Search Results for “Mad Woman Part two” – Page 5

“Ask Not . . .” by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia)

Nov 22 2023

In 1963, I became a Peace Corps Volunteer, assigned to La Plata, a small village of some 3,000 residents nestled at the 4,000 feet level of Colombia’s Andean mountains. It had no telephone systems, though there were episodic telegraphic services. On what soon would became a fateful morning of November 22, 1963, I had taken a bus into the Departmental capital, Neiva, to obtain some governmental authorizations of Community Development Funds for one of our projects. Like most every bus in our area, firmly set above the driver’s head were three pictures with Christmas tree lights around them: Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and President John F. Kennedy. Later in the afternoon, about 3:30 PM or so, before boarding the bus for the trip back, I stopped at a newsstand to see if it had a recent copy of Time Magazine. There was one copy left! In my excitement to . . .

Julie Balzano (Costa Rica) leaves Miami for Colombia

Nov 09 2023

Miami got too expensive so she moved to Colombia By Tamara Hardingham-Gill November 7, 2023 Julie Balzano (Costa Rica 1988-91) been living in Miami for around three decades and had built a life that she loved. Originally from Long Island, she found herself struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living in the “Magic City,” recently ranked as the 10th most expensive city in the world on Swiss private bank. After selling her home in 2021 with the intention of downsizing, Balzano couldn’t find anything within her price range and decided to rent a townhouse for a year in order to “let the market stabilize” and eventually “buy back in.” However, as time went on, the 60-year-old, who is divorced with two grown-up children, realized that this was unlikely to happen anytime soon, and she’d need to come up with a different plan for her future. “Property prices . . .

Peace Corps settles negligence lawsuit with suburban Chicago family for $750,000

Nov 08 2023

By Stephanie Zimmermann Nov 7, 2023 Julie and Bill Heiderman display a portrait of their daughter Bernice at their home in suburban Inverness in 2020. A settlement was announced Tuesday in their federal lawsuit alleging negligence. Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times A suburban Chicago family won a $750,000 settlement Tuesday from the Peace Corps after their daughter died in 2018 of undiagnosed malaria while serving in East Africa. Bernice Heiderman, 24, of Inverness, was volunteering in the island nation of Comoros, when 18 months into her tour she sought medical attention for what turned out to be classic symptoms of malaria — signs that a local Peace Corps doctor and the agency’s director of medical programs in Washington, D.C., apparently missed. Heiderman’s mother, Julie, said the settlement “gives us the sense that the Peace Corps is taking some responsibility. That’s what we’ve wanted all along — that the Peace Corps thinks twice . . .

“Oral Tradition in Writing” by Jeanne D’Haem (Somalia)

Nov 03 2023

In the News — by Jeanne D’Haem (Somalia 1968-70) Somalis are known throughout East Africa for their beauty and for their poetry. In this oral tradition, poems are used to communicate, to share news and even to settle disputes. A poet insults another clan in a poem. For example, “You have mistaken boat-men and Christians for the Prophet.” News and other communication had to be oral because the Somali language was not written even when I lived there in 1968. This was due to a dispute over what kind of letters should be used. Religious leaders wanted an Arabic alphabet, business people wanted a modern Latin one. When Siad Barre, a military dictator, took over the county in 1969, his goal was rapid modernization under communism. He sent a delegation to China where Chairman Mao held similar views. When Mao was informed about the dispute, he suggested the Latin . . .

The Infamous Peace Corps Postcard

Nov 01 2023

The Infamous Peace Corps Postcard I recently received a few emails asking what JFK’s remark about writing to him meant to PCVs. Here’s a quick summary of the ‘famous’ post card incident that I posted on our site a few years ago. Marjorie Michelmore (Nigeria 1961) was a twenty-three-year-old magna cum laude graduate of Smith College when she became one of the first people to apply to the new Peace Corps. She was an attractive, funny, and smart woman who was selected to go to Nigeria. After seven weeks of training at Harvard, her group flew to Nigeria. There she was to complete the second phase of teacher training at University College at Ibadan, fifty miles north of the capital of Lagos. By all accounts, she was an outstanding Trainee. Then on the evening of October 13, 1961, she wrote a postcard to a boyfriend in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here is . . .

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, . . .

Review — THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador)

Aug 20 2023

The Showgirl and the Writer: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) Peace Corps Writers 488 pages July 2023 Reviewed by John Thorndike (El Salvador 1966-68) • This powerful mix of personal and national history unfolds in three parts. First is Marnie Mueller’s own story, starting with her birth in the Tule Lake concentration camp for Japanese Americans, where her Caucasian parents were on the staff. In this relatively short section she describes her childhood, marriage, and life as a novelist. A longer second section traces her years as friend and caregiver to Mary Mon Toy, the showgirl of the title, an actress, dancer and singer of Japanese heritage who was incarcerated in 1942 in another of the “segregation camps.” Mary claims to be half Japanese and half Chinese, something Mueller believes during the years she takes care of the . . .

I Shall Not Want | by Andrea Elise (South Korea)

Jul 20 2023

I Shall Not Want Poems Andrea Elise (South Korea ) Create Space Publishing February 2015 46 pages $6.95 (Paperback) This is a collection of poems that express love, friendship, regret, loss, gratitude, vanity. It also includes a number of haikus and an essay about one day in the life of a young woman’s 2-year stint in the Peace Corps in South Korea in the late 1970’s. Andrea Elise was born in Sopron, Hungary and immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1956. She grew up in Amarillo, and attended Amarillo College before transferring to Duke University, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. She spent two years in the Peace Corps in South Korea, then obtained a Master’s degree in Counseling from West Texas A&M University. Her interests include writing essays and poetry, partner dancing (East Coast swing or jitterbug), playing mandolin, hiking, working out and . . .

2023 Winner of the Peace Corps Writers‘ Maria Thomas Award for Best Fiction

Jul 04 2023

The World Against Her Skin: A Son’s Novel John Thorndike (El Salvador 1967-68) The World Against Her Skin is an extraordinary work, written by a mature, highly published author. John Thorndike defines his book as a “Son’s Novel,” a hybrid memoir/novel or “biographical novel.” It is his endeavor to know his mother, as he openly states in his “Author’s Note, “I want to know everything about my mother,” especially the secrets that were kept from him as her son. He inhabits this woman character in order to know her. His are the height of literary goals; find truth through your imagination, cross boundaries through sympathy and empathy, and do it because you need to for survival. It beautifully flies in the face of current stricture to only write what you can know as determined by your gender, race, ethnicity, class and so on. Thorndike completely succeeds in capturing feelings that many . . .

RPCV Suzanne McCormick (Thailand) New President & CEO, YMCA

Jul 02 2023

“I made a special stop to visit my friends at the Peace Corps office in DC today. My career of service really began with my three years with the Peace Corps teaching English in Thailand. A lot has changed since then, but I carry that experience and the lessons I learned with me to this day.” Suzanne McCormick is the 15th person and first woman to lead YMCA of the USA (Y-USA), the national resource office for the Y — a leading nonprofit committed to strengthening community through youth development, healthy living and social responsibility. Collectively, the nation’s YMCAs engage 11 million members — 4 million of whom are under the age of 18 — annually. Suzanne became President and CEO of Y-USA in September 2021. She has 27 years of experience as a local and national executive leader in the nonprofit sector, most recently as U.S. President of . . .

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 . . .

Connor H. O’Brien (Ukraine) Peace Corps Volunteer says: Choose violence

Apr 28 2023

Why words like ‘diplomacy,’ ‘ceasefire’ and ‘negotiations’ are such rubbish in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine The EAGLE American University I will never forget the day I arrived in Ukraine to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. It was a cool September afternoon, several months after I graduated from American University. After landing in Kyiv, my fellow Americans and I were whisked off to the northern city of Chernihiv for orientation. On the bus ride, as we fought against jet lag and looked out upon expansive fields of wheat, a Ukrainian woman who worked for the Peace Corps addressed us. She explained that our orientation would be in an old Soviet-era hotel and that we needed to put our luggage in the basement upon arrival. She went on to explain that the basement was built to be a bomb shelter during the Cold War. . . .

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 . . .

Search Results For -Mad Woman Part two