December Holidays We Never Think About
You (probably) have your sights set on December 25 about now. Tree is up or going up soon. Presents are bought or at least on a list. Feast is planned — your house or theirs? — and guests invited. … Read More
It Takes A Village
It takes a village … … and not just to raise a child. It takes a village to write a memoir, too. This post is about the villagers in my village, the … Read More
Finding Joy Again: A Post on Gratitude
At the end of last week’s post on the JFK assassination, I promised we’d talk this week about finding joy again. I expected it would be a post about the importance of grieving, the difficulty of moving into … Read More
The 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of JFK
It’ll be 50 years this Friday since John Fitzgerald Kennedy, better known as JFK, the 35th President of the US, was shot and killed while in a motorcade in Dallas TX. I’ve known for quite some time … Read More
Full-service or Self-service?
I’ve been on the road these past few weeks and I have a few musings on that. Mostly they’re about pumping gas. But we’ll get to that in a bit. My mode of transportation for all of … Read More
DST: Yay or Nay?
With the nearly nationwide return this past weekend to Standard Time (I say nearly because not all states or territories observe Daylight Saving Time) I got curious once again about this scourge of school children everywhere. I’ll start … Read More
The Application Process, Part III: At the Sanitorium
Some thirty Kazakhstanis and four Americans were in charge of our training in a village near Almaty, home of Kazakhstan’s international airport. But first, we had to get there. The Peace Corps brought us to Washington DC … Read More
The Application Process Part II
We knew we’d be able to come home whenever we wanted, theoretically. The Peace Corps does not want volunteers who don’t want to be there. It’s not the army, after all. In practical terms, though, it would be … Read More
The Application Process, Part I
“Flexibility, patience, and a sense of humor characterize the successful Peace Corps volunteer,” or PCV, as the recruiter actually said, using the acronym that would soon became part of our everyday vocabulary. He may have been referring to … Read More