HERSTORY IN PICTURES

STUDIES AND EDUCATION

Vibo enrolled in collegiate programs helpful to service members stationed overseas. She found that attendance at brick-and-mortar universities was less flexible to online learning environments. In 2012, she earned her Master of Arts with a Graduate Certificate in Online Learning and Teaching. Her experience in these mobile and adaptive spaces would eventually help guide her work as a Military Education Coordinator in the state of Hawaii. While her spouse was stationed on the island of O'ahu, Vibo served seven locations throughout O'ahu: MCB Camp H. M. Smith, Tripler Army Medical Center, Schofield Education Center, Marine Corps Base Hawaii Kaneohe Bay, Hickam Air Force Base Education Center at Hangar Two, U.S. Coast Guard Base Honolulu, and Pearl City Hybrid Classroom and Offices. To learn more about her service in the nation's largest public university with a global campus and her other work experience, follow her LinkedIn profile. Additionally, Vibo's writings are part of the curriculum at Paris College of the Arts and Sciences Po in Paris, University. Advanced English Creative Writing Professor, Malik Ameer Crumpler, has asked Vibo to speak to learners at both universities in Fall 2024. 

I believe storytelling is helped by world travel and experiencing people and cultures. I started my education in the heartland, but it continued in multiple states and into Australasia and Europe. I earned an AA in Mass Communication: Writing for Television and Radio. I was the Association of the United States Army honored recipient of the General of the Army Omar N. Bradley Fellowship Grant for Military History. I earned a BA in Liberal Studies and later my MA in Liberal Studies. My course shell creation was entitled: Human Challenges in the Robotics Era which structured a syllabus around the history and ethics of the robotics field. The AI focus related to warfare technologies I learned about while working in the Air Defense Artillery. I created micro scripts via social media focused on the ethics of automated weapons systems. My Capstone Project (See WOMB attached SCRIB) included material which expanded war theory, mythology, moral injuries, and commemorating the fallen. My Capstone Mentors were Laurence Lyons Murphy Ph.D., professor emeritus, Doctor of Philosophy, Rutgers University; Robert Price PhD., performance artist and music instructor; and Linda L. Holt Ph.D., Humanities Professor and author of the international prize-winning novel, Invictus (Harvard Square Editions, 2019). This website (all of my writings and art) encompasses a process of understanding the implications of generational trauma. It is through creative outlets that we show the range of storytelling available to our veterans, our families, and communities impacted by war wounds."

NOT INVISIBLE

Vibo's association with the military was featured in a weeklong British Forces Broadcasting Service radio segment and was part of the Scotland Fringe Festival where she created glitch films to describe war and experiences as a veteran and a military spouse. Additionally, her work was anthologized in Oxford Brookes University Poetry Centre's 'My teeth don't chew on shrapnel': an anthology of poetry by military veterans, and later discussed during the Transforming the ways we commemorate war research by Dr. Niall Munro and Dr. Jane Potter. The Veterans Writing Workshop's Afterwords: I Am Here, and several literary O-Dark-Thirty journals published by the Veterans Writing Project. In 2021, she was a panelist for the Center of New American Security CNAS, a Poetry Finalist in a National 9/11 Art Competition, and spoke at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. Her pieces have displayed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital, Dulles International Airport, and the National Veterans Art Museum. In 2022, she gave an artist demonstration curated by Uniting US for the Veterans History Project, hosted by the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. In 2023, her art is part of an 80-participant community artwork project led by Uniting US and the World Wide Art Project at the British Embassy in DC (See: Uniting the World Through Art: Love & Peace VS Fear & War).

OF WAR AND MORE WAR

Vibo served in the Active Army in the position of Supply Sergeant for OIF at Al Jaber Air Base where she made supply runs into Kuwait City, coordinated supplies within the brigade locations OCONUS, and organized field sanitation requisitions from her Conex. Her convoy into Iraq stopped at Tallil Air Base (approximately 20 km from An Nasiriyah). It was at Tallil AB that she burned trash and excrement (not a total metaphor). Her unit (attached to XVIII Airborne Corps) earned a Presidential Unit Citation (PUC) for operations alongside the 1 Marine Expeditionary Force. 

You know war is hell, but I believe war is also a load of excrement. I stirred feces. Literally. That was my job. I was paid to take out the trash. I raised my right hand and pledged an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I learned a lot about myself and human behavior through the process of combat deployment and the ever-present hunt for opaque gold. These are the stories that need to be told. Retelling tired tales of conquering heroes and writing about 'just wars' doesn't paint the full portrait. War rapes our world. War is Hell. War is filthy.

MATRILINEAL & PATRILINIAL LORE

To learn some of Vibo's Matrilineal story, visit: 51st Congress 1st Session Letter from the Secretary of the Interior (March 3, 1890) Ex Doc. No. 82 which includes complex family dynamics. Part of Vibo's Patrilineal history involves a visit to Davy Crockett historical sites and relatives who trekked from Ireland to the American frontier. Vibo's extended family makes up a beautiful multilingual melting pot with a diverse blend of Asian dialects (and a smidge of SoCAL Valley).

Proof of my family tree ties to genealogical records, family lore, oral traditions and a rumored sheepskin map inside a safety deposit box. I am but one in a family of storytellers. Visit this space often."

VIBO'S CAPSTONE PROJECT

The attached SCRIB is Vibo's Capstone Project for partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies degree from Thomas Edison University (2010).

W∞mb by Maggs Vibo on Scribd

O'er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall,
Were raining down dilated flakes of fire
As of the snow on Alp without a wind"
​
—Dante, The Inferno: Canto XIV

CONTACT MAGGS VIBO

Poetry, Vispo, Media, Photography, and Art on the website  have credits where available. Open to collaboration? Send a message.