Oh what an aching hole to fill. Early yesterday evening, when the backchannel exploded, I was fine. Seven hours later I went to bed grappling with what I was going to say when we went public, and I didn't have a thing. Four hours later, I woke up knowing what I was going to say, and when I sat down at the keyboard... I couldn't do it.
Everything's too blurry.
Lex was the bleeding edge of the second wave of milbloggers, just as I was on the trailing edge of the originals. There was much turmoil, as we were out there inventing our blogselves and blogging as a counterweight to Big Media's control of the narrative. Hell, *this* space was involved in Rathergate, and our involvement was part of how we clawed our way into respectability. The milblogs were fighting to tell the inside stories of the warriors the Bigs couldn't be bothered to tell and correct the misinformation being put out - by DoD as well as the Bigs and especially going after the antis on substance.
Good googly moogly though, the Castle was a wild and wooly place back then, what with all the Denizennes swinging from the chandeliers, and the choklit cannon.... Then there was this guy blogging anonymously as Neptunus Lex who was clearly one of the best writers among us - and to my trained ear, damn senior.
I was in San Diego on business and SWWBO came out to join me to viist blog-friends we had out there. Sean Dustman invited us to join the Sandy-Eggo milbloggers in a meet at his place, with some of the other local milbloggers and such, including Lex. So I met Lex, and Sean, and I'm sorry, I don't remember who else - sitting in Sean's living room, eating barbecue, and watching a frankly classic movie we were amazed that some present had never seen.... and dangit, I can't remember the name of it.
Blogging, by it's nature, doesn't have a lot of truly senior leaders doing any blogging that we would recognize. There are good reasons for that. Among other things, the milblogger community is ruthlessly merit-based, you're ranked there by what you have to say and how you say it, external rankings don't enter into it. It's one of the reasons senior leaders don't blog much. They simply can't engage in that kind of a dialogue in public. And blogging also showed that (news only to the ignorant) that there were damn fine minds wearing stripes on sleeves, and leading on the distaff side, and doing serious work in the trenches. And eclectic. Intel weenies, grunts, operators, medics, fobbits, Household Sixes and a certain Air Force weather-guesser I remember who was really flying under cover then. There were some auld pharts in there, too, like Concrete Bob and Our Bill, determined not to let the nation do to the current wave of warriors going downrange what it did to the ones sent to Vietnam.
But there we were - an enlisted sailor, a not-terribly successful retired Army Major, and an active duty Navy Captain who'd worn the gold star of Command At Sea, talking as equals, telling our stories, sharing our gripes - doing what warrriors have done around the campfire ever since there were campfires and warriors to sit around them. And tilting at windmills. And to our surprise, we toppled a few.
We're grown old in war now, and the community is much changed, as has the blog battlespace. We've had to reinvent our genre time and again, resort our bins, and we ourselves have changed with the passage of time. And through it all, there was Lex. Building that wonderful community at that wonderful blog, inviting all and sundry to stop by and have a Guiness and exchange lies and talk about the issues of the day. Of course, many of the best blogs are like that - internet bars and coffee houses, with owners who know how to keep the crowd engaged, but not have the crowd engage with fires.
And Lex was the master of that.
It's a frickin' huge hole in the 'sphere and at our very heart.
***'s going to stay pretty. But I'm pretty sure that while Lex wouldn't mind dying in the saddle like most of us old warhorses, he wasn't planning on it right now. I rather suspect that it was something like Wolfwalker described in a comment on Bill's post,
" I'd like to think that right up to that last second he was still a pilot, still doing pilot things to try to avoid/ameliorate the crash, with no time to be scared."
Though I suspect that, at the very end, his last thought was an apology to the Hobbit, his wife, and the fam. Because that was Lex's center.
Neptunus Lex, departing.
Dammit, I've got to get the air conditioning fixed, the condensation at the blog-station this morning is terrible.
We've already danced at the Castle. I don't have the energy to do it again.
I need a Guiness. And I don't even really like a stout that much.
But, as George Patton said, "Let us not mourn the fact that he is gone. Rather celebrate the fact that such a man lived."
And that requires a little Guiness. It's gonna be a helluva Irish wake in the milblog world today.
Fair winds and a following sea, sailor.
Read the complete post at http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2012/03/we_were_blogger.html
Posted
Mar 07 2012, 04:13 AM
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Argghhh! The Home Of Two Of Jonah's Military Guys..