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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 17, 2005
27 TrackBacksFor the last five years, liberals have indulged themselves in a bitterness and and self-pity unseen in this nation. It has been disgusting. Read More Today's winners are Bank of America and The Florida Department of Safety and Motor Vehicles. Read More The ACLU has announced that they intend to file a lawsuit against President Bush over remarks he made in the days following Hurricane Katrina. In a statement released on August 28th, President Bush alternately referred to Katrina as a disaster Read More A “news” story on MSNBC’s website begins: WASHINGTON - Initially, after Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, was slow in getting ice and water to victims. …. But as we noted days ago, the American... Read More Even as John Roberts was showing his mettle in the Senate Judiciary Committee round two was ready to get under way. Speculation will be ramping up about the Presidents choice. I also expect another fill-in-the-blanks "outrage" to surround that choice... Read More Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne wants Senate Democrats to vote against confirming Judge Roberts because Dionne feels Roberts didn't really answer the Senators' questions. He tried to convince readers and unintentionally made me smile. I hope t... Read More I've just finished a book, and it's been a while since I've done that even though I'm an avid collector of old rare books, by Tony Blankley. In two sittings totaling about four hours I've read what Tony questions with Read More All citizens who profess to love America and revere its Constitution should have its Preamble memorized and seared upon their hearts. ... Read More What happens when a woman shows up for a CAIR photo shoot without properly covering her hair with a hijab? No problem! The CAIR brotherhood has big fat marking pens, just for that Islamic PC dilemma. Yes indeed they do, and you can view the result of ... Read More We're having a contest: How much do these heads of two prominent charities make in annual salaries? Todd Bassett National Commander Salvation Army We've got the honor system in play here -- no fair looking up the answer before you... Read More Put a public school teacher in the governor's mansion and you'll have a pedagogue as the chief executive every time. It really doesn't matter how long she's in office, she'll always be a schoolmarm who's out of her element and in over her head—the ... Read More In a summer that has seen President Bush’s approval rating sink lower than ever, prospects have suddenly turned even worse for the White House. With Karl Rove’s recent illness and Dick Cheney’s upcoming surgery, Bush has been left unminded in the Whi... Read More In its typical scare tactic way, the ACLU is fighting the Patriot Act over a librarian’s name to be released over activities the FBI has found worthy of investigating. The ACLU is trying to take the FBI’s efforts to protect Americans from... Read More It's been a while since I've selected some material from some of my favorite blogs, so why don't we go ahead and get started. Read More Declaration of Independence Declared UnconstitutionalTed NessmanJuly 4, 2006 In a move that surprised few, U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Krugman of California today ruled the American Declaration of Independence unconstitutional and therefore null a... Read More Who would have guessed, as the crisis with Katrina and New Orleans unfolded, that the Fourth Act of the Drama would culminate in a serious debate about the limits, philosophic basis, and hidden dangers of Big Government intervention in human affairs? Read More Cindy Sheehan is back, and stupider than ever. I read about this a little bit yesterday before I unplugged myself for the day. “You know something, Billy? I don’t care if a human being is black, brown, white, yellow or pink, or if she’s Christ... Read More Great article in OpinionJournal today which brings to light all of the recent action which has been underway in western Iraq near the Syrian border. This progress has been ongoing for at least a couple of weeks if not more, Read More Grab your wallets folks cause state politicians just can't keep their hands off of a new way to 'steal' money from it's citizens. They're calling it SSTP (Streamlined Sales Tax Project), isn't that just so cute! Read More A blogger there had a story about A German senior minister for Gerhard Schroeder is using a picture of our Dead American Soldiers on one of his campaign posters!!! Read More Camera: Canon EOS 10D Lens: Canon 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec Exposure Program: Manual F-Stop: f/5.6 Aperture: f/5.6 ISO Rating: 100 Focal Length: 100mm Effective Focal Length: 160mm Metering: Partial Description: There is a bi... Read More The saga of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's goofy thought process/command decisions continues today. As you may know, this is the man that ordered a voluntary evacuation of the city prior to the hurricane and then 12 hours later turned it into a toothl... Read More It's just an ordinary, unpretentious cup of Sunday Morning Coffee. It's chock full of caffeine and - if you're a sweet junkie like me - sugar, and it has real cream -- the kind that comes from a real Read More Today the people of Afghanistan went to the polls to select a Parliament. Good for them. They went to the polls despite the threats of violence from those freedom fighters, the Taliban, of violence if they voted. Of course, the MSM focuses on the fact ... Read More (Click on the picture for the alternatives) USA Today: Plans advancing for world's first face transplant Read More Remember that 3-25 Marines AAVP7A1 destroyed by a huge IED last month where 14 Marines were killed? Critics were quick to jump all over the military for equipping troops with vehicles that couldn't survive those sorts of blasts. Wolf Blitzer... Read More In this dispatch, my correspondent looks at the various interests all competing in Iraq, and their motivations. 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 |
