Star Trek IV...

I just got back to Afghanistan. The trip was long and perilous. Well, long anyway, not too much peril, I just thought that sounded exciting. In reality, it went like this: Fayetteville airport Saturday morning, 1.5 hrs on a commercial flight to ATL. All day sitting in the Atlanta Airport, where, at one point, I met a lovely black, puerto rican woman who was offended by my apparent racism. The conversation went like this...

"[me to my friend] All this construction [in that particular terminal] makes this place look kinda ghetto."

"[woman, in front of me on the escalator, to me] What's 'ghetto'?"

"[me to the woman] Well, right now this terminal is."

"But how do you define 'ghetto'?"

"I use that word to describe something that has been neglected, or is in a state of disrepair, or simply looks like it needs some improvement."

"Yeah, but who lives in a ghetto?"

"Umm, in WWII the Jews were forced to live in ghetto because of their ethnic status."

"We're not talking about WWII."

"No, we're talking about Atlanta International Airport"

"Don't play that. White people own this airport. And you know who lives in the ghetto. Black people do. And don't be sayin' a black man is president, because you know who runs this country - white people."

Of course I apologized for my insensitive comment because she made such a compelling argument that racism is still a plague upon our country (even if only through her apparent attitude rather than through the words she chose). Thank you God for grace.

Food for thought - here are several definitions from various online sources for the word "ghetto":

1. (n.) an impoverished, neglected, or otherwise disadvantaged residential area of a city

2. (adj.) poor; of or relating to the poor life

3. from the word 'getto' or gheto', which means 'slag' in Venetian, (slag being the waste from the reduction of a metal), and was used in reference to a foundry where slag was stored in the same area as that of Jewish confinement, as in WWII Europe.

Back to the timeline. Left Atlanta late Saturday night on a chartered commercial jet with about 300 other soldiers. We made one stop in Ireland for gas, then on to Kuwait. That whole portion took about 16 hours. Once in Kuwait we sat around and tried to avoid going outside for about 5 days because it was about a billion degrees. Late thursday night I hopped a C-130 for the 4.5 hour flight into Kandahar Airfield. We arrived around 1030 Friday morning. I moved back into my room and did all my laundry. Now, less than 24 hours later, I'm headed to work (if you can call it that) to go flying. Can you believe they pay me to do this?

9 months to go.