Only in NoHo

Ok..so...here's one for you. I am sitting here blogging in NoHo..at java Net... I look up and in the window seats there is this 50 something year old guy practicing an electric clarinet with headphones! I would take a picture but I doubt he would appreciate it. You'll have to just imagine it for yourselves. He has a T-shirt on that says something about bagpipes.

hyfi

NoHo Night

Baird and I are at the Java Net (see photo) in NoHo with our cameras and computers. We just had a yummy dinner at the Hay Market. The skies got totally black, even well before sun down. There is a storm/hail warning out. It just lightninged and thundered....WooHoo!

krooked design

i'm submitting this in an art contest:

Surely Checks Out BeDe cards

Surely thinks she might llike to BeDe, too!

BeDe Backgrounds

Here are a few of my BeDe painted backgrounds.

Jess's fish had babies: Surprise!

Baby fish :-)

Shopping List

Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream (hopefully Vanilla Health Bar...but they probably won't have it)
Tortillas
Soda & Lemonade (we have consumed almost 36 12oz cans of soda/ice tea in the last week...all diet)

I'm going to go read my new House and Garden Magazine...and prepare to be inspired to design more furniture.

Cool Worship

to alpha

one must be cool to worship
isn't it cool to worship?
goal- to imitate heaven
mustn't be hotter than hades

from the BeDe man himself

baird asked me to post this hot rendition of my shorts!

At Home with Ben and Jess

Conversation:
J: Ben, we should really get you some new shorts since you obviously decided to paint your only pair. (raises eyebrows)
B: I didn't do it on purpose!! (looks innocent)
J: Ben, it looks like you took a roller to your butt.

Evidence above.

Donfried at Amherst College

So my information tells me that Karl Paul Donfried will be a guest lecturer at Amherst College this Fall and will be teaching a course on Paul. Interesting and something those of you who are undergrads may want to check out....

Karl Donfried, Elizabeth A. Woodson Professor Professor of Religion/Biblical Literature
B.A. (1960) Columbia; B.D. (1963) Harvard Divinity School; S.T.M. (1965) Union Theological Seminary; Th.D. (1968) University of Heidelberg

Karl Donfried, recently retired, has taught at Smith College since 1968. He has been visiting professor at Amherst College, Brown, Yale, Hebrew University, and the University of Hamburg and Geneva. His research interests include Paul, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the relationship between early Christianity and the Judaisms of the Second Temple Period. His current research projects continue to center around 1 Thessalonians as well as Paul chronology and theology. Of particular interest is the relationship of Paul to the Judaisms of the Second Temple Period. Specific emphasis is given to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the role they play for a new understanding of both Judaism and Christianity, and their interaction with each other, in this period. In addition, he is involved with a project on the interpretation of the New Testament and its meaning/s for the contemporary Church.

Pit Falls of the Religious Right....

I have been continuing my reading about the Religious Right...and trying to understand where those NOT in the RR see the differentiation between Evangelical: Christian: and Fundamentalist. Here is an interesting passage and link to an article in Orion magazine by David James Duncan who decribes himself as an evangelical.. of sorts.. tho I think I would say he is more of a Universalist..but...despite that, it is interesting reading and the criticisms do ring true to me. It gives me a lot to think about. I would be interested in what others of you think. His quotes from Wallis's book about Bush's misuse of Scripture in speachs are also telling.
Full article at:
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-4om/Duncan2.html

excerpt:
.....The "Christian Right's" fully-automated evangelical machine runs twenty-four hours a day—like McDonald's, Coca Cola and Exxon-Mobil—making converts globally. But to what? The conversion industry's notion of the word Christian has substituted a "Rapture Index" and Armageddon fantasy for Christ's interior kingdom of heaven and love of neighbor; it is funded by donors lured by a televangelical "guarantee" of "a hundredfold increase on all financial donations," as if Mark 10:30 were an ad for a financial pyramid scheme and Jesus never said, "Sell all thou hast and distribute it unto the poor"; it has replaced once-personal relationships between parishioners and priests or preachers with radio and TV bombast, sham healings, and congregation-fleecing scams performed by televangelical rock stars; it has trumped worship characterized by ancient music, reflective thought and silent prayer with three-ring media-circuses and Victory Campaigns; it inserts veritable lobbyists in its pulpits and political brochures in its pews, claims that both speak for Jesus, and raises millions for this Jesus, though its version of Him preaches neocon policies straight out of Washington think tanks and spends most of "His" money on war; it quotes Mark 10:15 and Matthew 5:44 and Matthew 6:6 and Luke 18: 9-14 a grand total of never; it revels in its election of a violent, historically ignorant, science-flaunting, carcinogenic-policied president who goads us toward theocracy at home even as he decries theocracies overseas; it defies cooperation and reason in governance, exults in division, and hastens the degeneration of a democracy built upon cooperation and reason; it claims an exclusive monopoly on truth ("America is the hope of all mankind...") yet trivializes truth globally by evincing ignorance of Christianity's historic essence and disrespect toward the world's ethnic and religious diversity and astonishingly rich cultural present and past.

Sheep Comics

I love these comics, but this one I thought was especially good.

Check it out.