Retired FSIO Allen Hansen's review of the new book about the last days of USIA by professor Nicholas Cull appears in this month's issue of Foreign Service Journal, and Hansen offers a preview to PublicDiplomacy.org. 

Association president Mike Schneider describes PDAA's outreach campaign, coming events including a conference on the U.S. and East Asia in New Mexico and PDAA's April 2 lunch program on Asia, as well as collaboration with NCIV. And Mike tells about the public diplomacy achievement awards, which will be announced at PDAA's annual dinner on May 5.

 

As Ernesto Uribe told the Public Diplomacy Alumni Blog, public diplomacy officers sometimes end up in the big time world of show business. Jazz DeCou, retired from USIA and now living in France -- colleagues may remember him as Jim DeCou -- tells how his USIS work with American Olympic decathlete Rafer Johnson landed him on the popular early network TV show "This Is Your Life."

Alan Kotok, PDAA's newsletter and Web site editor, returned on 29 January 2013 from an eight-day University of Iowa alumni seminar in Cuba, and highlights public diplomacy opportunities for the U.S. to exploit, before others beat us to it.

Here's an opportunity for public diplomacy alumni to make good use of their language and cultural skills: the National Defense Language Corps, a new Department of Defense initiative.

Bob Baker, a retired FSO from USIA, tells how even dedicated Marxists in Mali got their groove on with Chicago Blues artist Junior Wells, plus bonus video.

Mike Anderson reflects on the recent passing of Indian music icon Ravi Shankar, and a meeting in India between Ravi Shankar and visiting U.S. musician Ravi Coltrane, the son of jazz legend John Coltrane. This article first appeared in the January 2013 PDAA Today newsletter.

Eddie and Mary Lee Deerfield offer a look behind the scenes at Foreign Service life in Madras, Kampala, and Lagos. "[I]t came to us," they said, "that we had not included some happenings that were so bizarre or outlandish that they seemed out of place in a 'proper' historical document."

Ernesto Uribe

It’s all about being in the right place at the right time… Ernest Uribe tells how he got recruited into a role in a Hollywood film, and even did his own stunts (blood and all). 

Georgette Garner, the widow of FSO John Garner, wants to remind PDAA members of memorial markers available from American Foreign Service Association, an idea that the Garner family initiated.

Stephen M. Carney: Trying to remember what took place in Nicaragua more than sixty-five years ago I encountered the names of two individuals who were significant in the early annals of public diplomacy and whom I knew personally -- Muna Lee and Jake Canter.

 

The American Association for the Advancement of Science unveiled on 9 March its new quarterly publication, Science & Diplomacy.

A poem by Jim Jensen, inspired by a personnel policy at USIA in 1961.

Alan Kotok

It isn't often that a news report overlaps with my various careers in public diplomacy, technology, and business, but a story on the CNN-Money Web site this week brings it all together. Jeff Bussgang, general partner at the venture capital firm Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston, writes about his recent experiences meeting with a group of Palestinian entrepreneur CEOs during their USAID-supported visit to the U.S.

 

Charles Spencer

"As was demonstrated repeatedly at these [cultural exhibits] from 1959 to 1991, Americans and Russians, as people, did indeed discover a mutual understanding."

So concludes Andrew Wulf, curator of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and a doctoral candidate in museum studies, who has delved deeply into the U.S. Information Agency records at the National Archives in Washington and at the Reagan Library in California.

Bob Baker

The most amazing poetry reading I ever heard was by James Dickey. Our distinguished Cultural Officer in the U.S. Embassy, London, had arranged a formal reading by the American novelist and poet. Dickey was in London as the guest of his British publisher to talk about a new volume of poetry.

 

by Fred Becchetti, USIA 1962-89

In 1962 on my first day at USIA Edward R. Murrow greeted me at the front door of 1776 Pennsylvania Avenue. He smiled and said good morning to me as he hurried out the main door to his waiting car.