Charlottesville

When I heard about the protests and counterprotests in Charlottesville I was saddened. What type of world have we come to, exactly? White Supremacy groups are protesting the taking down of a statue. They care so much about this statue that they were willing to kill several counter protesters to make sure that it happened. Where is the justice in that?

At the same time, we need to remember that General Lee would not have stood for the KKK. In fact, he didn't even condone slavery. The fact of the matter is, General Lee did have some degrading thoughts towards black people. That wasn't uncommon for the time. While that doesn't make it right, maybe tearing down everything that has to do with the South isn't the best plan.

As someone who lived in the south and has Southern friends, they resent the fact that all their monuments are being taken down. Tearing down their history doesn't help your cause. Keep that in mind. The civil war is a huge part of the South's history and a huge part of ours. Both sides made mistakes.

At the same time, by fighting so hard for the statues they have raised them up to be idols. For that, they need to be taken down. We don't need the statues to be up anymore, they never needed to be up to begin with.

What I'm saddened by in Charlottesville is the fact that there is so much hate from the White Supremacy groups. The fact that there is a large majority that claims to be Christians? That causes me pain and sadness.

Jesus said, "If you hate your brother, you are a murderer." Make no mistake, White Supremacy people hate black people. They hated the counter protesters enough to send a car through the group, and some of those people were white.

In the book of Revelations and several other places, it talks about people from ALL nations being in heaven. Not just white nations. Also, they would have to hate Jesus. Jesus came from a Jewish family with Jewish roots. He was not the white skinned, blonde haired, blue eyed man that you see in pictures.

Racism is a poison to our society and will cause us to crumble.

Sam

Printing Presses and Dystopian Writing

As you know, there are different sized printing presses. Modern day ones are large and used for newspapers/books. A printer could be considered a printing press. However, I have noticed a flaw with writing a dystopian story with old printing presses.

I have to become a designer.

This wouldn't be considered a problem for most people, but I like to have all the facts before I design. I want to design a more portable printing press for the Rebels in my book. I have run into a problem. What is that, you ask? I'll tell you.

I am stuck between having them use Titanium and plastic. If they use Titanium then it could be only slightly less heavy. Where would they get the Titanium? If they use plastic, can they find a heavy enough plastic so that way the machine can work? How long would the machine last? They could never buy spare parts.

This is where I need help. I need help researching how much a titanium machine would weigh as compared to a Cast Iron machine would weigh. Then I need to find out what the plastic would do when created in the likeness of one of these machines. And I mean both big and small machines.

This is my current dilemma. Ugh.

Desensitized

So, I was on facebook one day (shocker) and I saw a friend had posted something so I went to look. In the picture, there was an extremely underweight girl. She said if people weighed more than 115 pounds there was a problem. The picture disturbed me, the girl looked like bones. I saw Anorexia or another eating disorder. I almost cried.   My friend was mocking the picture along with some friends.

When did we get to be so desensitized? That girl could be dead now and people would be mocking her photo. Why didn't the man who took the screen shot call an emergency number? Her weight is unhealthy and she needs intervention. But instead, she is mocked? I'm sure that helped.

Then not long later I saw a facebook post about a woman who left a church because she couldn't nurse her baby without a covering. Even though she was given several other choices with what to do. Then she complained about it on facebook live. She chose to be offended and use the law to punish a church despite the fact they did not kick her out. She chose to leave.

America has a problem. We get offended by everything and then we mock girls who need to be in a hospital. It's time for us to grow up. Y'all aren't teenagers anymore. 

Politics and writing

When writing a dystopian novel you tend to look at the politics of the current nation. In most public speaking classes they will discourage you from going to the extreme. While I understand that, in my book, I go straight to the extreme. Whenever you look at history nobody expected the extreme when it happened (the holocaust, genocides, etc). If nobody ever talks about it then nobody will expect it.

The first thing that I want to discuss today is our president. I respect him because he is our president, he has made the economy better, and I do believe he has the best intentions for America as a nation. However, when people start bringing him to the level of God, that's where I have problems. I recently saw a meme that struck a nerve.

"He gave up his million dollar home (company) to be mocked, ridiculed, and dragged through the mud just to save the American nation that he loves."

Okay, back up. Last I checked he is still making money from his company? (maybe I'm wrong here) He's already taken expensive trips and his kid is still at his original school. Secret Service agents don't do their job for free.

The other thing is, the people I saw posting this were Christians. That bothers me a little. We don't worship President Trump. We worship Jesus, He died for sinners. He was mocked, ridiculed, and beaten on our behalf to save sinners. Trump isn't God and people should stop elevating him to that level. It is nothing short of blasphemy.

It also scares me a little. When people start admiring humans to that level crap starts to hit the fan. We can't allow ourselves to become so enamored with a man that we forget about the God who made us.

Culture and Writing

Hello, today I wanted to talk about two major things that I'm studying/doing right now. The first of the two is about Culture.

I've started taking cultural anthropology and studying Deafhood (which dives into the culture of the Deaf). I am not a cultural relativist, I am far from it. Despite my views on it, I am learning a lot of interesting things about language development and other things that develop differently depending on the culture.

With Deafhood I'm having some problems with culture shock. Deaf culture is very different from hearing culture and that's going to be hard for me to overcome. And then you hear them raging against hearing people because of what we've done to them. As a result, I would end up exhausted on my short day. What I'd like in the class is transparency, for example, where are the sources for this information? (Students are required to cite sources, teachers should be held to the same standard) Was there anything that hearing did that was good? (If you constantly push the negative then you have the potential for jaded students.) Why is it bad for hearing people to help? Nurses don't get ragged on for wanting to help, why should interpreters have to put up with it?

With writing, I am close to the end of editing my 3rd chapter in my book. I am hoping to get it up in a couple of months. I am also still working on my prequel (When the roads ran red) and I'm unsure of when the first chapter will be up.

Thanks for reading!
(Questions, comments, advice is encouraged)
Sam

Immigration, bans, writing

Hello!

Today I have decided to cover a couple issues. 1. Immigration/bans. 2. Writing. I hope I can cover both of these thoroughly.

1. Immigration. I saw the executive order that had to do with immigrants/refugees. This is a very evil order. How do you tell people who are being murdered, "I'm sorry, we don't want you here," or "Fend for yourselves?"   How can you do that?
And then everyone jumps up and says, "God Bless America."  How can God bless America when we are aborting our babies? And now we're turning people away when the Bible clearly states how we are supposed to treat the sojourners in our land.
Yeah, turning away the refugees will certainly help with the terrorism problem. *Sarcasm*

2. Writing. I have been editing my book over the past few days. I plan on working on it some more today after I've finished my homework. I will have enough for at least 3 chapters. I thought I had more than that but editing has taken out a lot of unneeded information while adding a little bit of needed information.

Thanks for reading,
Sam

Inauguration, writing, college

Hello!

For the past week I have been doing several things:
1. Editing and writing my book
2. Starting another book (A prequel)
3. Attending college
4. Doing homework
5. And watching the Inauguration.

Let's start with number 1. I almost have enough edited to put up chapter two of my book. I am on page 43 and I told myself that after I doubled the pages I did I would put it up. So, the next 22 pages are almost ready.

Number 2. I have started to write another book called "When the Roads Ran Red" and it is a prequel to When the Sky Caught Fire. It's basically about how it all began. The title is tentative but I'm fairly certain that will be the title.

Number 3. This year I have 7 classes that I'm taking at my college. The majority of them are my ASL classes and 3 of them are general courses. I am hoping to finish my homework tonight and tomorrow so I won't have to worry about it during the week.

Number 4. I have been doing homework for the past few days and expect to finish it tomorrow. Thankfully, since it was the first week, I don't have a lot of homework. If I can learn to keep on top of it now it won't be as hard later in the semester.

Number 5. Friday I watched part of the Inauguration. I must say, I did like Mrs. Obama as a first lady. She was very classy. I do want to see how the Trump presidency will go. I am not optimistic about it but I would like to see if he turns out to be good for the economy.

Thanks for reading!
Sam

Editing, reading, writing, and homeschooling

Hello again!

Today I am editing more of my story and have found some inconsistencies. One of the biggest ones is after Moisés is shot he doesn't have as much trouble as he should during the story. That is one of the biggest detail fillers I've had since I've started the story. I am currently on page 33/34 and hope to get up to page 40 done within the next few days. I would like to post a couple of my chapters back up on Inkitt before I start school again which is next week. 

I have also been reading a book called The Perfect Horse by Elizabeth Letts (I believe that's her name) it is an excellent book about the Lipizzaner horses in Nazi Germany. It made me hate the Nazi's even more, not because of how badly they treated the horses but because of how well they treated the horses in comparison to people. I'm about a quarter of the way through but I hope to be done with that book in a couple days. 

Recently I saw an article about how home-schoolers shouldn't go to college. While I agreed with them in one sense I also did not agree with them. Part of the reason is because I am in college, I have been in college for two years. The career I'm going for cannot be attained without a B.A. degree so it is a direct insult to home-schoolers who want to be doctors, nurses, midwives, interpreters, teachers, and so on. 

In the area I agreed with them on was the fact that not every job needs a degree. For instance: To start your own business or become an salesman you don't really need a degree, you can learn that from other people. Or even a writer, you don't need a degree. Some of the best writers did not have a degree in writing/creative writing. It isn't a necessity to write. 

Anyways, those are my thoughts. Thanks for reading!
Samantha

College, writing, postcrossing

Hello!

Today I've started to get ready to go back to college. I've been gathering info about SAT tests (transferring), checking to make sure that my application for graduation went through, getting my transcripts sent to my colleges of choice, and next week I'm getting my books for the college I'm attending now.

For writing I plan on editing my book at some point. I am on page 27 and still editing. Changing back to third person is very difficult, it causes the story to morph once again. I hope that it turns out in a way that I can like. (Either that or I end up scrapping complete paragraphs).

And finally, postcrossing. I love postcrossing because you get mail from all over the world. Just yesterday I got two postcards from France and one from PA (USA). I currently have 6 postcards travelling and hope to get a few more out before I'm too busy with college.

Have a great weekend!
Sam