2006.01.31: January 31, 2006: Headlines: Tasmania: Art: Sculpture: Alameda Times Star: RPCV Peter Adams is one of Tasmania's best-known furniture/sculpture/landscape artists
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2006.01.31: January 31, 2006: Headlines: Tasmania: Art: Sculpture: Alameda Times Star: RPCV Peter Adams is one of Tasmania's best-known furniture/sculpture/landscape artists
RPCV Peter Adams is one of Tasmania's best-known furniture/sculpture/landscape artists
Adams lives on a gorgeous stretch of land called "Windgrove," on the Tasman Peninsula southeast of Hobart. His 100 acres overlook the sea where he swims every day "as a way to get rid of the anger I feel when I hear the buzz saws clear-cutting forests or read about war," he says.
RPCV Peter Adams is one of Tasmania's best-known furniture/sculpture/landscape artists
Tasmania has solitude, natural exotica — and a history of imprisonment
By Christine Temin, BOSTON GLOBE
HOBART, Tasmania
ONE friend's reaction to the news that I was shipping out to Tasmania was: "Don't forget the Ngorongoro Crater," which of course is in Tanzania.
Another: "Is the Tasmanian devil a person, place, or thing?" Maybe something to eat, like deviled eggs or devil's food cake?
Here goes. You don't eat this devil, but it eats just about everything but you, snakes to sheep. Its fierce jaws and teeth can consume entire animals, fur, bones, and all, when it's not using its mouth for scary screeches. It is the world's largest surviving carnivorous marsupial, found only on this island south of mainland Australia. It is so nocturnal that in more than two weeks here, the only ones I saw were in the form of topiary or taxidermy.
Why spend an entire vacation here, anyway? It's contrary to a certain traveler mentality that calls for one country or capital per day. If you actually want to relax, though, Tasmania is a great destination. The smallest Australian state, about the size of West Virginia, its population of fewer than half a million (compared with West Virginia's roughly 1.8 million) means you will never hit a traffic jam, and, because there aren't many roads, you have to be navigationally challenged in the extreme to get lost.
[Excerpt]
"I plant a tree for every day I live here," says Peter Adams, one of Tasmania's best-known furniture/sculpture/landscape artists. A Harvard graduate and Peace Corps veteran who moved to the island 19 years ago, Adams lives on a gorgeous stretch of land called "Windgrove," on the Tasman Peninsula southeast of Hobart. His 100 acres overlook the sea where he swims every day "as a way to get rid of the anger I feel when I hear the buzz saws clear-cutting forests or read about war," he says.
Equally passionate about peace and ecology, he has created a huge garden of stones benches, and totems on his property, a place where people from all over the world come to meditate, where a split rock represents, he says, "the broken heart we must have to develop our inner lives."
While he also hosts a "Refugee in Residence" program that allows like-minded souls to stay in tents on his property for up to two months (contact him at peter@windgrove.com or visit http://www.windgrove.com), mostly Adams is alone in the house he built; he has given to calling himself "the inadvertent monk."
When this story was posted in March 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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| RPCV admits to abuse while in Peace Corps Timothy Ronald Obert has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a minor in Costa Rica while serving there as a Peace Corps volunteer. "The Peace Corps has a zero tolerance policy for misconduct that violates the law or standards of conduct established by the Peace Corps," said Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez. Could inadequate screening have been partly to blame? Mr. Obert's resume, which he had submitted to the Peace Corps in support of his application to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, showed that he had repeatedly sought and obtained positions working with underprivileged children. Read what RPCVs have to say about this case. |
| Why blurring the lines puts PCVs in danger When the National Call to Service legislation was amended to include Peace Corps in December of 2002, this country had not yet invaded Iraq and was not in prolonged military engagement in the Middle East, as it is now. Read the story of how one volunteer spent three years in captivity from 1976 to 1980 as the hostage of a insurrection group in Colombia in Joanne Marie Roll's op-ed on why this legislation may put soldier/PCVs in the same kind of danger. Latest: Read the ongoing dialog on the subject. |
| PC establishes awards for top Volunteers Gaddi H. Vasquez has established the Kennedy Service Awards to honor the hard work and service of two current Peace Corps Volunteers, two returned Peace Corps Volunteers, and two Peace Corps staff members. The award to currently serving volunteers will be based on a demonstration of impact, sustainability, creativity, and catalytic effect. Submit your nominations by December 9. |
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Story Source: Alameda Times Star
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Tasmania; Art; Sculpture
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