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Carolyn Mulford

Carolyn Mulford

Carolyn Mulford
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Monthly Archives: November 2013

Interview Posted on Writers Who Kill

Carolyn Mulford Posted on November 21, 2013 by CarolynNovember 21, 2013

The upcoming release of Show Me the Deadly Deer prompted E. B. Davis to interview me for a mystery writers’ group blog, Writers Who Kill.

 

Among the questions E. B. posed were the following.

The law enforcement underestimates and undervalues two of your three main characters, which they use to their advantage. If this typical behavior?

When it comes to the political arena, your characters show their acumen. Is politics different than law enforcement?

Your use of internal dialogue reveals the duplicity and complexity of Phoenix’s life. How do you reveal without over justifying her actions?

Do you think women must team together to overcome the odds of prejudice?

E. B. posted my answers today, November 20, at www.writerswhokill.blogspot.com.

 

Posted in News releases, Show Me Series

How JFK’s Assassination Affected Dessie, Ethiopia

Carolyn Mulford Posted on November 17, 2013 by CarolynNovember 17, 2013

Friday night, November 22, 1963, Dessie, Ethiopia

A group of us were chatting at the guys’ house after a tough week of teaching when my housemate, Peace Corps Volunteer Arwilda Bryant, ran in.

Everyone shut up as she gasped for breath. Arwilda wouldn’t have come out alone late at night and risked attacks by hyenas or feral dogs without good reason.

“Kennedy’s been shot,” she choked out. “I just heard it on the radio.” She told us all she knew: The President had been shot while riding in an open car in Dallas and taken to a hospital.

We called the other half dozen Peace Corps Volunteers in Dessie, Ethiopia, a mountainous provincial capital, and huddled around the guys’ short-wave radio, straining to hear through the static. Well after midnight, on November 23, we heard the shocking news that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had died.

We felt a special connection to the man. He spoke to our 300-plus Ethiopia I Peace Corps group on the soggy White House lawn during our training. The press called us Kennedy’s kids.

The next morning Arwilda, my other housemate (Pat Summers), and I slept late. A little after eight someone knocked on our door. A student who lived in the shed behind our house let the person in. I dressed quickly and went to the living room.

An Indian colleague at the Woizero Siheen High School had heard the radio report that morning and come to our house immediately to express his sympathy. He gave us the latest news and addressed us as though we were members of JFK’s family.

Over cups of tea, Mr. Singh recounted with great emotion his memories of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, drawing parallels between the two leaders and the grief and uncertainty their violent deaths evoked in their home countries and around the world.

He asked what the President’s death would mean to the United States. Was the vice president involved? After all, the assassination took place in his home state. We assured him that Lyndon Johnson had no connection to the killer and the American people would accept the new president. Would we Volunteers be recalled? Kennedy had sent us. We assured him that JFK’s death would not end our service.

All that day faculty members—Ethiopian, Indian, and South African—and students came to the Peace Corps houses with the same expressions of sympathy and the same questions. That afternoon we received word that the governor had arranged a special mass the next morning for us, local dignitaries, and faculty members.

The assassination of the dynamic young President had stunned, saddened, and alarmed even our isolated mountain-top town. More surprising to us, Ethiopians and the few foreigners in Dessie regarded the Peace Corps Volunteers not just as Kennedy’s representatives but as his family. Years later in the Capitol Rotunda, I took part in a returned PCVs’ marathon reading of accounts of those days. All had similar experiences.

In Dessie, the PCVs met to discuss what we could do as representatives of our country. The only thing we could come with was to wear black for a few days. We assured the students, and the headmaster, that we would be in our classrooms Monday.

With no television or movie newsreels, no international newspapers, limited radio, and little possibility of international telephone contact, we had little idea what was happening in the United States and the rest of the world. Our main news source, Newsweek, wouldn’t come for days. One of the first photos we saw showed the diminutive Haile Selassie marching behind the cortege with towering Charles de Gaulle.

On Monday, the students in my first eleventh grade English class sat somber and silent. I told them, and each succeeding class, what had happened in Dallas and explained the Constitutional provision for the vice president to succeed the president. Then I invited them to ask questions. They were expecting civil war in the United States. No matter what I said, they remained convinced that Lyndon Johnson engineered the assassination and that Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald to cover up the conspiracy. They expected the PCVs, half the school’s faculty, to be recalled or abandoned by the U.S. government.

The students remained tense all week. Eventually they recognized that in the United States a leader’s violent death didn’t signal war.

The assassination disillusioned people everywhere. Through the Peace Corps and other programs, John Fitzgerald Kennedy projected hope that democratic government and economic betterment, the American dream, could flourish in the Third World. The world looked to the United States as a beacon of hope and generosity.

Over the last 50 years that image has faded. Yet in the United States and elsewhere, people remember President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and these words: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

—Carolyn Mulford

Posted in News

Latest Postings


Earthquakes on My Mind

Carolyn Mulford Posted on December 16, 2020 by CarolynDecember 16, 2020

2020 has been a horrible year. I hope it doesn’t end like another bad year, 1811. That year, rains brought mud and flood to Upper Louisiana. The nightly appearance of the devil-tailed Great Comet prompted rumors of destruction. The brilliant Tecumseh campaigned for tribes on both sides of the Mississippi to unite to beat back the encroaching Americans. The adolescent United States crept closer to the War of 1812. Then a natural disaster struck the middle of the newly expanded United States. In early morning on December 16, a series of earthquakes, aftershocks, and tremors began, interrupting New Madrid’s French … Continue reading →

Posted in Thunder Beneath My Feet

Summer Before Air Conditioning

Carolyn Mulford Posted on July 19, 2019 by CarolynJuly 19, 2019

Air conditioning keeps me comfortable during the current heat wave, but I remember how we tried to cool off when nothing but the movie theater was air conditioned. July and August approximated hell when I was a kid. No day was so hot that we wouldn’t work in the fields and the garden. Only the persistent breeze made the heat and humidity bearable. The steamy days heated the house, making it equally miserable. When we got electricity, fans helped a little. During the day the coolest place to be was in the shade of a big elm. (Sadly Dutch elm … Continue reading →

Posted in The Feedsack Dress

Mixing Memories and Research

Carolyn Mulford Posted on July 16, 2019 by CarolynJuly 18, 2019

When I started writing The Feedsack Dress, my own memories of farm life and the ninth grade guided the plot, but I needed facts about life in 1949. I looked for them in the same places I would have if I were writing an article. At the library I wore out my eyes scrolling through microfilm copies of the Kirksville Daily Express and two great photo magazines, Life and Look. These answered such questions as the styles of dresses or skirts and blouses a fashionable ninth grader wore to school and how much they cost. Few girls wore jeans or … Continue reading →

Posted in The Feedsack Dress

About The Feedsack Dress Blog

Carolyn Mulford Posted on July 16, 2019 by CarolynJuly 18, 2019

When The Feedsack Dress came out in 2007, I started a blog on Typepad that focused on life during the late 1940s and early 1950s. I stopped posting there in 2012, but you can still link to The Feedsack Kids. I’m posting some new blogs and my favorite old ones here.

Continue reading →
Posted in The Feedsack Dress

Giveaway of New Show Me the Ashes Edition

Carolyn Mulford Posted on April 30, 2019 by CarolynApril 30, 2019

On May 7, Harlequin’s Worldwide Mystery will release a paperback edition of Show Me the Ashes, the fourth in my series featuring former CIA operative Phoenix Smith solving murders in rural Missouri. In this one Phoenix and friends, including Achilles, her Belgian Malinois, take on a cold case involving a coerced plea deal (far too common), a string of disturbing burglaries, and crippling bigotr The WM editors insisted on one editorial change from the original Five Star hardback and e-book editions: “Tramp” replaced “slut.” The covers of the paperback and hardback editions look nothing alike, which is also true of the covers … Continue reading →

Posted in Mysteries, News, Show Me Series

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