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When you want to contact your local consul (or his office, the consulate), nothing impresses him more than when you show an understanding of his position. You begin by using the correct title, not in a condescending manner but as part of your own ...

Jamaican honorary consuls are much appreciated by some of their government officials, who recognize that these consuls will “serve its economic and political interests globally.” As a particular example from the publication I read, Dr. Richard Bernal, Jamaica’s Ambassador to the ...

Diplomatic terms come in many shapes and in many contexts. I love it when I run into something new and unusual, like the recent digital diplomacy. And how about the “ambassador ladies” I just encountered on name-tags of people greeting me at ...

What motivates a foreign country to open a consulate in a particular U.S. city and state? This is a question often asked by business people and others who want to know why there isn’t a consul in their area to ...

A consul can be a head of post, but not head of a diplomatic mission (= embassy). The Miami Herald should have referred to the local Haitian consul-general as head of the (consular) post, but instead used the wrong term. You sometimes even hear ...

In a recent public announcement to more than 1,500 cruise ship passengers (I was one of them) the captain spoke of the Army Corpse of Engineers so my mind immediately went to many a consular corps that’s also been called a “corpse” ...

When President Obama referred to the “Corpsmen” (very much alive and kicking) he used the pronunciation for a dead body: “corpse” with the hard p and s (notice the e in the end). What a great teaching moment this is for all of us ...

Consulin? Imagine being the wife of a consul and getting your own title, feminized from your husband’s position. Thomas Mann, Nobel-prize winning author of Buddenbrooks, writes about how in 19th century Luebeck, Germany, the surviving wife of a consul was still called ...

It’s a safe bet that not many people recall a consular board from the McCarthy hearings in the 50s. But when William Shirer mentions this in one of his memoirs I got curious. What could this possibly have had to do ...

Armenia has its first honorary consul in the U.S., but the location may surprise you: Fresno, CA. Up till this point the sizable Armenian community has had to travel to the (career) consulate in Los Angeles for the usual citizen services like ...