The Department of Defense announced this morning that it is reinstating the popular My Career Account program that provided up to $6000 of educational benefits to military spouses.  The program will resume this Saturday but only for those spouses who already part of the program.  New applicants won't be allowed until the Department of Defense develops a long range plan for, presumably, funding and administering the program.

Members of Blue Star Families worked hard to get the word out about how military spouses were being harmed by the abrupt halt of the MyCAA program, holding a roundtable with Congressman Glenn Nye (D-Va) of the Congressional Military Families Caucus.  The CMFC was instrumental in getting the program reinstated.  Congressman Glenn Nye says that Congress will continue to work with DoD to ensure that the program is available to all military spouses in the future.

Here is a news story from Channel 13 News in Hampton Roads about the resumption of the MyCAA program.  BSF member Chris Cowan talks about how the MyCAA program helps military spouses continue careers, despite the frequent moves required by the military life.

All those military spouses out there who fought for this program should pat themselves on the back!  You did this.  Together we can change the world.

by Alison Buckholtz

I've written letters to my much-deployed husband, Scott, on monogrammed stationery, hotel letterhead, notebook paper, and even, once, in the margins of a menu from a restaurant in Switzerland. In Japan, I invested heavily in cards that featured cute animals of different species talking to one another; when I worked in an office, I scribbled on the back of recycled meeting agendas. But only the memory of these letters exists. Like most deployed service members, who are always on the move and have to travel light, my husband couldn't hold on to my notes. It's not a question of sentiment—I know he cherishes my missives—but of mobility and storage space.

I've kept Scott's mail, of course. I stay put, and when one shoe box spills over, I reach for another. That's how it is with most military wives, and that's why archives and books like War Letters feature correspondence from husbands on the battlefield but little from the wives waiting back home. Here's one exception, circa 1952, that has always charmed me:

"Jan is snoozing in her afternoon nap & Jay is dragging himself blearily about trying to keep awake. He hardly even takes a nap anymore & is really ready for the sack at night... I think it is high time you are coming home because Jan is beginning to call every man she sees in a magazine 'Daddy'."

Louise Duquette sent this note to her husband, Norman, just before his plane was shot down in North Korea and he spent 587 days as a prisoner of war. The letter was returned to Louise unopened, which is probably why it survived. (She found out 19 months later her husband survived, when a radio station broadcast the names of released POWs.)

I've often wondered what a collection of letters from wives to their husbands-at-war would look like. Would most, like mine, sift through the detritus of the day before snagging on a shiny nugget of interest to the partner exhausted by combat? Would they be filled with romantic poems, full of longing? Pleas? Regrets? Would these letters capture important moments in American history, or fads known only to military families, like Flat Daddy? Such a collection, hinting at how other wives manage long and frequent separations, would give me some comfort. So I turned to the closest thing that exists: blogs by military spouses, which I started reading a few months ago when I got tired of hearing myself whine about my husband's 12-month deployment. The blog entries by Marine Wife Unplugged, Household 6, Mrs. G.I. Joe, New Girl on Post, Battleship Bettie, and others (some of which can be found here) finally make the firsthand experience of the waiting wife accessible to all.