 |  |
 
October 2012
August 2012 July 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003
     |
 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 20, 2005
26 TrackBacks...So it was no surprise when a tear- stained Rather and a representative for former Vice- President Al Gore announced Tuesday formation of a new think- tank dedicated to understanding the causes and solutions to the rising Climate of Fear... Read More I thought this gesture was extremely classy, special, and it struck my patriotic funny bone in just he right spot. Amid all of the destruction, despair, and heart wrenching images of the disaster that we now know as Hurricane Katrina Read More The One Soldier's Story Project continues to look for literary nonfiction submissions. Now, we offer an incentive to help us generate more submissions: three Signed copies of Sen. Bob Dole's recent autobiography, "One Soldier's Story." Read More Remember the song with the line, "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you"? That's how democrats must be feeling about their options regarding John Roberts. The lefty special interest groups are continuin... Read More Today's winner is Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Bosse Ringholm. Read More Failing Europe- Europe is in trouble: Nearly one third of Germans under 30 say that the U.S. government ordered the 9/11 attacks. In France, a book insisting that Americans carried out the assault themselves to increase defense budgets becomes a... Read More According to today's Washington Post, the FBI is looking for recruits in a new anti-pornography effort Read More I caught Gorgeous George when he came to my town and got four questions with him. Read More We here at The Nose On Your Face are big fans of best-selling conservative authoress Ann Coulter. As a friendly gesture to her, our staff have compiled a list of potential titles for any upcoming books she may be planning. Read More But finally, Man's loyalty to the jackass party is paying off. It got a $24 million bridge. Only one little problem. The bridge is cracked. That's right. It has a crack going its entire 2,000-foot distance. Byron Smith, project manager for the Division... Read More I have linked to some of Robert Kaplan's work in the Atlantic before, and Kaplan has now combined some of those articles into Imperial Grunts released earlier this month. If you want to know how SF operates, and if you want to know where we are makin... Read More Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... It's a TJ-is-sick + Kerry-180 Tuesday Read More Athletes need to practice. Exercise. Conditioning. Drills. To perform at the top of their game, they must continue to push themselves beyond their limits. Josh Herbert has a unique conditioning program.Josh Herberts's family raised Buddy, the 8-year-ol... Read More Former President Clinton's talking a lot now about Katrina and how President Bush should have managed things. Let's not forget some important things about Clinton. They help us understand him now. Read More NEW ORLEANS - President Bush announced today that Hurricane Rita, likely to make catastrophic landfall near Houston, was his "mop-up operation to finish exterminating poor and black New Orlinians who fled to Texas." Bush, aka God, said it saddened him... Read More At least I don't remember hearing of it. When I read this, about a new use physicists have put it to, I figured it was just another new transuranic element that exists for a couple of attoseconds, about as long Read More If you want to get nauseous read what happened to a young Palestinian girl after being raped and impregnated and the by who is beyond sickening. From RofaSix. Read More Citizen Smash is looking for a job. The number one characteristic a hiring manager should study is not on a candidate's resume: Character. Hiring committees know only about an applicant's mettle from a third party observation. This is an openly... Read More Did Bin Laden really have all of this gamed out before 9/11? Hmm, I don't think so. But if he did, it's a game he lost. Read More For some background and some examples of stuck on stupid click here and here. I've liked that Cajun General from the day he hit the ground in New Orleans, but I had no idea he had such a way with Read More After complaints by British muslims, Burger King has withdrawn its new ice cream product, the "BK Cone." The problem isn't with the actual ice cream cone, but with a logo on its lid. The logo's design is supposed to represent a swirl of soft serve ic... Read More The team from GirlsGoneWild has given every husband the opportunity to order their tapes without fear of discovery by the other half. Now if the folks from the Spice Channel would do the same thing! h/t: Buzz Machine Others blogging about this im... Read More Today it looks like our own allies are balancing against us. The recent refusal by NATO to expand the mission in Afghanistan is the latest sign. NATO insists that an expansion into anti-terrorism would put their peacekeeping forces at risk. It would... Read More For the last few months I have watched the hurricanes come and go with my immediate family safely outside of the destructive paths of them all... Read More I can understand 24/7 Katrina coverage for days on end. What I want to know is where are all of those "concerned" reporters every time Guam gets pasted by a typhoon? Read More Rice Urges Israel to Cooperate with Terrorists. If the administration keeps this up, I think God might create a category six hurricane! 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 |
Comments (0) |
|
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 |
