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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! September 16, 2005 Open PostBy GreyhawkA big Thank You to Holly for a job well done, hope she can hold out til Mrs G returns. Posted by Greyhawk / September 16, 2005 8:17 PM | Permalink 34 TrackBacksFrom Jim Pinkerton, at TechCentralStation: “Tony Blair Pulls the Plug on Kyoto at Clinton Summit.” The article opens: Kyoto Treaty RIP. ... Read More Today's winner is German Interior minister Otto Schily Read More ...Newdow effusively thanked “a random series of undirected chance starting with the big bang and ending in the halls of this courtroom” for his victory.... Read More I'm going to veer away from concentrating on specific testimony in the fourth day of John Roberts hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I want to talk a bit about my general observations. My chief observation is this. Why did they bother? ... Read More One popular line from the advocates of accepting homosexual behavior is that being gay is innate, like race. How often have we heard the line, “no one chooses to be gay”? The black civil rights movement is often invoked by those arguing ... Read More When someone with as sharp a mind as Justice Scalia encounters someone with an ego as bloated as Senator Schumer's something's sure to pop. I hope this post makes you smile. Read More The bad ideas for rebuilding after Katrina are already starting to pile up. The biggest conflict will clearly come with the same local and state officials who misspent our taxpayer money in the past, and then failed so miserably to do their jobs duri... Read More Much to the dismay of Democrats everywhere, President Bush demonstrated yesterday that he is in fact human when a Reuters photographer clicked a photo of an all too compromising note he was writing to Condoleeza Rice during a U.N. meeting. Read More Dr. Mike S. Adams writes in Townhall that stupid questions, contrary to popular academic opinion, are asked. Apparently with alarming frequency. A few years ago, I was listening to one of our high-quality top-notch administrators at UNC-Wilmington as h... Read More At the beginning of the week, James Lileks posted a Bleat that included some very important thoughts about the September 11th anniversary. Read More So a wacko cleric of Iran thinks the US does not deserve any aid, in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Don't take my word for it...Read for yourself...Those who spent millions of dollars to kill the people of Afghanistan Read More Army engineers are using new technology to generate more than 100,000 gallons of potable water per day for the hospital in Biloxi, Miss., and area residents affected by Hurricane Katrina. Read More Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... Consitution Day edition Read More ...I'd prefer someone with a near-perfect score on this: Something above 80%, at least, with a low average distance error. I think I lucked out with a perfect score on the first try. It would be more difficult if you... Read More TITLE: Katrina in photos URL: http://blog.soundfirst.com/archive/0001/01/01/1089.aspx IP: 69.93.44.130 BLOG NAME: The Informed Christian DATE: 09/17/2005 03:02:00 AM Read More A federal judge declared Wednesday that the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation "under God" violates school children's right to... Read More More like the 2005 Indians versus their 1985 counterparts. The Royals are about to be the third different team that Buddy Bell has led to 100 losses. But that's his problem. Tribe's Magic Number for the Wild Card fell to 15 and its Magic Number for the... Read More Let's set up a competition between an ACLU Lawyer from Columbia vs. an ACLU Lawyer from NYU. I've got the perfect case and it's hot off the wires. Read More Davy Crockett vs. Welfare From The Life of Colonel David Crockett,by Edward S. Ellis (Philadelphia: Porter Coates, 1884) Crockett was then the lion of Washington. I was a great admirer of his character, and, having several friends who were intimate Read More Thanks to the United States' new ambassador, Michael Bolton, the UN has found itself in a bit of a dilemma. Read More The U.S. Constitution was finalized on 17 September, 1787. Read my post commemorating its 218th anniversary. Read More Lawsuit blames oil companies for loss of wetlands, Katrina damage LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) - A lawsuit seeks what attorneys say could be billions of dollars from a long list of oil companies for damages to wetlands that would have allegedly Read More Others hosting open trackbacks: basil’s blog Outside the Beltway Jo’s Cafe Cafe Oregano The Mudville Gazette Read More U.S. Acts to Finish Divisive Border Fence -- Environmental laws are waived by the Homeland Security chief to allow last section to be built through wetlands near San Diego. By Johanna Neuman, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — In a Read More Once again we have widespread evidence of abuse, of the truth, by those sorry misguided extremists at the ACLU. This time because they have no concept of what life is like in an infantry combat unit, whether in peacetime or in a war-zone. In the pers... Read More Vang is the St. Paul Hmong immigrant who shot 6 hunters (4 in the back and all but one unarmed) and wounded two while illegally hunting on one of the hunters property in Wisconsin. Read More Benjamin Netanyahu recently spoke on Israel Radio and questioned why Ariel Sharon did not bring up the subject of the synagogues that were destroyed in Gaza by Muslim vandals when speaking at the UN Read More Alexis de Tocqueville David Wayne who pens JollyBlogger is bringing together bloggers with an eternal perspective: God Bloggers. Friday, September 30th at 6:30pm. Details. Tocqueville would not be surprised. ### Thank you (foot)notes: Mudville Gazette... Read More The Deceased Gentleman, whose portrait appears to the left of this paragraph is Napoleon II. He isn't much as historical folk go, he didn't last very long as is noted in this from Wikipedia: Three years after his birth in Paris, the First French Empir... Read More The Deceased Gentleman, whose portrait appears to the left of this paragraph is Napoleon II. He isn't much as historical folk go, he didn't last very long as is noted in this from Wikipedia: Three years after his birth in Paris, the First French Empir... Read More What do you think ? So You Wanna Be A "Hooters" Girl? A peek at the beloved boobs-and-beer emporium's employee handbook Read More Was a missile fired at Flight 17 as it left JFK? One would think that it is a simple question that would get a “yes” or “no” answer. Think again. When asked by blogger Michele Malkin, American West responded to the questi... Read More Let me tell you why they shouldn't rebuild New Orleans. It'll suck. Trust me. It'll suck so hard you could use it to clean gum off a carpet. I was out last night with a few friends in Manchester, a city that was devestated by an IRA bomb in 1996. Read More Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... Talk Like a Pirate Day edition, ARGH! Read More 1 Comment |
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 |
Would someone please tell me WHERE the Trackback URL for these posts is?