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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 29, 2005
38 TrackBacksWith all the talk of reforming Social Security of late, Medicare has been called the white elephant in the room that no one wants to see. As Dean Reese of Today’s Democracy and The Wide Awakes has recently written, there are troubling financial ... Read More I don’t remember the exact day, but it was 19 years ago that I placed a simple silver band on my right wrist. Nothing special. Nothing fancy. It is just a simple silver band with a man’s name on it. As you might have guessed, the band is ... Read More Immigration is clearly the unheralded political issue of the year. It may not lead the evening network news every night, but with Democrats and Republicans alike moving on this issue, the political landscape is flooded with immigration reform proposals... Read More bRight & Early is SupportingFreedom Alliance in Blogathon 2005Please Register and Donate From the AP Criticism from Sen. Edward Kennedy (Embarassment-US) was the toughest talk yet from Senate Democrats about President Bush’s first pick fo... Read More Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has entered into contract negotiations with Arthur A. Levine Books. The publisher became interested in Roberts as a hot literary property after the White House announced that 75,000 pages of John Roberts’ docu... Read More Something George Orwell said in 1945 is about right for the "London caused by Iraq" folks. Read More Citizen Smash, along with Greyhawk and Blackf... Read More In keeping with the national French policy of preemptive surrender, The Louvre Museum in Paris recently accepted a $20 million donation from billionaire Saudi Prince Alaweed bin Talal for a new Islamic Art Wing. Talal was at the center of Read More The Army is trying to fight 21st-century wars with a caste system that was developed in the 18th century. We are justly proud of our NCO Corps. One reason is because you guys accomplish tasks light years beyond what commissioned officers did even jus... Read More Senator Bill Frist, Republican majority leader, came out today in support of modifying the current policy, favored by the president, regarding embryonic stem cell research. The new bill, already passed in the House, would allow research on existing em... Read More Latoyia Figueroa is 24 years old, she has a seven-year-old daughter and is five months pregnant. She and her boyfriend were apart but "working things out" and he was the last one to see her. She was accosted by his ex-girlfriend a few weeks ago --the... Read More Alright, boys and girls, get out a sheet of paper and a no. 2 pencil. It's time for a quiz. Don't worry, it's a simple one. Who are the following people talking about? He's a scholarly man; he has a Read More "A few months ago, I suggested to a family member that they read Norman Podhoretz's World War IV, which I thought was worth proliferating, especially due to its coverage of our domestic enemies, and the origins of the permanently cadred "anti-war" mo... Read More The four would-be suicide bombers of the botched July 21 attacks in London have a big problem. They were caught on videotape. Read More subtle differences Read More The Supreme Court's recent Kelo decision, which allowed government takings for transfer of private ownership, has surprised and alarmed people across the political spectrum. So much so that left is talking to right in Congress, in trying to pass a Read More Today's award winner is Helen Thomas, the matron of the White House Press Corps Read More Senate Bill S. 1088, The Streamline Procedures Act of 2005, is somewhat offensive to the lunatic bats at the ACLU. Why? They seem to have their panties in a twist over the provisions relating to writs of habeas corpus. Read More Following all of the coverage of "Over There" by both Milbloggers (Mrs. Greyhawk has a great round up in Dawn Patrol) and main stream media, I'm rethinking my position on not watching the show. In fact, I almost certainly will... Read More "I am of the opinion, based on enormous research of the Muslims' own books, that Islam is the most vile, wicked, evil danger facing the world today," Youngblood said. I agree. Clarification: I agree with the quote, not the sign. Read More Today Show in the morning -- 7:13AM. Bill Frist betrayal. ### ProLife Blogs says Frist Pulled a Kerry. A salute to Open Post at Mudville Gazette who points us to The Unalienable Right posting Frist Flip Flops. And Women... Read More OK so this is out at last! Once again, the rumors on the golf course turned out to be true! There is no finer, nor more accurate rumor mill that the ol' golf course! Bell Helicopter has won the Advanced Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) competition! I... Read More Charles "Charlie" J. Chibitty, the last of the World War II Comanche code talkers, was buried on 26 July in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mr. Chibitty was honored three times at the Pentagon for his service to America during World War II. Read More If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people... Read More Dick Meyer writing for CBS News, carries on the legendary tradition of Dan Rather. The subject? Gun Control, or rather The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. And what a load of tripe it is... his writing, not the bill. He only gets one conclu... Read More The Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team gathered on Thursday to pay their respects to four of the brothers who died earlier in the week. Among the brave men who died defending freedom while overseas are:Staff Sgt. Carl Read More Weekend Edition of the best NIF on the web! Read More Friday on Laura Ingraham's radio show she talked to Imam Yahya Hendi. As part of the Fiqh Council of North America, Hendi issued an Islamic religious ruling (also known as a fatwa) against terrorism. Some people have taken a dim... Read More Ok, podcasts sounded like fun and so I decided to try and do one myself. If you weren't aware of how fun podcasts can be to listen to I encourage you to find out!! There's a great podcast from deployed soldier David Green (Hat Tip the Mudville Gazette)... Read More As some of my returning readers might remember, I occasionally complain when politicians do something that shows their utter contempt for people, and indicates how stupid they think you are. However, I think I'm learning that they really are right.... Read More Course I'm sure those of you who are like me will do exactly that. Michelle Malkin had a link to this BERKELEY BARES ITS ALL .......... Read More Photo: PHAN Knoell OPEN POST: Off-topic comments and trackbacks are welcome.Other link-fests at The Jawa Report, OTB, Mudville, and Basil's.... Read More Ever since the attacks of September 11, 2001 Americans across the political spectrum have been seeking to “understand” terrorism. We’re very good at this sort of thing. It’s a part of our national character commented on by such... Read More It appears the Army has taken a page right from Cardinal Law's handbook. He was the Cardinal who, upon discovering that priests were abusing boys, decided to reassign those priests to other parishes to abuse again. Well, the Army has decided that those... Read More Funniest Picture From Iraq I've Seen All Year.... Read More So the ACLU shows up to the party as an univited guest, and tries to run the show. With complete disregard to the democratic process, as always. It seems the concerned crowd was a large one for such a small town, with enough citizens concerned that i... Read More Photo: PHAN Knoell OPEN POST: Off-topic comments and trackbacks are welcome.Other link-fests at The Jawa Report, OTB, Mudville, and Basil's.... Read More OPEN POST: Off-topic comments and trackbacks are welcome.Other link-fests at OTB, Mudville, and Basil's.... 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 |
