MOHMMH

For a few months now, I have been volunteering at the National Medal of Honor Museum of Military History (whew!). Once a week, I help out at the museum archives. For the last few weeks, I've been working on the task of culling excess material out of the museum's files. They keep a file for each Medal of Honor winner (or most of them...there are around 3500) with general information like photos, medal citations (the certificate or declaration from Congress stating the reason for the award), articles, correspondence, etc... Basically anything that's not an actual artifact that is stored elsewhere in the archives. Now, I have no idea who the person was that created these files, but I'm not sure what they were thinking. Apparently that there would be lots of demand for information on these people, because in each file there are multiple copies of EVERYTHING. 6-10 copies of photos, citations, multiple original clippings of articles, blah blah blah. Basically, just buckets of unnecessary stuff. So anyways, I'm combing through,pulling out the extras, getting rid of anything that doesn't belong there, and making sure everything's in the right order (because apparently that person didn't know the alphabet either).

Anyways, the point of this is to tell you just how interesting this has been for me. I am NOT in any way a military history buff. Or any kind of history buff. It's interesting, sure, but I'd rather read fiction than non, and I've seen more battlefields than I'll ever remember. I leave that to the men in my family. They're all in the Army (some on purpose, some by accident of fate), they're all ridiculously bright, and they all love history. Even my mom, with her graveyard and family history obsession, falls right in with them. So when I first started working at the archives, I felt a bit out of place. I'm just there to get some exposure to the field, everyone else that volunteers there is a veteran, over 50, and has lived through, not to mention studied, far more history than I. It's actually kind of fun because when there are more than 3 of them in a room they all reminisce about the crazy things they did as children (filling discarded hypodermics with gasoline and lighting it for an impromptu flame-thrower) and talk about how surprised they are they made it to adulthood. It's absolutely delightful.

So my lack of knowledge in this area is the reason I'm so excited to be going through each of these files. With each one, I get to see the faces of war heroes from eras past, read their spectacular stories, and learn a little bit more about that side of American history with each one. My favorite part are the items that personalize the stories: photos, letters, even just a signature.

It's also, honestly, quite heartbreaking. Many of the medals were awarded posthumously. In some of these cases, instead of a photo of the soldier in the file, there is a photo of his loved ones at the presentation ceremony. In these photos, the president awarding the medal is invariably ecstatic, clearly impressed by the example of these men, and appreciative of the opportunity to honor them in this small way (It's really cute actually, most of the ones from WWII, which also actually make up most of the medal winners, are president Truman, and he is just beaming. In the ones awarded while the soldier was alive, they usually show him hugging the soldier or holding him about an arm's length away while he talks to the soldier. I'll paste a pic below). In the posthumous awards though, the faces of the families, tell a different story. I have not seen one that is smiling. While I am sure they are grateful for the example of their lost son or husband or brother or father, their grief and pain at his loss is strongest for them, and it is so clear on their faces. These photos hurt the most. They show that, no matter how high the honor, there is nothing that can repay their sacrifice.

So every day that I go in there, my fingers get a little dirtier with newsprint. My knowledge bank grows a little bit more. My heart hurts a little bit more. But most of all, I gain more respect and understanding for the kind of man who would knowingly sacrifice himself to save his friends. That's what keeps me going back.





(the soldier in this photo is Desmond Doss, and I'm going to tell you his story because it's amazing. He's actually from my area! Anyways, he was the only conscientious objector to win the medal in WWII. He was Adventist and refused to carry a weapon or fight or work on his sabbath (Saturday). So he got a position as a medic with a unit stationed near Okinawa. One day, his unit got in a bit of trouble, and he was the only medic left. He agreed to come help as soon as he finished his scripture study (bless!), and arrived to find his unit on a high cliff with no escape but down the cliff. He waited, under fire, and used a rope to lower 75 (75!) other people to safety. Only when all were safe did he leave his post and seek safety himself. There are also a couple of other incidents where he rushed in to treat mortally wounded soldiers in incredibly dangerous situations, and continuing treatment even after he himself was wounded.)

Some brilliant person scheduled the new season of Glee for the same night and time as Lost. I am NOT a fan.

This video is ridiculous in every way possible, and so is the song now that I think of it, but I LOVE it. Everyone should listen to it. But not too closely.

Also, there's no way to embed this in a way that fits the center column and doesn't overlap into the sidebar (I know you're sad you can't see all the tabs). Youtube fail.

Today I was switching purses because, you know, it's a new season, and I felt like a change. Even if I'm just switching back to the giant grey thing I carried all last winter. Anyways, I was transferring the "essentials", and I realized something ridiculous. My purse "essentials" include SIX DIFFERENT TYPES OF LIP GLOSS. Excessive much? I think so. But really not- you see, sometimes you want color (that's what the Clinique and Lancome are for), sometimes you just want shine (B&BW, and Estee Lauder), sometimes you want sparkle, which is different than shine (MAC), and sometimes you want the minty freshness of B&BW mentha lip gloss. I can't kick any of them out. I must be prepared for any and all potential lip situations.

So probably no one cares about this, but I just say the most impressive presentation I can remember. Today, in my digital libraries class, we started presentations of the two final projects. The projects were 1) report on an existing digital library, and 2) use the open source digital library program "Greenstone" to build your own digital library. Most of the projects are similar to mine, people have have little idea of what they're doing with the new software. BUT one student got it in a way which I can never hope to understand. The collection I built (and everyone else's) was very basic, mostly just a list of items, not much metadata (identifying information) or organization. Which is fine, that meets the requirements. This guy though, took it above and beyond, creating multiple access points for each item, so his collection is searchable by title, author, genre, blah blah blah. The items are presented in tables (noooo idea how he did that) and all his analysis was just above and beyond. We were all blown away, having communal text chat head explosion while he was presenting. I want to be him.

I was really grateful for conference this past weekend. In the Sunday afternoon session, I was sitting there, mind wandering, thinking (of all things) about Mary and Martha. The story of Martha being "cumbered about with many things" has always frustrated me (a few thoughts on that- many people demonize Martha for not dropping everything and joining her sister at the Savior's feet. I think that this is not the correct interpretation for the incident. Mary was doing what she thought best. Martha was serving others in the way she thought best [they had to eat, right?]. How can we possibly fault someone for performing a small but necessary service? I feel that the rebuke came to her not because of her choice of activity, but because of her momentary loss of focus. For a moment, instead of focusing on her act of service, she was overwhelmed by the unfairness of the situation and focused more on her sister's actions than her own. I take this story as an admonition to maintain focus and monitor my own motives instead of worrying about the motives of others). I was thinking about a friend and how this story applied to her situation, and then (I'm not sure on this, but I think it was) Elder Schweitzer stood up, not 5 minutes after I started following this mental thread and began to talk about Mary and Martha. Everything else aside, it was a very simple tender mercy- more of a spiritual nudge, really- showing me that I and my concerns are not unnoticed. Just something to say "hey, I know you're there", which is little enough, but, you know, timely and wonderful.