January 16, 2012 -- Snowfall at dusk obscures the shores of a silver lake outside a little town called De Smet, South Dakota. Nearby, a sign points 275 miles east to Laura and Mary Ingalls' birthplace in the big woods of Wisconsin; 12 miles southwest to Laura's golden years at the Brewster School; and 2.5 miles north to her first four years on Almanzo Wilder's claim.

January 18, 2012 -- A farewell message from a suburb outside Pierre, South Dakota, which is still recovering from its worst Missouri River flooding since 1952. Down the block, Lewis and Clark first came upon the Sioux Nation in 1804. Temperatures in the state capital are dipping below 0°F tonight.

January 16, 2012 -- The view from U.S. Route 81 and the road to the Ingalls Homestead, a particularly storied quarter-section, like the one pictured above, outside De Smet, South Dakota.

Join RBM and friends for a reading on February 29 at the Festival of Language, an off-site event of the 2012 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Chicago. Also on the roster: Janée J. Baugher, Jamison Christopher Lee, Ewa Chrusciel, Jordan Cox, Ricardo Cortez Cruz, Ryan Clark, Pankaj Challa, Michelle Weber Cusack, David Stevenson, Marilyn Carr, Leslie Raine Carman, Jane L Carman, Kirstin Hotelling Zona, Evan Nave, Meg Tuite, Janice Lee, Debra Di Blasi, Dan Libman, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Kirk Nesset, Cortez Cruz, John Domini, Alan Lin, Lance Olsen, Dina Elenbogen, David Hamilton, Holms Troelstrup, Kass Fleisher, Daniel Nester, Anna March, Lasantha Rodrigo, Kate Dusenbery, Robert Vaughan, Cris Mazza, Andy Farnsworth, David Hamilton, Jeff Grieneisen, Steve Halle, Elizabeth Hatmaker, Davis Schneiderman, Quintus Havis, Gabriel Gudding, Deborah Henry, Erika Wurth, Anna Joy Springer, Michael Mejia, Steve Tomasula, Tom C. Hunley and Lidia Yuknavitch. There's more information at AWPWriter.org.

December 28, 2011 -- The view from Washington's Ape Cave, a 2.4-mile basalt tube created from molten lava that also helped to form nearby Mount St. Helens.

December 26, 2011 -- The view from Portland Japanese Garden's karesansui (literally, "dry landscape").

November 27, 2011 -- The light changes on Highway 81 outside South Branch, Nebraska.

November, 23, 2011 -- The light changes on the 1600 block of Wazee Street in Denver.

October 29, 2011 -- The University of South Dakota's biennial John R. Milton Writers' Conference has just concluded with a generous reading from Mark Spragg (above, in a coat), whose work as a ranch hand in Wyoming began at age 11 and paid $30 a month, plus three squares a day. That boyhood, and an education from the likes of Robert Roripaugh (in denim), a professor emeritus and a former Wyoming poet laureate, has inspired three novels, a memoir, and a feature film.

Earlier conference highlights included readings from David Marshall Chan (in black) and six other featured authors. RBM moderated two panels and on Friday read from a manuscript, Zen and the Art of Conquest, at USD's Danforth Chapel (also pictured above).

September 30, 2011 -- RBM (reluctantly!) leaves one journal's nonfiction staff for another as a double issue of South Dakota Review departs the Great Plains for a mailbox near you. On the front cover: Sacro Wi (Sundancer, 1967) by Oscar Howe, whose artwork is on display at SouthDakotaReview.com and in a permanent collection of the University of South Dakota. On the back cover: 30 poets, 7 authors of fiction, and 2 essayists, Dionisia Morales ("Blue Means Water") and Yelizaveta Renfro ("Song of the Redwood Tree").

via "Remembering Osh"RBM's essay "I'd Like to Talk About the Bigger Stuff," which won Phoebe's inaugural nonfiction contest and appeared in print earlier this year, is now available online. Another excerpt:

To the west, through the helicopter’s tea-colored portals, I can see Uzbekistan; the cotton fields and cherry trees of the Fergana Valley; and a long, maniacal border severing one village from the next. I imagine, for a moment, an engorged Stalin, dragging a fountain pen down a wide gray map. Skirting his line, as though his hand ignored the topography, march row after row of mountaintops. They look cold and lifeless from on high. They divide Bishkek from the farmlands and become impassable in winter. Reminding the Russified Kyrgyz, who prefer white rice, of those hotheaded Uzbeks, who prefer red. But that’s enough imperial history.To read this and more from Phoebe 40.2, as well as other debut nonfiction, visit PhoebeJournal.com.

via WLAJournal.comRBM's essay "What Happened Yesterday in Baghdad," which debuted last fall at the U.S. Air Force Academy's War, Literature, and the Arts conference, is soon to be out in print. An excerpt:

Once, when I was young and intent on becoming a Texas cattleman who also apprehended bandits, my parents commissioned a sepia portrait at the county fair. For about $25, families could select frontier costumes and stand inside a saloon as flashbulbs illuminated the scene. My mother, pictured wearing ostrich feathers and a broach, refused to distribute the photo the following Christmas on account of liquor bottles visible in the background. But the original has hung for years in our hallway. The visage of the boy at her side is somehow indelible: my pudgy, adolescent jowls expressionless beneath a top hat, one small hand gripping a cane, the other pocketing a revolver. I hadn’t examined it closely until recently. Then, late one August night, I saw what looked like the same boy online, in another portrait titled Great Times Together.To read this essay in full and others from Teri Carter, Leila Levinson, and Joseph Bathanti, as well as fiction and poetry, browse WLA 23 at WLAJournal.com.

Above: Washington's Mount Baker and the 93-foot ferry Whatcom Chief as seen from low tide on Lummi Island.

August 15, 2011 -- Boy meets old world at Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Above: pictures from an August trek up South Dakota's Harney Peak and other Black Hills.

August 14, 2011 -- Westbound motorcyclists follow U.S. Route 18 and points north after converging in Sturgis, South Dakota. Attendance was slightly down amidst the recession but as in years past, the 2011 rally turned violent.

By R.B. Moreno

Above: Thursday's sunset from a third-story window outside Dallas, Texas. The 2011 Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference gets underway in earnest here on Saturday and Sunday with lectures from long-form journalist Ted Conover and The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten.

Opening remarks at Grapevine's DFW Hilton, below, came from essayist Diane Ackerman who contends that she would rewrite every book she's authored, given the chance. "It's hard to stop working," Ackerman explained.

I asked her about the recent wave of memoir criticism in editorial circles, which she rejected. (See this dispatch for more background.) Ackerman said she happily borrows techniques from fiction and enjoys testing boundaries, but can't consider one genre superior to another.

Then how, someone else followed up, do we avoid tiresome memoirs?

"I'm a firm believer in being as specific and detailed as possible," was Ackerman's reply. "Just that alone will create something universal. Having it be interesting enough? There's the rub."

Remarks from Paul Theroux at the same venue a couple of years ago finished with this advice, which has been hard to ignore: "Leave home, tell the truth, you'll be all right."

Ready for the rest of the Mayborn lineup, over the years? It's become something of a nonfiction grocery list: Mary Karr, Mark Bowden, and Gary Smith; Ira Glass and Alma Guillermoprieto; N. Scott Momaday, Bob Shacochis, and Candice Millard; Mary Roach, Allison Hedge Coke, and Joyce Carol Oates; Hampton Sides, Melissa Fay Greene, and Gay Talese; and Susan Orlean and Norman Pearlstine.

July 15, 2011 -- A swim with Plum and other Alaska natives in the Cache La Poudre River's Seaman Reservoir.

By R.B. Moreno

June 3, 2011 -- Independence Day approaches at the Ameristar Casino in Black Hawk, Colorado.

"Agustin" (via Ana Moreno)By R.B. Moreno

Every so often -- more often, in the age of the social network -- someone who's come to love a foreign place sends me a tale just as fascinating as it is fishy. You know these gems. They involve a village and a wilderness. They're carried on the lips of backpackers and aid workers. But rarely are these stories accompanied by a good photo, and rarer still is the chance to share them on tape or in decent writing. (There are exceptions here and here.)

Enter "Journal #5," an e-mail that arrived over the weekend from Ana Moreno, my sister and a Paraguay RPCV now studying rural medicine. An extension program of the University of Washington has placed Ana in a remote corner of San Martín this summer. It's Peru's gateway to the Amazon and a region known, among other things, for orchids in varieties that probably outnumber your friends (online and otherwise). But that's enough prologue. Here with Ana's permission is "Journal #5." And our storyteller (who else?) -- a fisherman:

Today my 89 year-old landlord, Agustin, told me that he once caught a mermaid. He was fishing in a river not too far from Yantaló and his net pulled up a woman, gringa from the waist up and shiny scales from the waist down. He told me that mermaids communicate by whistling, kind of like dolphins, so she just looked at him and he let her go. “It’s too bad there aren’t any mermaids in this region anymore,” he said. “It must be because of all the people and pollution in the environment. They must have gone somewhere else.” He was completely serious. We were sitting around the table after lunch, and Agustin’s granddaughter was there too. She is one of the most educated people I’ve met here, currently in her last year of dental school in Tarapoto and home for a few days of vacation. She wasn’t smiling either- this tale of the mermaid was completely true to her. I asked what other Amazonian creatures are disappearing, and the stories began:

It turns out there is also something called a chujachaki, which Agustin describes as a sort of dwarf that looks like a short man with big ears and only four toes. They live in virgin jungles, and their job is to protect the forest. In fact, one day a long time ago when Agustin’s cousin was 8 years old, she was kidnapped by one of the chujachaki and carried deep into the woods. The town organized a search party, which found her the next day unconscious in the top of a tree. She didn’t wake up for seven days. When she finally came to, she was traumatized to the point that she was left with mental health issues for the rest of her life. At the time this happened there was a Spanish priest living in Moyobamba, and he was called to perform an exorcism on the girl. He told them she was taken by this devilish animal because the family was Evangelical hadn’t baptized any of their 12 children. Wanting protection, they became devout Catholics and the two youngest siblings still work as nuns to this day.

Then there are the bujeos colorados, a dolphin-like creature that turns into the form of a man and can steal women away, never to be seen by their families again. There is also a type of fairy that looks like a little man only a few inches tall, that lives among the banana trees and takes care of the crops. The yacuruna is a water ghost, which used to be seen under the bridge in Yantalo when the full moon was out. They protected the river, and appeared in order to scare away any fisherman who came near. Nowadays these beings are seen only rarely, but Agustin remembers when they were a part of everyday life.

Every culture has its myths and legends that are passed down through the generations, but what is striking to me is the absolute certainty with which these stories were related to me. Between Agustin, his granddaughter, and the other people around the table there was someone who claimed to have personally seen each of the beings they spoke of. I found myself becoming convinced as well. Who is to say that the old-timers weren’t actually witness to jungle animals that have since disappeared with the arrival of modernity and the region’s subsequent ecological destruction? And where is the line between fact and fiction in a place where scientific investigation is a recent arrival, and oral histories have always served as the only form of record keeping? If anyone would know what was here before, it is those that lived in such close communion with the jungle and whose lives depended on nature’s will. I’d like to think that maybe there actually is some magic left in the world that science still hasn't touched.For more on Ana's travels, see this profile and our 2008 road trip through Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.

"Mars" (via Brevity)A guest review by RBM of debut nonfiction at Byliner.com, "Three Cups of Veritas," appears today on Brevity's nonfiction blog thanks to editor (and genre co-godfather) Dinty W. Moore. An excerpt:

“The way I’ve always understood Greg” (Mortenson), one embittered anthropologist tells [Jon] Krakauer in the closing pages of Three Cups of Deceit, “is that he’s a symptom of Afghanistan. Things are so bad that everybody’s desperate for even one good-news story. And Greg is it. Everything else might be completely fucked up over there, but here’s this guy who’s persuaded the world that he’s making a difference and doing things right.”

Meanwhile, on Oshima Island, some 100 miles from Fukushima, Grandma Fumiko, almost 80 and the matriarch of the Murakami family, has already awoken to a ruined house. She is perhaps looking out to sea and recalling the curious American in a spotted raincoat who recently remarked that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed particularly sad that her countrymen should again be fearing an invisible fallout. (The old woman clutched at a bamboo stick to escape the magnitude 9.0 mayhem of March 11; “I saw the wave: lots of bubbles, so it was white. It was low.”)

“The Murakami family’s is the last tsunami story I will tell,” writes William T. Vollmann, almost apologetically, halfway through Into the Forbidden Zone. (Winner of the National Book Award for a novel portraying the Nazi-Soviet war years, Vollmann’s other nonfiction includes Rising Up and Rising Down, an “epic treatise on violence,” notes Byliner on the back cover of Forbidden Zone.)For another favorite Brevity post that's garnered just a few more comments, see our update to RBM's "In an Age of Great Nonfiction Writing, Too Much Nonfiction Writing?" And for Brevity's current issue, a tribute to tornado-ravaged Tuscaloosa, visit CreativeNonfiction.org.

Volunteers reach the safety of a helicopter in Osh (via "Exit Osh") Another former Peace Corps volunteer recently based in southern Kyrgyzstan has contributed some thoughtful commentary in response to "Remembering Osh," last weekend's dispatch on the first anniversary of the Central Asian province's intethnic riots.

Along with several of RBM's colleagues whose service ended as a result of the fighting, Peter Andrew Clark went to work -- almost immediately and for months afterward -- on behalf of a Western aid organization operating on the ground in Kyrgyzstan. Clark signed up to coordinate temporary housing in Osh. He now lives in New York and writes, in part:

In June of 2010, the world was reminded of a simple, general reality: Kyrgyz and Uzbek people do not like each other. These woes arise from even more widespread malaise and grief -- both sides feel victimized. Rumors have always spread about economic suppression. Kyrgyz blame Uzbeks; Uzbeks blame Kyrgyz. Kyrgyz villagers blame the rich Uzbek businessmen in Osh city for dishonest business practices. Uzbek businessmen blame the rural, uneducated Kyrgyz farmers for spreading mendacious propaganda thereby ensuring more discord. Unfortunately, these vicious rumors have rooted themselves in the culture to the point where many observers now simply see it as racism.

And on the edges of this problem are most international organizations. There have been international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) in Kyrgyzstan since the fall of the Soviet Union. Some have advised economically. Some have tried to better the dietary habits in rural areas. Some have even worked in the South of the country to prevent ethnic disputes and conflicts. But none of these organizations have integrated quite like Peace Corps. Unique among them all, Peace Corps volunteers, however callow they may seem, work with idealism and hope. The volunteers learn the Kyrgyz language, and oftentimes the Uzbek language, and live with families. The volunteers learn the names of shop owners and shake the hands of every little boy in their village. And unlike most of the other INGOs that function out of the two largest cities of Bishkek and Osh, Peace Corps is inside of the conflicts, often in a very tangible way. And it is from these grassroots efforts that Peace Corps sets itself apart from all other organizations, and it is this freedom to inspire change from the disenfranchised and downtrodden that should rally more support for Peace Corps volunteers.

One of the many criticisms of Peace Corps have been its manipulative bureaucracy (easily traceable to Washington) and the horde of neophytes it brings into the world of international aid. Many reasonable critics have also denounced it as a political arm of the State Department and a vehicle for American interests abroad. One cannot deny the organization's potential for these insidious doings just as it cannot deny the organizations potential for peaceful, cheap and productive change. Ironically, Peace Corps does not handle conflict well. It was not designed to. Peace Corps volunteers seek protracted engagement, dreaming of generational changes, not immediate ones.

So in June of 2010, when conflict erupted in South of Kyrgyzstan, Peace Corps came out and INGOs went in. INGOs offer aid equitably; they document their activities for the world to see; they have plenty of money; and they respect the governments and people for whom they serve. Their efficacy, though, is based entirely on the willingness of the populations to embrace their programs. When providing food and shelter to monoethnic, non-conflict communities, aid provides relief. In a post-conflict situation where the aggravators still live in close proximity to the victims, relief to the victim provides further enmity for the aggravators. INGOs are stopgap solutions, not lasting ones ...

... Peace Corps reaches populations that other organizations would consider statistically irrelevant. INGOs spend a large amount of time writing reports and justifying their actions because their projects need ... maximum impact at all times in order to secure more funding. Peace Corps does not have this issue. In some cases, it will take generations of volunteers before results are produced. And ethnic divide is a waiting game that may require nothing more than perpetual involvement -- no one can really say for sure. And most Peace Corps volunteers work directly with the children that can influence the next generation, subtly asking them to question their role in the world.

The ethnic conflict that so many of these INGOs hope to prevent will take many years of intervention (the expected deployment for many of the large INGOs is one to two years). This violence will probably repeat ten years from now, and maybe ten years after that; but eventually, the children of these children might have peace longer -- maybe fifteen years -- and maybe if a little more time passes, they will start to forget the animosities that caused violence in the first place.

One year later, not much has changed in Kyrgyzstan, but only a fool would have expected otherwise. As many media outlets profess the democratic power of the new government, the country is still plagued by corruption and intolerance. There are dangers still, but there will always be dangers until the collective conscience of Kyrgyzstan reviles racism and all other social ills. This does not mean that the international community should sit on the edges until things get better; this is a call for help.

As with many problems, the answer to how the international community should be involved in Kyrgyzstan is multi-faceted. Should INGOs provide aid? [O]f course. Should Peace Corps keep doing grassroots work? [C]ertainly. Should donors keep sending money into the country, even if it is not always best spent? [Y]es. All of the forces above would benefit from drastic changes to their policies; but in the meantime, they should continue working. Disengagement is the easiest thing to recommend, especially in political and social climates that prefer isolationism and self-determination. But self-determination is not a morally defensible position when people are poor, homeless, and suffering. Different people can solve different problems, and there are enough problems to go around.RBM: Thanks for writing, Peter. Putting aside the question of INGOs (I agree with most of your analysis there), perhaps our main difference resides in our views of Washington, which I view as Kyrgyzstan's most capable ally in terms of socioeconomic development. Departments of state are indeed -- almost by definition -- manipulative, and in their worst moments, insidious. But next to China, the U.S. is also the Kyrgyz ally with the deepest pockets and best interests at play (other neighboring states and Europe do compete in this regard).

Secondly, the power of an individual volunteer is an amazing thing to witness, but in my view a marooned and ill-equipped volunteer can't go very far toward achieving the kind of literacy and business-related advances that could stop another Osh 2010. And the death of that well-meaning but hastily trained volunteer in the same violence might well end U.S. assistance for political reasons, as we've seen in Somalia, Uzbekistan, and now Yemen, to cite just a few examples. That's basically why I've come to feel, in researching this story, that the Peace Corps as presently configured is the wrong vehicle for empowering communities in southern Kyrgyzstan (the North is perhaps a different story).

Let me be clear: I'm not advocating disengagement. And [three fellow volunteers referenced offline] did become amazing agents of change, but I shudder to think what the killing of one of those men (much less a group of 10 Americans) last June would have meant for U.S.-Kyrgyzstan relations and the Peace Corps worldwide. Still, as I tried to suggest in my June 11 post, this doesn't mean that the State Department and its most celebrated agency (I view them as one animal) can't themselves change to adapt to the needs of the country.

Given their literacy and interpersonal skills, and despite your well-founded qualms about economic assistance, I believe [our colleagues] could have been more effective as volunteers. More effective, that is, if they had the means to buy a dozen Beeline wireless modems for an impartial nonprofit interested in offering micro loans to farmers, for example. I'm pulling that scenario out of a hat but what I mean to say is that I want to see American aid workers in places like Osh better trained, better resourced and better connected. In two words, if I were speaking to the State Department directly: Think bigger.

Our aid workers should also be better protected from mayhem by our own military, which could have taken the lead in last June's evacuation. Case in point: a simple GPS unit issued to volunteers might do away with the daily "whereabouts" mess (a status reporting system based on intermittent mobile service) that did little to keep the 10 Americans in question away from the epicenter of Osh's chaos.

I realize these priorities would radically shift the image of a volunteer living a subsistence life alongside her fellow villagers, which does have positive cross-cultural benefits. But again, I don't think that model is realistic in this age and in that province.

Evacuation day: June 12, 2010By R.B. Moreno

As Central Asia watchers the world over have been noting -- see the Associated Press, EurasiaNet, and the BBC, for example -- this weekend marks the first anniversary of a fiery street war between ethnic Kyrgyz (and officially unidentified forces backed, perhaps, by a foreign party) and ethnic Uzbeks that left many hundreds of residents of southern Kyrgyzstan dead or wounded.

The AP notes that almost three-quarters of those killed were Uzbeks -- a minority population that fled en masse from the province of Osh to the Uzbekistan border amidst the violence, only to see several children trampled to death in the panic.

Another group that got the hell out town last June: the U.S. Peace Corps. As I wrote one year ago via NPR.org, I was among 10 American aid workers evacuated from Osh by way of hired cars, a maddeningly uncoordinated military convoy, and an Mi-8, the camouflaged gunship pictured above (the same photo has been previously published).

Boys take cover from gunfire below my apartment window in OshIt's hard to find words appropriate for this kind of anniversary. In reading other commemorations, what seems generally true is that an uneasy peace has settled on Osh. The fires that ravaged whole neighborhoods have been extinguished. The dead have been buried -- sometimes, again, en masse. Students have returned to scorched schoolyards. And farmers and shopkeepers have slowly reoccupied the city's vast, once-bustling bazaar.

But with the spring thaw, the foundation of trust that had begun to calcify in the two decades of relative peace that followed Osh's last interethnic riots, in 1990, has dissolved.

"Many Uzbeks seem glumly resigned, focusing on rebuilding their homes and trying not to get drawn into arguments over who was to blame for the violence," observes the AP. "Speaking in her partly reconstructed house in one of the worst-hit Uzbek neighborhoods, 57-year old Mokhidil Ganyzhanova says things have quieted down. But she despairs at how little she feels the government is doing to restore people's livelihoods."

Meanwhile, and with irony fit for Greek tragedy, "deputies are bogged down in heated debates over who [bears] responsibility -- Uzbek 'separatists,' Islamists, loyalists to former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev," reports EurasiaNet's Alisher Khamidov. In Bishkek, "few seem willing to look at the complexities of ethnic relations in southern Kyrgyzstan."

Those complexities were on full display last June as I waved goodbye to Ms. Jashyrova, my host, a woman about Ms. Ganyzhanova's age, and ducked into one of the cars the State Department hired to get its personnel to a safe house.

An English teacher with twinkling eyes and an indomitable telephone, Ms. Jashyrova (I'm using a pseudonym) had over the previous 24 hours heard of a Kyrgyz nephew dying in the fighting, and more chillingly, a mob of ethnic Uzbeks attacking a number of Kyrgyz girls at a dormitory. (That rumor was later proven false; instead, a fight between dueling gangs at a casino likely sparked the 2010 riots.)

"Why did they go out?" Ms. Jashyrova demanded of the rioters. "Teachers, farmers: we just want to work. Who suffers? Ordinary people!"

I've corresponded infrequently with Ms. Jashyrova over the past year. In the fall, a shipment of undisturbed books and papers arrived to my apartment in Colorado, having been turned over to the Peace Corps by the same woman who had insisted on cataloging her every purchase at Osh's bazaar on my behalf (e.g. "2 kg potato; 0.5 kg tomato; 1 kg cucumber; 1 cabbage; 3 bunches of herbs; 2 types of noodles; 1 kg rice").

In the letter that followed the shipment, Ms. Jashyrova writes of moving to her family's village in the countryside -- not only to help with the harvest but to avoid further unrest, I imagine -- and of the brickwork shower that her husband had built in the cherry orchard.

"We tried hard to make its walls high taking into consideration your height," she explained, adding "we all hope that you will come one day."

I do intend to return to Osh one day. In the meantime, I've been searching for answers to the region's perennial violence. And I've been contemplating the role of the Peace Corps, as presently configured, in that environment. More bluntly, this involves interviewing former Kyrgyzstan volunteers, writing essays, and researching a nonfiction manuscript about the months I spent there, currently titled Zen and the Art of Conquest (and based in part on Robert Pirsig's travelogue of a similar name). In sum, as the title might suggest, I'm asking questions about the value of young, inexperienced volunteers in an enchanting but volatile country -- one that's deposed three autocrats in two decades and trafficked countless tons of Afghan heroin to Russia and Europe.

Curiously, in drafting this manuscript, there's something very particular that I can't reconcile, apart from the bloodletting, which seems uncharacteristic of Kyrgyzstanis like Ms. Jashyrova. I'm just as perturbed, that is, by the deaths of two hired drivers that I described in "Exit Osh." By what twist of fate did American aid workers deserve to escape unharmed, I asked in that post, while others perished in the evacuation? I'm still not sure.

Condoleezza Rice addresses Colorado State University on April 19, 2011I tried to put a similar query to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in April, at a public lecture here in Fort Collins, Colo., that has also hosted the likes of Madeleine Albright, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Greg Mortenson. But Colorado State University, whose Master's International partnership sent me to Kyrgyzstan and whose professor emeritus Maurice Albertson helped to found the Peace Corps, declined to put the question to the Secretary.

The university invited questions via social networks

A staff member at the university's Department of Public Relations "does remember your question," one official told me in an e-mail, "and although it was a good question, it was determined there were others that had a more direct connection to Dr. Rice." More importantly, does Colorado State have a position on the role of Peace Corps volunteers serving in volatile countries such as Kyrgyzstan, I wanted to know? As to that question, "the university does not have an official position," the e-mail concludes, suggesting I contact Washington for comment.

Washington, by some accounts, wasn't pleased when "Exit Osh" was posted on June 15. Other, more politicized narratives about our evacuation were causing the most angst at the State Department and the Pentagon that Tuesday, but as my dual role as a volunteer and a journalist wouldn't conclude until July, I faced something of a dilemma. News outlets reading the post -- such as NPR, CNN, and the BBC -- wanted interviews; the Peace Corps, by contrast, suddenly told every volunteer in Kyrgyzstan to go dark. And going dark, our supervisors explained in a meeting at the NATO base outside Bishkek where our Corps had relocated, meant pulling offline anything we had written about Osh.

Of course, as the Arab Spring demonstrates, that kind of blackout isn't feasible given today's Internet. I followed orders, as did most other volunteers, but "Exit Osh" had already been republished by NPR, which sent a correspondent to southern Kyrgyzstan in the days following the riots, and I wasn't inclined to ask the network to take down its own post. (Full disclosure: I worked as a producer for NPR between 2004 and 2008.) When I arrived home via Beijing and Seattle two weeks later, I republished my own accounts of my experience in Osh.

It's easy to shower criticism on Kyrgyzstan's Peace Corps, considering the circumstances I've described above. But I'm trying, in Zen and the Art of Conquest, to avoid that gesture, because the agency, worldwide and in Central Asia, does more good than bad. My colleague Jia Tolentino made that clear in a recent New York Times op-ed, and my Facebook friends' pictures of kids playing baseball in snowy Naryn Province, taking standardized tests in Talas, and learning to swim in Lake Issyk Kul tell an even better story.

Still -- and this isn't easy to say -- given Kyrgyzstan's geopolitics, the hired men killed last year, and the two carloads of panicked, mostly greenhorn Americans nearly gunned down amidst my evacuation, I'm not sure the Peace Corps is right for Kyrgyzstan. It certainly doesn't belong in provinces like Osh and Jalal-Abad, where the agency will no doubt attempt to return in the coming years.

So what is American development work in Central Asia supposed to look like, skeptics will ask?

Although Secretary Rice's April lecture didn't address Kyrgyzstan, she did point toward policy options in this arena worth considering. In response to a question about military contractors, for example, Rice praised the efforts of the U.S. military's Provincial Reconstruction Teams as well as the prospect of a "national civilian corps" whose expertise might help rebuild fragile states.

I'm heartened, too, by the poise and potential demonstrated by veteran volunteers like Fritz and Ginger Morrison and Ted Trautman, now a journalist who returned to Osh this spring to assess conditions there. The challenge, assuming proper backing in Washington, would be to channel the expertise of this cohort into unarmed but more nimble, better trained, and highly equipped development teams that might have avoided the kind of debacle I witnessed last June.

Finding funding for such a venture shouldn't be difficult. The U.S. spent $20 million on last year's parliamentary contests in Kyrygyzstan. "In the run-up to the presidential elections that are going to take place this fall, we’re likely to do something very similar to support the actual process of the elections and the mechanics of democracy," newly installed Ambassador Pamela Constable told public radio last week. That ought to be a story the State Department won't want to darken.

Above: pictures from RBM's next destination, Vermillion, S.D., where floodwaters aren't expected to crest for another week.

By R.B. Moreno

My hometown of Ridgefield, Washington, doesn't get much in the way of strange weather, but the storm passing over Fort Collins, Colorado, just now is producing the biggest hail I've ever seen out west -- about the size of strawberries. Big enough to let neighbors give a midnight wave to one another from their doorsteps, anyway.

Above: Utah's high desert, where Mormon colonizer Brigham Young and his followers sought pastures for their cattle in the 1870s, despite warnings from Indian tribes. Rainfall is so rare, its arrival seems to bring miracles.

Above: pictures from a sweltering, South Dakota-bound road trip along the Missouri River, which forms the Nebraska-Iowa state line. Record snowpack and heavy rains throughout the river's watershed will likely threaten communities in seven states until mid-August, the New York Times reports today.

The flooding hasn't dampened spirits at Omaha's Florence Mill, behind OJ's Mexican diner, where tomato starts compete with a dozen recipes for homemade pie, including strawberry-raspberry-blueberry-blackberry-rhubarb-filled "Farmer's Basket." A nearby placard explains that the Mill allowed Utah-bound Mormons to weather Nebraska's winters in the late 1840s.

Slideshow: The View from Greyrock

Above: spring flora, mountain pine beetle damage in Roosevelt National Forest, and other pictures from a climb on Greyrock Mountain. For the view from the summit, check out the video below.

By R.B. Moreno

Above: the view from my apartment window in Fort Collins, Colorado, on Saturday.

Nonfiction pop quiz! What species of bird is pictured? The first reader to identify this ground feeder and link to a photo gets (what else?) a fabulous tweet.

Above: RBM's sister Elizabeth chats with family via Ridgefield, Washington's Starliner Food Mart about her development work in Uganda and a recent trip to Southern Sudan.

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The balance of power on the Moreno family farm in Ridgefield, Washington.

via PhoebeAn essay by RBM that explores relationships among Coloradoans, the Kyrgyz, and our animals has won Phoebe's inaugural nonfiction contest, judged by author (and screenwriter) Shauna Cross. The essay will appear in the George Mason University journal's fall issue (volume 40). An excerpt:

Dinner and a bowl of kumis, or fermented mare’s milk, prompts another tale, this one about the melting of the snows. “I was born in the mountains,” says Salmorbek, his whiskers flaring around the words. From here in Kant, the Tian Shan range looms impossibly high, stretching all the way to China and 10,000 feet above the Rockies. Somewhere up there, in celebration of the equinox, points Salmorbek, through the kitchen window, men mount horses and compete in a sort of airborne wrestling match. Instead of a ball, they fight for a dead sheep. “I too rode a horse,” he adds with pride. “But I was better at riding a tank.”

That night, locked among the carpets, I find “Reviving the Kyrgyz Horse” in the guidebook Kyrgyz Republic. “For centuries, the horse was vital to nomadic life,” reads the entry. I swallow hard at what comes next. The author quotes a French historian dismayed by a Soviet plan to civilize the Kyrgyz: “‘The shepherds were in tears,’ says Jacqueline Ripart. Some of the horses went into giant Soviet stud farms but most were killed for their meat.’”For Phoebe's current nonfiction and other genres, visit the journal's blog, which for a limited time is offering an entire issue as a free download. You can also follow Phoebe on Twitter and Facebook.

By R.B. Moreno

Earlier this week I accepted an invitation to join the University of South Dakota English Department's PhD program, where I look forward to studying creative writing and teaching composition, among other courses. From USD.edu, thumbnail sketch of the degree:

The Ph.D. program is built around the English Department's seminar offerings in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and in creative writing, and is supplemented by independent study courses ...Within these specializations, you'll construct your own plan of study to reflect your interests.The Department also offers a list of FAQs about its PhD and publishes a news blog. USD's literary associations include The South Dakota Review, edited by Brian Bedard and Lee Ann Roripaugh, the Dakota Writing Project, and the Vermillion Literary Project, which is hosting a reading and poetry slam next week.

USD's vermillion and white (via Wikipedia)USD is the state's oldest university and its 216-acre campus in Vermillion currently serves about 10,000 students. Ten governors have graduated from USD along with William "Doc" Farber, Tom Brokaw, Al Neuharth, Ernest G. Bormann, and embattled Greg Mortenson, among other alumni.

Vermillion was founded on the banks of the Missouri River shortly before the Civil War but was largely destroyed in an 1881 flood. The reconstructed seat of Clay County now sits on higher ground whose earliest admirers included the Lakota ("Red Stream," they called the area), Pacific-bound Lewis and Clark, and in 1843, John James Audubon.

April in Vermillion looks cold and wet, a boon for crop circles visible from Google Earth. But somewhat more tranquil than the forecast for RBM's last departure from Colorado.

via Google

via Janice Mount for the ColoradoanA guest column by RBM about the Crystal Fire, which has destroyed homes near Colorado State University, raised questions about air and water quality in the region, and made national news, but received no mention in the university's communications with students, appears today in the Coloradoan. An excerpt:

The Crystal Fire has reminded me, an instructor at CSU, of an embarrassing, even dangerous breakdown in communication. I live on campus, and like my neighbors, I woke up about 5 a.m. on Sunday thinking my building might be on fire. Nope. But the smell of burning wood was palpable, if not overwhelming. So I went online.

"Safety Information: Report of Possible Peeping Tom." This March 30 e-mail, about yet another man leering at women on campus, is still the last advisory I've received from CSU's "Public Safety Team." Thinking I must be missing some mention of the fire, I left my inbox for ColoState.edu. "Teeing Up for Golf's Greatest Tournament," read the news at the university's homepage, about former CSU golfer Martin Laird.

What gives, CSU Public Safety Team? I don't like telling people how to do their job, but I'm also bothered by something I've learned from watching the past decade's string of terrorist plots and natural disasters. It's that robust communication can save lives, reassure parents and prevent similar mayhem. That's where I feel CSU staff missed the mark on Sunday.

This isn't to say that apprehending peeping toms isn't important, or that the Crystal Fire has put CSU students in danger. That's beside the point. What I am saying is that CSU can better utilize the tools at its disposal to inform the campus community, in real-time, about the status of emergencies that affect us all.Look for RBM's column on page A6 of today's paper and at Coloradoan.com.

Out my window, a farmer pauses to listen to a firefight

By R.B. Moreno

It's been nearly a day since predawn text messages brought news that renewed fighting had broken out on Osh streets and in surrounding villages. The unrest quickly spread to neighborhoods including mine, whose location can't be named here for security reasons. Wire services report as many as 37 people killed and over 500 wounded, many from bullet wounds; already this is half the number who died in Bishkek in April. Local TV channels have aired pictures of students being evacuated from dormitories on buses, as well as interviews with officials from Kyrgyzstan's Health and Interior ministries, some of whom stated that the city is now back under control. That does not appear to be the case, at least locally.

As I write this post the popping and booming of gunfire and cannons can be heard through an open window, along with the rattle of Chinese firecrackers lit by teenagers looking to add to the mayhem. Few cars have taken to the streets today; those that do motor past at high speeds. Gas lines have been cut. Along one avenue a steady stream of pedestrians, mostly young men, could be seen moving downtown. Columns of smoke later rose from that direction, then dissipated. Shouts from mobs occasionally waft skyward. Still, for some Osh residents, including the neighbor pictured above, life carries on.

For another man close to the family I am staying with, life has ended. The jangle of a telephone, just minutes ago, brought word that a 27-year-old nephew of my host, whom I'll call Ms. Bekova, has died in the fighting. This news shook a woman whose stately features and ebony hair rarely lose composure. "I told my sister, keep your children at home!" she protested, raising her hands toward our dining room ceiling. I met this nephew's mother recently at a reunion that had both sisters chatting in whispers for hours on end. The victim's father passed away years ago, just before his birth, and so the son's Kyrgz name carried that fact. As the youngest child, he would have been expected to care for his mother, who now must lean on aging Ms. Bekova and other siblings. (At one time they numbered 15.)

As tonight's curfew descends and combat helicopters orbit the city, the reasons for this family's loss remain obscured. Wire reports mention a brawl breaking out Thursday evening on Osh's main thoroughfare and a number of damaged properties owned by ethnic Uzbeks. (Other property owners have also suffered losses.) But Ms. Bekova prefers to think today's events were coordinated by Uzbek enclaves themselves. Then again, maybe it was a reminder from God. Kyrgyzstan's people, she points out, were also rocked by an earthquake Thursday.

"Why did they go out?" she demands of the rioters, and again of the ceiling. "Teachers, farmers: we just want to work. Who suffers? Ordinary people!"

Postscript (July 1, 2010) -- After being removed temporarily at the request of the U.S. Peace Corps, this post has been republished.

Above: a clear day for dog training and suntanning at Colorado's Copper Mountain, where the T-Rex Grill offers lunch at 10,500 feet.

An essay by RBM involving travels along Colorado's Horsetooth (pictured above), through Cartagena de Indias, and above Osh, Kyrygzstan (below), appears on Matter Daily newsstands this weekend.

Matter Daily is a publication of Wolverine Farm and Matter Bookstore. An excerpt from "Exposure Time":

Sulayman rises from an old city on the Silk Road and an arid expanse of farmland, and looks something like Horsetooth. Still, its five hills are made of quartz and lime, not sandstone, and I feel conspicuous in my shorts and trainers. This a place of pilgrimage, where colored prayers dangle from bushes and women in veils slide down a certain rock said to impart fertility.

Get on with it. What’s a foreigner doing in a cemetery?

The sun has nearly set but I want to find a running trail I can trust -- and get a look at the summit. I don’t know how to get there, but the path that snakes around some military barracks, on the west side, seems less taken. I work myself higher and higher along switchbacks, feeling my heartbeat climb into familiar territory. Burs rake at my legs as I lose the path, but the exertion is exquisite (and hard to find on the campus where I teach). I pass boulders covered in Kyrgyz and Russian graffiti, some with blue numerals that signal older markings -- hunters and the hunted, most predating the Qur'an. Finally, the path enters a draw and shoots straight up, toward a plateau where the sky seems brightest.RBM's last dispatch from Osh can be found elsewhere on this blog and over at NPR.org.

Nathan Leopold, ca. 1924 (via Wikipedia)RBM's final post this week for Colorado State's Center for Literary Publishing engages Colorado Review contributor Peggy Shinner in a conversation about her fall/winter 2010 essay "Leopold and Shinner." The essay centers on a letter her mother received from Nathan Leopold, one of two University of Chicago students convicted in what newspapers called the “Trial of the Century” in 1924. An excerpt from the interview:

RM: “The letter was an artifact,” you tell us, “like her wallet, wristwatch, key chain, social security card, also put away in a drawer -- a memento of my mother.” What compelled you, 29 years after her death, to examine it anew?

PS: I’ve had this letter for a long time, and from the very beginning was intrigued, puzzled, and moved by it. I’ve attached a certain amount of longing to it, my own longing. What did it mean? Who was the woman on the receiving end? The questions, the same questions, don’t stop coming. I tried writing about it before, but to no avail. I had nothing to push against the letter, no context or resistance or countervailing force. It wasn’t until I started searching for her letter, and immersed myself in the other letters, that something began to shift, that I could sense a gathering of momentum within myself, and simultaneously that I could go beyond myself, in fact needed to go beyond myself, to investigate the place or places where this personal history intersected the history of the larger world, which was very important for this essay. That’s the boundary I find interesting -- where personal concerns nudge or collide against the larger polis.For the rest of the interview, an excerpt from Shinner's essay, and RBM's earlier posts, visit the CLP Editor's Blog.

Today's post by RBM over at Colorado State's Center for Literary Publishing examines a new source of information about contests and calls for submission. An excerpt:

Ambitious storytellers, like the graduate students who keep our English Department’s printing lab busy at night, can soon have all kinds of literary magazines and blogs crowding their computer monitors. And when we read, after browsing Khimaira’s website, that our 30-page, Tolstoy-inspired novelette isn’t eligible for the journal’s 2011 Fantastiki Fiction Contest, whose guidelines call for a story of fewer than 5,000 words set in Ancient Greece, we may feel led astray.NewPages.com's LitPak can help writers avoid getting lost. Find this post and another by RBM at the CLP Editor's Blog.

Over the next few days RBM will be blogging for Colorado State University's Center for Literary Publishing, where he serves as a Colorado Review editorial assistant. His first post considers a debate about memoirs that's been brewing over the past few weeks. An excerpt:

to read the New York Times Book Review as of late is to get the impression that the age of nonfiction, like that of Rome or America, has overstepped its bounds. The literary world, according to Times editor Neil Genzlinger, has been inundated by “a sea of people you’ve never heard of, writing uninterestingly about the unexceptional, apparently not realizing how commonplace their little wrinkle is or how many other people have already written about it.” Genzlinger’s guide for “would-be memoirists,” which conveys the kind of hollow feeling I get from reading sex advice columns, comes in four partsTo read this post and an upcoming interview with one of the Review's nonfiction contributors, visit the CLP Editor's Blog.

Above: Idaho State University's Benny the Bengal and pan con lechon from a Cuban grill helping to refashion an old stop on the Oregon Trail.

Above: visitors prefer snowshoes and wings at Rocky Mountain National Park's 10,080-foot Emerald Lake, which sits just below Hallett Peak.

RBM presented "Negotiating the Personal/Academic Divide: A Bibliographic Essay" at today's Intermountain Graduate Conference in Pocatello, Idaho. This year's interdisciplinary gathering on "Challenging Boundaries, Seeking Intersections" was co-hosted by Idaho State University and Utah State University. Above: "Ganges Composition," a map of composition pedagogies RBM developed in support of the essay, based on satellite imagery of temperatures in Mars' Ganges Chasma.

Above: Nevada's Route 292 runs a desolate three miles south from the Oregon state line.

Above: Oregon's Crooked River Highway follows its namesake along a watershed that supports river otter and beaver, redband and rainbow trout, golden eagles and prairie falcons, and mule deer and pronghorn antelope, among other wildlife. Farther south, a weathered oasis in the town of Brothers seems transplanted from another century.

Above: views from the peninsula's Dungeness Spit and a ferry ride to the Emerald City.

Above: Military insignia left by past visitors and a series of newly-painted murals adorn a dining facility at yet another undisclosed location in northern Kyrgyzstan. RBM and other Peace Corps volunteers spent time here after being evacuated from the city of Osh in June. (Note: some photos have been blurred.)

"What Happened Yesterday in Baghdad," an essay by RBM about understanding the Iraq War through voice-overs and conversations with Iraqi students, will appear in a forthcoming issue of War, Literature and the Arts. More about WLA, a journal of the U.S. Air Force Academy: From time immemorial, war and art have reflected one another, and it is this intersection of war and art that WLA seeks to illuminate. If it seems to fall to the historian to make distinctions among wars, each war’s larger means and ends, the trajectory for the artist, regardless of culture or time, seems to fall towards an individual’s disillusionment, the means and ends of war played out in the personal. For the individual soldier, the sweeping facts of history are accurately written not in the omniscient, third-person plural, but in the singular first. We live in a culture that values the individual. Our works of art about war mirror this welcome bias.The 2010 WLA Conference runs September 16-18 in Colorado Springs. Check back here for an excerpt from "What Happened."

Slideshow: Relief for Osh

Above: U.S. Peace Corps workers, tourists, journalists, security guards, and other volunteers at Manas International Airport load a Russian cargo plane with relief supplies bound for Osh, Kyrgyzstan, on June 19. In the hold, thanks to local and international donations: flour, rice, potatoes, sugar, cooking oil, and dishware.

From Foreign Policy, on June 14, "Trouble Down South: Why did Kyrgyzstan suddenly erupt into violence?" An excerpt: The Uzbek minority is largely excluded from Kyrgyzstan's political system, though they dominate the country's merchant class. Disputes over water and land use between the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz are common in the south. The Soviet Union spent decades trying unsuccessfully to suppress ethnic nationalism in the area and in 1990, when the Soviet military was unable to put a stop to a three-month-long inter-ethnic battle between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in Osh that resulted in hundreds of deaths, it was taken as a sign of Moscow's diminished power over its regions.From the Telegraph, on June 17, "Kyrgyzstan: Death, dictators and the Soviet legacy." An excerpt: It would be wrong to characterise the violence in Kyrgyzstan as politically motivated. Ancient ethnic tensions and stereotypes have come to the fore, and poverty is the root cause. But at the same time it is broadly true that the Uzbeks of the south generally support Otunbayeva, while their southern Kyrgyz attackers do not. Bakiyev supporters have played some role in stirring up the violence.From the Times, on June 18, "Diplomatic Memo: Value to Big Powers May Not Save Kyrgyzstan." An excerpt: Now, Kyrgyzstan needs help building a stable government that knits together the north and the south. Dmitri V. Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, suggested that NATO should be working with the members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization to develop a mechanism for collective action. The next time a Central Asian country is wobbling at the edge of a precipice, he said, someone must be prepared to accept responsibility.From the Post, on June 21, "Both sides in Kyrgyzstan fault government for failing to prevent violence." An excerpt: At the front of the crowd was Kadyrzhan Batyrov, a prominent Uzbek politician, businessman and university chief who argued that Bakiyev's ouster meant Uzbeks would finally get the political rights they deserved. After recapturing the building, the throng marched to the Bakiyev family compound in Jalal-Abad and burned it down.

Witnesses said Kyrgyz and Uzbeks stood side by side in the crowd. But Bakiyev's supporters framed the conflict in ethnic terms and painted Batyrov as a radical Uzbek nationalist, tapping into fears among local Kyrgyz that Uzbeks might gain too much power and attempt to secede.From The Economist, on June 24, "Kyrgyzstan's humanitarian crisis: Sad homecoming." An excerpt: [Ethnic-Uzbek] women are now trickling back to their husbands, fathers, and brothers, who stayed behind to protect their homes—or what is left of them. Many houses were burned down, sometimes with their residents still in them. Now they have to go back and attempt to pick up their lives again, side-by-side with their ethnic-Kyrgyz persecutors.From The Nation, on June 25, "Kyrgyzstan on the Brink." An excerpt: Unaddressed stereotypes have allowed tensions between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks to fester ever since the only previously reported conflict between the two groups, in 1990. These typecasts were a breeding ground for the surge of rumors—spread by Internet chat rooms, text messages and word of mouth—that helped provoke the attacks: “Uzbek men raped a group of Kyrgyz girls”; “young men brawled over a restaurant bill”; “Uzbeks, in their efforts to declare autonomy, had armed themselves.”

But frictions between the two groups aren’t the result of some ancient ethnic hatred. They have waxed and waned for only a generation, as local elites, manipulating economic grievances, vie for control of resources. In recent times, that has meant Afghan heroin. In place of a functioning state, southern Kyrgyzstan has become a network of trafficking routes controlled by narco-barons and their extended families.From the Times, on June 26, "After Kyrgyz Unrest, a Question Lingers: Why?" An excerpt: Last week the head of the country’s national security agency issued a statement saying that the younger son of Mr. Bakiyev, Maksim Bakiyev, had hired Islamic radicals from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group with ties to the Taliban, to infiltrate Uzbek neighborhoods and stoke conflict. The statement said the Islamic radicals fired rifles at civilians and then hid, only to reappear in other areas.

Reinforcing the message of external instigation, on Thursday an airplane flew over Bishkek dropping leaflets warning that “provocateurs” could foment ethnic violence in the capital, too, though the streets remained calm.From RFE/RL, on June 30, "How Strong Is Kyrgyzstan's New Constitution?" An excerpt: The challenge for Kyrgyzstan now will be to go far beyond simply writing a new constitution to developing the whole body of institutions and public expectations which assure a constitution is upheld and guides a society.

As Kyrgyzstan took its first step this week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gave it a dubious send-off. He told reporters at the G20 summit in Toronto that he did "not really understand how a parliamentary republic would look and work in Kyrgyzstan."

Medvedev asked, "Will this not lead to a chain of eternal problems -- to reshuffles in parliament, to the rise to power of this or that political group, to authority being passed constantly from one hand to another, and, finally will this not help those with extremist views to power?"

Put another way, the same question would be: Are not parliamentary systems, though a proven success in democratic countries, doomed to failure in the post-Soviet space?