One woman’s quest, profiled in the Sunday New York Times. She’s Shelby Monroe, from Chappaqua NY, and this is her blog. To go to Iraq, she quit three part-time jobs — in libraries in Chappaqua and Peekskill and in the Village Bookstore in Pleasantville. When she told her bookstore boss, Roy Solomon, where she was heading, he bluntly replied, “What are you, nuts?”
From the article: “Her explanation for why she chose to become a latter-day Ernie Pyle doesn’t quite add up as a reason someone would want to risk her life — but that’s the wonderful Rosebud mystery of her life. She says, for example, that she returned to Iraq last December after being there six months in 2006 “mainly because I felt an attachment to the soldiers, who were very good to me during my first trip, and I wanted to keep an eye on them.”
“There is something to be said for stepping out of your comfort zone,” she finally admitted. “I like to test myself once in a while. I like to see what I am really made of and what I can endure.” She adds that “growing up with four brothers helped prepare me for this. Riding around with boys is something I’m familiar with. And it is a nice contrast to the deafening silence of the library.”
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