Search Results For -2009 books

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The Genius of Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador)
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Trumps’ Republican Political Appointees at the Peace Corps
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Tom Miller seeks writer for Moritz Thomsen book (Ecuador)
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Marnie Mueller Writes of Japanese American Incarceration (Ecuador)
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STORIES MAKE THE WORLD by Stephen Most (Peru)
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Review — IF YOU ARE RETIRING, YOU MIGHT JOIN THE PEACE CORPS! by Sally Jo Nelson Botzler (Mexico)
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RESOURCES – Updated 9/17/2020 An Unofficial Guide to the Resources for Peace Corps History
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Review: THE ART OF COMING HOME by Craig Storti (Morocco)
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“How Trump Is Transforming Rural America” by Peter Hessler (China)
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Peace Corps authors: Writing from another country
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Review: MAIL FROM KYRGYZSTAN by Michael Licwinko (Kyrgyzstan)
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Award for Best Book for Children
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Award for Best Photography Book
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Awards for Best Travel Book
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RPCV Food Aficionado & Author Dies in Nova Scotia

The Genius of Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador)

I first  published this item on June 1, 2009. A new publication from Quito, Ecuador, is out with a scholarly look at the writings of Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965–67). It is the online publication LiberArte, from the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito. Contributors to LiberArte are primarily professors and students at the university. The journal, first published in January, 2005, features articles on literature, film, and critical trends in Ecuador. Last year there was a conference on Thomsen’s writing held in Quito. If you are interested in any reports from that conference, contact Martin Vega (vegamart@gmail.com) Martin also welcomes comments and critiques of Thomsen from those who knew him. I asked Martin if he knew Moritz and he said he didn’t, but that Alvaro Aleman, who heads up their journal, did know Moritz and often visited him in Guayaquil and spoke with him at length about authors and books. After Thomsen’s death, Alvaro . . .

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Trumps’ Republican Political Appointees at the Peace Corps

Thanks to a ‘heads up’ by Meisha Robinson (Benin 2000-02) NPCA February 2018 Patrick Young, Associate Director for Global Operations Patrick Young joins the Peace Corps as Associate Director for Global Operations. He most recently served as the Acting Chief of Staff for the Office of Personnel Management during a period of significant transition. Prior to public service, Patrick gained extensive experience in operations as well as project and organizational management as an entrepreneur and business owner. Patrick has managed projects and teams for government, private sector, and non-profit clients both international and domestic. Patrick has a master’s degree from George Washington University. Joel Frushone, Associate Director for External Affairs–(Lesotho 1995-97) Joel Frushone joins the Peace Corps as Associate Director for External Affairs after serving for four months as our Director of Communications. Joel brings over 20 years of experience in Africa, where he lived for nearly 10 years. Most recently, . . .

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Tom Miller seeks writer for Moritz Thomsen book (Ecuador)

Tom Miller has been writing about Latin America and the American Southwest for more than thirty years. Miller’s highly acclaimed adventure books include The Panama Hat Trail about South America, On the Border, an account of his travels along the U.S.-Mexico frontier, Trading With the Enemy, which takes readers on his journeys through Cuba, and, about the American Southwest, Revenge of the Saguaro. Additionally, he has edited three compilations, How I Learned English, Travelers’ Tales Cuba, and Writing on the Edge: A Borderlands Reader. Miller, a veteran of the underground press of the 1960s, was subpoenaed by the Nixon Justice Department to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the anti-war movement. Miller refused to even enter the grand jury room, claiming that to appear behind closed doors would affect his ability to gather news. After considerable legal maneuvering on both sides a US District Court judge ruled in Miller’s favor. Miller was born and raised . . .

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Marnie Mueller Writes of Japanese American Incarceration (Ecuador)

Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) has recently been asked by Densho.org, the preeminent website on the incarceration of Japanese Americans, to write a short biography of Mary Mon Toy.  As a result of working with them on it, they have asked Marnie to digitize all of her archive on Mary Mon. Below is a brief overview by Marnie of Mary Mon Toy’s life. Singer and showgirl best known for her comedic role as Minnie Ho in The World of Suzie Wong on Broadway. Mary Mon Toy’s career was begun and forged after her incarceration in the Minidoka concentration camp. Her love of singing and her need to prove to herself that she had not been destroyed by what she’d been through spurred her to fulfill a youthful dream of becoming an opera singer. Like many Nisei, she reentered America with a determination to succeed. Early Life and Wartime Incarceration Born Mary Teruko Watanabe on June 3, . . .

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STORIES MAKE THE WORLD by Stephen Most (Peru)

  Stories Make the World: Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary by Stephen Most (Peru 1965-67) Berghalin Books 288 pages June, 2017 $34.95 (paperback), $150.00 (hardcover) • Since the beginning of human history, stories have helped people make sense of their lives and their world. Today, an understanding of storytelling is invaluable as we seek to orient ourselves within a flood of raw information and an unprecedented variety of supposedly true accounts. In Stories Make the World, award-winning screenwriter Stephen Most offers a captivating, refreshingly heartfelt exploration of how documentary filmmakers and other storytellers come to understand their subjects and cast light on the world through their art. Drawing on the author’s decades of experience behind the scenes of television and film documentaries, this is an indispensable account of the principles and paradoxes that attend the quest to represent reality truthfully. Stephen Most (Peru 1965-67) is an author, playwright, . . .

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Review — IF YOU ARE RETIRING, YOU MIGHT JOIN THE PEACE CORPS! by Sally Jo Nelson Botzler (Mexico)

  If You Are Retiring, You Might Join the Peace Corps! by Sally Jo Nelson Botzler (Mexico 2009–11) WestBowPress July 2017 122 pages $16.95 (paperback), $3.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964—66) • WAKE UP RETIREES, life is just beginning . . . Sally and Rick Botzler did it and so can you! After a successful career teaching, raising a family, and involvement with their communities . . . they became Peace Corps Volunteers assigned to Mexico. Twenty-four months as Volunteers, and three months as Trainees, and their lives will never be the same. Peace Corps does something to you no matter where you serve in over 70 countries  — with Vietnam being the newest. Sally takes us thru the application process, and having kept a log (great idea) she tells us what training was like — the excellent and friendly host family they lived with, and Peace Corps Mexico (PC/M) staff and . . .

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RESOURCES – Updated 9/17/2020 An Unofficial Guide to the Resources for Peace Corps History

Here is the current list of unofficial Resources describing the history of the Peace Corps.  It is unofficial and incomplete. The public  documents are available but not necessarily easily accessible. Few are  digitalized. Most are the property of the institutional archives, public, private and certainly university. For example, the training documents for Colombia I, the first Peace Corps group to enter training in June of 1961, are archived at Rutgers University.  RPCVs may visit the university and review the materials, a privilege otherwise reserved for students and faculty of the university.   RESOURCES An unofficial guide to the locations of resources describing the Peace Corps, and its history.    This list is a cooperative effort with Alana deJoseph, producer of the documentary in progress, A Towering Task, her team and the many archivists and librarians at the places cited. Thank you to all .   This is the latest information we . . .

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Review: THE ART OF COMING HOME by Craig Storti (Morocco)

  The Art of Coming Home by Craig  Storti (Morocco 1970-72, PC/W 1973-79) Nicholas Brealey, publisher 2001 (revised edition) 229 pages $22.95 (paperback), $12.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1963–64) • Culture Shock in Reverse Culture Shock, a noun . . . “the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone who is suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes.” — Google   IF YOU HAVEN’T EXPERIENCED IT, returning home after spending months or years overseas in a different culture, with different standards and perhaps another language, can be a challenge. American Peace Corps Volunteers, Japanese Volunteers or United Nation Volunteers in Latin America bring back their experiences and new found memories that have changed their person. And it isn’t just volunteers who experience these changes, military families, students, missionaries, and business executives do as well. Coming home is a challenge with special benefits that remain with us. . . .

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“How Trump Is Transforming Rural America” by Peter Hessler (China)

  This is a brilliant article by Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) in the current issue of The New Yorker. My only regret is that in the bio about Peter they never mention his Peace Corps service. It’s as if he never served in the army, was a Boy Scout, or was a bed wetter as a child. Nevertheless, we PCVs will prevail. — JC ♦ How Trump Is Transforming Rural America In Colorado, the President’s tone has started rubbing off on residents. By Peter Hessler When Karen Kulp was a child, she believed that the United States of America as she knew it was going to end on June 6, 1966. Her parents were from the South, and they had migrated to Colorado, where Kulp’s father was involved in mining operations and various entrepreneurial activities. In terms of ideology, her parents had started with the John Birch Society, and then they became more . . .

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Peace Corps authors: Writing from another country

These writers are all RPCVs whom I wrote about recently for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs website. The eight writers tell how they have used their overseas experiences in their writing careers. JC Writing From Another Country Throughout the history of literature in the United States, American writers have looked towards, and gone to, foreign countries to seek inspiration, new experiences, and find work. Henry James in The American (1878) and Samuel Clemens in The Innocents Abroad (1869) were early writers who wrote about their new experience in Europe. Next, we had Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel of a half-dozen ex-pats in Paris The Sun Also Rises. Not only novelists, but poets, too, traveled abroad. T.S. Eliot and Robert Penn Warren are two. They went to England to find work and sources of inspiration. Robert Penn Warren, the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry, first went to London in . . .

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Review: MAIL FROM KYRGYZSTAN by Michael Licwinko (Kyrgyzstan)

  Mail from Kyrgyzstan: My Life as an Over-50 Peace Corps Volunteer Michael Licwinko (Kyrgyzstan (2008–10) Self-Published November 2016 300 pages $15.99 (paperback), $2.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Catherine Varchaver (PC/HQ 1990–94; Kyrgyzstan APCD 1995–97)   • In this journal-like collection of annotated blogs and emails, Michael Licwinko sketches a lucid, patient portrait of life as an older Peace Corps Volunteer posted in a remote corner of Central Asia. Licwinko takes us from 2008 to 2010 and gives us a glimpse into the culture and people of Kyrgyzstan — and some of the satisfying and shadowy sides of the Peace Corps experience. If you want to take a virtual trip to Kyrgyzstan by reading one man’s observations and stories, this will help you travel Lonely Planet style — on the cheap, with plenty of “local (post-Soviet) color” and details on what to expect. This isn’t about places to visit and cool things to do. This is about local . . .

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Award for Best Book for Children

  Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Book for Children This award was first given in 2001. Awards are presented to books published during the previous year. To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com, click on the book cover or the bold book title, and Peace Corps Worldwide — an Amazon Associate — will receive a small remittance that will help support these annual writers awards. The winners are — 0 2015 A Hitch at the Fairmont Jim Averbeck (Cameroon 1990–94)   2015 The Market Bowl Jim Averbeck (Cameroon 1990–94) 2012 The Megasaurus 5 to 7 years Thomas Weck (Ethiopia 1965–67) with Peter Weck and illustrator LenDisalvo and How Back-Back Got His Name 5 to 7 years Thomas Weck (Ethiopia 1965–67) with Peter Weck and illustrator LenDisalvo   2011 A Small Brown Dog with a Wet Pink Nose 5 to 8 years Stephanie A. Stuve-Bodeen (Tanzania 1989–91) with illustrator Linzie . . .

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Award for Best Photography Book

The Peace Corps Writers Rowland Scherman Award for Best Book of Poetry   This award was first presented in 2009. Awards are presented to books published during the previous year. To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com, click on the book cover or the bold book title, and Peace Corps Worldwide — an Amazon Associate — will receive a small remittance that will help support these annual writers awards.   The winners are —   2020 Altamont 1969  Bill Owens (Jamaica 1964–66)    2019 Legacy in Stone: Syria Before War Kevin Bubriski (Nepal 1975–79)   2018 A Silhouette of Liberia Photographs: Photographs: 1974–1977 Michael H.  Lee (Liberia 1974–76)   2014 Timeless: Photography of Rowland Scherman Photos by Rowland Scherman (Peace Corps/Washington staff 1961–64)   2014 Somehow: Living on Uganda Time Douglas Cruickshank (Uganda 2009–12)   2012 Making Peace with the World: Photographs of Peace Corps Volunteers Richard Sitler (Jamaica 2000–02)   2010 . . .

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Awards for Best Travel Book

  Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Travel Book Awards for the Best Travel book were first presented in 2001. Awards are presented to books published during the previous year. To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com, click on the book cover or the bold book title, and Peace Corps Worldwide — an Amazon Associate — will receive a small remittance that will help support these annual writers awards.   The winners are —   2023 The One-Way Ticket Plan — Find and Fund Your Purpose While Traveling the World Alexa West (Bulgaria 2010–12)     2020 Europe by Bus: 50 Bus Trips and City Visits Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96)   2019 Why Travel Matters: A Guide to the Life-Changing Effects of Travel Craig Storti (Morocco 1970-72)   2018 Writing Abroad: A Guide for Travelers Peter M. Chilson (Niger 1985–87) o 2017 Tales of Family Travel: Bathrooms of the World Kay . . .

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RPCV Food Aficionado & Author Dies in Nova Scotia

  Dorothy Cann Hamilton, Founder of French Culinary Institute, Dies in Crash at 67 By Sam Roberts New York Times SEPT. 19, 2016 Dorothy Cann Hamilton (Thailand 1972-74) founded the French Culinary Institute in New York in 1984; it produced such famed graduates as Bobby Flay, Wylie Dufresne and Christina Tosi.   Dorothy Cann Hamilton, a food aficionado who started a vocational course that evolved into one of the world’s leading culinary schools, died on Friday on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. She was 67. She died of injuries sustained in an automobile collision, said Bruce McCann, her cousin and the president of the International Culinary Center in California, the West Coast branch of the school that she founded in New York City in 1984 as the French Culinary Institute. She was the chief executive there. The police said her SUV and a truck hauling a camper collided. Ms. Hamilton, . . .

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