Commentator and novelist Christian Bauman recalls the excitement of receiving mail from anonymous well-wishers back home during his deployment with the U.S. Army in Somalia in the early 1990s.
This was a fascinating listen.
The coup, of course, was getting a letter with a snapshot or two inside. I don't know why, but the further west the return address, the more likely the envelope had a picture. And the more north, the more likely the picture was, shall we say, "revealing". Triangulate this equation, and you discover that the girls in the northwest get a real charge out of showing the troops exactly what it is they are fighting for.
Make sure to stick to the end for the punch line. (Every good story has a punch line.)
Punch line?
I was all set for a grand finale. What a letdown.
I guess I didn’t find it as funny as you did. :)
this is the web, don’t tell me I have to actually listen to find out?
No kidding — I was hoping for some Ray Chen-provided eye-candy. LOL
This makes we wonder the ladies from Alaska send them.
:O
I ran into some javascript error when trying to listen so if anybody has any problems downloading, here are the direct links (first is realaudio, second is some mediaplayer one that didn’t work for me either):
http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=ATC&showDate=07-Mar-2004&segNum=3&mediaPref=RM
http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=ATC&showDate=07-Mar-2004&segNum=3&mediaPref=WM