2003-04-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

Embedded with the 2nd Coffee Brigade, 1st Civilian Division.

I wanted to give you a report on what is going on here with the war in Iraq. For security reasons, I can't disclose my exact location, but I can tell you that all week we have been bombarded with special reports, updates, images, and news from the front. The most troubling and effective unit to date has been the Retired Generals Brigade or RGB who analyze, with unbelievable flexibility and quickness, news speculations, turning a "what if" into a well analyzed, deeply thought-out possibility. This becomes a challenge to the Brigade as they then must spread their focus over multiple scenarios instead of on what is actually happening.

The stress of combat is starting to take it's toll as well here at...oops, almost forgot. Thanks Geraldo. As I was saying, the stress of combat is starting to take it's toll as New Yorkers wage war vicariously through their television screens. For many here in the unit, it is the first conflict that they've been able to follow moment by moment and their first taste of real reality programming. Most are finding it much different than their training of "The Bachelor", "Fear Factor", "Survivor", and "The Mole", although some have confessed that the numbness and brain atrophy that these shows caused has indeed been a help, allowing them to watch late into the night while still rising early to catch the morning's information on their computers at work. This is the most professional group of war-watchers I have ever witnessed and America should be proud.

We have yet to see any of the early threats of this war materialize. The coffee still is hot and the bagels are still warm, although there is an eerie, unrelenting feeling that something could go wrong at any minute. You must remember that the war is only 6000 miles away so the unit here is always on guard, always preparing for the next worst-case scenario.

Our support infrastructure is still intact and operating at optimal levels, providing us with up-to-the-date Iraqi weather reports so we know what to feel as we watch the April, sun-baked desert. The mood is tense but professional. People here know what to do and are doing it. They read the papers, they go home and watch the news, special reports, and special editions of href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/dateline_front.asp"
target="NewWindow">Dateline and href="http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/48hours/main3410.shtml"
target="NewWindow">48 Hours, and they log on to their individual online news sources to get the in-depth reporting that they might miss while changing channels. They then talk about the conflict with everybody they know, formalizing the day?s new strategy. It's a tough job being a part of this special operations brigade but the members are well trained, well equipped I know in my heart that they will be here doing what they do best until the end?or at least a few more weeks.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This report was written in accordance with Pentagon ground rules allowing so-called embedded reporting, in which journalists join deployed troops. Among the rules accepted by all participating news organizations is an agreement not to disclose sensitive operational details.

Until next week -- Live fully. Live well.

2003-03-31T08:03:00.000-08:00

Every writer finds a place to do what we do--rooms, libraries, cafés. We search in our eternal quest to find those places that provide space for our bodies as our minds travel to the imaginary worlds we create. Those places become the waiting rooms for the flights of our souls. Doma has become mine. If it is as they say, that everything in the universe has a counterpart in an opposite dimension, then Doma is a Starbucks that snuck through. It is the antithesis of the current version of a café or coffee bar. It is a throwback to an earlier time. It is one of those special places that occasionally grabs hold in the soil of the city and becomes a literary landmark. Time will tell if I am right, but with the number of writers who have, like bees to a rose, found themselves drawn here, I suspect that I am.

Doma has done a lot of things to endear it to my heart; old wood tables and mix-matched wood chairs with a solid reality that comes with age, large windows that flood the room with light, coffee in real ceramic mugs, non pop music on the stereo, and a general feeling of welcome. Cell phone usage is banned and I can?t begin to tell you how pleasant it is to be shielded from the one-sided, animated dramas of other people?s lives. Laptops populate the café but are limited to a three-hour limit. People have their coffee, read their papers, have breakfast and touch base with each other before heading out into the city and the rest of their lives. Those of us who stay, work on our current thoughts, occasionally catching each other?s eye with a knowing glance as we chase elusive images. I should mention too, that Doma is an art gallery with fresh paintings on the walls that stir the creative soup of the writers sitting below. Doma is a space that is, in itself, a work of art.

I give this description so you have a base of reference for the articles that will appear on this page. Once weekly I will fill this space with dispatches from Doma; they will be about the café, about life, about writing. At times they will be drivel and at other times they will transport you to a table here at Doma where you can see the people as I see them, reading the Times, writing, or sharing morning moments with loved ones. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy sitting in Doma writing them.

Until next week -- Live fully. Live well.

DomaFile