Muse of Fire

I watched this incredible DVD today. It is a documentary featuring soldiers and their family members reading selections from their writings about their experience serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Their writings were solicited by NEA for their Operation Homecoming. This National Endowment of the Arts project also conducted writing workshops led by writers like Tobias Wolff, Tom Clancy, Jeff Shaara, Marilyn Nelson, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Mark Bowden, at 27 military installations at home and abroad. An open call for submissions resulted in 12,000 pages from over 1200 soldiers and family members. 100 of these were featured in an anthology edited by Andrew Carroll.

Read more about it here and here.





Do I need to explain why I think this whole concept rocks? I know the healing power of story and especially of telling one's own story. Not only the military personnel and their families will benefit from this healing power but every American who encounters these stories and the nation itself.

I will have to share this with my nephew who has been serving as an Army Medic in Baghdad for over a year now. I may get to share it with him in person as he is currently home on leave and visiting his family in Portland OR. That is if I ever get there. His mother is the one who is going to drive down here to pick me up but the snow storms hitting the Washington and Oregon I5 corridor are putting that on hold for now. He has to return to Iraq January 1st for another several months.

I wish I could share the video itself with him but it belongs to the library. So I was collecting the links online to share with him and decided I might as well collect them into a post.