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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! December 9, 2005 E-mails of Thank You's to our TroopsBy Mrs GreyhawkThe email address of these fine folks have been removed by me in order to respect their privacy. Greetings and Salutations! Posted by Mrs Greyhawk / December 9, 2005 12:57 PM | Permalink 6 Comments |
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 |
Offtopic... your site very heavy... it loads too long...
Isn't interesting how, when the rightwingnuts send messages to troops in the field, so many of them can't resist including partisan political propaganda?
I say this as someone who has sent many thousands of dollars worth of packages through Any Solider. In contrast to my comments on the hyper-politicized wingnut "milblogs" that exist mainly to parrot Republican politics, when I send a care package my letter isn't remotely political -- not explicitly or implicitly.
And by the way, how much you wanna bet that 99% of those whackjobs sending those e-mails through the wingnut site don't give a dime for the troops? In my experience, rightwingnuts are the stingiest people on the planet.
Wilson is smarter than the rest of us, and now, apparently, he is just an overall better person than the rest of us, too. Just ask him. He'll tell you.
Kevin,
Don't even bother with Wilson. Someone on another thread described what it is like to talk to him and it was spot on:
Something like this...
Wilson: Your mom is fat
Any Sane person: No she isn't.
Wilson: See, you just proved my point by attacking me which means your mom is fat. This is surprising with all the goosestepping she does to ChimpyBushitler's war-drum.
Any Sane person: I didn't attack you, i just said my mother isn't fat.
Wilson: See you just proved my point again wingnut. By not posting a picture it proves your mom must be fat, Bushbot. And if you did post a picture it is probably a fake rightwing Haliburton scam, which proves your mom is fat.
www.unrelated.obcsurelink.com
Ignore the troll. His maturity level is about on par with a six year old child in a store when she doesn't get her "My little Pony". If he screams and makes enough noise he'll get his way.
Ignore him and he'll quiet down and go away for naptime.
Let's try this conversion:
Kolb: Your mother weighs 430 pounds. She can't get off the couch. She's fat.
rick: She's not fat! She's my momma and I love her.
Kolb: Someone should love her, ricky, and it might as well be you. But your momma is so fat it would take a crane to get her off that couch.
rick: Define "fat."
Kolb: I'd say that your fat momma provides her own definition of fat. My God, haven't you even noticed the dog's head sticking out from under her thigh? Duke died when she sat on him
rick: Momma's winning the war against dietary excess. Duke? The dog was a terrorist.
Kolb: Two years ago she weighed 135 pounds. I'm telling you, your momma is fat, Duke was a friendly German Shepherd and now his carcass stinks! I'm going to report the both of you to the ASPCA.
rick: Oh, how typical. The ASPCA. Bunch of liberal animal rights terrorists. You're obviously on the side of the terrorists. You hate freedom and mothers everywhere.
Wilson Kolb: "And by the way, how much you wanna bet that 99% of those whackjobs sending those e-mails through the wingnut site don't give a dime for the troops?"
I'll bet as much as you care to wager, because I happen to know many of the individuals who've posted messages on my website, and they give to our troops regularly, as do I. In fact, I just mailed an air conditioner to Sergeant Dennis Adams only a short while ago.
http://www.anysoldier.com/WhereToSend/Dynamic.cfm?SEQNO=3748&popup=no
As far as politicizing goes, it seems to me that you are doing just that with your response above. If you really cared to keep politics out of it, you wouldn't be drawing attention to the few messages that allude to political viewpoints out of the many which do not.