Gathering for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers

I'm still obsessing about The Help versus the way it really was in the 1960s, but since today was the day City College of San Francisco faculty returned to campus (for Professional Development Day), I wanted to get out an announcement for them about a celebration I'm going to host.  Here it is.

Dear Faculty and Staff,

                As you may know, this is the 50^th Anniversary of the Peace Corps, which is being celebrated in the Bay Area as well as in Washington, D.C.  I’d like to have an informal gathering of RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) on Sunday, September 18 from 2:00 to 5:00 to celebrate the occasion and see off the RPCVs who are going to Washington, D.C. the following week.  We had a similar gathering in February 2003, when we shared food, stories, photos, and the hope that our country would not attack Iraq.  Several of the RPCVs who attended eight years ago have retired since our party but will be back for this anniversary celebration.  

                If you are an RPCV or know a City College employee who is, please let me know.  It would be great to meet some recently returned Peace Corps Volunteers who aren’t of retirement age as I am, but people of all ages are welcomed!  After I hear from you, I’ll send an invitation with the address and other details.

                ‘Ofa atu,  (as people say in Tonga, my country of service)

                Tina

PS  Even if you can’t attend, I’d appreciate your contacting me so I can put your name and country of service on a list of CCSF RPCV!  We’d like to put an article about this special occasion (and special faculty/staff)  in City Currents.

Here's a tiny collage  of the gathering in 2003.  Later I'll include other pictures.  I think the rule is one a day, and to make this easier to open, I've reduced the pictures, so all you can get is an impression!

Anniversaries

Three anniversaries are coming up in September:  The ninth anniversary of the Club Toruno-Martin, the tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Peace Corps, so I feel that I should focus on these anniversary.  The Club Toruno-Martin is so exclusive that it probably doesn't belong on something as public as a blog--not if we can trust Emily Dickinson, who reminds me that I've never created a personal profile, so maybe she can help me:

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring blog!

Maybe she didn't really say blog.  Maybe she left out the l.  It's not my favorite poem by her, but it is the one that was used in Adventures in Literature--or was it Adventures in Appreciation?   Whatever it was, I remember that I memorized all of the poems to compensate for my inability to focus in math class.

So...I want talk about the Club Toruno-Martin yet.  Maybe I'll wait for our tenth anniversary.  But I'll see whether I can combine the tenth anniversary of our latest justification for bombing, invading, and occupying countries with the fiftieth anniversary of the Peace Corps.