All posts by Angelique Conger

I have always been a writer, as long as I can remember, I have written! Until recently, my genre was poetry. After a challenge in 2013, I started writing novels, and I find I love to discover the story of the women I have been wondering about for years! I am a wife, mother, and grandmother, once a teacher, always a friend.
Freedom, Independence Day

Enjoy Your Freedom of Speech

Do you realize how lucky you are to live in the United States? Though we have lost freedoms in recent years, we continue to have more freedoms than those living in most other countries.

I am as disgusted by photos of people stomping on and burning our flag. But, those people have the right to do that and they do not fear arrest or other legal reprisal for their actions. Try abusing a flag in some of the countries under marshal law. It isn’t something you would even attempt.

Citizens of the United States can express their frustrations in many ways citizens of other countries would not consider. Check out social media, almost any opinion is available to read, from far left to far right, and everything in between. Everyone has an opinion, and most share it freely on Facebook, Twitter, and the multitude of other outlets for expression. Calls to elect are often beside calls to impeach or requests to change the time periods for elected officials. No one is arrested.

In the last weeks, a furor has arisen surrounding the Confederate battle flag. Masses have gathered to demonstrate both for and against the flying of the flag. Fist fights resulted as people from both sides lost control of their tempers. Some were arrested for disorderly conduct. None were arrested for expressing their opinions.

We have lost many of our freedoms in the name of “protection.” I fear the loss of more of our freedoms. For now, I am grateful we still have so many.

Happy Independence Day!

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Will We Accept Hatred or Will We Build Love?

Our country is once more facing the sorrow of mass murder at the hands of a hateful, angry man. His hate has been expanded beyond the boundary of the church to discussions and conjectures from every corner of the nation.

One hateful, bigoted man has blown bigotry out of proportion, yet again. It was horrifying for a man to murder others in the midst of a prayer meeting, especially in the historic AME church.

It offers every politician a means to make a comment, a statement of disgust, return small donations from one who has been accused of racial hatred. Even President Obama has offered his opinion.

No, bias has not been eliminated, from any of the so-called races. Hatred and bias against others is a means of division, a way to encourage strife and war. Such bias has existed from near the beginning of time, since Cain slew Abel. Satan has used the weapon of bias and bigotry since then as a way to divide the children of Adam and Eve. It has become a favorite weapon in his arsenal.

Causing strife and hatred, leading to arguments and war, is one thing Satan pulls from his quiver frequently—much more often lately.  There has been war of some kind, somewhere for more than one hundred years. Even a small battle, the murder of nine people in a church, has a similar effect, especially in our day of immediate media and immediate reaction, resulting in agitation, unrest, and hate. It draws our hearts and minds from our love of others and our God down to hatred and despair.

We should abhor the murder of nine in prayer meeting. We should be aggrieved by the hateful actions of the murderer. However, our horror at his actions is no reason to further the hatred, increase the bias, or provide photo ops and sound bytes for politicians.

What is happening in the world beyond the furor over the Confederate flag? Surely there is something happening in the world beyond this current battle.

The media is so focused on one event, other larger, more despicable occurrences of hatred happen elsewhere, unmentioned by the press, unknown to the population of our country. How many were murdered in other countries today because they believe in Christ? Have others been lifted by the actions of others? Were there forces of nature affecting the lives of others beyond our borders? Who knows? The eyes of cameras focus on the Confederate flag controversy, or the latest killing of someone by the police. All horrid, unspeakable acts, to be true, but all sharing in the act of drawing Satan’s bow and directing pain and hatred into the population.

We are loved. There is much good in the world today. Much that can be shared to battle for right and beauty. Take a walk and enjoy nature. Sit in a park and watch little children at play. Drive in the country or the mountains. Enjoy the beauties of the world given to us by God.

What else can you do to move from hatred to joy and love? What ideas can you offer?

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Show Kindness and Love

In towns and cities across the United States, people are attacked, their businesses damaged and destroyed because they have admitted to homosexuality. Some people think it is necessary to show their disapproval for another person’s behavior in an open, violent manner. This is not right!

In all things Christ tells us to show love for others. He didn’t accept sin: he overturned the money changing tables in the temples. Still, he loved the sinner. He did not throw stones at the woman found in adultery, rather, offering the woman an opportunity to repent.

We aren’t required to support or participate in sin. We are required to accept the person and show kindness and love. Other actions are specifically not supported by the Savior or the Bible.

We have friends who participate in alternate life styles. Some of my friends find nothing wrong with an evening glass of wine, or an aperitif; others enjoy a cigarette or cigar; some friends participate in homosexual activities; while another may believe extramarital affairs are fine; and others may choose to drink coffee. I, personally, choose to avoid each of those activities. Not all are “sins,” but I choose not to engage in them. My friends have the right to participate if they choose. And, I maintain my friendship regardless of their choices.

I believe in the right of choice. All men and women have the right to choose actions, behaviors, and beliefs. Each can freely choose. However, with each choice comes unchangeable consequences, both positive and negative. The choice may be freely made, but the consequences cannot be changed. Hence, if I smoke, I can expect problems with my lungs.

At one time, laws entered administering consequences for behaviors contrary to those approved of by society. No longer. Standards have been lowered, behaviors once shunned are accepted.

I am certain Eve faced children who made choices she would rather they didn’t. She would want to force them to choose as Jehovah would want, but she knew that would draw her far from God’s plan. She allowed them to choose and face the consequences.

It wasn’t easy for her, it isn’t easy for us now. Even though she allowed them to make choices she would not have preferred, she continued to love her children and show them kindness. She didn’t join them in their bad choices, but that didn’t stop her from being kind and loving them.
Anger, violence, and hatred are not ways to show our disagreement with another’s choices. We, like Eve, need to find ways to stand for our standards and beliefs while still showing kindness and love. Certainly, ransacking a place of business or assaulting people who don’t fit our standards does not reveal the love and kindness required by those committed to obedience to God’s law.

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Why Would Anyone Sacrifice?

A favorite hymn in our church includes the line, “Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of Heaven.”[1] It seems a strange thing to think that sacrifice brings blessings.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines sacrifice as:

: the act of giving up something that you want to keep especially in order to get or do something else or to help someone

: an act of killing a person or animal in a religious ceremony as offering to please a god

: a person or animal that is killed in a sacrifice[2]

How will any of these kinds of sacrifice bring blessings of Heaven? Few religions demand a living sacrifice to be offered to please a god in today’s world. More frequently members of society will be found giving up something. Why would anyone give up something precious?

From the beginning of our world, sacrifice has been a part of life, even when it has not included the death of a person or animal. Eve, and then Adam, ate of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, and were rejected from the Garden of Eden. They gave up a paradise for thorns, thistles, and problems. Because they did, they also gained the blessing of children and family,

Women today continue to sacrifice independence, sleep, relaxation, and often health to give birth to and raise children. Life is never the same after a child becomes part of the family, even before birth. Sacrifice of life and health for children brings blessings unknown by those who have none.

Men sacrifice time to participate in more enjoyable activities when they leave home and family for employment. Fathers often miss the sweet times in a child’s life as they grow. Taking on responsibility of wife and family often removes the opportunity to play or relax as they did when single.

If you look, you can find stories of people of all ages who have determined to help a person or an organization. They give time to help, work to raise money, and write letters and make phone calls to change laws. People sacrifice their time, their money, their good name, their influence, and their things to help a person or a cause.

No animals are sacrificed or burned to please God, but hearts, minds, and attitudes are freely given.

What do you sacrifice? Why would you do that?

[1] LDS Hymns, 27

[2] Mirriam-Webster Dictionary; on-line edition

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Abortionists Want it Both Ways

They can’t have it both ways! The inconsistencies of the argument make no sense.

The arguments plied by those supporting abortion make no sense. They argue there is no problem to “dispose” of an unwanted pregnancy. Yet, when confronted with a murder of a pregnant woman, the perpetrator is charged with two murders, the mother and the child.

Arguments for abortion claim that life doesn’t begin until a specific date. They argue it is but a “blob of cells” with little viability. Until a “fetus” is viable, they claim it has no rights.

It has been proven unborn children develop a heartbeat at five weeks and fingernails nine weeks after conception. The brain is growing and the infant can taste at ten weeks. By thirteen weeks, the body is fully developed and often sucks its thumb, and smiles by sixteen weeks.

Unborn children live, with separate DNA and all the necessary body parts. They just need a mother to carry them while they grow big enough to survive away from them.

Unborn children are individuals and deserve the same protection in law as a child after birth. Murder is murder, regardless of age or birth status.

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Will Your Children Be Responsible Adults?

A basic law of physics states “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” If you push on a something, it will move, or push back. A ball will roll; a wall will push back and hold you up.

The same law applies to interpersonal actions. If you do something, there will always be a response, maybe not something you expected, but there will be a reaction. No action occurs in a vacuum.

When dealing with people, our actions can sometimes be misread, with others feeling everything from humor to anger. It would be easy to suggest that we have no responsibility for the  reactions of others to our actions, but this is not so.

If you smile, you will often receive a smile back, but not always. Sometimes the person you smile at will frown at you or growl. Usually, though, you can expect a smile.

If you hit someone, you can expect two or three things to happen. The person who was hit may cry or curse or be startled. He may fall or wobble. Most likely, he will hit you back.

From the beginning of time, Adam and Eve were given the right to make choices, to act as they chose. They were also held responsible. They chose to eat the forbidden fruit and were not allowed to continue to live in Eden. Their lives were changed for themselves and all their posterity.

It has continued to be the same since then. People make choices and must be responsible for the consequences of those actions. Focus on seeking wealth at the expense of family will distance them until the love and closeness is gone. A choice to be honest in your actions and pay your bills allows one to have good credit and trust from others.

Children must be taught responsibility for their behaviors. Children who do not receive this instruction become difficult to live with. They believe the world owes them a living. Nothing is their responsibility, the fault belongs to others.

Children have a right to learn to be decent adults. Though difficult, parents are expected to ensure their children have opportunities to learn responsibility. If they are not taught, society will suffer from more adults who blame others and expect special attention. For some it is too late. Some may learn. Please teach your children.

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How Can Artists Protect Themselves?

In 1998 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA was signed into law to protect intellectual property. The main thrust of the act is to protect copyrighted works particularly in connection to technology—the internet and other digital media. If intellectual property is illegally copied, the website must remove it immediately, and publishers of intellectual property cannot distribute stolen or copied works.[1]

All this sounds like a great idea to me, as I am working on my first novel. Those of us who participate in the arts have an underlying fear that our work will be copied or otherwise stolen and used for the financial gain of another, to our loss.

To comply with this law, a DMCA Takedown Notice is sent to the site in which intellectual property is copied, demanding that the offending copied material is removed, or taken down. If the content belongs to one person and is claimed by another, the owner of the content can legally request it be removed, and expect that it be removed.[2]

I read something scary about this today. A novelist recently had her book blocked from Amazon and Smashwords because someone had sent in a DMCA notice, and as these companies obey the law, her work was removed.

The problem is, it was her work and the DMCA complaint was sent by someone who had cheated, lying that this work was not hers, for some unknown reason. Perhaps this person wanted to ruin her life, or steal her money. Perhaps she wanted to blackmail the author.

The purpose of this false accusation is not as important to me as the fact that her work was claimed by another, though it had been copyrighted. And the simple fact that it was copyrighted had no bearing on the take down. It is all one person’s word against the others—a classic “he said, she said” problem.

I’ve read a lot by other authors who worry that their work will be stolen and reprinted and sold on other sites, with the benefit of the sale going to others rather than the actual author. I see multiple examples of copyright infringement on photos and paintings, as well as music. This international Act was passed to protect the artist who created the property.

What do we do when someone uses the act written to protect us as a weapon against us? Can I share any of my work with another for help as a Beta Reader if I always worry about theft? How can I share even a small portion of my work in progress if I fear someone will copy it and then claim the total as theirs?

This is a problem for all artists, not just authors. What do we do?

What would you do? Do you have suggestions for me, an unpublished, yet, author? How should I handle this huge problem?

Please respond if you have a suggestion.

[1] Copyright Office Summary

[2] DMCA: Protect Your Content website

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Lifelong Learning

How Long Do You Want to Live?

Life extends easily into the eighth decade and it is not unusual to hear of one living past 100. Over our history, life expectancy has varied dramatically. In the recent history of the last two or three hundred year, men and women were lucky to live to be 50 or 60.

Women especially struggled to survive through the births of their many children, facing unsanitary conditions and the resulting infections and fevers. Men didn’t fare much better, facing hunting accidents and war injuries with less than sophisticated medical knowledge and technology.

Even in the last century, accidents were fatal. Stories of men or women burning to death from accidents resulting from kerosene lamps are not unusual, nor are stories of death and injury caused by other accidents.

The question is: how long do you really want to live?

In the far past, it was common for people to live much more than 100 years. Abraham lived 365 years; Methuselah was the longest lived man on record, living 969 years. Adam and Eve lived well into their ninth century. That is much longer than I want to live!

Our lives are easier than theirs; we have all the benefits of electricity and electronics. Easy travel and rapid communication join with near effortless work in the home, food production, and other occupations, especially in comparison to lives just a century ago.

Our lives are more difficult in some ways. Consider the intensity of the challenges of hate, immorality, and evil that inundate us. It is difficult to get through a day without facing scantily clad people caught up in fierce expressions of lust, unless you stay in bed with the television off. Violence, hatred, pornography, abuse, immorality, and many more symptoms of a failing society abound, throughout the world.

Ancient days were not much better. None of the modern conveniences were available. All the work we depend on electricity to do was done manually, often by servants or slaves. Cleanliness would have been difficult. Medical knowledge was adequate, but certainly unable for its practitioners to cure or prevent infections and diseases.

Worse, battles between men were hand-to-hand, face your enemy, and slash him to bits before being destroyed. Women whose husbands and sons went to war could only hope and pray theirs would be the lucky ones to return without injury, if they returned at all.

Women who lived in those early could expect to be attacked and raped without protection of husbands, fathers, or their hired guards. Most men in nearly all ages believed in their right to have sexual relations with about any woman, while holding their wives and daughters to a stricter standard of sexual purity.

Violence and evil of every kind surrounded these people—much like it does today.

Eve struggled in her time in learning to survive a new, uninhabited world. Everything was new requiring thought and effort to overcome the problems, often failing and needing to try many different solutions before finding one that worked. She, too, faced the grief too many of her children who listened and succumbed to the voice of evil.

No, living for multiple centuries is not enticing. Seventy or eighty years is more than enough for any of us!

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Will You Let Your Fears Hurt Your Children: Measles and Vaccinations

The big measles outbreak has captured the attention of the country, as even little babies are becoming ill with this disease that should have been extinguished years ago. We were told it was gone, at least from the United States.

In the past decade, there were less than 100 cases of measles in most years. Most of the people who contracted the disease were unvaccinated, and came in contact with people from other parts of the world where vaccinations are either unavailable or unused by the majority of the population. Often the cause is lack of vaccination serum or lack of funds to pay for it.

In some poor countries, mothers walk with their children for miles to join long lines for vaccinations, when offered by a humanitarian group. They understand the severity of the disease.

A vaccination was developed for good reason–children die from the measles and its accompanying fevers. The fevers cause mental disabilities if not controlled. Children have been lost to this “childhood illness”.

Some children can’t handle the vaccination. It makes them sick. But this is just a small percentage of children. Most are protected from the side effects by the vaccination.

In 1998 a British doctor wanted his name in the news, and published a paper suggesting a connection between these vaccinations and autism. Autism causes major problems for parents and children and some parents saw the connection after the report was published. Like wildfire in dry grass, fear of vaccinations spread. Parents stopped ensuring their children were vaccinated, using excuses that it went against their beliefs, most often the belief was a fear of autism.

In earlier years, people who carried measles were not a major problem, for nearly everyone was vaccinated. Now, when someone arrives in the United States carrying the disease, it spreads, and even little babies catch it.

We in the United States have no excuse for not protecting our children. Most of us have insurance that will pay for these essential vaccinations. If not, public health agencies will provide them for little or no cost. I have never heard of a shortage of measles or the more common MMR vaccine. We don’t have to walk miles and stand in long lines.

We live in one of the strongest nations in the world, but we allow fears to keep us from protecting our children. There haven’t been any deaths, yet. With blessings from God, there won’t be, but will there be other challenges because of the high fevers?

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Marijuana

The Marijuana Band Wagon

The argument in our little corner of the country is whether or not the state or county has rights to determine who will run the marijuana stores. For now, they plan to sell marijuana only for those who need it medically, but as we saw in Oregon and Colorado, the lure of financial gain will soon change the laws to include recreational use.

I understand the need and desire to find relief from chronic pain, especially for parents of children who suffer from cancer and other debilitating diseases. No one likes to see their loved ones suffer, especially their little ones. We all want to find relief for pain, and cure for terrible diseases. I suppose marijuana does relieve pain. I am concerned about those who choose to use this drug for recreational purposes.

I’ve heard all the arguments, that marijuana is no worse than alcohol, that it causes less long lasting effects on the body, and that it helps the pain. They come from advocates, whose eyes are blinded by desire to use. Alcohol isn’t much better, in many respects.

I agree. Marijuana is not as destructive as heroin, cocaine, L S D, bath salts, and other illegal drugs. Users don’t jump from high windows thinking they can fly, or become addicted the first try, and die on the first or second use. But, they do impair the user, making them unsafe to drive. It affects the growth of the brain in young people, leaving them less than before use. They do forget their responsibilities, like jobs, safety, and children.

They are called “potheads” for a reason. Even stories that intend to support casual use portray the user as someone with fuzzy memories and strange activities. The substance that affects the user stays in the body and the brain for weeks. It isn’t as safe as those who push to legalize it would suggest.

My state tends to legalize many things in an attempt to bring money into their coffers. Medical marijuana is joining this, with many proponents shouting that it will help our schools. I doubt the money will reach the schools. As they greedily seek to gain more money from users, they will attempt to expand it beyond medicinal use to casual, recreational use.

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