13 Months o' Music

After attending the fantastic performance of world-famous bluesman Robert Cray last evening at Jesse Hall on the MU campus, I stopped to reflect upon the incredible series of shows I've been lucky enough to see in the past year or so. It started last fall with a show at the Blue Note featuring singer/songwriters Robert Earl Keene and Todd Snyder. Then at the Roots'n' Blues festival in Columbia, I got to see blues legend Booker T and rockabilly phenom Junior Brown.

This past spring, Bethany scored tickets to see the greatest blues singer of all time: Mr. B.B. King at Jesse Hall. At this year's Roots 'n'Blues, I took Alex to his first concert to see Anders Osborne, a New Orleans-based blues guitarist whom I had seen several years eariler in St. Louis (which I ranked at that time as the single best concert I had ever been to.)

Last night's show took the cake though. On Friday, Bethany received an email offer for half-price tickets to see Robert Cray. We jumped at the chance and when we arrived at the ticket window to redeem our coupon one-half hour prior to the start of the show, we nabbed two tickets in the center section--in the fourth row! And the blues legend did not disappoint.

If you are unfamiliar with any of the artists I just mentioned, do yourself a favor and check them out. All have at least a little bit of the blues in them. A couple have a lot. A couple have an alternative country twang. A couple have some jazzy undertones. All are incredible musicians and entertainers.

CDs are great, iPods are pretty neat, but watching a live show featuring your favorite artist can't be beat. So take out your earbuds, get together with a couple buds, have a few Buds, and go see a concert. You'll be glad you did.

It's a Girl!

Many of you out there have already heard the news: I'm gonna be a daddy again! This time, to a precious six year old girl from Daqing City, China. Found abandoned on a sidewalk on April 7th, 2004 with her umbillical cord still attached, she was taken to a hospital where doctors determined that she had probably been born the previous day.

No one can say for sure why she was abandoned by her biological parents, but simply being born female in a society that favors male heirs was the likely reason. Many times in these cases, the mother wants to keep her baby girl, but her family will pressure her to abandon the child and try again for a boy. The reason for this is quite simple. In China, a boy will eventually take care of his parents when he grows up while girls have to take care of their husband's parents. Who will take care of a girl's aging parents? No one. So in a country where each family is only allowed to have one child, boys are in high demand. What happens if you have a girl? You drop the child off in a public place and hope she is discovered before succumbing to the elements or starvation. Then you go home and try to give your husband a son.

The girl found abandoned that day was brought to an orphanage where she was soon diagnosed with cerebral palsy. As she grew up, she struggled to walk, but her personality and mental development was as normal as any child's. Eventually, she had two achilles operations to make it easier for her to walk and it is reported that today she is able to get around on her own, albeit slowly. Despite having lived with this disability and without a family to love her for the first six years of her life, she has become a smiling, talkative, and typical six-year-old girl. The resilience of children amazes me.

We spotted Tian Tian's photo on the website of our adoption agency months and months ago. As we have been filling out forms, getting background checks done, and having our entire lives scrutinized for our homestudy, we have been keeping an eye on this beautiful girl on the Waiting Children (special needs) list. We were selfishly hoping that no other family would apply for her before our paperwork was completed because we knew that she belonged with us. Fate agreed apparently, and yesterday we were informed that the officials in China approved us for adopting our little girl. We are overjoyed of course.

"Tian Tian" means "more and more" which seems pretty appropriate. We feel more and more connected to her every day. Our home has become filled with more and more love as we have filled it with more and more kids. The joy in my heart grows more and more as I share my life with my growing family. Hopefully, Tian Tian will love us more and more as she gets to know us. With Bethany's therapy skills, our daughter will become more and more independent as she learns to overcome her physical obstacles. More and more, I feel like I am the luckiest man who ever lived.

More and more, I am convinced that I was born to be a dad. I'm not the best at it, but I'm not the worst either. I can't tell you how much I've looked forward to being wrapped around a daughter's little finger. When Bethany and I first started thinking about adoption five years ago, we wanted a girl. Then Truman came along and happily altered that plan. But before we found him, I had bought a Chinese tea set as a birthday gift for my mom. I told her how much I looked forward to watching her have tea parties with her granddaughter some day. Unfortunately, that day will never come, but you can bet that my daughter and I will drink from that tea set as soon as we have the chance and have a toast to Nonna. Somewhere, my mom will say, "Ya done good, son. Ya done good."

As usual, she'll be right.

Outdoors and Offline

Well, the oppressive heat and humidity of summer have finally passed and my favorite time of year is here. The crispness of the air in Fall instantly sparks memories ranging from trick-or-treating to tailgating to bonfires to hayrides to watching the World Series. It is also birthday season in the Naughton family with Bethany, Truman, Alex, and I all having our birthdays within a span of 33 days. Plus, on November 3rd we'll celebrate Truman's "Gotcha Day" followed in a few weeks by Thanksgiving, which is perhaps my favorite holiday of all. I love Fall.

Today's weather, and the forcast for the next two weeks, makes me feel so alive. I'll be celebrating that feeling by spending a good portion of my time outdoors and offline. If you need me, you know where to find me. In Autumn, the virtual world of facebook just won't cut it. It's back to the real world for me. (Minus the working for a living and paying taxes thing of course.)

39: An Odd Birthday

On my birthday, September 25th, I went to a birthday party--for two four-year-olds. I watched them blow out candles on a birthday cake. I watched them open presents. I sang "Happy Birthday" to them. Then I supressed the urge to scream at the top of my lungs, "But today isn't even their birthday! Today is my freakin' birthday!" But I knew no one would care. It's hard to compete with four-year-olds.

Is it selfish of me to want my actual birthday to be about me? The "birthday" boy (Truman) was enjoying his second birthday party of the week while the "birthday" girl (Rebecca Barnes) was enjoying her third--both on MY birthday! Did the parents and grandparents (or my own wife and kids) stop to acknowledge me on my special day? Of course not. Did it hurt a little? Can I say yes?

But when you get to be 39 years old, people expect you to handle this type of slight maturely. Don't these people know me? Mature? I don't think so. Mature describes wines, not Naughtons. Therefore, I have decided to have a birthday do-over. I will start preparations now for a belated birthday bash to make every four-year-old in Missouri jealous. I'm gonna have a cake, ice cream, pony rides, and a Disney princesses theme. I'll hire a clown, or a stripper, or a mime. Fun will be had--in my honor! Stay tuned, peeps. I'm thinking a bonfire, or a party on the porch, or both (will have a garden hose at the ready.)

Stay tuned, and Happy Birthday to me!

500

Ladies and gentlemen, you are reading my 500th blog post. While that accomplishment may not compare to Hank Aaron's 755 home runs or the number of times Larry King has been married, I still think it is noteworthy. While many of my older posts are painfully awkward and many others are barely readable, some are of a high enough quality that revised versions have made their way into my book Naked Snow Angels. But how did it all begin?

My friend Paul Shields started his own blog back in 2004 and immediately I recognized the potential of this new medium. Paul held photo contests, haiku contests, and provided his friends with a means to exchange witty barbs--almost always at his expense. The result was comedy gold. Paul even wrote some original songs using material gleaned from reader contributions to his blog. (He now has a fan page on facebook and on myspace under his stage name of "Paul & the Violent Farmers" which you should check out--when children are not in the room.)

If you go back through the archives of my blog, you will see the evolution of a writer from a blogger to a bona fide author. At times I have written angry tirades, humorous observations, and melancholy lamentations. I've dabbled in philosophy, politics, satire, and sports. If you have some free time, I welcome you to go back to the beginning and re-live this writing journey with me. The payoff? You will have a unique perspective of Travis Naughton the author when my book finally gets published. Naked Snow Angels is a reflection and culmination of all of the different forms my blog has taken over the years. I now have two final chapters outlined that are ready to be written in order to complete my manuscript. Hopefully, it will be published sometime in 2011. When I'm internationally famous and you see me on TV during Oprah's final season, you'll be able to say, "I've been reading that incredibly handsome young man's work since he was a blogger. Now he's a celebrity and I want to have his babies." (Men, you may say, "I'd like to have a frothy, malted beverage with that handsome and clever fellow!")

Thank you for all your support and encouragement over the years. My readers and fans, afterall, are the ones who are really to blame for unleashing me upon the literary world. Just wait'll Oprah gets a load o' me!