Yes!

This is the window through which either David Crockett will heckle me or Andrew Jackson will kidnap me.

Truly. May we all feel cared for the way book clubs make authors feel cared for.

I have just given this way more thought than necessary and I have to believe that this is further awesomeness of book clubs. Someone must have slipped it in my coat pocket last spring when I was out doing the book club rounds.

Still, I wish someone would write about Edmondson's garden, because it sounds amazing--fruit trees, vegetables enough to last all winter, and a huge swath of flowers.

The Robert Farris Thompson essay, especially, is doing stuff no other Edmondson scholar has done.

I was also reading about how Edmondson's nieces and nephews liked to climb up on his lion and horse sculptures and, Nashville, why is there no replica art in our parks for children to climb on?

Which means that, by and large, when the art is not in the cemetery, it's because white people found the cemetery. Otherwise, it's usually just fallen and been covered over.

Here's the thing. I've been to the cemetery where the dove is more than I've been to any other cemetery with Edmondsons in it. That dove either came out of the ground or was returned to that cemetery between last fall and this March. But I suspect, based on damage to it, that it was just there.

I was hoping I'd get some kind of Historical Commissioner badge for moments like this, but no.

I feel like I got a brief glimpse into what it must be like to be Jim Hoobler.

Amen.