(MOAA) Fifteen months ago Army wife and journalist Jan Wesner started a blog to educate civilians about military life. But her posts took on the feel of diary entries when her husband of 17 years deployed to Iraq — with one difference: Anyone can read and respond to a blog.

"I talked about the times when I drank too much and how I started smoking and how I worried if we would be different when he got back," says Wesner, who lives near MacDill AFB, Fla., and whose blog, Standing By appears on the St. Petersburg Times’ Web site. "I talked about the things my kids said, and I even talked about not having sex for so long."
Because of her openness, Wesner was able to form friendships with military spouses from across the country she had never met.

"There are things I say on my blog that I would never say to someone face-to-face," she says.

Virtual community

Welcome to the military spouse blogosphere, where "milspouse bloggers," as they are known, share experiences and opinions, rally support, seek resources, and find friendship in the virtual world. In many ways military spouse blogs are a fusion of the unit newsletter, holiday greeting card, snail-mail letter, and journal entry.

"Describing how it feels to be a military spouse is extremely important. There are so many spouses out there who can turn to spouse bloggers for therapy, for friendship, for guidance, and for so much more. Plus, troops on the front lines can turn to their blogs to keep tabs on home and see how everyone is doing," says Jean-Paul "JP" Borda, a deployed guardmember who is the founder and webmaster of Milblogging.com, an aggregator site of nearly 2,000 military-related blogs that features more than 200 spouse blogs.

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I wanted to wish my Mom and my wife and all the Mothers reading this post a Happy Mother's Day.

I decided to post a recent photo of myself for my Mom.  That’s me on the far right.  Her "little noble".  Yup, that's what she called me growing up as a kid.  

Since it is Mother's Day, I have to say, don't believe that baloney about quality time, flowers and gifts on Mother's Day.  My Mom's "little noble" (that's me) used to go all out by scribbling with Crayon on paper bags and I'd tell her it was a Mother's Day card.  I know what you’re probably all thinking:  “Ahhhhhhhh, what an amazing son! Why can’t mine be as thoughtful?”  

Yeah, I know.  And to top it off, I was 23 years old at the time and living at home.  I mean what more could a Mother ask for?

So, uh, all you Moms out there eat your hearts out on this Mother's Day!

(Wired.com) Blocked blog access on Air Force networks. A Navy blog opposed by Public Affairs. Crackdowns on YouTube and other social media. The military has really struggled to come to terms with the internet era -- in stark contrast to jihadists, for whom the internet is the major medium for recruiting and spreading tactics and weapons plans.

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You'll be happy to know we've completed our final mission just a few days ago.  All Bad Voodoo soldiers are safe and off the road.  Pictured above is myself and "SGT Q" (a fellow Bad Voodoo Team Leader) posing for a photo during our last mission.  We both happened to serve in Afghanistan at the same time from 2004-2005, but we were in different units.  "SGT Q" was actually a member of the 25th Infantry Division.  I served with the Virginia National Guard during my tour, but I was also awarded the Tropic Lightning during my Combat Patch ceremony. 

Well, pretty soon this place will just be a memory and I'll be looking at pictures from my deployment saying to myself, "Those were the days.  Really takes me back..." 

The 3,000 degree weather in full Battle Rattle.  Back to back missions, over and over and over.  Some times getting little or no sleep.  Heck, throw in walking a mile to use the internet and eating sand during dust storms and I'm basically describing utopia. 

(American Enterprise Institute) Stop-loss is now the subject of an eponymous film that tells the story of three soldiers who return from Iraq and attempt to handle the burdens of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while re-entering civilian life as sons and husbands. When Staff Sgt. Brandon King is stop-lossed and told that he will be returned to the war in Iraq rather than be released from the Army, he flees his post in an effort to escape the orders. King's flight forces his friends and family to choose whether to support him and ultimately brings him face-to-face with the costs of abandoning one's comrades.

Not surprisingly, the movie has met with an unkind reception among milbloggers. Terri, a blogger at A Soldier's Mind whose boyfriend has served three tours in Iraq, watched the movie and panned it as "unrealistic," "inaccurate" and "inconsistent." She points out numerous factual errors, such as the immediacy of King's orders to return to Iraq, the film's treatment of PTSD and the police manhunt for King. Her conclusion: "It's obvious that this is Hollywood's latest attempt to make the military look bad and to glorify desertion."

A more typical response among milbloggers was to pan the movie without having seen it. Both "SSG Thul" at Foreign and Domestic and "Deebow" at Blackfive cheered the movie's poor takings during its opening weekend, as the film posted eighth at the box office. Thul concludes that the film did poorly because "Americans don't want to go see a movie that tells them that they are stupid because they are Americans." Deebow asks why there have been so many movies that criticize the war but none celebrating real-life heroes who fought in Iraq and have died for their brothers in arms.

The one sympathetic milblogger review of "Stop-Loss" that I found was by Carissa Picard, on the Military.com Daily Election Center Blog. Picard, founder of the soldier's advocacy group Military Spouses for Change, attended the movie's sold-out premier at Fort Hood, Texas, and interviewed audience members afterward. A notable (and vocal) segment of the audience included members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, which had organized a group to attend the premier and distribute anti-war literature. They agreed with the film's premises and thought that it provided a fair treatment of what they view as a betrayal of American soldiers. (AFJ staff writer Chuck Vinch reviewed "Stop-Loss" favorably, concluding, "'Stop-Loss' is not an anti-war film; if anything, it's pro-troops.")

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Smedley "The Camel Spider" is still living with us in our tent.  I took it upon myself to do some scientific research so I went on over to Wikipedia and read more about camel spiders.  Here's what Wikipedia says:

"In the Middle East, it is widely rumored among American and coalition military forces stationed there that Solifugae will feed on living human flesh. The story goes that the creature will inject some anaesthetizing venom into the exposed skin of its sleeping victim, then feed voraciously, leaving the victim to awaken with a gaping wound. Solifugae, however, do not produce such an anaesthetic, and they do not attack prey larger than themselves unless threatened. Other stories include tales of them leaping into the air, disemboweling camels, screaming, and running alongside moving humvees; all of these tales are dubious at best. Due to their bizarre appearance many people are startled or even afraid of them. The greatest threat they pose to humans, however, is their bite in self-defense when one tries to handle them. There is no chance of death directly caused by the bite, but, due to the strong muscles of their chelicerae, they can produce a proportionately large, ragged wound that is prone to infection."

I was a non-believer, until the other day.  So I was packing my belongings and a spider ran out from underneath my duffel bag.  I hit it with my boot several times and I'm not sure if he got away.  Well, later that night while I was talking to one of my battle buddies --- and in the corner of my eye ---  I swear Smedley was staring straight at me with those little beady angry eyes.  Like he wanted to eat my flesh or something. 

Smedley Update1:  Turns out, Smedley escaped from his cage.  He's small, just over an inch so it wasn't too hard.  Not that I'm scared, but I now sleep with my eyes open.  And all my body armor.  And my M-4.  Hell, I'm not ashamed, I even clutch a Woobie.

(Milblogs) The second annual GI Film Festival will take place in Washington, DC from May 14-18. In addition to film screenings and other fun happenings, the festival will present a series of panel discussions.

The festival has added a panel on milblogging to this year's agenda.

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