In 2001, I worked on the 51st floor of the Bank of America tower, the tallest building in the southeast. I’d been at work about 30 minutes when my phone rang. It was one of my lawschool classmates who worked at Turner: she: “Go to cnn.com.” me: “Why?” she: “Because a plane just hit the [...]
On Saturday, I spent an entire day in a tent with a black Master Sergent named Jon. At our first conversational lull, Jon belted out this chunk of wisdom: MSgt Jon: You know, black people are smarter than white people when it comes to animals. Me: How’s that? MSgt Jon: Animals are not your friend, [...]
If that isn’t frightening, I don’t know what is: officers are getting promoted too quickly, and PTSD is rampant.
The first time I deployed in support of OIF, Americans were still fairly novel creatures to the regular “Joe Iraqi” townsfolk, as were our beardless faces, our cargo pants, and–most intriguing–our sunglasses. On one of the two trips I took “outside the wire” while there (both unauthorized), I saw firsthand the perception they had about [...]
This is the dry erase board on which I encouraged the 39 members of my flight last year to write some things for which they could be thankful, even while stuck spending a holiday in Iraq. See? Things weren’t so bad. And here’s the Beastie Boys telling us to be grateful: I’ve never been one [...]
