When I was thinking of writing a post about meeting up with two old Peace Corps friends last summer, the title of a one-hit wonder popped into my mind. The song appeared just before the first moon landing, and was often played on the BBC World Service and other few other radio stations that I could get in Sefrou. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard it again, but between a time of climate change and AI, the song may deserve more recognition. In any case, we all tend to associate music with the times and places where we hear it, and I remember it well.
In 2025, nothing quite so dramatic as the extinction of mankind happened, but I did get to renew my old friendships with Jim Humphrey and Don Brown. As I write, I realize that this post sounds a bit like an excerpt from a college alumni newsletter or a Facebook entry, but, those of us who served in Morocco are of course alumni of a great teaching institution, the Peace Corps.
Therefore I thought that I’d post a couple of photos of two old friends, whose names appear in other posts in this blog, Don Brown and Jim Humphrey. The two briefly visited me and my wife, and spent a short time in Youngstown, explored one of the sites of what was truly the First World War as the French and the British fought battles for global supremacy, and mostly talked about old times and new.
the Rush–Bagot treaty, widely regarded as one of the world’s earliest and most successful examples of mutual arms limitation and border demilitarisation. Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario in the distance.
Morocco That Was 