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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


Why we needed Title IX before 1972

Carolyn Mulford Posted on July 5, 2022 by CarolynJuly 5, 2022

The fiftieth anniversary of Title IX, a landmark law requiring gender equality in schools receiving federal funds, reminded me of how little opportunity to play sports most females of my generation had. (Title IX changed much more than sports, but that’s another story.) In my one-room school with roughly a dozen students in grades one through eight, we had no organized physical education program for girls or boys. We played together at recess and noon, mostly baseball or games involving some form of tag. Our entire sporting equipment consisted of two bats, a softball, a baseball, and a volleyball (used for … Continue reading →

Posted in The Feedsack Dress, Uncategorized

Concert Jogs Memories of Vienna

Carolyn Mulford Posted on January 2, 2022 by CarolynFebruary 7, 2022

Memories interrupted my enjoyment of the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s concert broadcast last night on PBS. Unlike my Show Me protagonist, a CIA covert operative embedded in Vienna, I lived there only three years, but we shared a love of the city’s music. I went to the opera, an orchestra concert, chamber music, an operetta, or some other musical performance once or twice a week. Tickets were cheap, particularly if you were willing to sit in the balcony directly above a chamber orchestra using the instruments in vogue when the music was composed centuries ago. You could usually get a … Continue reading →

Posted in News, Uncategorized

New Sinister Snowman Edition

Carolyn Mulford Posted on March 8, 2021 by CarolynFebruary 7, 2022

Covid-19 stopped printers cold last spring. Consequently, the mass market paperback edition of Show Me the Sinister Snowman missed its slot in the printing queue. With the snow gone (until next winter, I hope), Harlequin Worldwide Mystery has just released the fifth book in the Show Me series.     This one finds Phoenix and friends trapped in an isolated mansion by a blizzard. Their housemates are aspiring political candidates and potential donors, one of whom intends to lessen their number before the roads clear. Phoenix has come to the meeting with two goals: to support Annalynn’s electoral dreams and … Continue reading →

Posted in News, News releases, Show Me Series

Memories Sparked The Feedsack Dress

Carolyn Mulford Posted on March 1, 2021 by CarolynMarch 1, 2021

When I began writing The Feedsack Dress almost 50 years ago, I asked my mother and two sisters to talk about their memories of 1949. I’d chosen that year for the novel because my recollections and my research identified it as a time of transition for the country, our rural Missouri community, and our family. Our discussion evoked many forgotten details and produced a major plot point. We gathered around the kitchen table at my parents’ farm on a hot summer day. To my surprise, each of us remembered not only different movies and music but also different versions of events, … Continue reading →

Posted in Historicals, News, The Feedsack Dress

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

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