Chicago Artists

We're here to catch up with lots of friends and relatives.  It turned out Thursday was artist day.







First, a familiar Alaskan artist transformed the landscape.  These two pictures are a couple of hours apart.







Then we went to visit a first cousin of my mom's, who is also an artist of some stature - Gerda Bernstein.  We, fortunately, met her at her studio.  My mom's had a lithograph of hers hanging in her house forever and I've seen catalogues of her work.  But since most of her works are large installation pieces, there's nothing like seeing things as they were meant to be seen.  The studio is a small gallery.  Some of the installations are up, but most are represented by photographs.  I want to do more on Gerda, but were busy every day visiting folks so this is just a brief post.

On the left is view from near the entrance to the studio.

This piece is called Gaza Tunnel.  It's a reconstruction of the tunnels used to smuggle things into Gaza.  But this tunnel is reimagined to be lined with books and the idea of the transformational power of books.

Most of her works raise issues of people's suffering in the world.  As I understand it - though I'm not positive - many early works were holocaust related and the focus has taken in other oppressed peoples.

I'm afraid I was overpowered by the art in the studio.  My initial interest in Gerda is that she's the only person I know of who is still alive who knew my mother when she was a young girl in Germany.  We talked about that a little bit, but the art was too strong to resist.

Here's a break as we drove through downtown Chicago.  The snow hadn't stuck everywhere.

I've been reminded that I'm no longer on the West Coast.  Drivers don't even think about stopping for pedestrians.







Thursday evening we followed up with folks we connected with at my Peace Corps group reunion in Portland.  We went to hear Edward G. McDaniels playing the base at Buddy Guy's blues club.  It was a wonderful evening.  Ed is on the right.  Great music, food, and conversation.

There was a picture of Barack Obama and Buddy Guy with this quote:  "People sometimes ask me what the biggest perk of being president is.  Number one is the plane.  Number two is Buddy guy comes here all the time to my house with his guitar."

". . . if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract," Ellsworth Kelly and Haskell Wexler

The LA Times had two front page obituaries of people whose names weren't on the tip of my tongue. But they both struck me as people I would have liked to have known.

The first obituary was about Ellsworth Kelly, an abstract artist.  Here are a few things about him from the article that caught my attention.

The key to creative inspiration was in the world around him, not in other artists' studios or at the Louvre. If he paid close attention to, say, the contour of a window, the shape of a leaf, the play of light and shadows on man-made and natural forms, his art would emerge.
"I think if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract," the artist told an interviewer in 1991, reflecting on the evolution of his work. Six years later, when a Kelly retrospective exhibition — organized by New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum — appeared at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, he told a Times reporter: "I'm not searching for something. I just find it. The idea has to come to me … something that has the magic of life." [emphasis added]

I like the conceit that if one can "turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract." That describes part of what this blog is ultimately about:  exploring how we know what we know.  How much of what we see in the world, we see because of the models in our heads that cause us to see what we've already been trained to see and to label in just one way.  People who don't know much about flowers may see "a rose" in many flowers because that may be one of the few flower names they actually know.  A police officer may see a life threatening man because his understanding of black men comes from movies and television and not from close black friends.  But if we can 'turn off the mind" then we can see the world fresh again, with all sorts of new possibilities.

Here are some pictures from the blog that show my attempts to see new things in the ordinary.

None of these were pictures I sought. They found me.

I'd note that none of these images was altered, except for the frame added around the onion.

I'd note the idea that the models in our heads cause us to not see what is really there was shown in a different light on an NPR piece this morning, talking about how the gambler's fallacy also tricked judges, loan officers, and others who made decisions about people.  The study showed they consider how the previous decision went when they are making the current decision.


The second obituary was about cinematographer Haskell Wexler.  These words grabbed me:

Despite his success shooting big-budget films for major studios, Wexler, a lifelong liberal activist, devoted at least as much of his six-decade career to documentaries on war, politics and the plight of the disenfranchised.
“His real passion was much larger than just making movies,” said son Jeff Wexler a few hours after his father's death at a hospital in Santa Monica. “His real passion was for human beings and justice and peace.”

Isn't that really what's important?  Justice and peace for human beings?  Our society is so distracted by the demand to acquire material goods, that we're all to willing to look the other way when confronted with injustice and war.  We excuse ourselves because we 'don't have time to get involved' or we 'couldn't make a difference anyway.'  Yet, if we don't do something, who will?  If we don't elect representatives who care, who will?   There are lots of stories about ordinary 'powerless' people who have made a difference.  You don't have to save the world, you just have to make it a little better than you found it.  If half the people did this, we'd be in a much better world.   The Wexler obituary reminds me that I need to do more.

And you've probably seen some of his films, like Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolfe?  or Bound For Glory  or One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest or In The Heat Of The Night.   If not, you might want to look them up.

Less well known and less seen was his feature directorial debut, Medium Cool.  I remember when I was a trainer for a Peace Corps group at Hilo, Hawaii.  Medium Cool was playing with another film, but the newspaper didn't say which one was playing first. (They still showed double features in those days where you paid once to see two films.)  So I called the theater and asked which film was playing first.  He responded, "Which one do you want first?"  After a second to digest this, I said, "Medium Cool."

From the obituary:

"Described by Wexler as “a wedding between features and cinema verite,” the drama about an emotionally detached TV news cameraman was partly shot in Chicago during the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention. 

At one point, as the camera inches closer to a tear-gas cloud and a wall of police officers, a voice off-camera famously can be heard warning, “Look out, Haskell — it's real!” 

Considered “a seminal film of '60s independent cinema,” “Medium Cool” was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2003."

Alaska Ties For Third For Most Returned Peace Corps Volunteers Per Capita

I got this list in an email today:

2015 Top States – Per Capita  (# of volunteers per 100,000 residents)
#1	Vermont	8.3 vols per 100,000 residents
#2	District of Columbia	6.5
#3	Washington Montana Alaska	4.5 4.5 4.5
#6	Minnesota Maine	4.1 4.1
#8	New Hampshire Oregon	4.0 4.0
#10	Colorado	3.8

This doesn't really come as a surprise to me.  Alaska is the state that is the most like a Peace Corps assignment and Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) are working throughout the state in all sort of roles.  Former Borough Mayor Jack Roderick is an RPCV, though his Peace Corps service in India happened after he was mayor.  Another RPCV from India is retired Native Law attorney David Case.  Scott Goldsmith, Professor Emeritus in Economics at ISER served in Malaysia, as did, if I recollect correctly, UAA Chemistry professor John Kennish.  Former UAA Chancellor Lee Gorsuch and his wife Ann served in Paraguay.  Retired doctor Jeffrey Lawrence and his wife Sharon served in Brazil.   Anchorage assembly member and former state legislator, Pete Petersen, served in the the Dominican Republic.  And there's a guy connected to this blog who served in Thailand.

2014 US House candidate and JAG attorney Forrest Dunbar served in Kazakhstan.  2014 Lt. Gov. candidate, petroleum engineering grad, and an Alaska teacher of the year, Bob Williams, served in Gambia.  

You can see some more Anchorage and Fairbanks RPCV's here   and Juneau RPCVs in this post.

UAA's Alumni Magazine for Septembr 2015 highlights six alumni who served in the Peace Corps:

In total, there have only been about 220,000 Peace Corps volunteers since President Kennedy started  the program in 1961.  And 4.5 residents per 100,000 in Alaska comes out to something over 300. [UPDATE:  A sharp eyed reader noticed that I added an extra zero to the number here.  I suspect I messed this up because I know there are way over 30 RPCV's living in Alaska and I think the number  may be closer to 300 than to 30.  Perhaps they are only counting the people who have joined the national RPCV group.]

In contrast, there are about 71,000 veterans in Alaska, about one out of ten, or 10,000 residents per 100,000 residents.

The US sends a lot more people out to wage war than it sends to wage peace.

But the Peace Corps got more applications in 2015 than it's gotten since 1975.

Sorry for the reposting - more Feedburner problems.

Some Personal University of Missouri History

In the summer of 1967 I was returning to the second summer of Peace Corps training in DeKalb, Illinois.  Friends had moved from LA to Minneapolis and asked if I could drive their second car; so I got a chance to drive across the US before heading for Thailand for several years.

On the way I stopped to visit my roommate from the previous summer's training  He was, in the language back then, a Negro.  While I went to a demographer's dream of a high school and had many interactions with black students there, this was the first time I got to have a close friend who was black.  (He's still my close friend all these years later.)  But he didn't make it through that first summer of training.  At the end, he was told to pack up and leave, as were others.  In hindsight, it was obviously racism.  He was the only black in our group.  It wasn't til much later that I learned it was his first time in an all white setting.  Thais have a thing about light skin, so it may have been the influence of the language teachers that got him kicked out.

Why do I say it was racism?  Because he did get into a Philippine group later where he served his two [three] years well.  And because there were so few volunteers of color and because he has an infectious smile, he ended up on a Peace Corps recruiting poster that was used for years and years.

[UPDATE July 9, 2016: rereading this I realize this is not a good explanation of why I feel he was deselected (the term they used) because of racism.  He and I were a team in training (and still are when we get together now) and there's no reason that our foolishness should have gotten him deselected and left me in the program.  I'd been labeled 'high risk-high gain' by our shrink, Dr. Feldman.  My sins?  In hindsight, I realize it was the first time I'd been discriminated for being from California.  What Feldman said was, "You wear cutoff shorts, a silly hat, and go barefoot everywhere."  Well, that was my native dress and we trained in DeKalb, Illinois where it never got below 90˚ F, and we didn't have air conditioning.  My dress was entirely appropriate to the weather.  (My hat was just a normal little hat the gave me some shade, not particularly silly.) I could ditch the hat and wear long pants and shoes - which I did for the rest of the summer - but my friend couldn't change his skin color.  I think my pointing out that he served well in the Philippines was to show that he eventually did become a successful volunteer, good enough to be used in recruiting posters.]

He lived in St. Louis and he was a student at the University of Missouri, which was still in session as I drove to Minneapolis.  I stopped in Columbia to visit him.  What I remember from that day was that he saw things I never saw before.  As we walked around campus he showed me escape routes, little paths he could use to disappear, if say, a threatening looking group of white students was approaching him, or if a campus police car was nearby, or any number of things that would make a black student at the University of Missouri nervous.  This was only ten years after the Little Rock Nine, four years after the University of Mississippi took black students, and three years after Governor Wallace blocked the entrance of the University of Alabama in an attempt to keep black students from enrolling.  The University of Missouri, through a court order, had integrated 'way back' in 1950.
But only for students in the nearby black college who wanted majors not available at their school.

I had lunch that day with my friend at a campus restaurant with his friends (all black.)  I was very conscious of all the people staring at me from other tables.  And later I learned that my friend was chewed out by his friends for having me eat with them.

I got the message that day, that Missouri was a southern state.

So it's with a mix of sadness and awe that I watch the news now of the University of Missouri's black football players standing up to the crap that's apparently still going on after all these years.  Football players threatening to boycott the game means people risking their scholarships and their education for their principles.

It says something about American universities that the threat of a cancelled football game can get a president and a provost to resign in a couple of days.  These aren't issues that are confined to Missouri or even the south.  These are issues on every campus.  And what will it take to get campuses safe and comfortable for women?

Lewis, do you have anything to add?  I was only there a day or so, you spent four [two] years in the mid 1960s at the University of Missouri.  You must have lots of stories to tell and lots of thoughts as you watch your alma mater today.  [UPDATE July 9, 2016:  Lewis emailed me after this was posted to say that he didn't comment here because it was still - over 40 years later - too painful to dredge up other memories of those days.]

1965-1975

Portland had me back in 1966 through about 1970 as we reminisced about Peace Corps training and our time in Thailand together, plus what we've all been doing since.

So, it's appropriate, as we get back to Anchorage, I go back, tonight, to 1965-19 75 in Anchorage at Cyrano's for "From earthquake devastation to Boom Town in a madcap ten years!"  The email I got implies Steve Heimel and Johanna Eurich are involved in this week's production.

I bet it doesn't include my first visit to Anchorage in August 1967 as our Peace Corps group's last American stop was in Anchorage.  A bunch of us had found out that if you had a ticket from Chicago to Bangkok, you could stop on the West Coast free and we didn't plan to spend our last three days in DeKalb, Illinois (nothing against DeKalb, but we seen enough corn growing during our training and those on the West Coast wanted a stop home.)

Photo from Alaska Airlines

I don't remember the flight between LA and Seattle, but the Alaska Airlines plane I boarded in Seattle was all decked out as a Gay '90s saloon - flocked red wall paper, stewardesses (they were all women back then) in floor length red velvet skirts, and there was a piano on board with live music.  [Warning:  this weekend comparing memories reminded me that mine is selective, but this picture from a story about the promotion does give some validation to my brain cells.)

I got to Anchorage at 6 am and was picked up by Bob D., a high school friend, who was stationed at Elmendorf.   He dropped me back at the airport to catch the Northwest flight to Tokyo where we overnighted and bought cameras.  There was another stop in Hong Kong - just the airport this time - and then to Bangkok.  And yesterday I posted the group picture of us just after we arrived.

I remember how totally green Anchorage was and the beautiful mountains, and I recall being told "Here's the university" and seeing nothing but trees.  So when there was an opening at UAA when I was finishing my degree, I was delighted to get the offer and we drove up in 1977 - just outside tonight's decade.


So, 7pm at Cyrano's.  Tonight is the last night of this decade.

More information on all this is here.

Peace Corps Reunion Portland

This is just a quick filler post.  My Peace Corps group is together for the second time since our official tour of duty ended in 1969 (though some of us stayed a third year and others lingered in the Peace Corps or in Thailand other capacities).  I did manage a break yesterday morning - the hotel has bikes for guests to use - and road along the river and some old routes from when we lived here in Portland in 2003. 


It took me a bit to figure out what Greenland was, but I stopped to snap a picture of Alaska's future.  I think Oregon's ahead on this because they've had more organized medical marijuana sales.

I really haven't had my camera out that much.  I've been enjoying reuniting with old friends, some whom I haven't seen in close to 50 years as well as meeting their equally interesting partners. 


And we're living out the reality of how unreliable memory is.  Some of us remember things that no one else does.  Others remember some parts of our training and others don't recall them at all. 






We talked in the bar, at breakfast, on the shuttle, at the Japanese garden.







Here's a sloppy group picture from our dinner Saturday night.  Some folks are totally recognizable after all these years and others not at all. 

There's a few more than half of the original group who went to Thailand to teach English together in 1967. 

And this morning a bike event is happening outside our hotel window.  I haven't had time to process all this.  Maybe there will be more later. 

Traces Of A Life

People's lives tend to be put in brackets of birth date to death date.  Inside those brackets we list basic facts like parents, spouses, kids, employment, and other key achievements or events.  But a life is made up of much more than that and I've been going through the traces of those other things in my mom's life.

There's so much I could write about but there are things my mom wouldn't want on the blog, so I'll just do a couple of examples.

The deer and the squirrel sat on my mom's night stand when I was a little kid and probably longer.  I don't know when they got put away.  I'd forgotten all about them until I found them wrapped up in the back of a drawer.  They're small.  The squirrel could sit on a quarter.  But they were part of our life together, a connection we had over these little animals. 

Another little piece is this temporary pass that was in my step-father's belongings.  He was a good friend of both my parents (and my father continued to have good relations with my mom and step-father after they divorced).  I'm not sure what meaning this particular pass had.  But it's interesting as a connection to the man and to a bit of documentation of history. 

Below is the back of the pass.

Here's part of Thailand Peace Corps Group 19's picture when we got to Thailand and just before we headed off to our assignments in 1967.  My mom wasn't particularly excited to see me off to Asia then, but she never let on until we talked about it much later. 

This is a shot from near the water at Venice beach the other evening.  We finally were able to get some time together, just sitting on the beach enjoying the surf.  There were more dolphins out there.  My mom and I also had a beach bond much of which developed at Venice beach.  She was still using her boogie board in her 70s.  And there are a couple still in the garage. 

And here's a picture she had in her room of my brother Glen, who died in a work accident at age 23.  That had a huge impact on my mom, but she kept working and helping others. but went to the cemetery every week to give him new flowers.  It's actually a picture I took and developed, including burning in the picture of him surfing in the background.  That was before photoshop when you could doctor pictures in the darkroom. 

There's also wedding pictures of my mom an dad, her wedding ring, and thousands of other little things. 

Peace Corps Will Accept Applications From Same-Sex Domestic Partners Who Want To Serve Together

From the Peace Corps today:  

Peace Corps Deputy Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet today announced that the agency will begin accepting applications from same-sex domestic partners who want to serve together as volunteers overseas.  Same-sex couples may begin the application process starting Monday, June 3.

“Service in the Peace Corps is a life-defining leadership experience for Americans who want to make a difference around the world,” Deputy Director Hessler-Radelet said. “I am proud that the agency is taking this important step forward to allow same-sex domestic partners to serve overseas together.”
Expanding service opportunities to same-sex domestic partners who want to volunteer together further diversifies the pool of Peace Corps applicants and the skills of those invited to serve overseas in the fields of education, health, community economic development, environment, youth in development and agriculture. Married heterosexual couples have been serving together in the Peace Corps since its inception in 1961. Currently, 7 percent of Peace Corps assignments are filled by married volunteers serving together.

The Peace Corps requires formal documentation for all couples who want to serve, and same-sex domestic partners will be required to sign an affidavit before leaving for service that will act as verification of their relationship. The Peace Corps continually works with staff in host countries to identify placements that allow for safe and productive assignments.

Couples who serve together gain a unique perspective of host country customs and culture, but opportunities for couples are limited, as both applicants must apply at the same time and qualify for assignments at the same post. Many factors affect placements, including an applicant’s overall competitiveness, program availability, departure dates, and safety and medical accommodations. For any applicant, the number one factor in determining an assignment is the demand from host countries for skilled volunteers.

To learn more about serving in the Peace Corps as a same-sex couple, visit http://www.peacecorps.gov/learn/howvol/couplesfaqs/.

While there are still people whose religious beliefs or personal issues will have problems with this, for most of us, this is a good move. As you can see, there have been discussions about what might and might not be appropriate placements.  I guess they've narrowed it down to 'safe' and 'productive.' What happens when a country says they do not want same-sex couples serving?   What role will same sex trainees get in discussing these options with the people who make the placement decisions?  Yes, there are issues, but nothing that can't be worked out fairly easily. And besides, there have been gay volunteer from the beginning, though I'm not sure when openly gay volunteers started serving. 

Anchorage to Mongolia, Mexico, and ???

Anchorage's returned Peace Corps Volunteers had a potluck to send off three Alaskans on their coming Peace Corps assignments.  


Michael Bardwell is headed for Mongolia at the end of the month.  He'll be teaching English there.

Becky Roberts is headed for Mexico.  I didn't know there were volunteers in Mexico, but she said the program started two [7 or 8 - see comment below] years ago and she'll be in group 13.








Jay Stariwat isn't sure yet where he is going, probably sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean.


The Peace Corps is very different today than when I went to Thailand (and got my first glimpse of Alaska during a 7 hour stopover).  We were farther away then - letters took at least a week or two to get home.  And the same for the answer to get back.  Volunteers today mostly have internet access.  But security concerns have put a lot more restrictions on volunteers who nowadays have to get permission to leave their towns and are not allowed to ride on motorcycles at all.  But as I wrote not too long ago, Peace Corps volunteers can impact many people they come into contact with in positive ways, and often they are not even aware of their influence. 

Michael, Becky, and Jay, it was a great pleasure to meet the three of you tonight and I wish you great adventures, lots of new friends, lots of patience, and good health.  I think I mentioned River Town by Peter Hessler to Michael because he's headed to Mongolia, and River Town is a fictionalized account of a PCV in China.  A very well done book that conveys his experiences in depth and insight. 

Does Peace Corps Matter? Reflections 40 Years Later

Some time last year the head of Friends of Thailand (a group of former Peace Corps Volunteers) emailed members of Thai 19 (the 19th group of Peace Corps Volunteers to go to Thailand) to ask for something written to go into a book for the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps Thailand in 2012.

I volunteered.  It took a while to finally do it, but eventually it got done.  I'd like to share it here.  Especially with people serving in the Peace Corps somewhere around the world right now.  Have a great year.

A Few Thoughts from a Thai 19 Peace Corps Volunteer

The bus hurtled around mountain curves through the black night, the red dirt road and dirty green jungle revealed by the ghostly glow of lightening. Then the rattling of every part of the bus would be swallowed by the head piercing boom of the thunder. After a week in Bangkok, then a few more days in Chiangmai with the other volunteers assigned to the North, I was now wondering if Iʼd survive to reach my teaching assignment in Kamphaengphet. After all the dialogues weʼd memorized and the lesson plans weʼd written and practice-taught to each other, the real thing was about to begin. If I survived this bus ride through the mountains.    “Mai ben rai” I chanted. My favorite Thai phrase covering a lot of English situations in the general category of ʻno big deal.ʼ Mai ben rai, mai ben rai until the many grisly ways this bus ride could end faded and I fell asleep.

That was the end of phase one - preparing to be a Peace Corps volunteer. Weʼd spent two summers in DeKalb, Illinois learning Thai, learning TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), how to eat hot food, dance the ramwong, and survive temperatures and humidity in the high 90s. Back then - our first summer training was 1966 - Peace Corps was training college students between their junior and senior years, in hopes of snagging them before other recruiters did. That was when students got jobs when they graduated, and when the army was drafting males for Vietnam. The Peace Corps wanted to get us first. Then we returned to school, graduated, and returned to a second summer of training. While we lost a fair number of people during the school year, everyone who went to Thailand stayed the full two years (except one volunteer who was kicked out because she got married) and about a third of us stayed longer. Because we had one summer of training before our last year of college, I was able to become friends with several Thai students at UCLA and even to learn to play (badly) one song on a kind of Thai gong the ethnomusicology department had.

I could write volumes about the mistakes I made and less about the things I learned, but as someone whoʼs been a returned Peace Corps Volunteer for 40 years now, perhaps what I can contribute most is perspective on the burning questions most volunteers have: Am I doing any good here? After all that work, has anyone besides me gotten anything out of my being here? So let me tell you a couple of stories.

I had a student, letʼs call him Somsak. He was a bright student, but very poor. He was awkward with others and didnʼt have the fun loving demeanor and smiling face of most Thais. I helped Somsak study for national exams that would qualify him to go to an excellent private high school in Bangkok that would improve his chances of getting into college. He passed and was accepted at the school. When Iʼd first arrived in Bangkok, the well-to-do family of one of my UCLA Thai friends ʻadoptedʼ me and insisted I stay with them when I was in Bangkok. And Khun Mae and Khun Paw truly took care of me. I asked if Somsak could stay with them in Bangkok, and they agreed he could stay in the servant quarters when we was going to school. I left money for the schooling before leaving Thailand when my assignment ended.

But it didnʼt take long for me to be certain that Iʼd really screwed up. Somsak wasnʼt going to be happy in the servant quarters. How was he going to handle the much more affluent kids at this school? How was he going to get along with the family members? He wasnʼt a sweet and easy-to-like kid. It took a bit to get past his armor and tease out his sly humor. And I regretted what I now regarded as me playing God. After a few years, writing letters in Thai became too difficult and the family had never said anything about Somsak. My connections to Thailand faded.

Flash forward. Iʼd first gone back to Thailand 17 years after I left, with my wife and two kids. I went to my Bangkok familyʼs home, but it had been replaced by a shopping mall and I couldnʼt find out where they were.    The reception in Kamphaengphet was fantastic - as though I hadnʼt left. My family was taken in like, well, family. Somsakʼs name never came up. I had occasion to return to Thailand a few more times over the years, and one time I asked about Somsak. I was told he lived in Bangkok and worked for the post office but no one had his phone number and I returned to Anchorage (my home in the US since 1977) without getting to see him, and not completely unhappy about that since I still was sure my meddling had led to no good.

About a month after we got home, I got a phone call. It was Somsak calling from Bangkok. Heʼd heard Iʼd asked after him and was very sorry he missed me. He went on to tell me how grateful he was for everything Iʼd done. It had changed his life for the better and he was saving money to set up a scholarship to help poor students like himself. He was still close to my Bangkok family. Wow, Hollywood couldnʼt have written a sweeter ending. We did get to meet in person a few years later when I attended the 45th Anniversary of Peace Corps Thailand. He also remembered the first and last name of Khun Jim, another volunteer from my group who was at the anniversary, whoʼd been in Maesod and whom he had first met in 1969 at the English Summer camp weʼd held in Lan Sang National Park in Tak.

On one of these trips I also got to meet another former student Somprasong, who was the headmaster of a school in the very remote border town of Umphang (past Maesod). The night before, at a dinner in Kamphaengphet, the regional supervisor had complained that Somprasong had scored first in all of Thailand in the test for school headmasters and could have had any school, but heʼd chosen this remote little village school. Visiting the school the next day, I was totally amazed. It was the most beautiful school Iʼd seen in Thailand. The grounds were full of trees and flowering plants - every one had the name of the student who was tending it - and he had dormitories for 200 students. Most of the students were hill tribe kids. When he first took over the school heʼd gone into the mountains to ask villagers why their children werenʼt going to high school. It was too far away, they couldnʼt afford to pay for housing. Somprasong managed to raise the funds from the local businesses and the international NGOʼs (non-governmental organizations) in the area working at the Burmese refugee camp. He said it was all due to his ability to speak English to raise money, which, he said, had never been an interest until he took English with me. He was upset because the supervisor wanted him to leave for a bigger school. We talked a long time about how to deal with this.

About a year later I got an email from Khun Jim, who lived in Bangkok, with a link to a Bangkok Post article. “Is this your student?” he asked? Somprasong had been named one of four Thai teachers of the year.

I mention these two stories not to brag, because, really, what I did was typical of what all Peace Corps volunteers do as a routine part of their assignments. My actions werenʼt any more noteworthy than anyone elseʼs. The only difference is that I had the chance to go back and find out, 40 years later, that some of what I did actually had tangible positive results. Even, in the case of Somsak, where I thought Iʼd made a huge mistake.

I know these experiences were not exceptional because at the 45th Anniversary of Peace Corps Thailand, other former volunteers gave similar accounts of learning that their name still lives on because of things they did years ago, things theyʼd long forgotten, which had turned out to have had a significant impact on a person or on a whole community.

Measuring the impact of Peace Corps volunteers by the number of students taught or wells dug may have some meaning, but the real impact is in peopleʼs hearts.    And the way to know about those changes is through stories, not statistics. So I offer these stories for people who want to know if the Peace Corps is doing any good. And particularly for current volunteers who wonder whether they are doing any good. Yes, I assure you, that you are having an impact that will grow over time. Hang in there and yes, take that extra effort. People are watching and noticing and it will make a difference that you probably will never know about.

"this is not civilization"

That's the title of a novel by Robert Rosenberg that was a University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University Book of the Year for this past year.  And probably what tonight's UAA Classrooms for Climate conference meeting speaker Majora Carter was thinking when she decided to clean up her South Bronx neighborhood.

The UAA/APU Books of the Year program is a powerful partnership between University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University that brings faculty, staff, and community members together to understand common themes. The books serve as the catalyst for discussions of larger issues of local and international significance.

[This] program started in 2006 as part of a Ford Foundation Difficult Dialogues initiative--one of only 26 in the country--to provide a safe environment on campuses for discussions of challenging topics. UAA and APU are now national leaders in this area. 

For me the title was intriguing, plus, it was about a Peace Corps experience.  Every PC experience is different, yet there are common themes - feeling totally lost as you enter a foreign world and language while people have unrealistic expectations of you and want to use you for their own purposes which you don't understand, making great friends, and always wondering whether you are doing more harm than good.  Here's Rosenberg's hero as he arrives in his town in Kyrgyzstan.

In Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka Jeff received what felt like a hero's welcome.  Over his first few days his neighbors on Karl Marx Street introduced themselves in a continuous wave.  Expectations were high;  they seemed to believe he could change their lives.  The attention was jarring. . . the villagers offered gifts of warm bread, eggplant and cabbage from their family plots, strawberry and cherry compote, boiled mutton, and plastic bags filled with cold triangles of fried dough.  They explained just to what length Anarbek [his host] had gone to refurbish the old brick townhouse.  The previous year the occupants had repatriated to southern Russia.   The house had served a six-person family for three decades, so the village deemed it large enough for one American.  Anarbek had arranged for its purchase with the village akim.  For an entire month he had shown up each day with his wife and two daughters to renovate the home and bring it up to Peace Corps standards.  He had installed a Western toilet (the bathroom did not have running water;  Anarbek would work on that, they said) and a series of electric radiators (the street's electricity seemed sporadic;  he would work on that).  His daughters had hung printed curtains made from bedroom sheets, pounded out the carpets, and scrubbed the several years' accumulation of Central Asian dust off the floors.  Anarbek requisitioned a heavy steel gate for the front door, a strict requirement stipulated by the Peace Corps, but in the neighbors' opinion an unnecessary precaution.  For the previous quarter of a century, Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka had known no crime.

You can learn more about the Book of the Year program and the two new books for next year

Part 2:  

Wednesday, May 4th 

Wendy Williamson Auditorium. 

 7pm - FREE (free parking too)

Majora Carter presents -

Hometown Security: Climate Adaptation, Social Innovation and Local Solutions

The theme for the two books this year was service.  That theme and the title "this is not civilization" seem a good segue into another UAA activity - Classrooms for Climate.

Classrooms for Climate is organized by the Chugach National Forest and UAA in partnership with the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center, Alaska Geographic, and the Northern Forum. Alaska is ground zero for climate change, and the Chugach and neighboring landscapes, with world famous glaciers and watersheds, are an extended classroom for researchers, educators, and students around the world seeking to understand the potential physical, biological, cultural and socio-economic impacts. Each of the participating institutions recognizes its own unique role as a “classroom” for understanding and responding to climate change. All are committed to working across geographic and institutional boundaries to build knowledge and craft sustainable and effective solutions. This symposium is a first step in bringing together partners in inquiry, education, and management from across Southcentral, Alaska and beyond.

The partnership between the university and the Forestry Service picks up on the theme of service.  And tonight's speaker at Wendy Williamson Auditorium,  McArthur Award winner Majora Carter,  probably thought that life in the Bronx was less than civilization and decided to do something about it. 

Majora Carter simultaneously addresses public health, poverty alleviation, and climate change adaptation as one of the nation’s pioneers in successful urban green-collar job training and placement systems. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 (with the help of a small Forest Service grant) to achieve environmental equality through economically sustainable projects informed by community needs. By 2003, she coined the term: "Green The Ghetto" as she pioneered one of the nation's first urban green-collar job training & placement systems. Her organization spearheaded new policies and legislation that fueled demand for those jobs, improved the lives of all New Yorkers, and has served as a model for the nation.

There's a lot more about her (and links to even more) at the UAA website.  From all I've heard about this woman, the free talk tonight at Wendy Williamson is another one of those incredible Anchorage opportunities to meet a world class thinker and doer.  It would be nice to think that our mayor and assembly members might show up to learn about how to integrate economics and environment and humanity.

What Do Peace Corps Volunteers Do? Juneau Returned Volunteers

Some Juneau Returned Peace Corps Volunteers gathered Monday night to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of JFK signing the law that created the Peace Corps.  In these two short videos they tell you what country they served in and what they did.








The first video includes people who went to Ukraine, Thailand, Nepal, Rwanda, and Morocco.












The second video has people who were in Nigeria, Afghanistan, El Salvador, India, Cambodia, Guinnea-Bissau, and Paraguay.

Here's an older post with a few Anchorage and Fairbanks Returned Peace Corps Volunteer pictures and what they've been doing after Peace Corps.

Alaska State Rep. Pete Petersen on Peace Corps' 50th Anniversary

This past week, March 1, 2011 to be exact, marked the 50th Anniversary of John F. Kennedy signing into law the US Peace Corps.  There is a lot happening all year and Alaskan Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs ) are planning a number of events. 

The only Alaska legislator I can find who is also an RPCV is Pete Petersen.  He served as an agricultural volunteer (he grew up on a farm in Iowa) in the Dominican Republic.  I talked to him about what he'd gotten out of the Peace Corps.  My sound card was full Thursday, so I went back again on Friday.  But I only got a bit of our conversation on video.  Here's a bit of that bit. 

The Mystery of the Unused Shea Butter Machines

Often things that other people do or say make no sense at all.  Until you see the story from their point of view.  

Maria Karlya is a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Ghana.  In an article in the Fall 2010 Worldview magazine she writes about the problem of the shea butter machines that are locked up in an old factory, while the women keep laboriously whipping the shea nut butter by hand. (I didn't know what shea butter was either so I looked it up.)  They work so much harder than necessary, but the machines go unused.

So Maria contacted Adisa, an Ghanaian woman who works at an NGO that helps women to become self sustaining.  Her encounter with Adisa leads to another long story about Peace Corps and Adisa's life, but for this post I'm just concerned with the shea butter mystery.


After a long conversation with Adisa, Maria asks her about the shea butter machines.  Adisa responds:

"Maria, here is the problem.  Making shea butter is a social event for these women.  All day, they are in the house serving their men and children.  They can't discuss their problems, because the men will hear.  They have no privacy.  But when they are under the trees making shea butter, the men won't mind them.  That's when they can talk.  They give advice to their daughters;  they share ideas and discuss their troubles.  They cherish that time.  Those machines are incredibly loud, and only a few can use them at a time.  The process ceases to be social. . ."

I try to remind myself that most things do make sense if you have all the data.  Especially at home.  But my wife will tell you I forget a lot.  

UAA Career Fair, Peace Corps, Army, Cloud Rip, Snow Biking, Hunger, Cosmetics, and More

I didn't have my camera yesterday, so I'm making up for it today with some shots of things I saw today walking over to the career fair at UAA to sit at the Peace Corps booth for a while.

A cloud caught on a 

cosmic nail.  Through the rip, blue 

checks in on the earth.

 I wrote in an earlier post that we don't use chains in Anchorage.  As I wrote it I was thinking, well sometimes I've seen postal vehicles with chains, and here is another exception. Maybe that's why I focused on cars in the other post.

And cyclists use chains.  But they use them in the summer too. 

I found a couple of interesting, but totally unrelated websites when I first googled "Eat Like the World" but nothing about this UAA event.  Here's what I'm guessing this is about from the University of Central Missouri:

A hunger banquet is a tool to demonstrate the distribution of food among the people of the world. We in the US - even the hungry in the US - have it much better than many people in the world. Guests draw tickets at random that assign them each to either a high-, middle-, or low-income tier and receive a corresponding meal.

• The high-income tier are served a sumptuous meal.
• The middle-income section eat a simple meal of rice and beans.
• The low-income tier help themselves to small portions of rice and water.

Why are we presenting a hunger banquet? It is a tool to build awareness to hunger issues that occur around the globe and around the block. Many of us have an extra can of food that we could share with someone. Many of us have an extra afternoon that we could spend helping the needy in our own community. Many of us have an extra few dollars that could make the diffence for someone who didn't eat last night. Many of us can help, and most of us are willing to do something. But we need to know how to help and what we can do. We are presenting the Hunger Banquet to raise money and collect food for the needy in our community, nation and world. We are presenting the banquet to help you help your neighbor.

If you want to know more and/or make reservations you can email uaaisa[AT]gmail.com. 




Finally, I got to the career fair.  There were lots of employers, not all that many students. 







The Peace Corps table (Joe there in the green Gambian shirt) was right across from the Army table.  They had a video showing people going through training the whole time.  We had nothing (stuff was sent up from the Seattle Peace Corps office) that had a big Peace Corps on it.  We had lots of brochures.  So I went home and got some big photos, and old photo album, a Thai fish trap, and some other odds and ends.  I did meet some interesting folks. 







*While I was looking for a link online relating to the "Eat Like the World" poster, I found this from "The Shepherdess' Mantle" a story from August 1960 copy of The Ministry  about Merrilee who is talking to her Aunt Anne about her upcoming marriage to a Minister.  I thought it was an interesting historical perspective. 

". . . And what about cosmetics, Auntie? Everybody wears them nowadays. You look really out of place without some kind of make-up."

"Yes, I suppose so." Aunt Anne sighed. "It is too bad that God's people cannot bear to be peculiar people any more. Oh, I don't mean that they should be conspicuous," Aunt Anne hastened to add. "But most of our young people today think they have to dress like the world, eat like the world, and most of them want to act like the world. They have completely forgotten that we are to be in the world but not of the world.

"Adventists should be the best-groomed people in the world. Their skin should be the fairest and the freest from blemishes, for we are supposed to eat right and keep scrupulously clean. Their nails should be clean and well filed. Their figures should be finely proportioned through exercise and diet. Their hair should be neat, well-groomed, and attractively arranged, whether long or short. Who says we are not allowed to use creams to keep the skin soft and lovely? Or lotions and powders? Cosmetics are not necessarily wrong. But when girls think they must wear artificial color on their hair, lips, cheeks, and fingernails, that is extreme, unbecoming to a Christian, and unnatural."

Two Short Notes One of Which Wanders to a Third

I posted a brief irreverent video of RG's 20 second history of Alaska earlier today, but took it down at the request of the 'historian.' As you can imagine, any good history of Alaska would have to mention Ted Stevens. Although the reference was brief and not disrespectful, this week of memorials is probably not the best time to post it. I should have thought more carefully about this in the first place.

I would also like to point out a relatively new Alaskan website - Alpenglo. The blogger is someone I know, but that's not enough reason to mention it here. My reason is that she is traveling south on the Alcan and has posted some น่าดู photos.

น่าดู is Thai meaning "Good to look at." Thai has this easy way to turn a verb into an adjective meaning "good to ____".  Fill in the blank - eat, play, see, hear, etc.  You add the word น่า (Na - falling tone) in front of the word. In this case ดู (do) means "to look at." So น่าดู means "good to look at" or "worth looking at." Less literally translated, it could be 'attractive."

My mention of this is not totally off-the-wall because the new blogger was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and I think that probably made me think to use น่าดู when I couldn't find exactly the right word in English. 


น = n, the little mark ่ on top (น่) is a tone mark and in this case makes it a falling tone
า = a as in "ah".  So น่า = na with a falling tone.  You can hear the tone at Thai2English.
ด =  d
  ู =  u, and is always under the consonant so ดู = 'do'

You can listen to all five Thai tones at Thailanguage.com.

What Do Peace Corps Volunteers Do When They Return? - A Few Alaskan RPCVs

 The Byers Lake outing the end of June was a chance for a few Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV's) from Anchorage and Fairbanks to meet half-way (more for Fairbanks, less for Anchorage) and spend time together.  I've posted about the flowers and bugs and the trail around Byers Lake, and now I'm finally getting around to post on some of the former Peace Corps volunteers living in Alaska who were there.  These are pretty brief bios.  These people are doing lots more things than I've captured.




Linda Pearson (Cline) was a volunteer in Malaysia Group 14 1966-68.  She was a teacher trainer in Simangang, Sarawak.  I know another former volunteer who was also in Sarawak (Scott Goldsmith at ISER) so I asked Linda if she'd been in a village with long houses.  She had.  These were probably some of the more primitive sites that Peace Corps volunteers served in, among people who had been headhunters not too much earlier.

Linda's a UAF graduate and has spent a good part of her career as a School Counselor in the Fairbanks area. 





Tony Gasbarro was a volunteer the first time in the Dominican Republic where he was a forestry adviser in one of the first Peace Corps groups from 1962-64.

Then he returned to the US and had a career that included the US Forestry Services for five years, the Food and Agriculture Association (FAO)  of the United Nations in Rome.  Then he taught at UAF for 24 years.  When he retired, he rejoined the Peace Corps and spent 1996-98 as a forestry manager in El Salvador.  As a Professor Emeritus at UAF he's keeping active helping out at the university. 

Currently Tony is teaching one graduate course related to natural resources and international development.   He is also campus coordinator of the Peace Corps Masters International  Program at UAF.




Andrew Cyr worked in environmental education and outreach in Morocco from 2006-2008, particularly working on environmental income generation.

Now he works for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources as a resource specialist doing environmental assessment of gravel sales and land leasing. 






Denise Ramp taught English from 1991-93 in  Gabon. 

She got a degree in Nursing and Midwifery and made her way to Alaska.  She worked at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation (YKHC) in Bethel from 2004-9 and now works at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) in Anchorage.  







Larry Flemming was also in Gabon from 1996-98 where he worked in school construction.  (No, he didn't meet Denise until they were back in the US.)

In Alaska he works as a project manager for the Rockford Corporation. 






Kelly Malahy worked in Agro Forestry and Environmental Education in El Salvador from 2003-2005.


While she lives in Anchorage, she's temporarily in Fairbanks where she's at UAF getting a teacher certificate. 














Joe Sullivan is the catalyst who organized the weekend get-together.  He wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer when he was younger, but thought he needed a higher degree before joining.  So he got his PhD in Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures.  But he also got married and they had a child and the Peace Corps wouldn't take him.

So after a couple of years of college teaching he came to Alaska and worked for the Department of Fish and Game as a fish pathologist.  He also managed a damage assessment project and restoration projects after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

When he retired from the state, he finally joined the Peace Corps and served in Zambia from 1999-2001 as a fisheries agent.  In 2005 he volunteered in the Peace Corps crisis corps and helped out after Hurricane Katrina.

He recently returned from several months in Zimbabwe where he was working on several volunteer projects. 

   
Carolyn Burgin Gray worked in Panama from 1965-67 as a community  development volunteer in the Azuero Peninsula near Las Tablas where  she  assisted doctors from the University of Panama testing her villagers for goiter. A self help project to build a USAID school was completed at the same time. A credit and savings coop was established for women of the area. She returned to work as a Peace  Corps recruiter 1968-69.  



Don Gray  worked near Calcutta, India, 1966-68, "Block Development Officer" in rice cultivation in West Bengal, and in well  construction during a drought in Bihar.

Carolyn and Don met at Stanford, obtained fellowships which were reserved for RPCVs going into education and they both obtained MAs in Secondary Education in the Social Studies.  On completion, they married and joined the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District in 1970 where they both taught social studies.  Carolyn, who also taught Spanish, retired in 1996 after which, among other things, she has been secretary to Northern Alaska Peace Corps Friends for many years.  Don retired in 1993 and then became a stock broker/financial advisor for Morgan Stanley and Wedbush Morgan Securities until retiring completely in 2005.


Don and Carolyn returned to India in 2002 where they noticed many crop changes and improvements in communication, (cell phones &  Internet), transportation and educational attainment since Don's service.  In 2008, Carolyn returned to Panama where she visited with old friends, and saw the village’s new community center, aqueduct, and water purification plant.

Some of the country links here go to a site with Peace Corps Journals online.  You can check it out at the link.

[UPDATE, March 10, 2011: There's a new post with video of Juneau Returned Peace Corps Volunteers relating where they served and what they did.]