Three Beautiful Things 08/21/18: Flying to NJ, Listening to *Caliphate*, Pizza and Wings and Beer at Sally's

1. The Deke and I spent the day high above the USA, flying from Spokane to Denver and then from Denver to Newark, NJ.  We had a delay in Denver when someone realized the toilets on board needed servicing and our flight to Newark took longer than advertised because air control routed the plane into Canada to avoid a bumpy low pressure system over the Great Lakes. None of this was a problem. We arrived in Newark just fine, retrieved our bags, took the AirTrain to Enterprise and picked up our rental car, and drove to Sally's house in Metuchen, NJ, about thirty minutes from the airport.

2. The slightly longer flight meant that I had time to listen to all ten chapters of the chilling New York Times podcast, Caliphate. The series is an audio version of work done over the years by Times foreign correspondent, Rukmini Callimachi, whose reporting has focused on Al Qaeda and ISIS. In this podcast, she works to get at reasons why men and women join ISIS and she explores ISIS's recruiting methods and, thanks to documents she recovered, some of the inner workings of the ISIS bureaucracy. Much of the podcast is very disturbing with graphic descriptions of executions and rape, among other horrors. While difficult to listen to, I deeply admire Rukmini Callimachi's work as a journalist and her absolute commitment to verification and corroboration of stories she recorded from men who'd been in ISIS. If you are interested in listening to all or parts of this podcast, just click here.

3. Once we arrived at Sally's, Sally broke out bottles of three of our favorite East Coast Beers: Flying Dog's The Truth, Victory's Dirt Wolf, and Bell's Two-Hearted Ale. The Deke and I divided one bottle of each between ourselves and dove into the fantastic dinner Sally brought home from Anthony's: a superb eggplant pizza, chicken wings to die for, and a crispy, fresh green salad. We relaxed on Sally's screened in patio area and before long I hit the hay, tired after a long day of travel and my sustained dive into the deep end of the pool of contemporary history.