This might be the funniest thing I’ve seen in a quite a long time. Hats off to my Baton Rouge pal, and occasional Good Egg, Eddie Manes, for this indubitable and delightful solution to my snake “problem”. Thanks for sharing the laughs, Edward.

Note A: I had several neighbors who, while walking by or riding past on their bicycles, stopped in quizzical observation of the skeletal detritus amid 19th Street. They inevitably asked me, since the spring weather lured us all outdoors (eerily reminiscent of reptiles), about the snake carcasses lying in the street. I just shrugged my shoulders and pretended to be as perplexed as they were. You’d think I was well-versed in Parseltongue with an attitude like that.

Note B: Observe the striking change in skin tones from my hands to my feet. Oh, what charm.

It is a beauty of a Saturday afternoon here in Nashville. I just finished mowing the lawn and now I’m inside cooling down while watching my beloved LSU Tigers play Auburn on television. There were no lawnmower incidents, thank you very much. [Incidentally, if you have no idea what this references, go here to read up on fellow Square Peg, Andrew Osenga’s woeful experience while lawnmowing]

I played a tiny show last night here in town at St. George’s Episcopal Church. I say “tiny” because, if my addition is correct, I think there were approximately 10 people in attendance, including my wife, myself, the drummer, and the opener, Kelleigh, along with her husband. Rich Courtney, who produced a couple of songs on Miracle of Forgetting, and recently relocated his family to Nashville from Baton Rouge, LA, was kind enough to join me on drums/percussion. I recently saw David Mead perform a show with just him and a drummer and I thought it was a very cool yet simple display. It inspired me so much I wanted to try it to see if I could pull it off in a live setting. I usually write my songs hearing a rhythm section in my head and it seems a natural fit to do the same thing live. Rich caught on quick and we had a blast playing a handful of songs together. I MUST figure out how to do the 2-piece band thing for more of my shows….

Another old Louisiana friend of mine, Jon, who’s currently studying music production/engineering at MTSU, as part of a semester-long class project, has to produce a couple of songs. He asked me if I’d be interested in letting him work with a couple of unrecorded or newer songs that I might have lying around. We did pre-production at my house a couple of weeks ago on “The Traveling Onion” and a brand new one titled “Bedlam and the Fuse”. This past Thursday night I spent the entire evening (plus a few A.M. hours) at MTSU’s incredible studio system recording acoustic guitar, drums and bass under Jon’s tutelage. Cheers to Jon, Darryl, Darren, Don and Josh for making me feel welcome and for working so hard to learn the songs and to capture good performances. I think we’re supposed to reconvene for overdubs in a few weeks. Hopefully I can figure out a way for folks to hear these recordings once they’re complete. You can read Jon’s blog. Incidentally, if I can EVER figure out how to post pictures I’ll put some shots I took from these sessions. Do any of you know how to upload pictures on WordPress? Email me if you do.

Yesterday afternoon, I got to spend a few hours with one of my new favorite songwriters, Andy Gullahorn. I’ve been writing a lot more than usual over the past month or so and, for one of those songs, tentatively titled “Come Back a Fool”, I thought Andy would be a great person to co-write it with since all I had was a melody, a chorus and gibberish for lyrics. His latest CD, Room To Breathe, is a constant in the Peters’ CD player. Tremendous melodies, great voice and deceptively simple depth. If that weren’t enough, his homemade website is among the funniest, most dry-witted places I’ve found on the internet. I’ll let you know how this particular song progresses, if it does. I give Andy 5 Gullys.

The sun is now beginning to set and I’m heading outside to enjoy a smoke on my pipe at dusk. Oh yes. Tonight is homemade pizza and a movie. I think we’re going to watch Akeelah and The Bee. “Xylem: X-Y-L-E-M.”
EP

It is a cool and most pleasant Saturday morning here in Nashville, the first of what I hope is many to come. Danielle and I are seated outdoors on our porch (aka, concrete slab/carport/driveway) wrought-iron patio furniture. A fly and a bee are buzzing my cup of coffee as I simultaneously swat at them and continue to type. I have yet to eat anything this morning so my stomach is grumbling from both the lack of food and java inundation. I look up to the sight of summer-weary Bradford Pears. A band of titmice and chickadees steal back and forth from the sunflower feeders to hidden perches. Beneath the boughs, in a semi-shaded corner of the backyard sit a small assortment of plants (chrysanthemums, salvia, snapdragons) we recently purchased which have yet to be introduced to the earth. A brand new bag of potting soil lies draped over an old tree stump nearby. They lie in wait. The air is different.

To this very day I am thoroughly at a loss to explain my love for autumn. I suppose it has much to do with the long-awaited - at least by me - diffusion of the sun’s prolonged summer cruelty. If you have read my communiqués for any amount of time you will no doubt recall that I am a subject to climatic conditions. With such predictability, I might as well be under a lab microscope. Pushing as much seasonal cliché aside, this new change of weather energizes me and awakens in me a rush of contentment, that quality of life I so often struggle to embrace. If it requires a weather pattern to jolt me out of disarray, then so be it. That and the thought of having a child…

You see, my wife Danielle is pregnant. She regularly reads to me from a pregnancy book she picked up for $0.25 at a used bookstore in Colorado earlier this summer. With us being soon-to-be-parents, it has been helpful to find out just what in all of creation is taking place inside her petite body. Our little boy (a fact we learned only yesterday) is twenty weeks - roughly halfway - along in this most incredible of blood-and-water processes existing upon the crust of earth. In some ways I feel as though we are merely spectators in an event in which we have little if any bearing upon, and in a way I suppose that is entirely true. But in other ways, as with any historical recollection, it takes two to share a story. To see and confirm that a tiny human being lives, breathes and develops inside the belly of a woman is beyond anything I, or I dare say anyone else, can explain in mere human terms. We use sterile – pardon the insensitive pun - words like DNA, chromosomes, zygotes, sperm, egg, and yet, enveloping all of it, a great Mystery shrouds the goings on of earth. We pretend to make sense of it all in certain fields of expertise among certain circles using curious words we brew up along the way. But to literally see your yet-to-be-born child’s beating heart via ultrasound reeks of the supernatural. By now I realize I, too, am an infant being born again, learning and relearning, pregnant in pause, pregnant with hope, pregnant with child. And it is good.

I will soon hang a new hat upon my head, that of father. The old ways are ending, the new is coming and the eyes of today are finding focus in the soft, still cooing of first breaths. Come one, come all. Bring your glory, bring your shame. Carry yourself or be carried to it. There is good yet to be discovered.