We recently spent an entire week renovating our home office. Since the budget for this project was pretty close to zero, the renovations involved removing everything, washing and painting the walls, laying down an inexpensive recycled rug, and then (oh boy) putting everything back in a new, more efficient arrangement.

It was a lot more work than either of us thought it would be. Granted, we didn’t get started on the office till all our other obligations had been dealt with, most days, but once we got started we worked steadily till that day’s work was finished.  The rest of the house was in absolute chaos while this was going on. This house is small, and moving the entire contents of one room into other rooms made us look like good candidates for Hoarders.

When all was said and done, though, it was worth it. The room went from grubby flat white (the previous owners slapped $1.50/gallon white paint on EVERYTHING in this house) to a nice tranquil light federal blue (Behr “Liberty Gray” if anyone’s interested).  It feels more welcoming and more tranquil. We moved the furniture around so that now each of us has a tall bookshelf by our desks, and our desks are no longer in a position where we bang into each other with the chairs all the time.

Re-attaching all the computer equipment took most of a day all by itself, since we had to figure out where the cables went and run them through new baseboard cable trays. I still need to go get some USB extension cords so we can both use the label printer and the all-in-one. There’s a lot of smaller stuff (books, tchotchkes and so forth) that needs to be schlepped back in here and put in place.

And ye gods, did we ever pile up books to be donated to the library book sale. This is a book reading, book writing family, and we’re prone to buying books to explain computer software (mourning the loss of printed manuals in software boxes). But software goes out of date, and so do the books that explain it.  So we buy new books and set the old ones aside, but until now we hadn’t done a good solid book purge in the office. That’s now done, and our daughter’s gaming books have been added to the collection (with her permission). I hope this means that our favorite local branch of the Los Angeles library gets some money out of them at their monthly sale. I just have to remember to schelp everything over on the proper day for donations.

I also got rid of several big binders full of information I collected back in 2004-06, when I had very different plans for my blogs. Mostly marketing stuff, before I decided that my purpose in life was not to get rich online (as if that were ever a realistic idea in the first place!) Now there are huge open spaces in several bookshelves. I guess the next project, after I finish schlepping all the Stuff back in here, is to start on the boxes of books out in the storage room and decide whether we want to keep them, recycle them, or donate them to the library or the thrift store.

I feel energized! I’ve been a devoted reader of the Unclutterer web site for a long time, and although I’ve always agreed with the philosophy of decluttering one’s life, it didn’t really hit home till now.

The photo’s not of our actual trash pile.  Just for illustration. Thank goodness.  :)

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Twenty years ago, I worked in a camera store in downtown Burbank. The man who delivered the photofinishing came in

and told us that the verdicts in the Rodney King beating trial would be delivered that afternoon. The store got busy and I didn’t get a chance to hear the actual announcement, but when the last customer left I went into the back room where my boss had the TV on.

One look at that dirtbag Daryl Gates on the screen and I knew what had happened without a word being spoken. And I said “We’re in for it now.”

And so we were. It didn’t take long before we could see plumes of smoke rising up past the mountains, as the riots started in Los Angeles. My boss decided to close the store early, just in case. A lot of the businesses on that block also closed early, just in case.

Those were scary times. We did not know if our community would be touched by the riots. Torching and looting were going on in cities that seemed perilously close. Smoke hung over the entire Los Angeles megalopolis for days on end and the air was hard to breathe.

We always watched the 10pm news on KTLA, so we were watching the very first time the video of the beating was shown. Rodney King has since admitted many times that he should have just pulled over, but people do stupid things when they’re drunk. Still, I can’t think of anything any unarmed person could do that would merit being beaten with that degree of savagery by that many people. It was sickening to watch it, the first time and every replay.

But how can people outraged about someone being savagely beaten turn around and savagely beat someone else? Why did all those hoodlums do what they did to Reginald Denney? I remember seeing Damian Williams’ mom on TV mooing about her baby boy. If she really loved her baby boy so much, why did she let him hang out on street corners when he should have been in school or at work?

Even at this late date I don’t understand any of it, to tell you the truth. I’m glad our community was untouched, but so many others weren’t so lucky.  In the end, Rodney King had it right: Can’t we all get along?

Related articles

• Rodney King: ‘Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right’ (npr.org)
• 1992 Los Angeles Rodney King riots remembered 20 years later (wjla.com)

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I’m a passionate consumer of the printed word. I read hundreds of books every year, almost all of which I get from the public library. I seldom buy books any more, lacking both budget and storage space, but there are a few authors whose works I will buy sight unseen as soon as I can get my hands on them. The most notable of those authors are Diana Gabaldon (fiction) and James D. Tabor (fact).

When I first read Dr. Tabor’s The Jesus Dynasty several years ago I was astounded by the simple rightness of it. I found myself saying “Yes! That’s how it was! That’s how it had to have been!” over and over as I turned the pages. I wrote a review of it here at the time, but in the various transitions and transformations of this blog over time (several new versions of the software, one big database swap, etc etc etc) the review itself got mangled and I can’t link to it now.

When Dr. Tabor teamed up with Dr. Simcha Jacobovici to write The Jesus Family Tomb, and to produce a show about what they then called the “Talpiot Tomb,” I read the book with interest, but could not quite agree with them on their conclusions. I had no religous objections (obviously, since I espouse no recognizable religion) to the idea that the man whose name has come to us as Jesus the Christ was interred with his family in a tomb near Jerusalem, and Dr. Tabor and Dr. Jacobovici laid out their case carefully and with plenty of supporting evidence. But I just could not accept the idea that after all these thousands of years, any particular family’s tomb would still exist, much less the tomb of such an important family.

However, with the publication of The Jesus Discovery, I must say that Dr. Tabor and Dr. Jacobovici have changed my mind. With the new discovery of another, adjacent tomb from the time of Jesus, with clear evidence of its occupants’ belief in the resurrection, it seems clear that the first tomb could indeed have been just as the authors said it was.

I’m just sorry that the book jacket design is so incredibly unfortunate. I think it’s supposed to be a Torah scroll with a silhouette of Jesus overlaid on it. But what it looks like, especially from any distance at all, is a vew of someone’s bare backside. I hope, hope, hope, that new editions will get rid of this cover!

As always happens when new discoveries have been made that have anything to do with Christian origins, there has been the predictable amount of breast-beating, sniping and derogatory commentary. I have never understood why some people are so completely frightened by the notion of new discoveries like this. After all, everything we discover now has been there all along. One would think that anyone who believes the concept of “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,” would have no reason whatever to fear and would welcome the chance for greater knowledge. Alas, this is definitely not the case.

Whether you believe or not, you really owe it to yourself to read this book. Dr. Tabor and Dr. Jacobovici once again lay out their case, point by point, backing everything up with evidence and facts. This is not a matter of accepting the improbable on faith; it’s a matter of following the facts to an inevitable conclusion. I can’t do justice to it in a short discussion because the reader needs to see and understand each step along the way. It’s also worth reading Dr. Tabor’s blog and the Jesus Dynasty Blog (see the link in the right sidebar) to see how he and Dr. Jacobovici answer their critics.

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Recently, a bunch of terrified religious leaders slapped their names on a “marriage and religious freedom” screed that anyone with two functioning brain cells could see was a horrendous collection of lies. You know, marriage is under attack, religious freedoms are under attack, religious organizations are going to be forced at gunpoint to do all kinds of things they have been taught to believe are totally icky… blah blah blah.

One of the signatories was the Commissioner of the Salvation Army. As it happens, I am a descendant of two of the Salvation Army’s shining stars, and I have their last name. All those other fearful-faithful brethren would not even see a letter I wrote to them expressing my opinion on the subject of Bronze Age superstition clouding 21st century minds beyond all reason… but in that one instance, my name would get me an audience.

I took the opportunity to write. I was polite but firm. Signing that hateful collection of absolute lies was reprehensible. To be honest, I never expected a reply and I was fine with that.

In one of those cosmic connections that defy imagination, I got a reply. It arrived in our mailbox the same day we got the news that our daughter (also a descendant of those two shining stars) and her partner of seven years had gotten married in New York City.

I told the commissioner (among other things) that he was standing square in the footsteps of George Wallace in the schoolhouse door and that my family and I were very sad that his unfortunate lifestyle choices would prevent him from sharing in our happiness.

Marriage equality is inevitable. And the people who frothed at the mouth about it are securing for themselves a place in history right alongside George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Lester Maddox and others who truly believed that they were right.

 photo credit: Kaptain Kobold

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Image by DanOCan via Flickr

A few days ago I was watching one of those science-oriented shows and saw someone say that a fear of the dark is instinctive for humans, probably because our ancient ancestors who ventured out after sunset didn’t live long enough to reproduce.

I’ve never been afraid of the dark. I couldn’t understand why so many of my friends had to have a nightlight, or leave the door open to let in light from the hall when they went to bed. I welcomed the darkness, because that was the only time I could think my own thoughts and have time that was completely my own. The door was closed, the room was dark, and my parents were somewhere else. Why would anyone be afraid of that?

The neighborhood always seemed more welcoming and cozier after dark. The noises of the day were gone and I could hear dogs barking from far away. I could turn on my radio and listen to stations that only came in at night, sometimes waiting till the hour or half hour to find out where they were when they identified themselves. When I was growing up, I could look out the window and see most of the night sky (precious little light pollution in those days).

I’m older now, and when I look out at my neighborhood at night I still feel the same way. It’s cozier. More welcoming. We live in a safe place, so I can go walking pretty much anywhere near my house at night without fear (yes, even down the proverbial dark alleys, although no alley in the Los Angeles megalopolis is really dark).  I still wonder why so many of my childhood friends were so afraid, and wonder whether they ever grew out of that fear and learned to appreciate the night.

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The email notifications of posts seem to be showing only a partial post with a link to click to get more. I’m experimenting with new subscription plugins to see if I can fix this. I hope we can all be patient.

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This is my third year for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I’m writing the middle section of the multi-generational novel that I started last year. Yeah, this one’s gonna be LONG. But it’s a good story, if I do say so myself.

Anyone else trying to Be A Writer this month?

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Tea Party Prototypes, or TPPs, through the ages.

Neolithic TPP:

• Basket? No way. I’ve got hands. Keep the change.
• Horse? Are you crazy? If we were meant to get around on four legs we’d have been born that way. Keep the change.

Bronze age TPP:

• Stone tools are way better. I can make them myself. Keep the change.

Iron age TPP:

• Bronze tools were good enough for my grandfather and they’re plenty good for me. Keep the change.
• If that long-haired preacher and his pack of losers think I’m going to change my religion, they’ve got another think coming. They can keep the change.

Renaissance TPP:

• The sun goes around the earth. God said so. Galileo, you’re in deep sewage.

Industrial Revolution TPP:

• I can make those things better by hand. Get that factory out of my town. Keep the change.
• I am not riding on that infernal machine. I’ve got my own two feet. Keep the change.

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In honor of what would have been my mom’s 82nd birthday, Logan Books has released The North Star is Nearer by Evelyn Eaton.  It’s available on the Smashwords web site in all e-book formats. Kindle format on Amazon coming soon!

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I know it’s been quite a while since I wrote much here. It’s not for lack of things to write, it’s for lack of time to write them. However, I’m working hard on a schedule that will start in September that will help me get all my writing tasks in order and make sure I do regular updates here and on my other blog.

Yeah, I know, promises promises, right? Let’s see how well I can make it work.  :)

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