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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 12, 2005
31 TrackBacksToday's winner is Jostens Inc. who was hired by Lee County Florida to supply high school diplomas. As reported by The Fort Myers News-Press there is only one problem- The diplomas were full of errors. Many of them spelling mistakes. Read More That will be the day that the Global War on Terrorism is won. Why? Think about it. When Israel gets attacked they almost immediately know who did it and the Israelis also know who to kill and when to kill... Read More In Fox News this morning is the following story: San Francisco Mulls Military Recruiting Ban... Gitmo Dick is at it again....this from Move America Forward: In keeping with his outrageous conduct against our troops, U.S. SenatorRichard Durbi... Read More After 40 years of dedicated service, the GI Joe action figure has reported for duty in the Pentagon. Read More In response to China's recent purchase of Taiwan and Cuba, States Department spokesman Richard Bowcher announced today that Secretary of States Condi Rice had revoked Hawaii's statehood and imposed statehood upon Israel. Read More Live Science carries an article suggesting that those of us with chronic pain--pain of any kind, e.g. backaches, headaches, whatever--are subject to brain shrinkage.Pain causes an unexpected brain drain, according to a new study in which the brains of ... Read More Julian Bond, Chairman of the “non-partisan” NAACP, attacked President Bush and the “non-partisan” Republican Party for “rolling back civil rights” in America in a speech to the NAACP convention Sunday in Milwaukee. ... Read More A dramatic shift in the attitudes of New Yorkers toward the war on terror now shows broad support for the policies of the Bush Administration. The tipping point was reached just days ago, as cellular service was cut off in the four tunnels leading... Read More Washington's two daily newpapers, the liberal Post and the center-right Times, report on a study of TV networks' treatment of President Bush. But they do it so differently. Take a look. Read More One of the reasons I get up so early here at bRight & Early is to fire up the Short-range Covert Oratory Truth Usurpation System, or SCOTUS. Made of parts from a 60’s era Motorola transistor radio, my Grandmother’s Dumont television, ... Read More The ACLU was founded on January 19, 1920. It grew out of a previous group, The National Civil Liberties Bureau which had grown out of the American Union Against Militarism, and a party that was held in New York City and attended by just about every r... Read More Tsk tsk, another whiney leftist twirp. All these people have is threats, against people who disagree with them, trying (in desperation to shut people up) as become evident the other day with the Corruption Engineer. But I digress. In keeping with ... Read More All this fuss and hollering about Karl Rove "Frog marched off to jail" is just about over. Read More They did everything by the book and now the Army is changing the rules. Additionally, the Army may force itself to discharge a helicopter pilot in order to activate an enlisted computer specialist...your tax dollars at work there. Read More MSG Keith has a new milblog and he's posted a hysterical story about a ride in an F-14 tomcat. BTW - I totally concur with Reilly's advice. Read More Meet Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. If you've never heard of it, it is one of the most popular-- and most adult-oriented-- video games out there, rated M for "blood and gore, intense violence, strong language, strong sexual content and... Read More Everyone should be seriously questioning military service right now, that is, whether or not they SHOULDN'T join. There is not one American that is completely safe and immune from terrorism. The terrorists have blatently said they want to kill us jus... Read More Before you go any further READ THIS for some background. Our wounded soldiers need your help - in a BIG way. I've blogged repeatedly about Sew Much Comfort, an organization near and dear to my heart. There is now a new sense of urgency. While the origi... Read More I'm still on blog hiatus. What follows is part of an earlier blog entry, a long one, that had been caught up inside an even longer one but deserves its own spot. ---- One of the things I believe is... Read More Maggie Gyllenhaal is so much more evolved than you or I. We are too far down the enlightenment chain to understand that we can't handle "complicated thought in a complicated world": ...I realize I have to be careful, because it's... Read More Let's see, supposedly "classified" knowledge is leaked to a reporter by a politico. Politicans with a different letter after their name, along with their supporters call the politico actions treasonous and demand his resignation and Read More If you want to support the troops and the war on terror, One of the best thing you can do is find one of your liberal, leftist, or otherwise anti-war friends, one who claims to support the troops, and ask... Read More God Bless the fellow, he's gonna do 8 days in jail for "discrimination" because he refused to serve French and German customers because of their government's failure to support the liberation of Iraq. Here's the article. From it:In Feb Read More ... Dem guys is at it again! For those of us who remember how hard the Kerry camp worked at keeping you from seeing the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ads, this really isn't all that surprising:Durbin's Staff Trying to Read More Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... It's Wednesday Read More In the Tuesday 12 July edition of The Washington Post, Leon Kass writes in “A Way Forward on Stem Cells” about the debate over how much latitude to allow scientists who study embryonic stem cells (ES cells), the partisans on each side of t... Read More Governments Hiring Muslim Clerics to speak against fundamentalism and terrorism is a bad idea. In the wake of the London terrorists attacks, pundits are now saying that governments--like Britain, the U.S., and France--should hire Muslim clerics to he... Read More Oh, I forgot, we're talking about Karl Rove, who in the eyes of the media is the modern day equivalent of a Sith Lord. Read More Ali al-Timimi of Fairfax, VA was charged with soliciting others to levy war against the United States. His conviction has now drawn him a life sentence. Read More Proclaiming the Homeland Security Department "open to change," Secretary Michael Chertoff on Wednesd Read More Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... SWEET, it's Friday! 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 |
