Happy Birthday Peace Corps!

JFK with the first volunteers in 1961

Two score and 12 years, John F. Kennedy signed an executive order that established the Peace Corps in the Department of State. A Peace Corps bill had been floating around in Congress since the mid 50s, but there had been no action taken on it until 1960 when Humphrey in the Senate and Henry Reuss in the House tried to push the bill toward passage, but ultimately it took Kennedy's executive action to make this volunteer service reality.

The first group of 52 volunteers were sent to Ghana in August, 1961. The country had been independent since 1957. The Peace Corps has had its ebbs and flows over the years but today numbers over 8000 volunteers with a presence in 76 countries. I served in Lesotho from 1988-90, as a math and science teacher in a rural high school, an experience I treasure.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

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Dispatches from Vilnius

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