Ridenbaugh Press goes global with Jeff Merkley

Posted by Carla Axtman on April 2, 2008

Sitting down last Friday with Jeff Merkley, Randy Stapilus of Ridenbaugh Press spent about 45 minutes talking foreign policy and global understanding with Jeff:

Merkley said that when he had left home, he’d thought of his family’s three-bedroom ranch house as modest; “when I returned from West Africa, I thought of it as a mansion . . . Garages stuck in my mind, because we not only had a home for our family, we even had a home for our car.” He said “it gave me a sense of the diversity of the world,” how fortunate Americans were in their freedom, government and prosperity, but also taking note how different each country was from another. He was hooked on the world at large; for the next decade and a half, that would be his professional life, and more.

The piece is extensive, going into Jeff's experiences abroad and in Washington D.C., and how they helped to shape his world view.

The rest of the fruits of Randy's interview can be found here.