Celebrities in the House--Saving Abel

On the first night of the milblogging conference, the evening ended with free concert by the group Saving Abel.

The groups performed free of charge for the conference and just returned from a series of concerts in Iraq.  Photos are here.

According to this story and an item I just saw on USAToday.com the band just performed on a warship in the Pacific.  This story is from Artist Direct:

Saving Abel re-teamed with the USO and boarded the USS Carl Vinson as part of a USO concert at sea that rocked the waves on April 11. The band performed for sailors returning from a three-month deployment at sea. It appears that Saving Abel have strong stomachs, since they played atop six-foot waves and 13 miles-per-hour winds entertaining more than 2,000 sailors. Footage from the USO show will be broadcast online in late Spring/early Summer.

The performance lasted 90-minutes and the band cops to being avid military supporters. And really, does anyone but far-out-in-left-field-liberals-whack-jobswho-don't-trust-humans admit that they don't support our forces? I'm not a conservative by any means, but really? Does anyone lay claim to being anti-the troops? Nevertheless, the band traveled to Kuwait and Iraq in late February, and participated in an eight-day USO tour. The band visited four bases and touched the lives of more than 4,800 troops. Footage from the group's concert at Camp Arifjan was later streamed online with help from Ustream. The show was viewed by more than 9,600 fans.

The band will release its sophomore album Miss America on June 8, 2010. The platter is named after their first USO tour, the album title was inspired by the service and sacrifice of America’s troops and their families. So these guys truly are avid supporters of the men and women fighting for our freedom, so not only do we salute said freedom fighters, we salute Saving Abel for their efforts.

Celebrity in the House--Baldilocks

At a military blogging conference you meet people that defy stereotypes.  After all, they are people who write who also volunteered to go to war.  The top of my list in the defy-the-stereotype category is Baldilocks.

Check her story out:

Obama vs. Baldilocks

A blogger's African dad came here on the same airlift as Obama's dad. All similarities end there

By Max Taves Thursday, Aug 21 2008

Los Angeles blogger Juliette Ochieng has a lot in common with the man who might be the next president, Barack Obama. A lot.
Both were born to Kenyan fathers of the same tribe (the Luo) from the same province (Nyanza), and both of their fathers came as boys to America aboard the same airplane. Growing up, neither Ochieng nor Obama knew their fathers, who both abandoned their American mothers and left their American-born children behind. Both of their fathers returned to Africa in the early 1960s and became friends, bonding at Kenyan bars over their favorite drink — Scotch. Both Ochieng’s and Obama’s mothers contracted ovarian cancer. (Hers survived it; his did not). Both Ochieng and Obama were born in the U.S. in August 1961 — only weeks apart.
But for someone with parallel beginnings, Juliette Akinyi Ochieng is quite different: Evangelical Christian. Working class. Military veteran. Pro-life. Conservative Republican.
Ochieng went to Los Angeles City College, not Harvard. Although she was born in Chicago — Obama’s political birthplace — she lives in South-Central Los Angeles, where she grew up. And since 2003, she has written a blog, luoamerican.com/baldilocks, better known as Baldilocks, a reference to her fashionably close-shaven head. Her soft speech belies her harsh yet thoughtful commentaries on black politics and national security from a conservative perspective.
Last month, she penned an essay for her site and for Republican-oriented pajamasmedia.com, bemoaning blacks’ loyalty to the Democrats. Last week, as Russian tanks rolled through Georgia, Ochieng, who worked for years as an Air Force Intelligence cryptologist-linguist specializing in Russian and German, mused about that conflict.
“She was very shaped by her experiences in the military,” says fellow blogger Patrick Frey, the deputy district attorney who founded Patterico.com. “She has very strong opinions, and she’s a very religious person. She’s very warm and hospitable.”

Read the whole story here.

She is sweet and funny in person.  Her views warm the hearts of Conservatives everywhere.

Thunder Run on My Blog

For those who have not checked out Thunder Run--follow the links below to the daily news from Iraq, Afghanistan and military bloggers.

In today's http://www.thunderrun.us/2010/04/from-front-04122010.html ">From the Front: (Click on link to read stories highlighted below) This post is courtesy of http://www.thunderrun.us/"> The Thunder Run

http://www.thunderrun.us/">The Thunder Run's From the Front is a daily series that highlights news and personal dispatched from the front and the home front.

Celebrity (Author) in the House--Dr. Charles W. Hoge

On Saturday while I was waiting for one of the sessions to start I met Dr. Charles Hoge.  He wrote the book Once a Warrior--Always a Warrior.  I reviewed the book on March 14 and found it more useful than I would have thought for me.  I would have thought it only applied to soldiers in direct combat, but there are things everyone in Iraq goes through that Dr. Hoge gives good advice on. 
(I can hear some of my friends saying "Going to Iraq for a year can be stressful--this is news to you?!)
Anyway, Dr. Hoge saw my name on my backpack and introduced himself.  We talked for several minutes about the book, Iraq, and reading and then I had to run off to move my car which was parked in a 2-hour meter zone. 
On the way down to the meeting, I talked to a friend who served was in Iraq last year and is having trouble getting back to the old routine.  He has two kids (age 9 and 11) and is having trouble with managing work, family, and all the details.  He wants to go back to fixing Chinooks 14 hours a day.  If he would read the book I would buy it for him, but reading would just stress him out more.  He seems ready to ask for help.  That's good news.

Celebrity in the House--WW2 Combat Cameraman

One really riveting presentation was a 20-minute film from the battle of Tarawa atoll in World War 2.  The narrator was 91-year-old Norman Hatch, a Staff Sergeant and combat movie photographer who went ashore during this very bloody battle.   He was the person of the week on ABC news and has made many other appearances on TV and radio recently.  Hatch talked about how he got some of the shots and the advantages of filming in the Pacific compared with the war in Europe.

Hatch shot the only footage in the war in which American soldiers and the enemy are in the same frame.  He spoke in a very matter of fact way through most of the presentation, but got noticeably more animated in talking about this particular shot.  He should have.  He was between two Marines firing from behind a couple of splintered logs.  The Japanese soldiers were maybe 20 feet away, bayonets fixed, charging Hatch's position.  Which brought up one of the great advantages of shooting in the Pacific.  He said in Europe you had to use a long lens because the battles were typically fought at longer ranges.  Of course, it is an advantage to be close enough to see the Japanese soldiers clamber out of a bunker to charge your position, but there are disadvantages to being inside grenade range of an attack by a determined enemy!

Hatch got two standing ovations from the packed room. 

Celebrities in the House--Gina Elise

Gina Elise operates and is the Star of Pin-Ups for Vets, a non-profit support group for hospitalized veterans.  She visits hospitals and sells posters and calendars.

For more information, Gina has a web site and a Facebook page. 

We talked a little bit about visiting Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.  I had a chance to visit in 2008 and was briefly there in 2010.  Gina visited in 2009.  She happily agreed to getting her picture taken with me--as long as I held the calendar for product placement!!

Celebrities in the House--Garry Trudeau

Today, just after lunch, I met Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury.  We got to talk for a minute and I told him I had his Creationist/Tuberculosis cartoon from December 18, 2005, was on my office door during the time I had an office in Iraq and on my wall at work for two years before deployment.  Trudeau also has a cartoon series on Chickenhawks that I have saved on my hard drive.  Too long to post here but, the Dec. 18 cartoon will fit.
Trudeau did not choose tuberculosis at random.  He is the great-grandson of Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau, who created the world-famous Adirondack Cottage Sanitorium for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis at Saranac Lake, New York State. Edward was succeeded by his son Francis and grandson Francis Jr. The latter founded the Trudeau Institute at Saranac Lake, with which his son Garry retains a connection.