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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! July 6, 2005 Open PostBy GreyhawkHAPPY BIRTHDAY PRESIDENT BUSH! Posted by Greyhawk / July 6, 2005 10:01 PM | Permalink 26 TrackBacksInteresting humor that makes you think. Read More From a White House photo by Krisanne Johnson President Bush celebrates his 59th birthday today. Personally, that makes me feel a little old. I’ve never been inside of a decade to a sitting President. Maybe he’s just very young. Yes, that... Read More I've tried to avoid commenting on the "chickenhawk debate" because of the adequacy of other blogger's efforts to refute the argument and point out that it's a poorly disguised tactic to silence actual debate, but there's one angle I haven't seen anyone... Read More Now the Cap Times has never seen a problem of poverty that couldn't be solved by pouring piles of money into gaping holes of corruption. Read More Many of us during the course of our daily lives make vows and promises that, at the time, we intend to keep. I'll start exercising more so that I will lose that extra 20 pounds, or I'm going to spend Read More There's a lot of nonsense being spoken about the Supreme Court nomination. Here are a few thoughts I think make sense. Tell me what you think. Read More I was through two hurricanes last year. That experience I shared in a previous post. Its barely a month into hurricane season and I am cautiously watching Tropical Storm Dennis as it treks through the southern Carribean. The computer models so far p... Read More While some have speculated this is a sign of growing desperation on the part of foreign terrorists operating within Iraq, Point Five has learned that the terrorist group is angry over al-Sherif's description of them as Islamic "Strict Constructionist... Read More More on the liberal “chickenhawk” charge from Tigerhawk, Winds of Change, Donald Sensing, and Blackfive. As we discussed earlier, those on the left, for whom “hypocrisy” is the greatest sin imaginable, have some explaining to ... Read More While some have speculated this is a sign of growing desperation on the part of foreign terrorists operating within Iraq, Point Five has learned that the terrorist group is angry over al-Sherif's description of them as Islamic "Strict Constructionist... Read More Wisdom can come from the strangest places: America has invested too much and lost too many soldiers to turn its back on the people of Iraq. We cannot cut and run and leave chaos in our wake, ... Sen. Dick Read More It seems the ACLU continues to discredit itself by fighting all efforts for the U.S. to secure its borders. teaming up with three other groups to monitor attempts by Minuteman Project-style groups to do in California what the Minute Men managed to do... Read More Behind the gates of Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital, there are many stories to be told. Stories of tragedy and triumph, life and death, overcoming adversity and succumbing to wounds. It's both a tough place, and a proud place. The hell that our wound... Read More Most importantly, if and when I have children, I don't need them to learn about God, religion, faith, or anything spiritual from a government institution. Some may feel that it's failure on the part of parents when their children don't learn about God,... Read More What a load of crap. Made the mistake of switching on the television to check on the weather since we are having a bit of rought weather here in Alabama and tornados are a possibility, warning sirens are going off,... Read More Powerlineblog.com blogger John Hinderaker pays tribute to Admiral James Stockdale: leader, patriot, hero. RIP Read More Michael Obitz, Saddam Hussein’s new agent, announced today that Saddam had agreed to participate in a movie, a TV show and several product merchandising deals to cash-in on his celebrity. Read More The brightest part of my soul never made it to Iraq, it is back in California with my better half. Read More This link was sent by one of our soldiers in Iraq. Please take a few minutes to listen to the entire presentation. Feel the pride. Let the goosebumps rise. Shed a tear or two. Read More I've made reference in the past to my day-job as a network engineer. There are rare occasions when my more amateur interest in politics and my profession intersect. Today I read about a man in Tampa, FL who was arrested as a result of someone calling... Read More The correlation between the interaction of man with a disease and the US and it’s coalition with the Iraqi “insurgency” have something in common. Read More A new homeland security strategy calls for an increased military role within the United States, including putting forces on the ground and intelligence sharing between civilian agencies and the military. The new strategy is outlined in a forty pa... Read More In the political version of thumb wrestling, paper beats rock, scissors beat paper and Red beats blue. Red gets to call the locker room of the team that wins the big game (don't say Sooper Bowl or the En Eff Ell will sue you). Red gets to name Wal... Read More José Piñera (via Social Security Choice blog): Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of Germany from 1871 to 1890, an aristocrat, a monarchist, and a Prussian nationalist, put in place the first social security system in 1889 in Germany. The U.S.... Read More Received via email... I saw your picture of the pilot with the American flag in his cockpit. Here is a picture of a Flag my family received and how we displayed it. It is with great pride that we were honored by such a gift. Read More Cnn is reporting that a series of about six explosions brought London's subway and transit system to a halt. Read More |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
