Actually, I didn’t grow up in a gardening family.   My dad grew grass for our horses and that was about it.  But during my many years in Nicaragua I developed an affinity---and  (I say with all humility), some skill---at growing things in the dirt.  A certain sensibility is required of this endeavor, which I admit I find a little surprising to have discovered in myself.   Right now the garden is in transition from winter to summer.    Collards, kale and mustard greens are still holding on.   (I have been feasting on them regularly since early fall.)  And okra, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are taking root.   I will plant some beans, too.   My chicken coop is almost finished, so I’ll have some magic chicken shit to mix in with the mullet heads I buried last fall.   All right here at the little pink house.   In Tallahassee’s midtown.  ​

So I played a house concert on Friday in Ponte Vidra, Florida.    There were about 27 people there.  Over half of them were classical musicians;  they played for the Jacksonville orchestra, the St. Augustine Orchestra, that kind of thing.   (Yea, I know:  I was so in my element.)    Many of the others at the show were parents of the students of my host, Victoria Scarlett, who teaches violin and cello.   Among these were Geeta and Vinjay, who earlier that very afternoon had completed the rigorous process of becoming citizens of these United States.    (I would gladly put their knowledge of our Constitution up against that of the next 100 people you see with a Make America Great Again sticker on their truck bumper.)   No, these are… Real Americans.   And if we want to Make America Great Again, the way to do it is to continue to add people like this to our collective vision and fold.  Meanwhile, my rage and ire and contempt for anyone who thinks they are better than someone else, solely because of where they were born, is mitigated by the warm embrace of this couple for the country I love so much.    ​

I am announcing today that I will seek the office of the presidency of the United States of America in 2020.
My platform is simple and straightforward: 
If I am elected, on the morning of the day I am sworn in, the U.S. will officially declare war on the sovereign nation of Canada. And then that evening, the U.S. will officially surrender to the sovereign nation of Canada.
If you would like to support my campaign, just send money to my PayPal account:   grant@grantpeeples.com
Yard signs and buttons will be available in August
Thank You.
Grant Peeples    (folk singer, Uber driver, poet, land-clearer, artist and AirBnB host)
​

I’m weary of trying to continue to word-my-way into some sort of clarity about this imperiled planet, and the sickening breed intent upon its ruin.   My former ruse---assonance and alliteration---seem not to hold the water that once floated my messy, mixed-up metaphors.  So…my creator-fuse is soddened this mornin’
So be it.
All literature will soon enough be stardust.  
It is waste of good fishing time. 
​

Behind The Lines With Grant Peeples
Grant Peeples & the Peeples Republik: Settling Scores Vol. II
(review by Bill Glahn)

The title track of Grant Peeples last album, “A Congress of Treasons” was a spoken word piece that appeared last on the album. “Ever since I was a kid, all I really wanted to be when I grew up was a traitor – a spy for the other sides,” starts Peeples. He continues with a narrative about a plan to sabotage the “shopping carts of oppression” and recognizes that revealing those intentions have consequences. Yet “here I go again…” It’s a good starting off point for Settling Scores Vol. II.
READ THE WHOLE REVIEW HERE

​Three Songs of Easter
In tribute to those
   who freaked-out that morning
      when they found the big rock
         had been pushed from the door
            of a presently empty tomb
   who rather that rise-up in arms
      to right the grievous wrong
         knelt and wept and cowered
      and began working on a narrative
         to assuage their guilt of complicity
         and that would ultimately become a Gospel…
    I submit to you
       this morning
          three songs
             written over a period
                of ten years
   
Jesus was a Revolutionary
 
Treason is the Reason
 
Dear Judas