I WAS ASSIGNED to the Island of Saint Kit in the West Indies. Once on an inter-island plane, I sat across the aisle from one of my new colleagues, an unfriendly, overserious young woman. She was twenty-four, twenty-five . . . we were all twenty-four, twenty-five. I didn’t know her much or like her. As the plane banked over the island, she pressed against the window, staring down at the landscape. I couldn’t see much of her face, just enough really to recognize an expression of pain. Below us spread an endless manicured lawn, bright green and lush of sugarcane, the island’s main source of income. Each field planted carefully to control erosion. Until that year, Saint Kit’s precious volcanic soil had been bleeding into the sea; somehow they had resolved . . .

“Remembering Doctor Giovanni Balletto” by George Brose (Tanzania)

Dec 13 2022

On November 18, 2022 John Coyne wrote an entry on this site talking about the “give away books” at his public library. I was inspired to follow up with this piece. Remembering Giovanni Balletto by George Brose Tanzania (1966-67) John: I, too, forage for books on the give away rack in our library where I live now in Comox, British Columbia. Recently my Peace Corps experience came into play with those free books. But, to see the connection, you will have to be patient and let me tell the lead in to acquiring a free book at my library. In the Peace Corps, in 1966-67, I was stationed in Moshi, Tanzania at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and I often climbed the mountain with an aging Italian doctor, Giovanni Balletto. Dr. Balletto ran a small health clinic on the Marangu Road that led up to where most of . . .

“Memoirs of a White Savior” by Jonathan Zimmerman (Nepal)

Dec 10 2022

Thanks for the ‘head’s up’ from Alana DeJoseph’s (Mali 1992–94) by Jonathan Zimmerman (Nepal 1983-85) Published in Liberties Fall 2022 • Last year, a student came to my office hours to discuss her post-graduation plans. She said she wanted to travel, teach, and write. “How about joining the Peace Corps?” I suggested. She grimaced. “The Peace Corps is problematic,” she said. I replied the way I always do when a student uses that all-purpose put-down. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “I don’t want to be a white savior,” she explained. “That’s pretty much the worst thing you can be.” Indeed it is. The term “white savior” became commonplace in 2012, when the Nigerian-American writer and photographer Teju Cole issued a series of tweets — later expanded into an article in The Atlantic — denouncing American do-gooder campaigns overseas, especially in Africa. His immediate target was the “KONY 2012” video . . .

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