You'll have

to excuse me if I ramble a bit this week.

I'm just back

from a very relaxing vacation in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the brain

is not yet fully engaged.

No, I won't

give you a travelogue. There's plenty of information on the Internet or

through travel agencies, and I don't have enough superlatives in my vocabulary

anyway.

I'll make one

recommendation, though: if you go, stay on St. John or one of the other

smaller islands, rather than St. Thomas. St. Thomas is crowded and busy,

not my idea of a great place to relax. It's famous for its duty-free shopping,

but you can always hop a ferry and spend a few hours in the shops, or

to enjoy the night life.

We had such

a great time on St. John that I almost lost touch with the gritty goings-on

back in the real world. But being a news junky, I had to flip on the TV

for a few minutes once a day to check the progress of the fight against

terrorism, and the Braves.

Well, so much

for the Braves.

The first thing

I noticed after landing in the islands was the prominent display of the

Stars and Stripes it was everywhere, at least as ubiquitous as here on

the mainland, and maybe even more so.

But other than

that, and the increased security at the airport, the area is pretty isolated

from this new threat. It's not a topic of conversation where people gather.

Rather, the talk is about the tings people go to the islands for, mon

... the fishing, the diving, the weather ... with an occasional reference

to sports ("You're from Atlanta, eh? How 'bout those Braves, mon.").

The second

thing I noticed was that the pace there is completely different from anything

I've ever experienced. People just aren't in a hurry, except for the taxi

drivers. It's comical to watch them compared to everyone else around them,

they're like a video on fast-forward, hustling bags in and out, rushing

up to passengers just coming off the ferry or out of the airport, weaving

through traffic with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the

horn.

But there's

a leisurely grace to the movements of all the other residents, and even

the tourists start to fall into the rhythm after a few days. Before I

had been there long enough to get acclimated, I was tapping my fingers

on the table, wondering when the waiter was going to bring my salad, when

I saw a sign in the shop window across the street that said, "Relax

... you're on island time now, mon."

Even going

through Customs before the trip back home, I was impressed with people's

friendly demeanor and unhurried approach to tasks. We stopped at one interview

window, where the agent spent what seemed like a long time looking at

our identification.

"Where

is this Yale Drive, mon?" he asked. The question threw me for a minute,

since my ID clearly stated that my Yale Drive address is in Jonesboro,

Ga. What more information could he need? As I started to stammer an answer,

he added, "Is that anywhere near Tara Boulevard?"

Turned out

he had once lived in this area, and had even looked at houses in Fayetteville.

As I reflected on what a small world it's becoming, I couldn't help but

tie that thought in with the terrorism war and the tenuous alliances that

have developed.