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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! October 10, 2005 Open PostBy Mrs Greyhawk Posted by Mrs Greyhawk / October 10, 2005 8:07 PM | Permalink 30 TrackBacksIf you think this makes me an evil, heartless right-wing extremist SOB, then so be it. I don't call people morons often, and never generically, but in this case, you are a moron. Specifically.There's outrage in northern Minnesota after firefighters Read More ...But Blorndback has found himself in the center of a firestorm of controversy, after the discovery that he had been displaying one of his own pieces, “Afternoon, Part III,” upside down for the last three weeks... Read More Goes to the Florida Times-Union newspaper and its website. Read More Was cruising around and found this gem which is undeniable proof that Google is taking over the world.At Google our mission is to organize the world's information and make it useful and accessible to our users. But any piece of Read More The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true. The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, a... Read More It wasn't too long ago that jihadists were claiming that Katrina was the wrath of God brought down on the evil Americans... Have they reconsidered? Read More For those who refuse to heed my warnings about Iran, here are a few news stories from the past couple of days, regarding Iran and their attitude towards the rest of the world in general, and the West specifically. I Read More Why do the French hate us so, and do we deserve their emnity? Well, it is true that in the 1600s and 1700s America welcomed with open arms the hated French protestants and French Jews who had escaped their native land with only their lives. However, F... Read More Ancient Greek and Roman historians recorded that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships afire. The ships were anchored within bow and arrow range. The story has been much debated and ... Read More Animal rights group PETA has recently found themselves on the defensive over their new comic book, Your Daddy Kills Animals. The book challenges kids to, Ask your daddy why he's hooked on killing and also asserts that fish have the Read More From Iraq: I’m glad that you took a moment of your time to write to me. It was a nice surprise to get a letter from you. I hope this e-mail finds you in good spirits and all is well in that beautiful country of ours. Thanks for the nice words i... Read More Earlier this month, a University of Oklahoma student was apparently so disgusted with being an engineering student, that he blew himself up outside of a Sooners football game. Apparently, Allah is a Texas Longhorns fan. Read More I’ve accidentally wandered into some media criticism, so perhaps I should outline one source of why I feel differently about the storied Fourth Estate than others who do journalism for a living. Shortly after the Vietnam War there was a PBS ser... Read More Since nothing funny was going on anywhere else, I dusted off some pics from the Election 2004 archives. Read More Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... Finally blogging again Monday Read More The issue of MILBLOGGERS rages on in the blogsphere. For my readers, you understand the position I take which is that MILBLOGGERS by their very nature provide biased and censored news. They are required to register their blogs with their command and th... Read More Today's Washington Post brings news of something that could pose a problem for Republicans in 2006. Apparently, the party is having trouble attracting candidates to run for Congress. Read More Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. - Auric Goldfinger Ok. Quoting a James Bond film villain isn't quite the same as quoting Churchill or Socrates, but the point is valid, and it applies. Within the past weeks thr... Read More The Indepundit provides an update on the Mt. Soledad cross in San Diego, and helpfully provides a list and photos of additional targets for the radical left to attack next. A California Superior Court judge in San Diego has ruled that the referendu... Read More I did like this comment from a reader on the question from LHJ to Bill Clinton: Read More In the wake of the July 7th London bombings, the NYPD started random searches of bags being carried onto the subway system. And the NYCLU filed suit. Now, on the heels of the stepped up police presence and re-institution of bag searches on New York&#... Read More We bought an egg from an Iraqi at the gate. To fry on the hood of the HUMVEE, you know, just to say that we did it. Read More Well, this ought to make Gary Abernathy's day: Kris Wise reports: "Secretary of State Betty Ireland isn't ruling out the possibility of running against Sen. Robert Byrd next year." Read More Here we have a perfect example of RIAA demonstrating their complete stupidity and lack of understanding of customer relations. I remember CDs selling for $18 and $19. Could that have hurt sales? How about how the industry fought every aspect of technol... Read More Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest is clearly very frightened of the influence military bloggers (MILBLOGS) and other right leaning bloggers are exerting over public, poli... Read More What Moonage Daydream calls “the dumbest idea the UN has ever conceived. Traumatizing kids so that they won’t be traumatized by something else.” Moon quotes the Sunday Mail: CHILDREN’S favourite Smurfs are wiped out in a gru... Read More In other words, the thugs killing US troops in Iraq are being permitted by Syria to set up camps, supply lines, etc, on Syrian soil. Read More In other words, the thugs killing US troops in Iraq are being permitted by Syria to set up camps, supply lines, etc, on Syrian soil. Read More On Sunday funeral services were held for another American service member killed in combat in Iraq. Another female in uniform. According to the Air Force, Elizabeth Jacobsen was an airman first class who was killed by an IED (improvised... Read More Pledged U.S. aid to victims of South Asian earthquake: $50 million Cost of one day of the war in Iraq (based on total budget): $197.3 million Innocent civillians killed by earthquake: 42,000 Innocent civillians killed in Iraq: 25,000-30,000 (estimated)... 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 |
