Air Force Reservists welcomed home from deployment Tuesday
Flights were scheduled to land at 4:43 p.m. and 5:53 p.m., carrying 14 Citizen Airmen who have been deployed to multiple locations in Southwest Asia. In total, thirty-nine Air Force Reservists from the 302d Airlift Wing's 39th Aerial Port Squadron have been deployed for the past six months.
The Reservists are transportation specialists who processed cargo and passengers at aerial port facilities in support of U.S. Central Command.
Located at Peterson Space Force Base with a Total Force of more than 1,300 personnel, the Air Force Reserve 302d Airlift Wing trains, equips, and employs C-130H aircraft airlift forces in worldwide support of the nation's interests.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Boston Globe
18-06-2025
- Boston Globe
I was changed forever by a journey to the bottom of the sea
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Just before my 2023 dive, Karl Stanley, the captain who took me down off the Honduran coast, told me that he had eschewed communication systems for his sub, believing that if something went wrong at the depths to which we were to dive, no one would be able to find and get to us, let alone save us. Stanley operates out of Honduras in part because his sub doesn't have to undergo a rigorous licensing and insuring process there. At the powerful whimsy of the encompassing brine, the best-case scenario if something went wrong would be for the sub to quickly tumble to its crush point — the depth at which the pressure crumples the craft. Where does wonder — if excessively chased — bump up against tragedy, or atrocity? Years ago, Stanley tested his own limits, pushing his first sub, C-Bug, beyond its operating depth rating, risking implosion, permanently deforming its hull. He narrowly escaped with his life. I've spoken to many in the amateur submersible community. Some admit to actually enduring time on the surface, as if it's painful for them — a too-bright way station. To some, the underwater realm serves as a convent or monastery. A place to be human away from the rhythms and strictures of the human world. A place where our sense of control is tenuous and often illusory. A place where we may feel that we don't have to comport with the rules of the surface. It's also a place where we shouldn't be, a place our bodies weren't made for, wherein we require machines in order to respire. 'It's really hard when you're down there to want to come back to the surface,' says the amateur submersible builder Shanee Stopnitzky, who has spent over a year of her life in aggregate underwater. 'This [the deep sea] is my place.' 'Definitely, in the beginning, it was almost like an addiction,' Tonni Andersen, a scuba and submersible diver, told me. 'I almost need to dive.' Many in the community seem to downplay the dangers of their avocation. They often get lost in the exhaustive safety precautions they must take to mitigate — but never eradicate — the danger. Because they're taking these precautions and lending their minds and bodies to inventing and engineering and then physically welding and sealing and gluing and fire-treating the parts for these safety measures, that's what many of them fixate on. The safety precautions are what take up their time and energy, and sometimes, if only rhetorically, many seem to confuse that for actual encompassing safety, actual encompassing security, when, in reality, the encompassing thing is the danger — the fickleness and power of the deep sea. I've probably watched too many Bond movies and can't help thinking of the dark side of chasing this exploratory impulse. It feels short-sighted and sometimes villainous. Could this be another version of misguided human stewardship and manifest destiny, akin perhaps to colonizing Mars? Should we occupy this space just because our technology and desires tell us that we can? What might be the consequences of such projects, and who may use underwater technology in the future for less benign and whimsical means? 'The future of mankind is under water,' Stockton Rush, OceanGate's late CEO (and one of the five who perished onboard Titan), once said. 'We will have a base under water…. If we trash this planet, the best lifeboat for mankind is under water.' One may wonder if by 'we,' he meant the uber-wealthy, and if by 'mankind,' he also meant the uber-wealthy. I do not regret having dived to 2,000 feet in Stanley's home-built submersible. What I beheld was indeed wondrous, but in a torturing kind of way. I think about it every day, and so, from time to time, I get lost, foggy, as if still down there with the bioluminescence. Though I will never do that again, I can see how it could become an addiction. I will attempt to satisfy the urge instead by putting on my shoes and going for a walk on the good, hard surface of the earth, watching the birds, praying that all who need to be rescued will be. I will do this, until it becomes enough.
New York Times
17-06-2025
- New York Times
Torn Between Artifice and Authenticity
This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What is history? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page. I was born in Saigon in 1960, and I experienced the war in Vietnam firsthand. When the war ended and Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975, the U.S. government evacuated me and my family in a C-130 cargo plane. We ended up in California. Now, 50 years later, I work as a landscape photographer, viewing my medium not only as a tool for witnessing past and present conflicts, but also as a space suited for contending with the paradoxes that define history itself. One particularly pivotal experience shaped my approach. It began in 1999, when I contacted a group of war re-enactors based in North Carolina and Virginia. I worked with and photographed them over several summers, and the images eventually became a series titled 'Small Wars.' This small group of young, conservative men was dedicated to recreating key U.S. military operations and battles from the war in Vietnam on one member's 100-acre wooded property. Among them were a product manager at Thomson Financial, a former National Guard driver, a mortician and a carpenter. Too young to have served in the conflict, none of these men had ever experienced real combat. Yet they were obsessively committed to the authenticity of their 'impressions' — meticulous in their attention to equipment, clothing, food and supplies, whether portraying the Vietcong, the North Vietnamese Army or American soldiers. Participation was by invitation only. To engage with multiple perspectives, I alternated between the role of a Vietcong fighter and that of a Kit Carson Scout — an N.V.A. soldier who defected to assist the Americans. Armed with an AK-47 loaded with Hollywood blanks, and clad in either Vietnamese-made black pajamas or an N.V.A. khaki uniform, I walked the trails and immersed myself in the dense bamboo thickets the re-enactors had planted. This vegetation — an obvious signifier for Vietnam and other Asian landscapes — was incongruously situated in an area that once witnessed the U.S. Civil War, on a site densely populated by pines, spruce, horsetails and kudzu. The result was a striking conflation of histories: theirs, shaped by vicarious experiences filtered through news footage, literature and myth; and mine, formed by personal memory, family lore and ambivalent feelings about a devastating war — one perpetrated by a government that ultimately saved my family and me from Communism and granted us a new life. The re-enactors and I spontaneously connected through a shared fluency brought on by the popularization and retelling of the Vietnam War in popular culture. We bantered back and forth, testing one another's knowledge of classic war films, as well as fiction and nonfiction books. One-time participants from other states occasionally joined us, and the organizers would disclose my participation only at the last minute as a 'reveal' for the unsuspecting visitors. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Yahoo
Terre Haute Fire Department opens application process
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — If you desire to serve and protect the community as a firefighter, the Terre Haute Fire Department recently opened its application process. Captain Nick Arnold said applicants need to be between 19 and 39 years old, have no felony convictions, a valid driver's license and a high school diploma or GED. Arnold said they'll also have to have a candidate physical ability test or a C-PAT card, that is valid within 356 days of the end of the application process. The hiring process will also include an aptitude test and interview. Rewarding career: Firefighters save lives and build friendships If you have an interest in fire service, emergency medicine or helping the community, Arnold encouraged you to apply. Terre Haute Fire Department swiftly extinguishes house fire 'It's literally the best job in the world. No two days are the same. You're not sitting behind a desk. You're not sitting in an office. You get to go outside. You get to serve your community and form bonds with your brothers and sisters in the firehouse,' said Arnold. The application process runs until August 31st, and you can apply by clicking this link. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
