Search Results for “Eres Tu” – Page 69

Review in WSJ of Martin Puryear (Sierra Leone 1964-66) Exhibition at Morgan Library

Nov 25 2015

The Wall Street Journal on November 24, 2015, had a review of Martin Puryear‘s : Multiple Dimensions show at The Morgan Library & Museum. Reviewer Lance Esplund writes “The 74-year-old American sculptor Martin Puryearis a consummate craftsman. As a skilled young wood-worker, he made furniture, guitars and canoes. And from an early age, he has been interested in the natural sciences and once considered becoming a wildlife illustrator.” In the Peace Corps (Sierra Leone 1964-66) , he taught biology, French, English, and art at the secondary school level in a rural Sierra Leone. The village carpenters who made furniture for his classroom impressed him with the level of their craftsmanship. While he studied biology at Catholic University, he took painting classes in his junior year and continued his adolescent interest in nature by making detailed drawings of birds and insects. After the Peace Corps he went to Stockholm and entered . . .

A Writer Writes:The Lesson of the Machi by David C. Edmonds

Nov 09 2015

A Writer Writes The Lesson of the Machi By David C. Edmonds (Chile (1963-65) Mapuche village near Chol Chol, Arauca, Chile September 1964 Friday-The drums wake me again. Now what? Another funeral for some poor child? A wedding? No, the village Machi, who performs all healing and religious rituals, is going to offer another lesson for the young girls. I don’t know the details because things that happen here don’t always make sense. So when I see the Machi’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Ñashay, passing by my little dirt-floor ruca with a pale of milk, I ask her what is going on. “It is called the Lesson of Two Loves,” she tells me in her broken way of speaking Spanish, standing there on the mud walkway in her head dress and shawl, all four feet, ten inches of her. “What is the Lesson of Two Loves?” “Yes, the Lesson of Two Loves. . . .

John S. Noffsinger and the Global Impact of the Thomasite Experience

Nov 05 2015

John Coyne has been posting a series on early Peace Corps history. One of the articles referenced the early staffer, John Noffsinger. The link to this article was rendered inactive because Peace Corps/Washington is transitioning to a new all inclusive website. However, Elizabeth Karr, RPCV and current librarian has generously offered to help all RPCVs who wish to view the digitalized text documents, such as this one, during this transition period. Elizabeth asks that requests be sent to the email: library@peacecorps.gov As we wait for Mary-Ann Tirone Smith’s review of Peace Corps Fantasies, John’s history becomes even more important. Here is the link to his posting that included John S. Noffsinger. Following the link is the article by Paul A. Rodell, RPCV. https://peacecorpsworldwide.org/ivs/ John S. Noffsinger & the Global Impact of the Thomasite Experience* By Paul A. Rodell Peace Corps/Philippines 68-71 Introduction This paper explores the life of a remarkable . . .

Review: Breathing the Same Air by Gerry Christmas (Thailand 1973–76; Western Samoa 1976–78)

Nov 01 2015

Breathing the Same Air: A Peace Corps Romance Girard R. Christmas (Thailand 1973–76; Western Samoa 1976–78) Lulu April 2015 366 pages $22.99 (paperback), $8.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Tino Calabia (Peru1963–65) • “I never looked at the Peace Corps as a two- or three-year excursion into the Valley of Riotous Romance,” writes Gerry Christmas, a Volunteer in the late 1970s. And from Christmas’ epistolary memoir Breathing the Same Air: A Peace Corps Romance, his three-year tour in Thailand followed by two years in Samoa proved neither riotous nor a steamy, bodice-ripping romance. In 330 pages, 68 letters (49 to his mother and father) trace the on-again, off-again travails of Volunteer Christmas’s love sparked by a woman named Aied in Thailand. Later, 6,200 miles away in Samoa, his heart still pines for her. Through it all, his mounting success teaching English would match his success as a writer, one especially adept in . . .

NPCA Goes To Cuba! Part II

Oct 28 2015

On Sunday morning we drove for two hours to the Che Guevara Mausoleum and Monument in Santa Clara. Here are the remains of “Che” and twenty-nine others, including one woman, who were killed in 1967 during Guevara’s attempt to spur an armed uprising in Bolivia. There is also a bronze 22-foot statue of Che in this monument complex. Guevara, who was born in Argentina, was buried with full military honors in 1997 after his remains were discovered in Bolivia, exhumed, and returned to Cuba. There is also an eternal flame lit by Fidel Castro in Che’s memory. Our guide told us that Santa Clara was selected as the site for the mausoleum and monument as a way to remember Guevara’s troops taking the city on December 31, 1958, during the Battle of Santa Clara. It was the final battle of the Cuban Revolution. After this defeat, Batista fled into exile. What is particularly . . .

More About Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65)

Oct 14 2015

(This is a short essay I wrote years ago about Theroux and his ‘Peace Corps Experience’ and I am reposting it now to continue the discussion of his latest book.) Living on the Edge: Paul Theroux • He went — in the way the Peace Corps rolls the dice of our lives – to Africa as a teacher. “My schoolroom is on the Great Rift, and in this schoolroom there is a line of children, heads shaved liked prisoners, muscles showing through their rags,” he wrote home in 1964. “These children appear in the morning out of the slowly drifting hoops of fog-wisp. It is chilly, almost cold. There is no visibility at six in the morning; only a fierce white-out where earth is the patch of dirt under their bare feet, a platform, and the sky is everything else.” How many of us stood in front of similar classrooms . . .

Author as promoter — David Edmonds and his LILY OF PERU

Oct 07 2015

In January of this year David Edmonds (Chile 1963-65) published his “romance thriller” Lily of Peru with the Peace Corps Writers imprint. David has written that since then the book has received a “good deal of love.” The attention that the book has received includes: Latino Literacy: International Latino Book Awards – Honorable Mention: Best Novel – Adventure or Drama – English Article on the Tampa Bay “Creative Loafing” website, “Local author named an International Latino Book Awards finalist“ 2015 Readers’ Favorite: Silver Award for “Fiction – Thriller – Terrorist” category . Florida Writers Association‘s 2015 Royal Palms Literary Awards: Finalist in the fiction category. (winners to be announced Oct 15-18) Latino Literacy: Latino Books into Movies Awards: Finalist. Favorable reviews and interviews in blogs, newspapers and writers’ magazines. One of those reviews of Lily of Peru, written by Tracy A. Fischer for Readers’ Favorite, follows: Sigh. That was my . . .

Andrew Tadross (Ethiopia 2011-13) publishes The Essential Guide to Amharic

Oct 05 2015

Talk about the ultimate Third Goal Project! Andrew Tadross (Ethiopia 20011–13) writes about co-authoring language guides for two Ethiopian languages, Amharic and Tigriyya: The Essential Guide to Amharic: The National Language of Ethiopia [Peace Corps Writers, September 2015] is the second project I’ve worked on with my friend Abraham Teklu, the first being The Essential Guide to Tigrinya. I began both of these projects within a few months of arriving in Ethiopia as a Peace Corps Volunteer, not knowing that my ever-growing vocabulary list would become, what I believe now, are the best resources available on either language. I met Abraham, an outgoing Ethiopian man in his early 50s, on one of my first visits to Mekele in northern Ethiopia. His wife, Hruti, owned the simple hotel I wandered into one sunny day. Both had lived in America for many years and had returned to their homeland for a simpler . . .

IVS and the Foundation of the Peace Corps, Part 1

Oct 05 2015

A new book entitled The Fortunate Few IVS Volunteers From Asia to The Andes, written by Thierry J. Sagnier, novelist and former senior writer with the World Bank, has just been published. In the early chapters the author links the Peace Corps to this international volunteer organization. Created in 1953–eight years before the Peace Corps–International Voluntary Services (IVS) roots go back to the religious pacifism of Mennonites, Quakers, and Brethren organizations. Like the Peace Corps it had a small community of organizers, two in particular, Dr. Dale Clark and Dr. John Noffsinger. Clark was with the State Department and had aided the Arab Development Society setting up a dairy program in Jordan. He then went to the Mennonite and Brethrens with an idea: would they be interested in starting a voluntary organization using Marshall Plan funds to help other Middle-Eastern nations? After a series of meetings, the IVS was born . . .

Peace Corps Writers–Friedman & Theroux In The News

Oct 03 2015

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ran a long article about “Songster, writer and Texas troublemaker Kinky Friedman” (Borneo 1967-79) who has just released his first studio album in 32 years. Kinky is best known for, as the WSJ writes, “his sharply satirical, sure to offend cowboy songs like ‘Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed’ and ‘They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore’.” His next mystery novels, all narrated by a musician-turned-private-detective named Kinky Friedmen, will be his 20th. It is due out next year an entitled, The Hardboiled Computer. Kinky’s next tour begins on October 9th. It will be 35 consecutive shows without a night off. Sunday’s 10/4/15 New York Times, runs a review of Paul Theroux’s (Malawi 1963-65) new travel book Deep South Four Seasons on Back Roads published by Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In the review, Geoffrey C. Ward writes, “Theroux’s remarkable gift for . . .

Review — Far Away in the Sky by David L. Koren (Nigeria 1965–66)

Sep 29 2015

Far Away in the Sky: A Memoir of the Biafran Airlift by David L. Koren (Nigeria 1964–66) CreateSpace April 2012 332 pages $17.99 (paperback), $8.60 (Kindle) Reviewed by Don Schlenger (Ethiopia 1966–68) • David Koren was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Eastern Nigeria from January 1964 through December 1965. At the end of his two-year service, after a brief return to the States, he re-enlisted, or ‘extended’ his service, as it was called at the time, and returned to Nigeria in January 1966, during a coup led by army officers. Many of these officers, who were from the Igbo tribal group, were Christian and their home was the eastern district of Nigeria, where Koren served as an English teacher. They overthrew the ruling Hausa leaders who were Muslim and mostly from northern Nigeria. In June and July 1966, another coup ousted the Igbo officers and led to the slaughter of . . .

Talking with Jonathan Weisman (Philippines 1988-90)

Sep 17 2015

Jonathan Weisman (Philippines 1988-90) is the Washington based economic policy reporter for The New York Times. He has also worked for the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal , and USA Today. Now he has written a novel, No. 4 Imperial Lane. • What was you college background and reasons for joining the Peace Corps? I went to Northwestern University with a year abroad at the University of Sussex, double majoring in journalism and history with a concentration in Africa and the Middle East. I was torn in those years between my love of old-fashioned newspaper writing and my interest in economic development. I actually had been thinking of the Peace Corps for years — I had a romantic vision of myself in an arid village in the Sahel struggling against the elements. But in the end, I applied more to use it as a tie breaker. My experience in the . . .

Making David Schickele’s (Nigeria) Peace Corps film “Give Me A Riddle”

Sep 16 2015

Give Me A Riddle by Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961-63) First published on PeaceCorpsWriters.org in 2001 • A COUPLE OF YEARS AFTER WE SERVED together as PCVs in Nigeria, David Schickele asked me if I would be part of a film project he was proposing to the Peace Corps. The basic concept was to capture the adventure of crossing into another culture and the rewards gained from escaping the cocoon in which Americans living abroad typically enclose themselves. It is an experience common among many PCVs to one degree or another, and for the Peace Corps, this film could be used to recruit the next wave of Volunteers, focusing on its two mandated cross-cultural goals rather than the more commonly publicized development assistance goal. Our personal experiences in Africa had been a revelation to us in numerous ways, and David wanted to make a documentary providing Americans with a new perspective . . .

Review — King of the Gypsies by Lenore Myka (Romania 1994–96)

Sep 09 2015

King of the Gypsies: Stories by Lenore Myka (Romania 1994–96) BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City 2015 215 pages $15.95 (paperback) Review by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993–96) • Lenore Myka writes astonishing stories of the Romany people (Gypsies), sex-trafficking, inter-cultural relationships, adoption of Romanian children, all with the deep, often disturbing understanding that comes with living in a particular place with people who define your life for a significant period of time, as would a Peace Corps Volunteer. But this is not a Peace Corps memoir; in fact, Myka’s service in Romania is mentioned only in passing. The narratives are mysteriously linked. In the title story, we meet a Romany child, Dragoş, an orphan who counters bullies by puffing himself up, pounding his chest and proclaiming himself “King of the Gypsies.” His search for his parents is heart-breaking, as is his brutal confrontation with a dog. In another story, . . .

Review — Ripples in the Pond by Michael Stake (India 1966–68)

Sep 08 2015

Ripples in the Pond: Reflections of a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from India by Michael Stake (India 1966–68) Inkwell Productions, 2014 371 pages $17.00 (paperback), $8.00 (Kindle) Reviewed by Barbara E. Joe (Honduras 2000–03) • ALL PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS HAVE a story to tell — a highly personal series of adventures to share. Thankfully, many are contributing to an archive about this unique historical experiment, with which fellow Volunteers can compare and contrast with their own experiences. Michael Stake has added his memoir, dating back to Peace Corps’ earliest days, a very readable book about that heady time when the agency was still feeling its way. Much has changed since, including less-ready acceptance of non-college graduates and no more assignments in India, where Stake was sent as a neophyte Agriculture Volunteer and where President Carter’s mother Lillian also served. Stake interrupts his college career to join because of uncertainty . . .

Search Results For -Eres Tu