Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Around the World with Peace Corps

Orange County Peace Corps recruiter, Julia Capizzi (L), and me

Since Peace Corps sprang into existence in 1961, its mission has remained the same. This is a remarkable legacy for a small Federal agency that has adapted readily to our changing world. The goals remain simple, succinct and extraordinarily comprehensive:

To promote world peace and friendship by fulfilling three goals:
  • To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
  • To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served
  • To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans
Twice this month, as a prelude to Peace Corps Week, I've accompanied Julia and other RPCVs to speak about what our experience has meant, and what a fulfilling adventure service to our country can be.

Peace Corps doesn't lag behind the times, either. No. It takes advantage of trends in staging its events as part of the third goal. This coming Sunday, Orange County, CA, residents interested in Peace Corps and what it does, are invited to the Center for Living Peace, 4139 Campus Drive, in Irvine. I'm looking forward to a different kind of a speed date experience.

Special Event - Around the World in 90 min. - Sunday, 1:00pm to 3pm, March 1st, 2015

This "Speed Networking" event will connect those interested in learning more about PC with returned RPCVs. Pairs will have 7 minutes to discuss whatever  topic they choose to ask about before moving on to the next conversation. Held at The Center for Living Peace, 4139 Campus Drive,
Norman Rockwell, Peace Corps in India
Irvine, CA 92612

Norman Rockwell, Peace Corps' Bold Legacy, 1966

 The following Saturday, March 7, I'll participate in another event in Long Beach, CA.

Peace Corps Festival: Host Country Heroes

Long Beach

03/07/2015, 1:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. (Pacific)

Expo Arts Center
4321 Atlantic Ave.
Long Beach, CA 90807



Travel the world through the eyes of international Volunteers.Join Returned Peace Corps Volunteers from around the globe to hear stories about their Host Country Heroes. These are the individuals whose collaboration and hospitality make Peace Corps service the amazing experience that it is.
About the Peace Corps: Read more or watch a video about what it's like to be a Volunteer including what Volunteers do, where they go, andthe many benefits of Peace Corps service. Or apply now to begin your life-defining experience.
Stay Connected: Sign Up for E-Updates || Facebook || Twitter || YouTube || Flickr || Tumblr || LinkedIn
For questions about this event contact Johann D'Agostino

Sunday, February 8, 2015

The Summer of '63: Another Fine Day

Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story on Stage
Yesterday my son, Steve Elders, escorted me to the touring musical Dirty Dancing, set in the summer of 1963. I had tears break rolling down my cheeks at every other scene. To revisit that period awakened in me such vivid memories of my own emotional turmoil that summer. When I saw the movie during the summer of '87, right before I went to Belize as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'd had the same reaction.I've written about 1987 before...but here's what happened the summer I turned 26, another retrospective. This is a a story I wrote on my 70th birthday and revised many times since. 

xxxxx

Another Fine Day

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” –Robert Frost 

The morning I turned 70, I sipped pomegranate tea and reminisced about other landmark birthdays. I’d celebrated my 50th with escargot at an award-winning French restaurant in Ensenada, right before I joined the Peace Corps. On my 60th I’d hiked over moonlit trails in Seychelles with friends in the Hash House Harriers.

Now I was tucking another decade behind me. Did I fear aging? Hmmm. Only one birthday ever scared me, my 26th, when I thought I’d have to relinquish my dream of becoming a writer.

I’d finished a student teaching assignment at a school that subsequently hired me to teach English and journalism. My then husband had been jubilant.

“It’s wonderful that you’ll have a steady job,” he’d said. “Teachers get good retirement pensions and solid medical coverage.”

How I’d scowled at his well-meaning comment! I might as well have been 70, instead of merely 26. Goodbye to youth and dreams, bylines and best sellers. They’d be replaced by lesson plans, bulletin board exhibits, and report cards. Now I’d be a grown-up with a full-time grown-up job. Reality had tackled and wrestled me to the ground. I’d become a stereotypical respectable middle-class wage earner, abandoning forever the hope of living my dream as a wild-hearted Bohemian writer.

All the time I’d been accumulating credits towards my teaching credential, I’d thought of myself as a promising young writer, even though I’d been married since shortly before my eighteenth birthday, and two years later had become a mother. Now I felt the hot breath of middle-age on my shoulder, and I believed then, as Yogi Berra had once remarked, that my future lay behind me. Since I’d written my first poem in seventh grade, I’d seen myself as a budding Edna St. Vincent Millay. Instead, I was destined to become a hair-in-a-bun drudge.

On that eve of that long ago birthday, our beloved Dodgers weren’t playing, so my five-year-old, Steve, and I didn’t spend our evening as we usually did, glued to the radio. He went to bed early, and I picked up my novel. For the past week I’d been reading Herman Wouk’s classic Youngblood Hawke, an indelible portrait about staying true to a writer’s dream. I’d been nearing the last chapters, and couldn’t put the book down.

I finished the final page shortly before dawn, crept up the stairs and crawled into bed, tears trickling down my cheeks as I envisioned the parade of gray days of my future. I shuddered, picturing myself correcting papers, diagramming sentences, and brushing chalk from my drab schoolmarm clothing.

When I awoke, I turned on my favorite radio station KRLA as The Chiffons burst into their rollicking “One Fine Day,” a song with a message of hope. I brightened. Maybe somehow I’d find a way to continue to write. Maybe I wouldn’t have to give up my dream altogether. That night Warren Spahn finally beat the Dodgers on their home turf, breaking a losing record that stretched back over a decade. Maybe that was a sign. After all, Spahn hadn’t given up hope. Then we all piled into the old Chevy and went to the drive-in to see Bye Bye Birdie.

Any day, I concluded, could be one fine day.

The night I turned 70, Steve phoned me. I explained how I’d been remembering that earlier birthday.

“Yes!” he exclaimed, “I remember how cute Ann-Margret looked with the credits rolling across her face at the end of that movie. And it’s funny that the Dodgers lost that game to Spahn on your birthday, because that was the year they went on to sweep the Yankees in the World Series.” 

As it played out, I taught for only three years, and then segued into another career as a social worker. Eventually I joined the Peace Corps and saw more of the world than I’d ever hoped. And as the years passed, I continued to write and to publish.

I never become a novelist, as I’d anticipated. Somehow I’d lacked the discipline to set aside the requisite chunks of time. Nonetheless, I stole evenings here and afternoons there. I wrote and sold articles and essays, book reviews, travel pieces, and author interviews. I never ceased to be delighted when I saw my byline in newspapers and magazines. The thought that somebody might be enjoying something I’d written continued to inspire me. With each submission, I kept my dream alive. It didn’t matter that I’d never written fiction or that my name never made a best-seller list. I had clippings galore.

So on this birthday I savored my special day, my fine day. I fed the dogs and cats and transplanted the zinnia seedlings. Every year I’d plant those seeds, and hope they wouldn’t get nipped by a late frost. I paused frequently to marvel at the myriads of butterflies fluttering around the poppies and delphinium in the front garden. The garden teemed with life. So did my spirits.

Later, I lost a game to my second husband at cards. “Happy birthday,” Ken chirruped, plunking down his second gin hand. I opened his gift, a crystal unicorn, rampant over a sapphire blue heart. I touched up my pecan-hued hair and sprayed myself with honeysuckle. I donned a navy dress with a splashy flowered border, and coaxed Ken to photograph me in the garden by the scarlet Asian lilies, flowers against flowers.

We drove to town where he treated me to an Early Bird Supper at the Oak Street Grill. I savored every bite of my lemon garlic salmon. In the evening we watched Jeopardy, read the local papers, caught the results show of So You Think You Can Dance, relieved that our favorites had made it through another round.

Then shortly before midnight, I sat down at my computer and finished an essay I’d started earlier, about how writing, like sowing zinnia seeds, calls for an act of faith. You put your words down on paper, just like you plant seeds in the soil, and hope they’ll bloom and that somebody eventually will find them entrancing. I’d seen a call out earlier for stories on gardening for an anthology. I submitted mine.

Since then I’ve had over a hundred true stories accepted by a variety of anthologies. So I don't doubt that indeed I am a writer. I’m not haunted by the ghost of failure. Bohemian? Maybe mildly…I've recently embarked on a new adventure

Ken died a few years ago. Eventually I realized it was time to tackle another dream. I've moved back to Southern California, a radical downsize, to a tiny apartment. Though I miss the zinnias, I can admire roses and pansies in December in the gardens of my senior living complex. As a bonus, I now have more time to write.

So at long last I'm determined to devote this coming year to short stories…yes, finally, fiction. If not now, when? But I won't abandon creative non-fiction. My 78th birthday now looms on the horizon. I’m betting it, too, will be one fine day. I know I'll write about it. I'm still wild at heart.
xxxxx

Thank you, Steve Elders, for the fabulous Christmas gift of taking me to revisit the summer of '63, when it really was still morning in America. Or, as he tells me, "before it turned into mourning in America."

Saturday, February 7, 2015

What's Sexier than 50 Shades of Grey?


Not Your Mother's Book...On SEX, that's what. And it's coming your way...for Valentine's Day! So shade your eyes, my prim and proper pals. If you've got a prudish streak, either suppress it or read no more! Unless you'd like to shed those inhibitions for a moment so you could laugh yourself silly.

Publishing Syndicate has announced the February 14 debut of its 11th title, Not Your Mother's Book...On SEX. Blushingly, I confess my story, "The French Way," is one of the 69 stories included in this volume. Here's what publishers Dahlynn and Ken McKowen include in their fair warning to prospective readers:

 Not Your Mother’s Book…On SEX is a look at the funny side of sex, not a blow-by-blow description of the act. It is a compilation of healthy, playful and irreverent stories about everything sex, from mature relationships to clandestine physical encounters, from surprising mishaps to embarrassing moments. You’ll get wet reading it, because you’ll pee your pants laughing. With 69 carnal stories and chapters titles including “Best Laid Plans,” “Sex and the Digital Age” and “Costumes and Props Required,” this book is guaranteed to be a stimulating re. ad, time and again.

Inside Story: The idea for this book fittingly was conceived in a hotel bedroom at the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop in March 2014. Just how appropriate is that?

I'm delighted to have been present at that late night gabfest when many of the NYMB co-creators and contributors discussed the success of Fifty Shades of Grey...and agreed that, hey, we can do better! Pam Frost stepped forward to take the lead...the rest of us jumped in to solicit contributions from our fellow writers, and at last...just in time for spring fever to strike...here's the result.

Not Your Mother’s Book (NYMB) is a new anthology for the 21st century. Series creators Dahlynn and Ken McKowen—seasoned veterans of anthology publication—launched the NYMB series in 2012. The secret to their success? Every book is filled with funny, even daring, stories from people all over the world. Be sure to check out www.LaughUntilYouPee.com, which features some of the best stories from the NYMB series. Not Your Mother’s Book…On SEX is the 11th book in the series. There are more new and funny NYMB titles under development and all need stories from YOU! Story submission guidelines at www.PublishingSyndicate.com.