Good morning, everybody!!
It’s a clear, sunny — but cold — first day of winter around here!
When I stepped out onto my kitchen porch at 4:30AM this morning, the black sky was so incredibly clear. I could see all the stars for miles and miles. There was a really great feeling in the air.
And the raccoons had been by. They ate up every single solitary morsel of cat food that I’d set out for Kon Tiki & friends yesterday.
Oh, and also yesterday, at my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man’s house, I encountered 5 beautiful deer in his backyard. And, later, while driving back into the village of Crazeysburg, there were about 8 swans in one of the de-frosting cornfields!! This morning, starlings are everywhere in the trees around my property and the cats are sort of glued to the windows. (This bit about the cats is, of course, a figure of speech. I do not allow my cats to get into the glue…)
Anyway, Happy Winter Animal/Bird Day everyone!!
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Okay.
Here’s this!
I’ve had some trouble piecing together what this was all about, but it seems to have been a fundraiser for a new church organ? Not sure. But it took place at St. Bartholomew-the-Great, the oldest parish church in London.
Nick Cave and Colin Greenwood performed by candlelight there on Friday night. (I believe this is the church Nick Cave actually attends?)
I can only imagine how moving this was, gang. Because these two could create magic together out back by a trash bin. And in an old church in London by candlelight??? Wow.
And speaking of Nick Cave—
There is still time to order something over at Cave Things and get it in time for Christmas!! (Maybe.)
For instance!!
Sex Pencils!! They are guaranteed to be sexual, unisexual, hip & sexy, and super sexual!! ($21 + shipping)
And right now, I believe you can get free pencils with every Christmas order. Click Here.
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Okay. I am loving this!
Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise
I found out about this podcast last evening on Instagram and I am halfway through listening to Episode 16 and I am really loving it:
Longing for God: Jack Kerouac, the Strange Solitary Catholic Mystic
“The Saint of Holy Groveling, the Hungover Mystic, and a deep, aching longing for God
Jack Kerouac is remembered as the voice of the open road, speed, freedom, and excess, yet beneath the motion lived a deep spiritual loneliness. He carried an intense longing for God that pleasure, travel, and rebellion never resolved. The party always ended in sadness. The road always circled back home. Formed by Catholic prayer, haunted by sin and grace, and bound to his mother in a small house far from the myth, Kerouac lived as a strange solitary mystic, restless for God and unable to escape the ache of faith that followed him everywhere.”
The podcast only started this past January, so there’s a chance I can actually get caught up on their previous episodes: Goethe, Dostoevsky, Chesterton, Solzhenitsyn, Blake, Pasternak, and more. Writers whose works I really love.
You can find the podcast here and then choose your preferred platform.
Subversive Orthodoxy: “Subversive Orthodoxy is a place for people who are burned by politics. We’re tired of culture wars and worn-out ideologies, but still have some hope that the Judeo-Christian story has something real to offer the modern world.”
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And speaking of Kerouac —
From the Kerouac Estate on Instagram:
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And here’s this–
Keith with one of his grandsons (maybe even the first one, judging by the color of Keith’s hair) (in the description below the photo, it said this is a grandson):
And Keith topless! Yay! (Adults only please!!)
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Okay!!!
Thanks again to Phyllis Stein for coming back from her vacation and for posting some more great photos on Instagram!!
Patti with the Patti Smith Group and TOM WAITS peeking in!! (mid-1970s)
And two of Patti and Jim Carroll in San Francisco in the 1970s:
(I loved this man so much, gang. I took a songwriting/poetry course with him at the West Side Y in NYC in 1984. You had to actually submit your writing to get into the class and when I got in, I hit the moon! There were maybe 12 of us in the class. What an incredible experience it was. The course lasted several months. And, wow, was Jim Carroll tall!)
Here’s this. Jim Carroll reading from his second collection of diaries, Forced Entries, in Cleveland, 1991 (1 hr):
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And here’s this!
I listened to it while making my dinner last night (and also texting with Johnny at the same time so it was a wee bit distracting!)
Abraham Hicks – Why Action Won’t Make you Rich (15 mins)
I especially liked the part about “Maintaining Your Vibration Despite Outside Influences” . (Ooops! Looks like you have to listen directly on YouTube. Just click in the box.)
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Phil seems to want everybody to have access to the Justice Department’s Epstein Library. It is searchable!
Word of warning, though. There is a TON of graphic stuff in these court testimonies and some of it will make you sick. (Especially if you’ve ever been trafficked or forced to have sex of any kind.)
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Other than that…Let’s switch gears!!
Wow, gang.
Christmas is almost here. Which means 2026 is also almost here. Which means that my retirement is also almost here!!
Johnny has asked me a couple of times:
HE: “What is the first thing you want to do the moment you know you are free from all the caregiving jobs and can do anything you want?”
ME: “Sit down at my desk and write.”
HE: (Looks at me sort of blankly.)
But that’s it, gang. Yes, I want to go camping (he already has a really long list… It includes cool places like Key West, the Adirondacks, and a place in Georgia). I do want to do that. But as loyal readers of this lofty blog know so well by now — I have a TON of half-finished and almost-started projects on my desk. I cannot wait to be able to give them my complete attention again.
PLUS!
Sandra is just basically sitting there in Rhinebeck NY, waiting for 2026 to get started so that she can send me all of her NOTES on the upcoming play Off-Broadway, the proposed new TV project, and our re-visitation of the screenplay for “Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story”.
I know this doesn’t sound like retirement for most people, but for me, it is finally getting to have my life back and I can’t wait.
Oh, and part of the publishing contract for my new novel includes: When will you be available to come out here and promote the book???
There is a chance that the book might be released by February, gang. But that’s not definite yet.
So, I wake up at 4 in the morning, and I stare at my dark bedroom and I just sort of think, Wow. And soon after that, I get out of bed.
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All righty!
I’ve got some yoga to do and then I have the retired Minister and his lovely wife and cat later today! And some more Christmas movies, no doubt! (And while I do have to drive home in the dark, there is no SNOW, no ICE, no HEAVY WINDS!! Yay. Just things like the Ronettes singing “Sleigh Ride” over and over and over for 22 miles!!)
So I’m gonna get all that underway here.
Enjoy your Sunday, wherever you are in the world.
Thanks for visiting.
I love you guys. See ya!
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I leave you with this. The most amazing Christmas song ever.
I listened to this several times while in bed last night with the lights out and the votive candles flickering and tried to keep my heart from galloping away from me .
I do not know where the years went to, gang. I only know that they flew by. And now both Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl are both dead. This song just breaks my heart now but when I listen to it, I am still inundated with all the love I had for this man and his gift for writing incredible, and now incredibly eternal, songs.
“Fairytale of New York,” The Pogues. 1987. Enjoy, gang. And let’s take a word from William Blake while we’re at it: He who binds to himself a joy / Does the winged life destroy; / But he who kisses the joy as it flies / Lives in eternity’s sun rise. See ya!
Marilyn's Room 