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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


I Am a River

Carolyn Mulford Posted on April 19, 2025 by CarolynApril 19, 2025

Each week I lunch with a group of friends and discuss a topic. Last time the coordinator posed this question: What is the shape of your life? The answers included a rectangle, a vase, a cloud, and an octagon. Usually I wing it, but this time I wrote my response. The Shape of My Life I am a river, Birthed in a puddle, Nourished by rain, Pushed to overflow And grow broader And deeper.   Springs and creeks fed my flow. Widening waters gathered force, Thrusting me against unyielding barriers And cascading me over rocky falls.   Other streams joined … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized

Where to Find My Books

Carolyn Mulford Posted on April 1, 2025 by CarolynApril 1, 2025

While only one of my books, Show Me the Sinister Snowman, continues to be published in print and electronic editions, several of my novels are available from online sellers. Most of the copies are used, but columbiabooksonline.com, my supportive local bookstore, has a small stock of new Show Me hardbacks and paperbacks. I also have a few copies of all my novels except The Feedsack Dress, my historical children’s book, and Show Me the Murder, the first in my mystery series featuring a former spy returning   home and solving crimes with old friends. Fortunately e-editions still exist. Barnes and Noble … Continue reading →

Posted in Mysteries, The Feedsack Dress, Uncategorized

Looking Forward 60 Years Ago

Carolyn Mulford Posted on February 28, 2025 by CarolynFebruary 28, 2025

Reminders of my attempts to start my writing career arrived last Christmas. A friend, Joyce Campbell, sent me letters I had written to her while we were serving as Peace Corps Volunteers (teaching English) in Ethiopia from September 1962 to July 1964 and in the months after we returned home (Chattanooga, Tennessee, for her and Kirksville, Missouri, for me) after traveling through Europe. On December 21, 1964, I wrote, “Has anything turned up for you yet? People don’t seem terribly impressed with Peace Corps experience for job qualifications it seems to me. I’m going down to the University Placement Bureau … Continue reading →

Posted in Writing

Mid-Continent Earthquakes, Past and Future

Carolyn Mulford Posted on December 16, 2024 by CarolynDecember 16, 2024

About 2:30 a.m. December 16, 1811, an earthquake threw people in New Madrid, Missouri Territory, out of bed and crumbled brick houses and cabin chimneys, forced the Mississippi River to run backward and change course, disturbed sleep along most of the East Coast, and toppled dishes from shelves in the White House. That marked the beginning of some of the most powerful, prolonged quakes the United States has experienced. These weren’t the first in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, which is centered near where Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky come together. Geologists and other scientists have found indications that powerful … Continue reading →

Posted in Historicals, News, Thunder Beneath My Feet

The Turkey That Bullied Me

Carolyn Mulford Posted on November 26, 2024 by CarolynNovember 26, 2024

I grew up with animals as friends, the first being our dog Roamer. He and I wandered around the yard, the barnyard, and the garden. Roamer barked at squirrels and chased rabbits from our vegetables. He made me ponder one of life’s great puzzles: Is it okay to sympathize with Peter Rabbit in the story but condemn him when your own carrots are at risk? Roamer knew not to chase our chickens or cows or pigs, and he joined me in playing with an orphaned lamb and the kittens whose parents kept the barn free of mice. What he didn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized

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