Not only is the laundry halfway finished already, but I’ve actually already been out to run my errands here in the village.

It is fucking FREEZING out there today, gang.

So freezing, in fact, that Kon Tiki of the Great Outdoors deigned to come inside for over an hour this morning…. (usually, she graces us for about 15 minutes at a time.)

Now that Big Blackie and Little Blackie have passed away, Kon Tiki is the only cat who lives out on my kitchen porch now, but I still have the four straw-filled cat houses out there that the neighbors made for me last year. And Kon Tiki uses all four of them now. I never know which house she will come out of in the morning when I open the kitchen door and call her in for breakfast… She’s mean but she’s too cute!!

We have sort of a dreadful week coming up — weather-wise. Mixes of snow & sleet with temperatures way down in the teens Fahrenheit almost every morning.

But dreadful weather aside — I’m waiting for a text from Johnny today to confirm if we’re meeting for lunch on Wednesday! (He claimed last night on the phone that a little weather won’t bother him!! Yay.) So we’ll see.

We might actually even go HERE!! (I know that shocks you!!)

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Okay.

Today is that sad anniversary that comes every year…

45 years ago, on December 8th 1980, John Lennon was murdered.

And I know I’ve posted this article from Rielpolitik many times… but here it is again, in case you never actually read it:

KILL THE MESSENGER: The Murder of John Lennon by CIA Operation 40 – By Gualdo Hidalgo (from 2022)

“…The presence of Jose Perdomo at the crime scene is the unequivocal proof that CIA murdered John Lennon. Jose (Sanjenis) Perdomo, Chief of the Secret Service at the Presidential Palace in Havana during President Carlos Prio Socarras, a CIA veteran, worked for CIA/Miami station in the early 1960s, and recruited most of the members of Operation 40 – a CIA assassination squad most of whom were Cubans” [full article here]

And in terms of my upcoming (forever upcoming!) memoir about my intensely troubled but also beautiful life in the 1970s [Joy: The Shortest Season]…

It begins with John Lennon, in 1971, and it ends on Dec. 8th 1980, with the murder of John Lennon about 3 weeks after I had moved to NYC.

It’s all those other pages that come in between those two events that I still have to write….

Yet another reason that I cannot wait until I retire!!

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Okay.

Yesterday, I forgot to mention that it was Tom Waits 76th birthday!!!

I found this great photo at PunkRockGraveyard on Instagram yesterday, but forgot to post it:

And even though it is hard to choose a favorite song of his, this one is usually what I consider my favorite!! “Jockey Full of Bourbon” from his spectacular 1985 album, Raindogs (yes–featuring Keith Richards on many songs!!)

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From James Tabor this morning.

His upcoming new course about Christianity before Paul, that I am eagerly anticipating, was supposed to be out today, but now it is coming out on Friday, December 12th:

“…I like all three of my previous courses–Mark, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Paul, but this one by some measure is the most important in that it pulls together a broader view of the first 100 years of the Jesus movement– or should I say the John the Baptist/Jesus/James/Ebionite/Nazarene movement. Among the extra topics are Marcon’s Gospel, Theophilus of Antioch, Ebionites beyond the Jordan, selected Nag Hammadi and so-called Gnostic texts, the role of Woman in the movement. The Zoom meetings will then have formal presentations, with an hour or so of discussion, and distributed materials. Sorry for the delay, but it will be well worth the wait!”

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And on a sort of similar note…

This article was posted on Bart Ehrman’s site the other day. Very interesting!

Essenes: Beliefs, Significance, Links to Dead Sea Scrolls — By Marco Marina, Ph.D

“There are many paradoxes embedded in the world of the Bible and the origins of Christianity, but few are as striking as this: one group that has become central to modern scholarship on both Judaism and early Christianity is never mentioned in the Bible at all. Not even once. Yet their ideas, writings, and communal life have profoundly shaped the way historians reconstruct the religious landscape of the late Second Temple period. I am referring, of course, to the Essenes, a group many readers first encounter not in Scripture, but through modern discoveries.  …” [full article here.]

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And last but nowhere near the least!!

Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand File today that just astounded me. Not what he said — I really enjoyed what he said — but the tone of some of the questions he was answering today was just — I don’t know, gang. Nick Cave deserves a medal of valor for putting up with some seriously opinionated shit stuff.

Here’s just one of the questions today from a reader in the UK: “Love the Files. Almost. Can you let us know when you are going to mention God, Jesus, etc., so we don’t waste our time reading it? Love ya.”

You can read Nick’s beautiful replies HERE.

And here’s this —

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And on that lovely note, I guess I’m gonna scoot!

I want to finish the laundry and do a bunch of dusting and vacuuming today. And the Amish guys are coming this afternoon to fix the stuff hanging off my roof.

In the middle of all that, I am hoping to get some writing done!! We shall see!!

Meanwhile, enjoy your Monday, wherever you are in the world.

Thanks for visiting!

I love you guys. See ya!

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I leave you with this!

I’m picking up some good vibrations, how about you??

Sent by my new friend Johnny the other day. Enjoy, gang!!