Top 2023 Books

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Bless your heart, Demon Copperhead. You’ve beaten my annual Top Ten book list like a borrowed mule and now I’m madder than a rattlesnake in a forest fire.

Barbara Kingsolver’s brilliant novel about young Demon’s perilous life in Appalachia was published last year but I read it too late for my 2022 Top Ten list. It turned out to be my favorite book of the year. I also admired its co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Trust, Hernan Diaz’s novel about wealth and deceit in New York. Likewise for another prize-winner, Nobel Prize recipient Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose spellbinding Afterlives transported me to colonial East Africa.

I’m not a professional critic who receives free advance copies, so I read these three books too late for my list. So, too, for some other excellent novels: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow; Olga Lies Dreaming; The Trees and The Measure.

My new list again highlights ten books published during the year but, as in 2022, 2021 and 2020, it’s limited to those I read by mid-December. Here’s my 2023 Top Ten: 

James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store was my favorite (so far). Set in Pottstown, Pa., it unravels the mystery of a skeleton found in the bottom of a well. McBride draws on his own Jewish and Black heritage to paint a rich portrait of Chicken Hill, a neighborhood whose diverse residents grapple with poverty, discrimination and a rapidly changing world. It’s a whodunit with a huge heart

My other favorite was Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, an eco-thriller set in New Zealand. A guerrilla collective of environmental activists forms an uneasy alliance with an elusive American billionaire who wants to build a survivalist bunker. His real goals prove more sinister, leading to an apocalyptic confrontation. The title comes from Macbeth and the final act is just as bloody.

Action and violence also abound in Small Mercies, but here the conflict revolves around the Boston school desegregation battles of the 1970s. As in Mystic River, author Dennis Lehane captures that city’s voices. His central character is Mary Pat, a tough “project chick” from Southie with two failed marriages and a son lost to heroin. When she learns her daughter may be involved in the murder of a young black man, she is caught in a whirlwind, just like the city around her.

In Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano tells the story of a boy growing up in a loveless house who finds refuge among his basketball teammates. William goes to college on a scholarship and seems to finally find happiness with an ambitious classmate whose Chicago family embraces him. When their marriage falls apart, he discovers even deeper love — and then tragedy — with an unexpected partner. He nearly dies before reconciling at the end with a figure from his past.

Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett,is set mainly in a cherry orchard in northern Michigan. The farm’s mother, Lara, slowly shares with her daughers — and us — the story of her brief acting career and love affair with an actor who became one of the world’s most famous movie stars. One daughter thinks the actor is her father. Her mother reveals the truth while gently prodding her daughters to contemplate deeper truths about family and what matters in life.

For more action, consider All the Sinners Bleed, the latest thriller from S.A. Cosby, whose Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears appear on my previous lists. This time Cosby opens with a shooting at a rural Virginia school that leads to chilling revelations about the murders of local Black children. The sheriff slowly makes sense of the case while confronting racism, religious zealots, snake charmers and a former girlfriend who became a podcaster.

The remaining four books on my list are nonfiction, led by Jonathan Eig’s masterful biography of MartinLuther King Jr., which draws on a trove of previously unreleased White House telephone transcripts, F.B.I. documents, letters, oral histories and other documents. I thought I knew a lot about King, but I learned many new things about him as both a man and historical figure, as well as about Malcolm X, the Kennedys and others. Most of all, Eig shows us King’s incredible determination and heroism. I came away with even greater gratitude for his life.

Considerably less admirable are many of the characters in David Grann’s The Wager. Set mainly in South America in the 1740s, it’s a page-turner about a British vessel that wrecks off the coast of Patagonia while pursuing a Spanish galleon. Its survivors are marooned and then embark on a harrowing journey. Those who reach Brazil are hailed as heroes until several other castaways appear and accuse them of mutiny. Who is telling the truth? Author Grann, who wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, presents the evidence he uncovered during years of research.

Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland takes place closer to home, in Indiana during the 1920s. A charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson leads the Ku Klux Klan to national power, culminating with a march through Washington, D.C. He recruits politicians and others to his movement, which appears unstoppable until his abuse of a local woman leads to his downfall. Especially in today’s world, it’s a sobering reminder of how easily hate groups can attract followers.

My final book, also nonfiction, is a memoir by the historian Drew Gilpin Faust. Necessary Trouble describes her childhood in rural Virginia, a life filled with horses, privilege and racism. Young Drew is a precocious child, as you’d expect of someone who would become Harvard’s president, and she struggles to make sense of her life. Her perspective keeps changing as she travels to Eastern Europe, gets involved in the Civil Rights Movement and protests the Vietnam War. I was moved by her empathy and beautiful writing.

I’ll also salute two excellent nonfiction books that didn’t make my Top Ten: The Undertow, Jeff Sharlet’s journey into far-right extremism, and Traffic, Ben Smith’s origin story about online disinformation, featuring his time at Buzzfeed.

Equally disturbing, although fiction, was Emma Cline’s The Guest, about a young woman who uses sex and manipulation to con her way through the luxurious world of the Hamptons. I was engrossed by her odyssey of desperation and, after finishing it, went on to read Cline’s earlier (and even more chilling) The Girls, based on the women who followed Charlie Manson.

Other novels I enjoyed were much lighter, such as Pineapple Street, about Brooklyn’s wealthy elite; Romantic Comedy, featuring a writer who finds love at a show resembling Saturday Night Live; and The Chinese Groove, about an overly optimistic immigrant who confronts the realities of America.

I love crime fiction and this year discovered Don Winslow, specifically City of Dreams and City on Fire. They’re both set in Providence, where I once lived. I also enjoyed a pair from Ruth Ware: Zero Days and The It Girl. I liked two other thrillers, Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead and Every Man a King by Walter Mosley, but found both less compelling than previous work from these two distinguished writers.

A book even older than those I cited at the beginning is Richard Ford’s 2014 novel Let Me Be Frank With You. It’s the fourth in Ford’s series of novels about Frank Bascombe of New Jersey, who is now confronting the indignities of older age. It made me laugh (and cringe) more than any other book this year.

I was less enthusiastic about two of the year’s most honored books, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (too long; couldn’t finish) and The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk (an overdue history of Native America but too scholarly for me). I also gave up on Under the Wave at Waimea by Paul Theroux, usually one of my favorites.

Finally, a salute to Cormac McCarthy, who died in June. I’d read several of his books but never All the Pretty Horses, whose brilliance reminded me of his singular talent. I will miss his voice even as I look forward to 2024 and a new year of great books — regardless of their publication dates.

As always, if you have suggestions of your own, please share them here.

Peace Corps Macho

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I received a message recently from someone thanking me for an article I wrote in 1979 before returning home from my first stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer, in Nepal.

The message came from a woman in Tennessee who served in Swaziland (now Eswatini) around the same time. “I pulled out a scrapbook and found a copy of your Peace Corps Macho article,” she wrote me. “That saying has reminded me many times not to get too caught up in myself over the years. I thought to look you up and I’m glad to see that you are still writing thought-provoking words on a very interesting life.”

I’d nearly forgotten the article, which appeared in the July/August 1979 issue of Peace Corps Times (which no longer exists). I found it online and, despite some gendered language and outdated phrases (e.g., “Third World,” “villagers,” “far out”), much of it remains timely.

Just in case you missed the article 44 years ago, I’m sharing it here along with some photos of my time in Nepal.

Item: A fellow Volunteer chose one of the most isolated posts here in Nepal. A few months later, he was visited by a Peace Corps staff member. The Volunteer’s quarters were, the staff member later told me, “a hovel worse than anything in the whole village. His kitchen was dirty and he wasn’t boiling his water. It was unbelievable. When I asked him why he didn’t improve his living standard, he said, ‘Well, I didn’t join the Peace Corps to be comfortable, you know.’”

Item: My lifetime friend, Mitch, joined Peace Corps/Nepal a year after me. At the end of his training. he had to choose between Kathmandu and another town, Pokhara, for his post. If he lived in Kathmandu, we could have shared my house and had a great time together. But Mitch chose the other post. One of the main reasons was that we both felt funny about doing something that we would so obviously enjoy. It would lessen the hardship we associated with Peace Corps service.

Item: My first post in Nepal was a village called llam. For medical reasons, I was transferred to Kathmandu. My salary was raised by $16 per month. Now I go to an occasional film or cheap restaurant. When Volunteers come in from their isolated posts, I am sometimes asked whether I have forgotten in my “luxury” what the real Peace Corps experience is about.

The implication is clear: You have to suffer to be a PCV.

It’s an attitude that I call “Peace Corps Macho.” It occurs when the willingness to endure hardship in the course of helping the poor turns into the belief that hardships have an intrinsic worth of their own.

Peace Corps Macho. You have to suffer to sing the blues.

Turning the inevitable hardships of Peace Corps life into a psychic combat medal is, of course, one way to cope with problems beyond our control. We can laugh at our troubles. It gives a sense of camaraderie.

But the problem is that many Volunteers I know — myself included — sometimes feel they have to seek out these hardships to prove how much they can “take,” thus showing how much they are willing to sacrifice to help humanity.

For example, a typical conversation in the Peace Corps/Nepal medical office:

“Hey, guess what? My lab test just came back and I’ve got the amoeba!”

*Oh. that’s nothing. I just got over pneumonia. I almost got a trip to Bangkok out of it, but I got better too soon.”

“Really? Say, did you hear about Bob? He came down with typhoid and had to be helicoptered out. Pretty amazing. First he had hepatitis and malaria, now he’s got typhoid.”

“Well, you know, Bob’s a far-out guy.”

This is the ethic of the missionary. Suffering brings prestige. Like the priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, the taking on of suffering elevates the soul.

The trouble with this is that Peace Corps Volunteers are not missionaries. Nor are we in Outward Bound. Nor the army. By the Peace Corps charter, we are here for three reasons. The primary one is to help the poor. Second is to give foreigners a chance to see Americans. And third is to create a body of American citizens sensitive to the needs of Third World development.

There’s not a word about suffering.

The line is not always clear, of course, about when hardship is a necessary part of getting our job done and when it becomes a spiritual ego ride. For example, to live in a simple house is to show solidarity with local farmers. But it’s ludicrous not to do what you can to catch the rats, keep your room clean and be happy.

Likewise, if you eat local foods instead of tinned goodies from home, it is a sign of fellowship with the poor. But some Volunteers carry this to the extreme by eating a protein-deficient diet, well knowing that they are endangering their health. Why? To be like their neighbors.

I feel the pressure myself. My lob and life here have been going extremely well. My teaching is successful, I have launched a series of special projects and have made many friends. And yet I sometimes feel guilty because things aren’t more difficult.

Peace Corps itself is ambiguous in its attitude towards hardship. On the one hand, it frets over Volunteer safety, programs and the like. But on the other, it prints recruiting brochures that ring something like: “Sure it’ll be tough. You’ll be vomiting up spiders and wishing those poisonous snakes would finally put you out of your misery. But you’ll be a Peace Corps Volunteer!”

The tension doesn’t only concern physical health, but mental health, too. Consider the Volunteer who has been at his post for six months, but who is not supposed to come to the capital for another two months. He is lonely and really wants to see his friends and have a decent meal. Too often a Volunteer in that situation will feel that he has to visibly freak out before he is morally justified in seeking relief. So he stays — after all, hardship is what Peace Corps is all about. Maybe he will tough it out after all. But maybe he won’t.

Another example: During my training, we had several conversations about whether there were times when we ought to drink unboiled water. In certain social situations, shouldn’t we just be gracious and take a few sips?

Well, as one who has now been through giardiasis, amoebic dysentery, hookworm and roundworm, I have no doubts anymore what the answer to that question is. What are you going to gain by drinking the water and vomiting for days: impress the villagers?

There seems to be a need here for balance between our own needs and the commitment we feel to help the poor. Too often there is a tendency among those involved in social service to make the worst of things so as to assure themselves that they are genuinely committed.

The issue is even more pronounced these days since many of us (I include myself) feel a certain repulsion toward the narcissism of many in the so-called human potential movement, what Tom Wolfe and others have called the “Me Generation.” For myself, I feel that many such people, well meaning though they may be, have become so wrapped up in themselves that they have forgotten the poverty of half the world’s people.

But they have their point, too. It’s a fool who doesn’t watch out for himself. So somewhere between suffering to show “compassion” for the poor and getting Rolfed and ESTed all day, there’s got to be a balance.

In any case, Peace Corps should face this issue a lot more squarely than it does now. Is hardship to be maximized as a requirement for successful service? If not, why does Peace Corps so often glorify unhappiness? And more important, why do so many PCVs let themselves get sucked in by such self-destructive logic?

Peace Corps Macho, to be sure, is not one of life’s basic human needs.

While I’m Still Able

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It’s a phrase that may be familiar to older Americans wondering how long they’ll be able to maintain a busy lifestyle:

“While I’m still able.”

I realized recently that I’ve been saying it myself when running into old friends. They’ll say something like: “I follow you online and you sure do keep busy traveling and everything else.”

“Well,” I’ll respond, “I want to do it while I’m still able.”

When I said this again the other day, it made me think of Supermarket Sweep, the television show in which contestants race to fill their carts with as much as possible within a brief time. Grab the steaks! Get some lobsters! Don’t let time run out on you!

I thought: Is this what I’ve become — someone frantically filling their cart before the buzzer sounds?

One of my volunteer projects is with this group in Moldova.

I know it can look that way. During the past year, I’ve taken several big trips, which I’ve written about here. I volunteer with local nonprofits, serve on boards, write this blog and a newsletter, go to local events and spend time with family and friends.

This may all just add up to an “active retirement” but I wonder sometimes whether I’m trying to prove something, to myself above all. Maybe I’m compensating for the fact that I no longer have the title and recognition of a formal job. Indeed, when I return these days to the campus where I used to work, few people recognize me. They just see a random retired guy.

Celebrating my 70th birthday with my seven grandchildren

So maybe I’ve been filling up my schedule as a way to say: Hey, I’m still here. Or perhaps I’m overreacting to medical challenges I’ve had over the past couple of years, or to turning 70. My clock is ticking and I hear it even without hearing aids.

Whatever my motivations, I’ve been busy, perhaps too busy.

Speaking at a local retirement community

An older friend told me recently she’s been wrestling with the same issue. She said she’s finding it hard to juggle numerous volunteer roles with the informal help she provides to friends, family responsibilities, travel and everything else. She laughed that it’s hardly what she expected in “retirement.”

I have no regrets about my own “not exactly retired” life, which I’ve pursued since walking away from a busy job at the age of 62. I recognize how fortunate I’ve been to do this. But it’s never been a retirement in the sense of kicking back. Shortly after I began serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 2016, I wrote about my inability to ease up and move beyond the packed schedule of my previous life. I noted then how “I keep checking my cell phone for messages. I don’t go home until I’ve completed every item on my mental ‘to do’ list.”

I concluded that post by humorously vowing to pay closer attention when the Peace Corps staff told me again to be patient. “Really,” I promised, “I may even put a reminder in my electronic calendar.”

Visiting the Suomenlinna fortress in Helsinki

Now, seven years later, I remain just as persistent about making my days productive, whether it’s assisting a local community group or traveling to some foreign destination with Champa. I’m doing this mainly for myself but, at some level, I suppose I am also asserting my own relevance in a world that can make older people feel invisible.

In any case, I’m determined to make the most of this precious “not exactly retired” stage of my life when I no longer have the responsibilities of a formal job but am still able to contribute and thrive. All of these activities give my life meaning and I plan to keep doing them while I’m still … well, you know.

Beyond Ukraine

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I saw while traveling in Moldova and the Baltics recently what President Biden asserted in his Oval Office speech last night: Russian aggression in Ukraine threatens security and democracy far beyond Ukraine.

“If we don’t stop Putin’s appetite for power and control in Ukraine, he won’t limit himself just to Ukraine,” Biden said in his speech, which linked the conflict there to the horrific crisis in the Middle East (which I’ve also been feeling personally).

Street sign in Tallinn, Estonia

Moldova and the three Baltic countries — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — have not forgotten what it was like living as Soviet states under Russian domination. They treasure their independence and strongly support Ukraine. They understand what’s at stake, and so should we.

Champa and I saw Ukrainian flags everywhere during our trip this month — on public buildings, on churches, in shops. 

Chişinǎu, Moldova’s capital, hosted a “Ukrainian Day” while we were there. Ukrainian families that fled there after the Russian invasion celebrated their homeland with dances, food and traditional costumes. 

This young woman wore a dress and wig that resemble Ukraine’s flag.

Social service groups set up booths to provide refugees with resources and information.

We saw Ukrainian assistance centers throughout our trip, such as at this storefront in Latvia’s capital, Riga. 

Ukrainians even receive special parking benefits in Riga.

This message atop a building in Vilnius, Lithuania, reflected the popular sentiment that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine.

My friends in Moldova, and those on the front lines in Ukraine, don’t know anything about the dysfunction in our Congress. They just need help, and fast. As Biden said, “there are innocent people all over the world who hope because of us, who believe in a better life because of us, who are desperate not be forgotten by us, and who are waiting for us.”

Picturing the Baltics

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The three Baltic countries differ. Lithuania is mainly Catholic.  Estonia has a language similar to Finnish. Latvia has the world’s tallest women. (Really.)

Yet all three impressed us when we toured them last week with a local travel company. Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and then joining the European Union and NATO, they’ve enjoyed far more prosperity and stability than the former Soviet state we know best, Moldova.

They’re also really interesting to visit, as you can see in the dozen examples below:

Picturesque churches, castles and squares abound. These are just a few of the ones we visited.

Cobblestone streets are also plentiful. They’re charming (but challenging when you’re recovering from hip surgery). This street is in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn.

Some old forts and castles look like Game of Thrones. This one is at a national park in Lithuania.

Lutheran and Catholic churches predominate, but there are also many Russian Orthodox churches, like this one in Tallinn.

Jewish synagogues are scarce. The Holocaust all but wiped out the vibrant Jewish presence here. We visited Jewish museums in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, and Latvia’s capital, Riga.

The Nazi occupation was followed by decades of Soviet oppression. The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius included this exhibit showing how the KGB bugged and monitored Lithuanian citizens.

Soviet domination was portrayed artistically in this exhibit of old propaganda posters at the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn.

Traditional baths and saunas are celebrated in the Baltics. This historic display in Latvia shows what people added to their baths.

If you ask for “hot chocolate,” don’t expect something like cocoa. You’ll be served a delicious cup of melted chocolate.

Riga hosted the World Athletics Road Running Championships while we were there. Our hotel was filled with world-class runners, including Olympic champions.

The rappers 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes came to Riga shortly after we left.

The Hill of Crosses is a pilgrimage site with more than 200,000 crosses in Siauliai, Lithuania.

You cross easily from one Baltic country to the other. This sign marks a border between Lithuania and Latvia.

Finally, meet John from Australia, 89 years old, who traveled solo with our group, including this stop at the Baltic Sea. He inspired Champa and me to keep pursuing our own travels for as long as we can.

Fascinating Istanbul

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Istanbul fascinated us when we visited there during the past several days.

It’s a blend of East and West, Asia and Europe, traditional and modern. Shops sell Turkish sweets and baklava alongside Starbucks and McDonalds. Western pop songs play as “Allahu Akbar” sounds from minarets. Some women wear head scarves, others don’t.

Champa and I loved exploring Istanbul following our unforgettable reunion with friends in Moldova. I’d visited here before, in 1975, when I was among thousands of long-haired backpackers who stopped at Istanbul’s Pudding Shop before heading overland to Kathmandu. I thought then the city was one of the most interesting places I’d ever seen.

It still is. Istanbul has grown and changed tremendously during the past half-century, (although the Pudding Shop is still there). Yet it still has a distinctive “East meets West” vibe and, of course, landmarks that remain timeless.

There’s Hagia Sophia, above, a domed architectural marvel built as a church in 537, then converted into a mosque, then a museum, now a mosque again. Nearby is the equally magnificent Blue Mosque, its interior adorned with more than 20,000 turquoise tiles.

We gazed upon both structures from our hotel rooftop while eating breakfast, gulls soaring beside our table. We also visited attractions such as the Topkapi Palace, the underground cistern, Taksim Square and the Galata Bridge. We toured the Jewish Museum, cruised on the Bosphorus and took a day trip by ferry to the island town of Büyükada. We climbed hills, rode the subway and learned the T1 Tram stations.

We enjoyed all of it but noticed few other American tourists. It’s possible we just didn’t see them, as recent statistics suggest, but I found myself thinking back to something I posted while we were serving as Peace Corps Volunteers in Moldova. During our vacation travels in the region, we saw even fewer Americans and were saddened by how our country’s people were missing out on great places they’d probably never even considered visiting.

In a subsequent post, I suggested three spots in particular that many Americans would love if they just gave them a chance: Transylvania, Romania; Tbilisi, Georgia; and Bratislava, Slovakia. I’ll now add Istanbul to the list, even though it’s one of the world’s great cities and hardly a “hidden gem.”

Why should American tourists go somewhere that may surprise or even challenge them a bit? Here’s just one example. Early on our first morning in Istanbul, Champa was awoken from a deep sleep by a muezzin chanting the call to prayer from a nearby mosque. “What did you say?” she asked sleepily, then started laughing when she realized she was talking to a voice from a minaret. We both treasured the moment — one we had only because we’d come to this colorful and historic crossroads.

As Turkey’s largest city, with more than 15 million residents, Istanbul will fascinate you, too, and you don’t have to wait a half-century to visit it.

Expats in Moldova

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They’re leading lives I’ve sometimes imagined for myself: American expats in Moldova who are running businesses, managing programs, assisting refugees and tackling other challenges far from home.

Many of them first came to Moldova as Peace Corps Volunteers, like us. Unlike us, they’ve made a new home here. We’re friends with several of them and it’s been fascinating this week to catch up on our lives.

Chris Flowers, a fellow former Volunteer, is now the country director for the American Councils, managing educational and cultural programs. He recently married a Moldovan attorney, Diana, who’s done heroic work assisting refugees, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine. We met up with them at an Uzbek restaurant.

David Smith opened and ran an American-style barbecue restaurant for several years. He’s also been active in the local small business community and writes a newsletter with excellent analyses of what’s happening in Moldova. He, too, married a Moldovan woman.

Andrew Blakely was two years behind me in leaving Duke University to serve in Peace Corps Moldova. Now he’s back with Church World Service, managing programs to assist Ukrainian refugees and others. He’s working with Casey O’Neill, who previously served in the Peace Corps group between ours.

Bartosz Gawarecki is here, too, working with refugees near Bălți, where he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Bartosz is the president of Friends of Moldova. When the war broke out, he left his business in Michigan to join David and others in rapidly creating some of the first centers to provide desperate Ukrainian families with food and assistance.

That’s Bartosz in the photo, in the white shirt, along with Joseph Lutz of Indiana, who’s returned as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer. He and I are working together, with Marjory David, on a project to establish a national Jewish museum here.

The American expat community also includes diplomats, teachers, missionaries and others, along with a Facebook group and other community resources. On Sunday, we reunited with a couple from Alabama, Kathryn and Brian, who lived near us in Ialoveni. They’ve devoted their lives to helping vulnerable young women avoid trafficking, a serious problem here. They live now in Chișinău and continue to pursue this mission along with efforts to promote better foster care and education for young people with disabilities.

I admire Kathryn and Brian, as I do everyone I’ve mentioned in this post. While so many Americans tear each other apart back home, they’re quietly making the world a better place. I could also have highlighted other Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) here, including Courtney Jackson, who’s working with refugees, or Kelsey Walters, who’s raising a family with her Moldovan husband and promoting new agricultural approaches. (Apologies to those not mentioned.)

Back in December, when Champa and I were in Nepal, we had lunch with another RPCV, Anne Kaufman, who served in Peace Corps Nepal a year behind me in the late 1970s. She married a Nepali man, Raju, and has lived mostly in Kathmandu, working with development organizations and raising two daughters. For me, she represented the road not taken, the life I might have had if Champa and I had remained in Nepal instead of moving to America.

I don’t regret our decision. I’ve loved our life back home, especially our family, but this trip has been a reminder that it’s also possible to pursue a rich, impactful existence abroad, especially if it’s in a country you already know. The roads before us are far wider than many Americans realize.

Lasting Impact

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Yesterday we returned to our Peace Corps workplaces and learned, after more than five years, that our impact has endured more than we’d realized.

Champa’s big project as a Volunteer was to help her school’s drama program create a magnificent wardrobe of costumes and props, which were unveiled in a colorful public ceremony in 2018 (see video).

When we returned to the school yesterday, current students greeted us wearing some of the same costumes — Romeo, Juliet, a king and more. The school has been using them regularly and added to the collection.

Champa stopped by an English class and reunited with some of her old students.

Earlier we visited the library where I worked. The librarians proudly showed us a trophy room they’ve created to display all of the awards won by the robotics team I helped to establish with Lidia Rusu (above).

One of my younger robotics students, Alexandru, dropped by to thank us, too. He is now a high school senior, serving as a community youth leader.

Valentina Plamadeala, the library director, in white blouse, hosted a champagne reception for us (at noon; I love Moldova). She posted on Facebook a list of the many projects we did together, several of which are still thriving, notably the Bebeteca room we created for local moms (see video.)

Our reunions in Ialoveni, the small city near Moldova’s capital where we served from 2016-18, were intensely emotional. We were moved to see how we’d touched people’s lives.

At Champa’s school, one of her fellow English teachers, Elena Antociuc, read a certificate saying, “We sincerely appreciate the time you spent guiding us to new perspectives by collaborating with us in search for the best solutions.”

The certificate concluded: “We’re proud to be part of your international family.”

Ialoveni, we’re even prouder to be part of your family, now and forever. As we told Champa’s costume collaborator Ana Doschinescu, at a dinner her beautiful family hosted for us, our lives are so much richer because of all of you. Thank you for keeping us in your hearts.

Return to Moldova

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More than five years since we completed our service as Peace Corps Volunteers, we returned to Moldova on Sunday night.

We endured flight cancellations, an all-nighter at JFK Airport, an unexpected stop in Istanbul and lost luggage when we arrived in Chișinău. In a larger sense, our return was delayed by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and health setbacks.

But now we’re finally here, and so is our luggage. We couldn’t be happier.

Our first jet-lagged stop on Monday was at the Peace Corps office, to hug old friends and discuss the virtual project I began several weeks ago to help create a national Jewish museum.

Then we reunited with our host family in Ialoveni, just outside the capital, for a delicious Moldovan dinner prepared by our host mother, Nina. That’s her in the top photo with her daughter, Alisa, showing off their copies of Not Exactly Retired with personal inscriptions from the author.

Among our other gifts was this carved wooden picture frame from Nepal displaying a photo of our beloved Bunica, Nina’s mom, who passed away before we could see her again.

Nina’s husband, Mihai, and son, Andrei, joined us for this group photo after dinner. We left with our own bag of gifts, including some of Ialoveni’s famous chocolates.

We also enjoyed reuniting with the family dog, Boss, who remembered us.

On Tuesday morning we attended a ceremony where U.S. Ambassador Kent Logsdon announced a major grant to restore one of the central structures in Chișinău’s large Jewish ceremony. Irina Shikhova, below, with whom I’m working on the museum project, was among the other speakers.

It was an inspiring event and great to finally meet Irina after several Zoom meetings. I also met Marjory and Joseph, two Peace Corps Response Volunteers working on the project.

Champa and I are staying at an Airbnb downtown. We’ve been eating placinte and friptura, drinking local wine and exploring how Moldova has changed over the past five years. More on that later.

For now, we’re just soaking it all in. Moldova, we’ve missed you!

Join us on the journey.