#Peace Corps volunteers

[crispyfryenperu]

Normal Midnight Chaos

It’s 12: 16 am. I am sitting in my dusty bed under my dusty mosquito net in my dusty town which I at once adore and is the bain of my existence. I am listening to my host mom softly snore from across the hallway (our bedrooms have windows to the inside of the house so you can always hear everyone). I am surfing youtube and happily settle on 1989 the album. Taylor’s Version was announced today to come out in October. I am excited, I can remember so clearly blaring every song with Julia and Antonia, we had just graduated high school and thought we were so cool.

This race in Newhall was awesome- it was so rainy and so many varsity girls fell down the hill. Everyone was covered in mud and soaked to the bone. Then they cut out the muddy/hilly part for the varsity boys race which was afterwards. (losers)

Today was a strange day, although not unusual. All in all a typical Peace Corps day. Unlike most midnights, I am enjoying my 25 gigabytes a month to listen to 1989 and type up a hopefully-quality-blogpost. I can’t sleep. Possibly because of the brownies I made today with Ryan. Usually sugar doesn’t affect my body but I guess I ate too many (just 5?) brownies. I’ll blame the “chocolate-flavored chips” that we use for their cheap price. Who knows what those are made of. Or maybe it’s because I drank one teaspoon of instant coffee today. Or maybe it’s because there are so many striking, beautiful moments in my days, and also so many startling, uncomfortable moments. In addition recently we had a tragedy over here in Peru.

First I’ll tell you about my day. I woke up took out my retainers and opened my door… there was my 5-month old teenage kitten meowing at me right away. Michicucho followed me as I drank some boiled water - there was no milk :/ and ate a piece of french bread with REAL BUTTER!! I made my bed (wow!) and got out some baking items. Ryan Reynolds (I recently turned in a report and didn’t realize I referred to my site partner as Ryan Reynolds in it. His last name in Lenhart.) Ryan Reynolds showed up at 9:45 am to bake some brownies - despite being in Calango almost a full year this is probably only the second time we hang out just the two of us outside of work. So we talked about Peru and Peace Corps and our expectations vs reality. We are both happy to be growing as people and learning new perspectives and ways of life. I hadn’t wanted a site mate but in the end I’m grateful that Ryan is here!

Now Peruvian ovens are tricky - they usually don’t reach as high temperatures so you need to bake your goods for a long time. Once they were finally done it was lunch time! After I ate 5 brownies and Ryan licked the bowl, he left with most of the brownies. My host mom came home with rice, mashed potatoes, and chicken soup from the comedor popular (like a soup kitchen). I made a lemonade - I can never get the lemon to sugar ratio perfect enough for my host brother! At this point I just try my best, there isn’t more I can do. And my host mom made me a fried egg to eat with the rice and potatoes. I’ve changed in a year because I did enjoy this lunch.

 Throughout the morning I was also checking in with my host mom and counterparts, because I had a meeting with the mayor at 12, but he was at a reservoir inauguration so i had to wait for him and my counterparts to return. After lunch (2 pm) I went to the municipality to wait for them. Finally I was able to present my community project at about 4 or 4:30 pm. Unfortunately, they are stressed, busy, and understaffed, so I was rushed through my presentation. My counterparts weren’t able to come because they had other work to do, in the room nextdoor, as well as because the timing was so impromptu. But the project was accepted. I mean, I’ll be applying to a Peace Corps grant, so who wouldn’t accept free outside money.  Then I tried to have a small meeting with my counterparts to assign some responsibilities in the project and agree on a timeline. But it’s pretty much iMPOSSIBLE to get even 3 of them in the same room for more than 7 minutes. Then I walked 30 seconds to one of my friends house’s to bs about work and life. We walked up towards a bakery by my house to drown my sorrows in some warm french bread. Then I came home, managed to open my front door with the key - We recently changed the lock and I haven’t been able to open it all week. I shared brownies with my host mom and brother, held my crazy cat, and watched my favorite tv show Al Fondo Hay Sitio. But in Al Fondo Hay Sitio there are some really idiotic characters, and today showcased characters who were racist or classist. So it was making me angry. Then I spoke with my creative and lovely friends Alex and Carmen on googlemeet (weird), and finally to my parents. Even though family can be so frustrating sometimes, FaceTiming my parents always brings me joy.

I put my laptop and myself under my thick blankets in case my typing is bothering my host mom. It’s now 12:41 am. Fortunately most people in Peru are very used to loud noise all over the place. So I’m probably fine. Actually the acceptable public loudness in Peru is one thing that I … hate. 

Everything I did today was pretty trivial, so why did I bother sharing it? Well, it just had so many moments of joy and hope. and so many moments of frustration, sadness, or anger. I think it all felt exaggerated in my mind due to the fake-chocolate-drugged brownies (am I old or allergic?)  Regardless, I finally felt today that my community project makes sense. All of the puzzle pieces came together. But there is also so little support for it. The people I am looking for don’t have a lot of time to give me. I can’t blame them for not wanting to do extra work which isn’t even in their job description. 

I was going to talk about TRAGEDY in this post but it’s already a post on it’s own! Looks like that’ll be coming up. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly okay. And so is everyone I love. 

12:57 am. Hopefully now I can sleep deeply.

[selfdiscoverymedia]

GV23-32. Peter Michael Johnson, author of WHITE CLOUD FREE.

Our Global Veterans Stories with Sara Troy and her guest Peter Michael Johnson, on air from August 8th Set mostly in Latin America, it’s a semi-autobiographical tale of an idealistic, naïve Peace Corps volunteer who suffers a series of traumas abroad, leading to unlikely friendships. At 23, Peter has enlisted in the Peace Corps and finds himself teaching beekeeping in a tiny village in Paraguay.…

[usnatarchives]

Beyond the Stars: Mae Jemison’s Odyssey ✨

Happy Black History Month!

This Black History Month, we spotlight the extraordinary life of Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African American woman to travel in space. Born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama, and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Jemison’s journey into the stars is a testament to the power of dreams and determination.

From an early age, Jemison showed a keen interest in science and space, but noticed the absence of women astronauts. She pursued her passion relentlessly, earning a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and an M.D. from Cornell Medical College. Before joining NASA, Jemison was a general practitioner and served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where she managed health care for other volunteers. In 1987, Jemison’s dream became reality when she was selected for NASA’s astronaut program. On September 12, 1992, aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor on mission STS-47, Jemison became the first African American woman to travel in space, serving as a mission specialist. During her eight-day mission, she conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness, contributing valuable data to the field.

Jemison’s honors include induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the National Medical Association Hall of Fame, and the Texas Science Hall of Fame, among others. Her story is not just one of breaking barriers in space exploration, but also of inspiring generations to pursue their dreams, regardless of birth and obstacles.

For more information on Mae Jemison’s groundbreaking journey and contributions to science and humanity, the National Archives holds numerous resources that illuminate the lives and achievements of African American pioneers:

[whatevergreen]

Blood of the Condor (Yawar Mallku), (1969), film poster. (director: Jorge Sanjinés)

"Ignacio (Marcelino Yanahuaya), the proud chief of a tribe of Quechua natives in remote Andean Bolivia, discovers that his wife cannot bear children. Like the other women of their village, she has been secretly sterilized against her will at an obstetric clinic operated by a purportedly beneficial aid group from the United States, with the covert help of the Bolivian government. Ignacio gathers the men of his tribe to exact revenge and bring justice to his people."

The story, which was based on accounts by indigenous people to Jorge Sanjines, provoked a public outcry which led to a government investigation about the Peace Corps' actions in Bolivia, ending in their expulsion from the country.

Part of an interesting albeit slightly flawed review on IMDB:

"... Molly Geidel, author of, "Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties" found documents decades later clearly showing that the Bolivia Peace Corps director and volunteers with the agency, inserted IUDs in indigenous Aymara women at the time, despite not always having medical credentials and not being able to communicate well with the women.

So, it would seem that it wasn't the large-scale premeditated sterilization of a people that this film would have you believe (that is debatable), but none-the-less, an incredibly problematic policy practiced by the U.S. Peace Corps. It's not a long walk from nonconsensual contraception to accusations of population control. But the true story gets more complicated.

Long after this movie was released, a 2002 report by Peruvian Health Minister Fernando Carbone suggested that the president of neighboring Peru, all around asshole Alberto Fujimor, was involved in the forced sterilizations of up to 300,000 Quechua and Aymara women between 1996 and 2000 as part of a population control program called "Voluntary Surgical Contraception".

The United Nations and other international aid agencies supported this campaign, and yes, USAID provided funding and training for it. Whether these Western NGO's and Orgs were told that it was a voluntary family planning program (as the title suggested) or they knew it was a crime against humanity, I can't say.

The point is, the conspiracy theories this film uses to push its political agenda are based on either an eventual truth, or an ongoing truth that we simply don't have the full reportage of. So the movie's anger is prophetic or timely, but regardless, righteous."

Source:

[neil-gaiman]

If Good Omens comics come out I will dedicate my life to serving God's higher purpose I will go to church I will volunteer I will join the Peace Corps I-

Oh good.

[discoonthegrass]

I asked this about Kirk earlier, but I’m curious what you all think McCoy would do if he wasn’t a doctor for whatever reason! (Also not including nurses or paramedics)

[nrdmssgs]

Spiraling

Masterlist Part 2 (in case you need a happy ending)

Very mild angst Pairing: Ghost x you TW: no Summary: Ghost understanding, something very important just slipped through his fingers. AN: this is kinda sorta songfic. Here is the inspiration.

The worst part is that Ghost can't even get mad at you. He was never there to show you true love, you were never there to break his heart. There were no promises, no occasional touches or stolen glances. There were these two evenings: each beautiful in its own way.

On the first one, the squad was resting after a successful operation, waiting for a transport to pick them up. A large group of soldiers gathered around you and Ghost came closer to find out what was going on. The southern sky was strewn with large, bright stars. Not a single cloud hovered over the desert, so it was a perfect opportunity for stargazing. Time to time you raised you hand up, searched for a next constellation and did this strange, unpractical move: you pointed on the constellation, drawing an invisible line between stars and then pretended to grab it. Ghosts mind blurted out some jibe about you obviously being too short to grab a star. So he sat on the ground behind others, to say it out loud, when you pause. Only to find himself alone on the ground, staring up at the sky. "Lieutenant? Ghost?" Your voice brought him back to reality. "Our heli is here. Are you alright?" He nodded and was ready to stand up, when you offered him a hand. He reached out automatically and you grabbed his hand. It was almost pointless since you were much smaller, but still you helped him. Grabbing his hand like one of those stars, you'd never reach.

The other evening happened much later. Ghost could say, he got used to seeing you around. There were still no chats outside work topics, no interactions at all as soon as any of you was off to home. It was the way it was supposed to be: clean and professional. Ghost was in his office tending to paper work, when you knocked and entered. "Lieutenant, I wanted to let you know, I'll be spending the next few months away from this base. Volunteered to train international corps." Ghost nodded, not even raising eyes from his papers. "There is one more thing. I like working with you and plan to keep it on. But lately I've felt distracted, when you are around." His hand froze, not even finishing signing the last form. That sounded not good. So he finally looked up on you, only to find your absolutely peaceful smiling face. "Don't worry, I won't let it grow. We are all adults here, and I am planing to work here, not search for any kind of informal bonds. That's why I decided to take this job. Just wanted to be honest, ok?" Ghost nodded again, much slower this time. "Ok. Now go show them, how it's done." You left his office, and he tried to remember, where was he. But after a few attempts he understood, it was utterly pointless: his mind was racing somewhere. And that rush felt easy, even joyful. It was a good thing, you two were colleagues and there always was this formal barrier between you. But it was also a good thing, you were so mature and honest. It made him feel safe. His borders were secure. Somewhere deep inside, he was smiling.

Two evenings, they weren't even filled with anything special. So why the hell he felt as if a white-hot sting was deepening into his stomach, when in a few months he got a short message from you.

"The problem is dealt with. I'll be staying here for a little longer. Staying frosty."

You come back in almost half a year. Calm, polite, effective and professional - Ghost couldn't wish for a better squadmate. He finds himself observing you from afar. In theory, he must like, what he not even sees, but rather feels: you are at peace, you are over this. But a traitorous voice somewhere deep inside chuckles, "That easy, really? A few months to erase me, a few more - to consolidate success - and that's it?"

"It's good to be back, Lieutenant." You give his hand a firm, short shake.

"You aren't back," hisses something from the back of his mind, but Ghost only scoffs at it.

Too little too late, Riley.

That day, he finishes paperwork earlier and locks in his room. He sinks on his bed and watches evening lights slowly crawling across the ceiling. Simons' mind begins to spiral as he lays there, heartbroken over a love that never even happened.

[acourtofteasandfoxes]

I just... I love the idea that the Foxes join Renee at church on occasion. All for different reasons, at different times.

Wymack is the first, obviously. He loves all of his Foxes, knows them deeply. Wymack is there with her every Sunday for nearly two months before she settles on a church and finds her place. He still shows on occasion, especially on weeks Renee has been particularly quiet.

Dan goes to squash their high school rivalry. They need to be a team and team members support each other. Dan is also the reason Matt goes for the first time. The girls use it as a test. They wanna see how whipped Matt is for Dan, but also if he'll be respectful. Dan says yes to a date when he asks later that night.

Betsy goes because Renee asks. It was brought up in therapy and Betsy goes without question. Abby joins them. They don't go again, but Betsy doesn't hesitate to discuss religion with Renee and Abby ducks her head anytime Renee prays.

Allison goes after Seth. She had been meaning to go, truly, Renee is her friend and she had been invited. But it doesn't happen until Seth dies. Allison Reynolds is searching for answers, and she wants so badly to find them in church pews and worship songs. Allison would only step foot in that church one more time, and it will be for Renee, not for answers.

Seth never goes before he dies. Renee did invite him, just as she did all the Foxes, but he laughed at the thought.

Nicky was raised religious. Arguably it makes the most sense for him to join Renee when she asks him. Nicholas Hemmick has never said no so fast in his life. The jokes he throws around about bursting into flames when he walks through the doors aren't all jokes. Nicholas Hemmick is scared of the God he once loved. It's not until Drake, and Christmas, and Balitmore, that he cracks. He catches Renee right before she walks in and she holds his hand, in the back pew, as he cries during the sermon. They sit there for an hour after everyone else has left. Renee is the only one who understands the way Nicky feels both healed and broken.

Aaron goes because Katelyn goes. Her and Renee talk about it, she asks Aaron to take her, and really? Dude is so whipped he wouldn't say no. Aaron will never admit it, but he actually really liked the choir. When he gets back to the dorm he looks up a few worship songs to listen to before games.

Andrew doesn't go to an actual Sunday service. He does, however, help Renee volunteer for the church ice cream social. They were short handed and she promised him unlimited ice cream scoops. The adults are scared of him. The children love him and it's absolutely not, could never be, because he is giving all of them double scoops of sprinkles. Much like Wymack, however, he joins on occasion if Renee's vibe feels off. He just never goes inside, choosing instead to smoke in the car as he waits for her.

Kevin is the one to ask Renee if he can join her. They're talking about religion in one of his history classes, it overlaps with Renee's religious studies class, and he's interested. He ends up going every Sunday that summer, gathering information for a project, interviewing people, including Renee. He gets an A on his project and gets invited to all the church's events after that. The little old ladies loved him.

Neil is the last to join. He respects Renee, enjoys her company, but church and large crowds? Sitting still for an hour? Being preached at about something he doesn't believe is real? He has exy, and Andrew, and better things to do with his time. It's his idea, however, when he finally does go.

Because Renee has graduated. She's graduated, is heading into the Peace Corps, and she's leaving the church. Leaving Palmetto. Kevin gets the invite, but it's Neil's idea. Off handed remarks that turn into a Thing. Because the Foxes don't do small.

When Renee is asked to stand, when she is asked to lead the church in prayer one last time, she looks out into the crowd and has to take a moment. Because there, in the back, is an entire pew dressed in Palmetto orange. Every single one of them is wearing her number.

Renee knows, in that moment, that God truly does exist.

[babylon-crashing]

the psycho'vac

I.        In a glass case                in the dark                         in an alcove                                in the dark                in a church in Rome,        in Sienna, in Florence,                                bits of saints mummified like the monkey's paw or                        Daniel Dravot's withered head                                                sat in the dark                        waiting for the faithful                                                to pass by, tourists to gawk at, for children of archeologists                to be terrified by.        Outside the Uffitzi                        one could buy postcards                                        fragments of Bosch's                                                        Last Judgement (1504)                                        reaction against sexuality                        that was creeping        back into the faith – every where lusty, fleshy figures                        were being torn apart, swallowed whole by frog-eggs,        tossed into pits of fire and snakes,                                        onto pitchforks and trees of thorn                while the saved, the fleshless,                                desiccated, loosely built creatures                        closed their eyes and lay upon the ground to pray.

II.

It starts while you sit in an outdoor cafe near the great clock in the ex-Lenin Square, forever at 11:45, while swallows who nest in the ruined eaves dart low, dark sickle-flashes, sweeping, skimming. Your notebook is open, pen cast down. You sip at the tiny cup of bitter coffee-sludge (when you are at a friend's house the old tatik takes the finished cup from your hands and reads the ground-stains, having you press your thumb into the hot residue, always with the curious shapes rimming the inside lip.) There is a smell thunder in the air. It starts when you walk down one of the city's mud streets, the rain coming down for four days nonstop. You stand in a crumbled doorway, a truck rumbles past full of cabbage heading for the market, spraying mud and gravel into the air. The wave-like clouds come down off the nearby mountains, things urgent and low to the ground, overwhelming the ruined factories and caved-in apartments, the one-room emergency boxes families of eight or twelve had been living in for the last seven years. It starts as you walk down the street. Under your boots, laying in unmarked graves, thousands of bodies, crushed and buried, their calls bubbling to the surface. Waiting for someone to hear.

III.

After the first baby in the orphanage you work at dies, then the second and finally a third, you go on a walk. It has been lightly snowing. Behind the city lays the broken rail yard. Even though there is no penicillin at the rail yard and none of the doctors who refuse to come to the orphanage to heal "things" as they call your babies will be there, you walk without a hat in the late afternoon gusts. You climb up through an abandoned cab engine, the iron sticking slightly to your gloves, its wooden passenger carriages trapped under a fallen wall. The train - its olive green and chrome and red 1940s Soviet art deco - slightly covered in wet-powder. At your feet, in the lee of the cab engine, dozens of empty hypodermic needles. Beyond the cab, the twisted rail lines; toppled buildings and other ruins; open pits of crude oil sunk in the ground; a whole roundhouse with the roof caved-in. It looks like a temple. Something holy, but you who never believed in the sacred or the holy, who saw ghosts as simply cultural abstractions. When you reach the roundhouse you find nothing inside but rubble and years and years of snow.

IV.

Humor. An US Embassy worker, an American working for a Foreign Aide organization and a Peace Corps Volunteer run into each on the street. Soon an Armenian friend walks by.

"This morning for breakfast," the Armenian said, "I had Frosted Flakes with milk."

"You had Frosted Flakes?" cried the Embassy worker, "How did you get Frosted Flakes in Armenia?"

"Oh, I bought them at the black market store near my house."

"You had milk?" cried the Foreign Aide worker, "How did you get milk?"

"Oh, I mixed the powdered milk with water."

"You had water?" cried the Peace Corps Volunteer, "How did you get water?"

V.

All winter long you were in isolation

watching it grow. You had given up

on the poetry brought in the 40-pound

box from home. You had not spoken

English in over three months, ever since the first

frost coated your pillow – there was no heat

in your hut, the rains turned to ice.

You wore your jacket and thermals and gloves

to bed and gave up on poetry. Reading

a poet writing about wasted sex no less

in San Francisco was a hateful thing.

Reading a poet, in Berkeley, where they

have everything, speculate on her fat

soul was a hateful, too. Under your floor

boards the dead called out your name, until

vodka, Russian water, kept the their

voices at bay. Intolerable, how clear they

came in. All of them complained,

griped, belly-ached in a language

untranslatable until your perception:

It was a cross between Armenian

and Russian that the old women spoke

down in the market.

VI.

It is sad to see these old people one, two, three generations apart from their children. These haughty, thin old people unable to speak of these things anymore, needing always to speak around them, as if at the dinner table to speak with clarity would make the magic happen all over again. To listen to them submerge their magic, to protect their children. There was a woman, nearly a hundred, who lived in a nearby village. As a baby she had escaped the Young Turks' Genocide in 1915, had witnessed the USSR rise and fall and had lost eighteen children and grandchildren in the earthquake. You visit her, she speaks in the ancient language, the old Armenian words, "God has forsaken the Armenians" – and spends her time looking for her god among the graveyards where 50,000 of her people died in 4 minutes in 1988. You will be leaving soon, returning on a 32-hour flight. Numbers. Something is inside you. Parasite. You will be leaving soon, and she has no more use for the living. Her words drop away, become muddled, confused, a lexicon of secrets, you pass by gravestone after gravestone on the way to the surface, thousands of them, until there is no more room for air.

VII.

Of course, you

take it with you.

It grows hideous

inside you, even

after the Peace Corps'

doctors arrived and demanded

that you are Medically

Evacuated -- the ol' Psycho

Vac -- three days before your

twenty seventh birthday, you

take it with you. You have

grown thin now, fleshless,

desiccated. They do not

even let you say good-bye

to your babies, such is the state

they find you in. On the flight

back to DC you sit next to

a woman, Dutch ex-missionary,

who explains that sometimes,

the young men God has sent

to do his bidding go crazy.

They, who fear for the safety

of their souls above all else,

do not know how to take

care of themselves so far from home.

She knows this, she assures you,

she has seen it happen. As

the stewardess pushes the cart

for the evening's meal by your seat

the thing that rests inside you

gurgles once in agreement

and then is still.

][][

Notes.

This is it, my grand attempt back in 2002 to put words to my nightmare.

The poem starts out in Italy because that is where I learned, for the first time, about the religious fever dream that is Hell, when I accidentally saw the LSD-madness of Hieronymus Bosch's art and it blew my little brain at the implications of such a concept. It didn't seem like much of a stretch to link the mummified bodies of Bosch's righteous in that painting with the babies dying under my care.

The, "the one-room emergency boxes," are called "domiks" and are basically railroad boxcars used to house the vast homeless population suddenly needing protection from the cold. Gyumri was never really rebuilt and 30 years later there are families still living in their rusted-out boxes.

[trifoliate-undergrowth]

The thing about politics and administration changes are that they affect so many different branches of government. Personally I am at the moment sad about losing Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.

Deb Haaland is the first Native American Cabinet secretary, a 35th-generation New Mexican and an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna. She's especially passionate about environmental issues, climate change, healthcare for all and missing and murdered indigenous peoples. She created the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, an investigation of old boarding schools which came after the discovery of the mass grave at Kamloops. This would be "an effort to document known schools and burial grounds, including those with unmarked graves" and to, where possible, return remains to their families/nations. (x) She also created a new Missing and Murdered Unit to "pursue justice for missing or murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives" which has investigated 728 MMIP cases and solved 263 missing persons cases and 8 murders.

I'm currently a seasonal NPS employee so I've been getting weekly update emails from her office, and she includes her pronouns in her signature, which is encouraging to see. She also un-banned NPS uniforms at pride after there was a kerfuffle with that.

She's visited various corps and volunteer organizations (none that I was in. I'm not jealous!...), including Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps, shown here in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado:

She's rejoiced at fish progress:

(x)

(X)

And this is just an incredible picture:

(X)

She was present at Biden's historic apology for government-funded boarding schools, an apology which was suggested as part of the road to healing in the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report. This was also the first time a sitting president has visited Tribal lands in 10 years.

Secretary of the Interior is a president-appointed position and she will almost certainly be replaced in January. We got an email from her about a 'peaceful transition' which sounds like she knows she's on her way out. In the (paraphrased) words of my self-proclaimed moderate republican christian coworker, 'It's too bad, I liked her. Trump isn't going to want a Native American. He's going to appoint a middle-aged white businessman to maximize the profits of the National Park System so we can pay for ourselves and so he doesn't have to give us as much of a budget.' Everyone I've talked to has been sad about likely losing her as Secretary of the Interior.

Though many Department of the Interior employees will miss her and in my opinion the department will suffer without her, she'll still be around and now that I know she exists I'm going to make sure to follow her next projects, whatever those may be.

(X)

[luulapants]

I hate that stupid "the orphans don't care if you're building the orphanage out of ego!" story, I think it's done untold damage to activist spaces.

The orphans should care. The orphans will care when they find out that you cheaped out on construction materials because your goal was a building with your name on it, not the comfort and safety of the orphans. They will care when you never asked the community if they need a new orphanage - you just decided that on your own - and what they actually needed was a hospital to keep parents from dying and creating more orphans. They will care if the price of living in your orphanage is having a camera shoved in their faces so they can look pathetic and cheer your name in gratitude, as if a safe place for children to live is a benevolent kindness and not the bare minimum that people with more money than they need owe to society.

Intent is the foundation of every action.

Here's a better story: a team of US Peace Corps volunteers go to a community in south-central Africa. The area has rich, fertile soil and no agriculture, so the volunteers decide to build a big farm and teach the locals how to work it. The locals don't seem excited, but they watch the volunteers build, till, and sow the field. Plants begin to grow. Then, late one night, a herd of hippos come up from the river and stampede across the farm, destroying everything. This is why there was no agriculture in town.

When people care more about how charity makes them feel than they do about the actual work they're doing, at best they will be ineffective and at worst they can actively do harm. The nonprofit industrial complex wastes disgusting amounts of money praising their donors because they think that's the only reason people choose to give.

Don't give because it makes you feel better than others. Give because you are no better others. Your fellow human beings are part of your own soul, and their deprivation is your deprivation.

[footprintsinthesxnd]

USAAF Flight Nurses

So as I’m currently collabing with @major-mads on a fic where our two ocs are flight nurses I thought I do a little post about them as they aren’t well know. I’ve also had a passion for ww2 nurses, including flight nurses and so I’ve really enjoyed sharing my flight nurse knowledge with Mads as we have written our fic. These woman were truly amazing, like many woman during ww2, so I thought I do a little factual post about them.

Before World War II, the U.S. military showed little interest in using aircraft and flight nurses to evacuate wounded soldiers to rear areas. However, the global war forced the US to revolutionise military medical care through the development of air evacuation, which was later known as aeromedical evacuation and flight nurses.

With the rapid expansion of USAAF air transport routes around the world it was made possible to fly wounded and sick servicemen quickly to hospitals far from the front lines. This helped save the lives of many wounded men, and the introduction of flight nurses helped make it possible.

Due to a pressing need for this service, the USAAF created medical air evacuation squadrons and started a rush training program for flight surgeons, medics and flight nurses at Bowman Field, near Louisville, Kentucky.

The increasing need for flight nurses became critical after the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942, however many of the nurses at Bowman Field had not finished their training. Nevertheless, the USAAF sent these nurses to North Africa on Christmas Day.

On Feb. 18, 1943, the U.S. Army Nurse Corps' first class of flight nurses formally graduated at Bowman Field.

Due to the C47s used as air evacuation also transported military supplies, they could not display the Red Cross. This meant that without any markings to indicate their non-combat status, these evacuation flights were vulnerable to enemy attacks. For this reason, flight nurses and medical technicians were volunteers.

To prepare for any emergency, flight nurses learned crash procedures, received survival training, and studied the effects of high altitude on various types of patients. They also had to be in top physical condition to care for patients during these rigorous flights.

Eventually, about 500 Army nurses served as members of 31 medical air evacuation transport squadrons operating worldwide. It is a tribute to their skill that of the 1,176,048 patients air evacuated throughout the war, only 46 died en route. Seventeen flight nurses lost their lives during the war.

The Flight Nurses Creed

I will summon every resource to prevent the triumph of death over life. I will stand guard over the medicines and equipment entrusted to my care and ensure their proper use. I will be untiring in the performances of my duties and I will remember that, upon my disposition and spirit, will in large measure depend the morale of my patients. I will be faithful to my training and to the wisdom handed down to me by those who have gone before me.I have taken a nurse's oath, reverent in man's mind because of the spirit and work of its creator, Florence Nightingale. She, I remember, was called the "Lady with the Lamp." It is now my privilege to lift this lamp of hope and faith and courage in my profession to heights not known by her in her time. Together with the help of flight surgeons and surgical technicians, I can set the very skies ablaze with life and promise for the sick, injured, and wounded who are my sacred charges. ...This I will do. I will not falter in war or in peace.

Here are a few of the real flight nurses from ww2 from left upper: Second Lieutenant Elsie S. Ott, upper right: first Lieutenant Suella Bernard.

Elsie S. Ott - As the flight nurse on the first intercontinental air evacuation flight, she demonstrated the potential of air evacuation in January 1943. She was an Army nurse who had never flown in an airplane and had no air evacuation training, she successfully oversaw the movement of five seriously ill patients from India to Washington, D.C. This six-day trip would have normally taken three months by ship and ground transportation. For her actions on this historic flight, Ott received the first Air Medal presented to a woman, and she also received formal flight nurse training.

Suella Bernard - On March 22, 1945, two CG-4A gliders landed in a clearing near the bridgehead at Remagen, Germany, to evacuate 25 severely injured American and German casualties. Once the gliders were loaded, C-47 transports successfully snatched them from their landing site and towed them to a military hospital in France. In the second glider, Suella who had volunteered for the mission, cared for the wounded en route. One of the first two nurses to fly into Normandy after the D-Day invasion, Bernard became the only nurse known to have participated in a glider combat mission during World War II. For this mission, she received the Air Medal.

Upper left: first Lieutenant Aleda E.Lutz Upper right: first Lieutenant Mary L. Hawkins

Aleda E. Lutz - One of the most celebrated flight nurses of World War II, she flew 196 missions and evacuated over 3,500 men. In November 1944, during an evacuation flight from the front lines near Lyon, France, her C-47 crashed killing all aboard. Aleda was awarded the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Mary L. Hawkins - On Sept. 24, 1944, she was evacuating 24 patients from the fighting at Palau to Guadalcanal when the C-47 ran low on fuel. The pilot made a forced landing in a small clearing on Bellona Island. During the landing, a propeller tore through the fuselage and severed the trachea of one patient. Hawkins made a suction tube from various items including the inflation tube from a "Mae West." With this, she kept the man's throat clear of blood until aid arrived 19 hours later. All of her patients survived. For her actions, Hawkins received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

I hope you’ve all found this interesting and now have a greater understanding of flight nurses. If you’d like to read a fic on flight nurses please check out my fic ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’ and @major-mads fic ‘A Pair of Silver Wings’ a Masters of the Air collab.

[itwasthisorthemilitary]

April 5, 2024

Judgement day.

And I couldn’t be happier that my bracket was SO wrong. I hate to admit it, Francisco crushed this.

On April 18th I will be headed to Los Cañones, Panama Oeste. Approx population 200-250. Super rural. Electricity will be an issue but cell service and water are pretty reliable. Xavier knows the town and told me that there’s an orange orchard, a big river, and lots of kids. I’m only about 30 minutes away from Los Mortales.

Along with me in Panama Oeste are 🥁🥁🥁

CAITLIN, Sam, Maddy, Sophie, and Janet. It’s a motherfucking SQUAD. I’m so excited. When the big reveal happened and we all flipped our folders over, Caitlin and I were standing next to each other and it was the most relief I’ve ever felt. That girl is gonna be my neighbor the rest of my life i swear to god. I never believed I’d be in the same region as her and now I’m letting myself be excited. And let me tell you…our families are FREAKING OUT. They are so happy because we are so close. They all cried. Sughedys told me that if i hate my new family i can just come live with her again and we don’t have to tell the Peace Corps anything.

THEN in my packet of information, they mentioned the name of the last volunteer who was in this site, pre covid. Naturally i found him on Instagram in about 7 seconds and started messaging him. He returned to Panama after his service was terminated early due tot he pandemic and now he runs a hotel in Veraguas, Panama. So essentially, he’s amazing. He’s been messaging me all night and says he still goes back to visit Los Cañones because they’re his family now. Every message he sends just elevates this to such a new level of realness. He and his brother are going to visit me the day after I move there to show me around and introduce me to people.

Today felt insane. The anxiety and nerves and energy was really stressful and although I couldn’t be happier and was so relieved, the comedown from all the emotions made me jittery and exhausted. I’m nowhere near Audrey, Liv, or Carlo. We all are making plans to see each other but who knows the reality of how well we will execute those plans. Liv is so far and I know she’s scared because she’s hours away from other volunteers, whereas i can walk to Sam in less than an hour. I’m tempering my excitement around her, but she knows that’s what I’m doing and there’s no way to diminish her fears until she’s there and it all works out. Geographically she’s got one of the coolest sites, so i intend on keeping my visiting pact.

Feeling crazy, and sleep doesn’t want to greet me again. Unfortunate considering I’m headed to Panama City at 6 am tomorrow.

[mariacallous]

Going to prison for two years was the last thing I thought would happen to me when I signed up to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Poland shortly after the Berlin Wall fell. But according to a bilateral agreement between Washington and Warsaw, the U.S. would pay my pitiful 235 dollars per month salary while my Polish hosts had to provide housing.

At that time, the city government of Kielce, Poland still had many avowed communists and remained wary of Americans, so they insisted on housing me in the infamous Kielce prison, where hundreds of Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II and then hundreds of Polish patriots were killed under the Soviets.

I was the only one living in eerie abandoned cellblocks. There was a guard posted downstairs — for my protection, I was assured, not to keep tabs on me.

Over my two years working as an engineer in Kielce and living in the prison, I came to admire the Polish people for what they have become now — America´s best and most reliable ally. Indeed the Poles have stood with us from the Revolutionary War to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the incredible Polish military engineer who volunteered to come to our rescue in our Revolutionary war. is a personal hero of mine.

If Kosciuszko had thought like Donald Trump and regarded our war for independence as a faraway waste of time and money, as Donald Trump regards Ukraine´s war for independence, the United States might have very well lost the war and never achieved freedom.

Kamala for president

That is why as a lifelong Republican I am supporting Kamala Harris for president. She will stand with Poland in the face of ongoing Russian aggression against Poland and Ukraine.

Keep in mind that Poland has had Russian missiles traverse its airspace on their way to strike Ukraine. Every day, Poland faces Russian hybrid war tactics such as sophisticated Russian cyber attacks targeting key Polish military and civilian cyber infrastructure.

Because Poland is a NATO member, it is looking for a U.S. leader who will stand in solidarity with them — not pull vital military support for its strategic ally Ukraine with a so-called “America First” policy that cedes American leadership in Europe to the Russians. Because that is what is at stake in this election and it is paramount for all of Pennsylvania´s 800,000 Polish-Americans to understand and acknowledge that.

Working as an engineer in Poland provided me with valuable work experience that I leveraged to start a small steel engineering business in New Hampshire whereby I have worked in western Pennsylvania in places like Steelton. I have gotten to know and work with Polish-Americans, who have a special place in my heart and who often appreciate my Polish prison stories.

Important for me, as someone who served in Afghanistan and Iraq alongside Poles, is having your battle buddy´s back when they need you. That nation has had America’s back for over two centuries. Kamala Harris is the only candidate who will have Poland´s back.

[spacecasewriter13]

When the Lights Go On Again by @spacecasewriter13

Fic Summary:

It is May of 1946, over a year after his fall from the Hydra train and losing his left arm, and James "Bucky" Barnes is struggling to adjust. Working as an analyst at the New York City SSR branch, Bucky tries to put the war and all of its sorted memories behind him. However, try as he might he is plagued by thoughts of Magdalene "Maggie" Ramirez, a Women's Army Corps (WAC) Corporal he met in London and hasn't spoken to since before his fall in January of 1945. Little does he know that Maggie, in her struggle to put the war behind her, has moved to the city and looking for a job with the New York Bell Telephone Company as a switchboard operator. Now, by sheer dumb luck, they are reunited as they both fight come to terms with what they were to one another during the war, and work to figure out how to move forward in a world that was unprepared to deal with the consequences of war in the unsteady peace.

Chapter 30: A Brave Leap

Maggie meets the Barnes women, and both Maggie and Bucky ponder what this means for the future.

Excerpt:

The train station was loud, bustling with people, men in uniform, a few Red Cross volunteers, and other wartime workers all hustling to get where they needed to go. The line for the pay phones was absolutely astronomical, and she was aware of the strange looks she was getting—the sidelong glances and the double takes (never mind the outright gawking).

She hadn’t been unaware of the smear campaign but also hadn’t believed that anyone would buy it either, or that she would have to face down half her hometown just so she could use the phone.

Half of her had a mind to just hitch a ride home, rather than continue to stand in line so she could call Pai to send Tony and Danny to come and get her from the station. Wouldn’t that be a thing? Just show up unannounced on his front doorstep. Tony and Danny would be so upset that they’d been robbed of the opportunity to pick her up.

Her stomach turned as the next reality dawned on her.

They were going to be happy to see her, right? Things were so different now than they had been only a few months ago. They’d still be glad she’d enlisted even though she was going overseas now, right? They didn’t believe the smear campaign, did they? That all the WAC girls were like that? Would they?

Her mind spun, her stomach churning, all the possibilities and what ifs running through her brain as she tried not to think about how much had changed—how much she had changed since she’d left a few months ago, and how much she was still likely to change after she shipped out in a few weeks.

And she knew she wasn’t alone. Daniel had received his notice and was getting ready to go to boot camp before being shipped out.

How different would they be when they made it home?

“Corporal! Corporal Ramirez!!”

Maggie whirled around to find Tony and Daniel walking toward her, big grins on their faces.

“Tony? Daniel!” She grinned, adjusting her rucksack on her shoulder, rushed to them. “I thought Pai wasn’t going to send you until I called!”

“Couldn’t resist the temptation to get here before you called.” Tony laughed. “Come here, kid. Let me take a good look at you.” He held her out at arm’s length, and Maggie waited with bated breath as both her older brothers surveyed her with serious expressions.

“What? What is it?” She asked, shifting from one foot to another. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just—“

“Barnes here.” James’s voice called, pulling her out of whatever rabbit hole she’d fallen down.

Read the Rest of the Chapter on Ao3

[ptseti]

Dr. James S. Harrison taught history and humanities courses at Portland Community College (Cascade Campus) beginning in 1993 and eventually became Social Sciences Faculty Department Chair.

After receiving his BA, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Subsequently, he earned an MA in US and African History from the City College of New York.

In 2016, he gave a talk called "Imagining a World Without Whiteness."

Dr. Harrison passed away in September 2022.