If you have been following my blog, I have mentioned Jared Lee before in my post A Blogger Worth Knowing (and Following).  I am very fond of him and respect his vast knowledge of the internet and designing web pages to do what you want them to do.

Jared has been working online for many years supporting his family of 4. Rumor has it, he learned to build websites way before it was the cool thing to to do. He has lived the blogging boom and knows it from the foundation to what it is today.  He has helped other people,  including me, to learn to make an income online.

Every where you turn on the internet, you run into someone who claims to have become a multi-millionaire from the internet.  Take it from me, it just isn’t as easy as they say. Jared has proven his skills evidenced by the people he has helped do it.  Now he has made that information accessible to others – to YOU.

You might want to take a look at the package he just released entitled Earn with a Blog. It has tons of pages full of pictures and arrows and steps that will help anyone build a successful blog. I know, because I have one.

It’s funny really. Jared says even your grandma can do it! Let’s hope your grandma is more technical than mine!

Image via Wikipedia

Stumbleupon is great. I cannot say that I have ‘met’ many people on stumbleup0n, but I have connected with people I met on other social networks. I learn alot about them through the types of stumbles they stumble. Stumblers are for the most part GREAT people.

That being said – let me give you a warning. Do you remember the DIGG fiasco of a few months ago? All of a sudden what seemed like hundreds of diggers were suddenly history – and the message they got: you are SUSPECTED of using a script to digg. OK – some newbees got canned too because they used the script advertised by a popular digger figuring it was OK since it was built on the digg API which was open to anyone. This popular digger did not intend to cause harm to other diggers, he thought he was helping them.

Further than the fact that DIGG suspended accounts due to SUSPECTED use, they also did not give anyone a change to redeam themselves. They did not give second chances, and did not listen if one said they were innocent. The axe fell.

I have heard that some of the DIGG management have moved into Stumbleupon. I do not know if it is true. But suddently in the past month, SU accounts have been put under review – which is the same as suspending them – for stumbling (discovering) their own work! It doesn’t matter if the site or post is worthy of a stumble, what matters is if the author discovered it.

What is the effect of this? Well – don’t discover your own posts. Don’t use the SU toolbar to share your discoveries with anyone. In fact, use the SU share very minimally, if at all. If you are in a social network forum, share your SU user names, but don’t share SU stumbles. And NEVER NEVER suggest discovering someone else’s post or site or photo, especially in exchange for them discovering one of yours.

One other NO NO. Don’t thumbs down anyone or report them if you want to stay on SU. It is way to easy for them and their friends to launch an attach on you and get you banned.

Where does that leave stumblers who want to not only enjoy SU, but also contribute? It leaves you in an underground situation. You can either put a notice on your site or blog begging someone to discover you, or you can get into a private email communication with other bloggers to ask them to stumble your works.

This leaves me in a quandary. I love Stumble Upon and I also love contributing to SU. Neither of these options above sound good to me. What do you think? And be careful. Big Brother may be monitoring.

If you have done anything with SEO on your web site or blog, you have heard about Links and link backs, and exchange links and the importance of linking to get a good SEO and hopefully a good page rank in the search engines.

There is nothing wrong with this.  I would suggest that if you exchange links you attempt to get one-way links as often as you can.  That simply means if  you have a blog you want someone to link to, offer to put a link from another one of your blogs to their blog.  That gives one-way links to both of you.

Here are some facts about linking I have learned:

1. One-way links give better credit than two-way
2. Links included in text, especially text that relates to the subject matter or keywords of your blog, give you more credit
3. Links in lists on a blog roll give you more credit than one listed in a blog post list of links simply because the blogroll usually appears on more than one page, thus count one for each page of the blog.
4. If you get a technorati account, technorati uses the incoming links to your blog to determine your authority.  Search engines pay attention to this.
5. Submitting posts to stumble upon, digg, redit, and a number of other high profile ‘news’ sites puts a link on that site to your site.  Can’t go wrong with that! And hopefully the submissions will bring traffic to your site also.

I have joined one group who suggested we all get technorati accounts and exchange ‘favs’ as well as links.  I have exchanged favs with some friends at technorati, but did nto think about item #4 above.  Thus, I have started a Link Luv page where I can put all my link exchanges.

Since I am a little picky, I do check out the links before putting them on my site.  I don’t need (and neither do you) to have a porn site linked to my blog – at least not from my site to theirs.  Search engines do notice that type of linking also.

That’s it for now.  And remember to give a little link luv through the day.

The phrase ‘the only way to fail is  to quit’ has shown up several times during my brief blogging career.  What does this mean?

Picture this.  You start a blog.  You go to numerous social networks and make friends.  You establish links to your blog through commenting, submitting stories/bookmarks, answering questions a yahoo answer, and everything else you have been told to do.  You even watch the google trends to find the buzz words or topics.  You experiment to find the right post that will catch every one’s attention.  All this just so people will know your blog exists.  So the person who can benefit from your blog finds it.

The post you right that flows from your fingers onto the page seems perfect.  It includes a popular topic, it has a bit of humor, yet contains valuable information.  You know it is well written – one of the best you have ever done.  But your traffic does not grow.  In fact, it seems everyone ignores the digg or the stumble.  Even the twitter or plurk you sent out doesn’t spark interest.  This is discouraging.

You remember the phrase ‘the only way to fail is  to quit’.  You remember all the work you have already put into your blog.  So you trudge on – making friends, writing posts, searching for more valid information to put on your blog.  You check out other blogs to see what they are doing.  You read posts by blog experts like problogger.com.  You continue to post and mingle.

The occasional comment you receive from others tell you that someone has found help in what you wrote.  Other bloggers that see your blog and say – this is a good blog.  So you go on.  Traffic decreases.  You get discouraged.

You go to a forum of friend you have made and voice your discouragement.  They tell you they understand, but you have a good blog and don’t give up.  Then you again remember ‘the only way to fail is  to quit’.

One day you check your traffic.  600 visits yesterday, and 300 already today?  What is going on?  You check back in a little bit – 700 today,  then 800.  You check to see what post is so interesting.  It is a post you wrote 6 months ago!  In fact, it wasn’t much of a post, but it did have a cute catch.  You look to see where it came from – stumbleupon.  But what happened?  You stumbled it yourself back when you wrote it?  And why so much traffic?  You end up with 1600 visits that day.  OK, for a pro, that is probably an average day or even a slow day, but for you, it is like a miracle.

‘The only way to fail is  to quit’ rings in your ears.  Then the next day, traffic slows to a bit higher than usual.  But does it end there?  Nope, a week later you get a higher volume of traffic (not near 1600 or even 1000), but much more than your usual.  What post is getting the attention?  The same one.  And the visitors are also checking out other posts and pages on the site.  Maybe you are making progress after all.

‘The only way to fail is  to quit’

OK – so if I want to really accomplish my goal, all I need to do is keep trying, keep posting, keep learning, keep making new friends, observe what works and what doesn’t, and DON’T QUIT.

While the exact definition of SPAM (not the canned meat) differs from person to person, the general feeling of SPAM is the same – an irritating nuisance. Online entrepreneurs are usually the ones accused of spamming. Until lately I did not realize that the online entrepreneur’s blogs are subject to being spammed by comments. In fact, while browsing through the web, I found one fellow actually advertising a free tool to spam blog comments. 

After reading the do’s and don’ts in that article, I went back through the comments I had received.  I found quite a few that were easy to spot.  They are normally short and vague.  Sometimes the spam comment will pick up the post title or the blog title, even if the comment does not make sense. I felt betrayed – fellow bloggers were spamming me.

One day last week I checked the comments on my wordpress blog (not this one, but another one I have).  I had 117 comments caught by askimet.  Akismet has been very good at recognizing spam comments.  The only problem with akismet is you have to read through the comments to ensure a valid comment did not get caught before you delete them.  I went searching for a plugin to fix my spam problem. I actually found several different plugins in several different types.

One works by making the author preview the comment before submitting.  I did not choose this one since if you hit the submit button instead of the preview button, you received a note to use the back button to preview first.  When I hit the back button, the comment was gone.  As a commenter, I would throw up my hands and move on.  A similar one claimed to fix the back-button problem. I could not get that one to work. The comments on that plugin were very favorable; I just couldn’t get it to work.

Another type uses a capcha.  We all run into those all over the place.  Some of them I cannot read which causes me frustration.  If it causes me frustration to go throught 3 or 4 before I get the capcha correct, it will frustrate some of my commenters.  Again, I moved on. 

A third type uses a simple math.  I found two of these.  I have used them on other’s blogs when commenting.  They seemed a simple solution that did not bother me. Some people are not very good at math.  So why take the chance of frustrating a good follower just because they might not add quickly? 

I found and installed WP-spamfree.  This handy plugin is ‘plug and play’ with a few options available if you want.  I copied the code for the ‘badge’ which shows how many comments were caught.  I simply opened the footer.php and place the code at the very top (before the footer theme code).  You can see mine at Be the Weight You Want.  In less than 24 hours it has caught 12 spam comments.  I put the badge on the page so my readers would know it was to catch spam.  Now my akismet can be my safety net incase wp-spamfree misses something.

In my testing of this plugin, it has been virtually invisible to the commenter.  I hope if my readers comments do not get through they will let me know. I will have to put a contact link in my sidebar so they (you) can let me know if my new tool blocks them.

Do you have this problem?  What is your answer?

I have read many opinions by many professional bloggers on this subject. One point that remains consistent is to publish at least 3 posts a week. The reason for this is to keep your readers interested. The other point consistent between all the opinions is to keep your posts at a regular interval – such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That way your readers know when to expect a new post.

I have heard many opinions that say to post at least once a day. This sounds difficult, but really isn’t. You can write several posts on one day and schedule them to be published in most blogging platforms. I would caution you that if you are going to write once a day (or more) that you ensure you have a topic to write on that will be beneficial to your readers. The very longest time interval even mentioned was once a week.

I find it helpful to have a calendar to schedule my post publications on. I now have 5 blogs (including this one) to keep up. I try to schedule them two on one day, two on the next, and the fifth my plan is to do one post a day (the blog reviews) as I have blogs to spotlight. I also use Google documents (spreadsheet) to list all the topics I can write on for each blog.

Recently I wrote a series on one blog. Since it was a series, I scheduled the posts to published every 2nd-3rd day. I didn’t want too much time to pass between so my readers wouldn’t lose interest. It was a really great idea, I thought. My traffic slowed tremendously – so maybe my readers didn’t think my idea was so hot. The month was July, and right around the 4th of July, so perhaps my readers were on vacation. Or maybe it is just that summer is not the time people focus on diets. What I learned from this was to not write a long series. In this case, I was stuck finishing the series even though it seemed to bomb.

As a final note – keep your blog focused. If your topics cover too wide an area, start a second blog that can contain some of the topics. For example: If your blog about food goes into decorating a kitchen, you might start another blog about kitchen designs. If your blog about dogs goes into cats, birds, and monkeys, you might want to split it into one for each type, or one for domestic pets, one for birds, and one for exotic pets. Your readers come because the are interested in the subject. They can loss interest if you stray too far.

How often do you post to your blog?

Happy Blogging!

Having a blog on the Internet is great.  It is enjoyable.  But why do you have a blog on the Internet?  If it is your personal diary, why would you have it out there for everyone to see?

If you have a blog on the Internet, it is because you want people to see the blog, read it, and get something from it.  You may share your personal life experiences so others can find hope and help through reading it.  If you are selling something, you want them to read about what you are selling, see that it would be a help  in their life, and buy it.  If you are very knowledgeable in an area – an expert – you want to present this information and share it with others.

Your goal cannot be reached if the traffic, the other people on the Internet, can’t find your blog.  And to find your blog, they have to be looking for it.  So, if no one knows that your blog exists, why is it there?  That defeats your purpose.

In the brick and mortar world, how would you let people know your new store exists?  Signs, talking to people, leaving your business card, ads in the newspaper, on the radio, on the TV – these are some of the ways.

How can you do that on the Internet?  One way is to work your way up through the search engines.  If you do a search on the main point of your blog, you will find there are hundreds, even thousands, of sites listed there.  This is a little hard to climb through.  You could spend hundreds of dollars trying to purchase a more visible position and then still not get traffic.

One way to drop business cards on the Internet is to comment on other blogs with subjects that relate to yours.  Leave a link to  your blog – but don’t try to sell your blog.  Instead, make the link part of your signature.  Go into forums and do the same.

Another way is to make friends on the Internet.  Join Stumbleupon, Digg, Mixx, Delicious, Technorati, Twitter, Plurk, Blogcatalog – these are just a few of the social networks on the web.  Join in discussions, vote up others submissions, gather friends.  If you don’t believe this is powerful, try googling your name or online nickname after you  have been doing this a few months.  You will be surprised how many links you will find.

The more your name and URL is on the Internet, the more visible your site becomes.  The more trust you get from others and recognition of knowing what you are talking about, the more people will want to go to your site.

Just jump in and start joining.  A word of caution – watch what you disclosed about yourself personally.  And about what you leave as comments.  I guarantee there are things you don’t want published in a search engine when your name is googled.  Also bookmark your site URL where-ever you can.  Good luck!

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the social networking online that I don’t get my writing done.  Have you ever been in that situation?  I have been told one of the cures for that is to write several posts at once, then publish them later.

While this seems to be a good idea, I find that I write the posts, then schedule them, and then forget to continue to write posts even though I have some ahead.  For this blog, I use whatever is going on at the time, so it would be hard to write ahead.

My newest craze started yesterday with SezWho. I had a chance to get it with blogcatalog.com, but I didn’t understand what it was.  When entrecard announced it I finally got it.  So I registered all four of my blog sites.  I have been ‘meaning’ to get out there to some of my more favorite blogs and comment.  Since I am kind of a shy person (yes it is true), I have procrastinated.  At least this newest craze will help me get into the commenting habit.

Another new online activity I love is the HerProBlog.com social network I posted about in my last post.  The actual community blog is now live at HerProBlog.com.  Go check it out!  It looks great and promises to be one of the biggest resources for bloggers online.

I never could get into Twitter, but I love plurk.  I haven’t used it to share URL’s yet, but I love my dancing banana!!!   Be sure to look me up whenever you are there.

One craze I guess I must be a bit burned out on is Yahoo Answers.  I finally figured out how to use it and how to contribute quality to it.  It’s really not hard.  Due to my ’shyness’ I  haven’t ventured into forums yet.  I will get there.

Another good multi-author site is 5minutesforspecialneeds.com These authors write about their experiences with their special needs children and loved ones.  They offer hope and help.  They offer tips on how to handle situations, resources for information and help, and let other parents they are not alone.

My goal is to post here at least twice a week.  I hope you will visit and join in the 9 sites I mentioned above.  I think you will have fun with them.  What are some of your favorite places to spend time online?

These are exciting times online.  New opportunities are opening up for the social and the serious.  A new site -

HerProBlog.com is coming up soon for the professional blogging women with tips and discussions.  You can sign up for an email subscription now – don’t miss out on the opening!  Join the Women Bloggers Group now which is the social network for HerProBlog.com.  This is the opportunity to get in on the ground floor.  New members are being added daily.  And even though it is a women’s group, men are not banned.

The Women Bloggers Group is powered by Crowdvine.  You can interface with facebook to add your friends, and you can add your twitter stream.  Put your social bookmarking site or photo site to rss them.  And pick your favorite blog (we all have more than one, right  – OK, then put your one blog on it) to subscribe to.

Once you are settled in, go to HerProBlog.com and sign up for that subscription.  See ya’ll there!

]]> http://joyblogging.com/2008/07/a-new-woman-bloggers-community-herproblog/feed/ 2 http://joyblogging.com/2008/06/a-blogger-worth-knowing-and-following/ http://joyblogging.com/2008/06/a-blogger-worth-knowing-and-following/#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:43:40 +0000 joyntheir http://guru-sites.com/joy-of-blogging/?p=31

I want to introduce you to an online entrepreneur, Jared M Lee, who has a blog which has “Everything you need to develop a Business online. Tips, resources, and helpful information for at home entrepreneurs.”  This blog is entitled The Bloggers Destop.

I subscribe to his feed via email to ensure I get every post. He brings up details I would never even think about – such as the post “Never send out a partial feed”.

The difference between this blog and a lot of blogs online is that this gentleman knows what he is talking about. He not only knows the principals, but he has used them successfully. He coaches beginners on building websites/blogs and on how to earn money on line.  I subscribe to his feed via email to ensure I get every post.  He brings up details I would never think about – such as the post “Never send out a partial feed”.

If you think you cannot find the time to put into your online venture, take a look at Jared. Jared has a family – a wife and two children. He is also in seminary which takes tons of time outside of class to study and write. On top of this already full schedule, he coaches individuals in online business and web development which takes at least an hour a week per individual on the phone. He also maintains his websites and blogs, plus keeps up to date with the online happenings and new developments. Then he participates in the web 2.0 social networks. If he can find the time to do this, anyone can.

If you feel you are too inexperienced to set up a blog/website or keep it up, Jared not only does coaching over the phone, but he also is offering an email support where you can send questions via email to him at a very small monthly fee. If you just can’t understand the workings to set up a wordpress blog, Jared has a service where he can build the site for you. All you will have to do is keep adding the content (posts) every couple days.

Jared is also great at working with adwords. You might be able to hire him to run an adwords program for you. You would need to talk to him about that.

Let me end by saying you are missing out if you don’t go visit and read The Bloggers Destop.

There are about as many web hosting sites and web hosting plans out there as there are web sites.  Have you ever thought about it?  Do you know what to consider when deciding where to ‘buy’ your property?  This can be as important as choosing your address (URL).

When building a site on the Web or starting a blog, the first decision you have to make is where to put it. Where – well on the web of course – NOT.

I have been tinkering with websites for about . . . going on 10 years. With each new thing I try I learn something new. It would be nice to know these things at the very first.

The first site I ever put out there on the web was for my church. I was trying to keep costs down, so I found all the free stuff I could use.  The only trouble with most of the ‘free’ stuff, especially web hosting, is that they put whatever ads they want on your site. With a church, it isn’t good to have gambling, drinking, etc, advertised on your site.

Then I found out there is a thing called bandwidth. If you want to put audio sermons out there, you have to get the right bandwidth to broadcast them. The software can be gotten for free, but the bandwidth can’t.  I found ministries.com which gives churches and other non-profit organizations half price.   This hosting service provides the bandwidth to put audio sermons and a lot of other accessories – including a secure shopping cart and a blogging platform.  I have a good experience at there and recommend it to everyone with a non-profitable organization.

Which brings us to email programs. I found some hosts do not offer any and some only give you mail forwarding. Then if you get into e-Commerce and want more than one site, you need to know if your hosting plan will support more than one site. For instance – if you like to blog. Usually a blog revolves around one subject – say starting an online business. If you want to blog about another subject – say raising children – it would not fit on an online business blog. If you get the correct web host, you can create all the blogs you want.

Now, with blogs, there are 2 large blog sites I know about – Blogger.com and Wordpress.com. You can make multiple blogs on both of them. They do have their rules to abide by and you have to adhere to the rules. On the other hand, wordpress.org will let you get a copy of the wordpress ’software’ to put on your ‘web property’. When you do that, you can add extra plug-ins and widgets to use on your blog.

That brings up another point. Some hosts will let you get to the ‘back end’ of the site – that is straight into the files either with an FTP program or through the control panel. If you have access to the ‘back end’, then you can add the plug-ins to a wordpress blog sitting at your site.

Another item to consider is if the web host will allow you to use your own domain name (your address), or make it a sub-domain of their domain. An example of this is again word press. The domain is www.wordpress.com while the sub-domain would be like joyntheir.wordpress.com. You may have a difficult time finding a URL you like that is available. Some sites will give you suggestions of similar URL’s that are available – the dot portion of which may be the only difference; i.e., bodybuilding.com, bodybuilding.org, bodybuilding.net, bodybuilding.us, bodybuilding.uk, etc, etc. If you are concerned about your URL – like including keywords in it – then you may want to buy all or several versions of the URL if just to keep others from using them.

Some hosting plans will let you use purchased URL’s for your sub-domains, and some will not. You can also use a .php file to make sub-domain names – for example: your domain is fitness.com and you add a blog. The URL is www.fitness.com/blog. To make it simpler, you can build a php file that says ‘http://www.fitness.com/blog’ = ‘http://blog.fitness.com’/ Cool trick?

I was pointed to a good place to ‘purchase’ domain names:  StartLogic. The price for a URL is the lowest I have seen. And you can ‘park’ your URLs there. They also give a decent hosting plan which include also has Free setup/domain, Web builder, unlimited emails, PHP, mySQL, CGI, and FrontPage.  You can host as many domains as you want under one account, or get a reseller program.

Another good spot is  Webhostingpad.com which has plans for a little over $5 per month.  With their fantastico program, you can put many program platforms on a site, including wordpress, b2evolution, and drupal to name a few.  You can purchase as many URL’s as you wish and set them up as add on domains so each blog or site has its own URL.  It also has a good email program.

Other good hosting sites are:

Host Gater
Blue Host
IX Web Hosting

I know there are probably a lot of other details to look at.  Are there any other considerations you are concerned with in choosing an online host?

Have you heard of Plurk?  I did and I joined.  It is really fun.  It is different enough to be confusing when you first join.  Start plurking, and you will see how fun it is!  A lot of tweeters, diggers, and stumblers are showing up, along with the blogcatalog members.

What makes plurk different is the time line.  It runs horizontally, appearing on a time line defined in 12 hour or 24 hour times.  The days are marked also.  The discussions can be read by clicking on a plurk.  The responses drop down with a space for you to add a plurk – with many fun emotions.  In fact, the more you plurk (without spamming) and the more friends you acquire, the more emotions and abilities you achieve.

If that isn’t enough, you can follow a person’s plurks without being their ‘friend’.  Thus you can join in the discussions and meet more people.  There is a link box on the left that shows how many response and plurks have been added since you last looked.  If you click on the ‘unread only’ you can find all the plurks with new responses.  Then you can click on mark all as read when you have viewed the ones you are interested in.

There is also a site that has a ‘Karma’ watcher, a plurktionary, and other fun things.  The plurk IM is non-functional at the moment until the bugs are worked out.  Remember, this is a new site.

Are you ready to join yet?  You don’t have to be a blogger or entrepreneur to join.

Help me get my dancing banana and my  guy hitting the other with a chair.  Click on this link and join me at plurk. You have nothing to lose, and you can be my plurk buddy!

I have worked on computers for years.  I know the one secret passed on from one computer worker to another is ‘be sure to keep your work backed up’.  I remember one day when a server crashed at work.  One of my friends had been working on a project for 3 months – and kept it all on the server since it was a shared application he was building.  Come to find out, the person in charge of backing up the server every night had not been checking it.  The automatic backup had quit working 3 months before.

Last night I decided to change the theme to one of my blogs Be The Weight You Want.  I had exported my posts and everything before when I moved it off the wordpress.com.  Then I had done an export once in a while to backup my work.  I had also been warned by others and by reading about blogging to keep my work backed-up.

Guess what?  I didn’t back it up.  I started running into problems and still didn’t make an export file.  Then I was locked out of the site admin – no way to do an export then.  And no recourse but to uninstall the wordpress, then re-install it.  Luckily, I decided to save it the hard way – go to every post and page and save the html.  At least that way I saved all my posts.

Do you back up your work regularly?  It is much easier to export your posts and comments, etc, and save them to your hard drive than it is to save every page.  And with the export file, you can import them back in when you re-install.  All the dates, tags, categories, comments – everything comes right back up.

Why should you backup your blog?  To protect your work – that you put time and effort into.  The work that made your blog’s ranking in the search engines.  The work that people come back to even months after you published it.  The work that goes out over your RSS feed.

Anyone else had to go through this?  Leave a comment and tell your experience, or any tips you have for safeguarding your work.

Rather than discuss the issue of Human Rights, how they are abused, and any discussion of specific instances, I choose to address “How do we change the world to NOT abuse Human Rights.”

To eliminate, or minimize, the abuse of Human Rights in a culture, the attitudes and values of that culture must change. This means that each individual in that culture must have the same change of attitude and values. These have to change to be dominated by respect for all human beings, no matter what the age, sex, race, name, or nationality.

What does this respect entail? We have to respect that everyone deserves to be able to live peacefully, make a living, provide for their families, be able to practice their religious beliefs as long as they don’t take away rights from others. For example, if a person’s religion involves human sacrifice – the person being sacrifice (or killed) is having their right to live taken away from them. This would not be acceptable.

Everyone deserves the opportunity to excel – that means education, choosing their occupation, given opportunities to improve and advance. No one should be treated as being inferior, even if they are a garbage collector, or maid, or waitress/waiter. If a person has a disability, physical, mental, or emotional, they still deserve their human rights.

The abusers of this world need to focus their self-worth on doing a good job rather than on the domination of others. They should get self-worth in being a good example rather than being mean.

On the other hand, the abused needs to realize that he/she does have worth other than making someone else feel superior. The abused also needs to realize that he/she does deserve to be treated with respect and to be given the same human rights as everyone else.

We all, abusers and abused, each need to have a healthy respect for authority. Even if you do not ‘respect’ the person in authority, you need to respect the office or position they hold.

How do we change the whole world and all of its cultures? Change the belief systems of everyone? While new values can be learned outside of the home, people are most influenced by the teachings in the home – while they are still children. A child’s values are pretty well set by the age of 5 years. They can be modified and strengthened after that, but the base – or stem wall – has been poured.

A child learns by what he observes. By nature, the child learns the most from his parents, grandparents, and older siblings. They watch and listen to what is done and said in any given situation. To teach a child respect for other, the teacher has to show respect for others. The teaching can be verified and strengthened by verbalizing the values, but as the saying goes “actions speak louder than words”.

What is involved in respect for others? The values to tell the truth, be honest in your dealings, to be willing to help others, to honor others commitments (like marriage), to respect your elders and those in authority, to speak well of others. To NOT make up stories, be jealous of what others have, treat anyone with disgust or distain, force yourself or your will on others, steal, or take out your anger or frustration on another living thing.

These things are not taught in a home where there is physical and verbal abuse, where wives and children are treated as inferior, where there is incest and domination.

Bottom line: Respect for Human Rights begins at home – and with each individual. Even you and I.

Today is April 19th. A day that will always mean something to me. A day that a terrorist decided to take the lives of hundreds of people, but through intervention of God (or fate if that is what you believe), only 168 people lost their lives. Tragic enough – until you realize that many were babies and a lot of peoples bodies were strewn so badly that only a small portion was left to do DNA tests on. It is the day the Murray Building in Oklahoma City was bombed.

I had worked in that building up to 10 years before – my desk was in the middle of the 7th floor – the shock of seeing the building was horrific. I had lost track of many of my friends who worked there. Through the few I still had contact with, I found only 5 of them still worked there – and none of them where in the building at that time.

The nail that drove through my heart hurt worse because the people who did this were United States Citizens with roots in this country. This bomber said he was standing up for human rights because of the Waco disaster. Taking innocent lives for revenge?? I don’t think that is a fight for human rights.

On May 15th is ‘Bloggers Unite for Human Rights’. Many bloggers will be writing about the various aspects of human rights. One blogger is setting up a list of blogs to be published. She will a list of many participating blogs May 14 with story titles mythoughts-ssb.blogspot.com and proofpositivity.blogspot.com.

Be sure to participate in this event – either by blogging or by reading the numerous posts. In the meantime – here are some organizations that fight for human rights every day of the year:

• Amnesty International (http://www.amnesty.org/) is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. They work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity.
• Human Right Watch (http://www.hrw.org/) is dedicated to protecting human rights of people around the world. They stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, uphold political freedom, protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice.
• Youth For Human Rights (http://www.youthforhumanrights.org) is an independent non-profit that educates people about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights so they become valuable advocates for tolerance and peace.