An opportunity to TELL your PC stories in the San Francisco Bay Area
I went to a story jam by RPCVs last year NYC RPCVs and posted a report of it on this…
Beyond Borders Storytelling
in the Bay Area
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Founded by 3 returned Peace Corps Volunteers, Beyond Borders Storytelling (BBS) is dedicated to promoting understanding between peoples and cultures of the world through the art of storytelling. They have been running International Story Jams in San Francisco every other month now for over 3 years, and the organization is looking for Peace Corps Volunteers living in the Bay Area to share 5-10 minute stories of their overseas experiences at their next Story Jam on April 12 at Piano Fight, 144 Taylor Street in San Francisco.
Most storytellers have never told a story on stage so BSS provides free workshops, practices and coaching to prepare them for live Story Jams. To prepare people for the upcoming event BBS is having a storytelling workshop on March 15, 6:30pm–8:00pm at the Hostelling International USA offices located at 1212 Market St, Third Floor, in San Francisco.
This workshop will cover: hooking audiences, adding sugar and spice, editing, and finishing big. They also talk about what it’s like to perform before live audiences and overcoming stage fright. No worries if you’ve never told a story on stage, don’t think your experiences are interesting enough, don’t think you’re funny enough or fear you’ll forget your lines — they deal with newbies all the time and it’s not as daunting an experience as many think. It is an awesomely unique feeling when you tell your story and sense the connection building with the audience.
The shows are extremely popular and frequently sell out, and because BBS is partnered with Hostelling International USA, storytellers earn volunteer hour credit that counts toward free memberships and free night stays at hostels around the world.
Even though many of the storytellers are former Peace Corps Volunteers, BBS welcomes anyone to be a storyteller if they have a story with an international flair or of crossing cultures.
Will
To find out more about Beyond Borders Storytellers, share your story and watch videos from past performances, visit their site at Beyondbordersstorytelling.org.
For questions and to RSVP contact: Will Spargur (Swaziland 1992–95) at cspargur87@gmail.com
You do such a fine job. Do other RPCV sections of the country do this as well?
Thanks Ed, I think there’s a couple others doing some great story jams. In fact it was the Washington DC RPCVs that first gave me the idea to try this out. By the way, I would love to host you on stage one day!
My story is so long ago and my Peace Corps Ghana-One 1961 service was truncated so soon with the quickly approaching death of my dad Jack (John Powers Mycue, age 49) back home in Dallas where I returned to help and after he died in November on the Feast of All Souls to then get a job in the regional office for the southwest USA states at the US Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare (AS IT WAS THEN) in Dallas for Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Arkansas where I stayed for 3 years and moving for the next 3 to Washington, D.C.
Here below is a little piece I wrote from other notes this morning:
LONG TRAIL A-WINDING –PEACE CORPS 1960 — 2017
This for me has been a long long trail a-winding since June 1960 on the MIT campus along the Charles River in Cambridge a Boston University graduate student and a WGBH-TV intern (having come up from Dallas a North Texas State graduate student with a Lowell Institute Fellowship for Cooperative Broadcasting) becoming the assistant or ‘technical-director’ on the Louis Lyons 15-minute twice weekly NEW ENGLAND NEWS. Lyons was curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and got many persons (Eleanor Roosevelt, Adalai Stevenson, Harold Stassen, Senators Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy, the latter 3 seeking nominations, etc) and each of them seemed to touch on some kind of non-military public service abroad (like the Friends/ Quaker service abroad programs and others that were brought up.) Hurrying along, I recall Senator Kennedy responding to a Lyons’ inquiry about such a program and replying that it sounded like a good idea and that he’d didn’t discount good ideas coming from anywhere AND — and now remember that the term “The Peace Corps” hadn’t been even thought up then — saying “WHEN I AM PRESIDENT” he start such all the while smiling and maybe almost laughing you know just like he would do like the cat that ate the canary in exuding such CONFIDENCE and being so clever covering a lot of political territory that way head tilted/ right shoulder shrugging slightly. I tell you that KENNEDY was a hoot. Then he became the nominee of the Democrats and he came back in autumn and it was much of the same, and this being still before a PEACE CORPS name. Edward Mycue P.S. Oh by the next Spring 1961 with JFK the PRESIDENT HE did establish the US PEACE CORPS just like he’d said, the call went out and I took the first test in the basement of I think it was the Sanders building on the Quad probably on a Saturday and in a few months got the invitation to join the Peace Corp. Off I went in June 1961 to University of California Berkeley FOR training to go to Ghana and I went Aug 31 from Washington D.C. HAVING BEEN brought up to the WHITE HOUSE with the others including those trained to go to Columbia, Tanganyika, and maybe also some of these to go also later to the Phillipines to be addressed by president John F. Kennedy in the Rose Garden and then each of us had our picture taken in the Oval Office shaking hands with the PRESIDENT. The we from the Ghana-One contingent (50 in the group) got bussed to board the 2 engine Convarair that took us with 2 stops for refueling to the Azores and then Dakar, Senegal as it reared west it seemed up at us from the far west of AFRICA and then down again to ACCRA, GHANA. There is much more to say of course and I’ll save that for another time maybe but the story was well-told by one of our group Robert Klein in BEING FIRST — AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE EARLY PEACE CORPS published in 2010 by Wheatmark* (with the ISBN NUMBER 908-1-60494-457-0 and with the Library of Congress LCCN NUMBER 201092686). Bob Klein died a few years back –he did a good job with that book. Another RPCV Phyllis Noble is at least as “knowledgeable” (that word is a K word that even looks funny, but Phyllis Noble (tel. 608 293-4233) transcends all the funny stuff in history and is right on the money. She and Robert Klein were a great team right up to his death. Her contacts with the Kennedy Library in Boston where the Peace Corps’ early history are housed are important. By the way, Ernest Hemingway’s archives resides there on one floor of the Kennedy Library due to the friendship and arrangements of the two widows Kennedy and Hemingway.) Among another good sources for the “early history” of the Peace Corps are RPCV’s John Coyne, Newell Flather, Marian Haley Beil, Neil Konkel, Susan Luccini, Georgianna McGuire, Robert Scheuerman up there in Montrealo, Loretto Carr, Mike Shea, Penelope Roach, Don Groff, Ophelia Gona, Valerie Stains, Jack Lord. I’d ask them if I needed or just wanted to know. And there will be other I can’t think of at the moment.
© Copyright Edward Mycue 10 March 2017
Edward,
Thank you so much for this important account of Kennedy’s interview in the summer of 1960.
The RPCV Oral History project started by Bob Klein and continued by Phyllis Noble is open to all RPCVs, regardless
of their years of service. Phyllis has done a fantastic job keeping Bob’s project alive. Here is the contact information for
the project. It should reach Phyllis: OralHistoryProject@peacecorpsconnect.org
Thank you, Joanne Roll. You are another great GREAT source for real information–good and sensible information.
I guess you are well up there with Phyllis, but I just in the last year began to clue-onto you and all you do.
Period.
I went to a story jam by RPCVs last year NYC RPCVs and posted a report of it on this site. It was wonderful.