Chris Wage Photography 

Rambo Sambo warming up in last week’s team scrimmage before the Honky Tonk Stomp.

Railroad tracks, North Nashville. I’ll lay off the storm pictures soon, I swear, but for now storms and cicadas is pretty much all that’s goin on around here.

I found this old picture from 2008 that I never posted for some reason. Probably because I got hit by lightning shortly after taking it. (Actually, I think it was because i took this one right after and lost interest in everything before it.)

I also stumbled across an older lightning shot and spent some time re-processing it to not look so dumb:

Stay safe in the storms this morning, folks.

(Click to enlarge)

They’re heeeere. Brood XIX emerged this week in Nashville: tredecassini, a 13-year variant of the Magicicada genus. There’s a lot of hysteria surrounding these little critters, but they’re a relatively minor nuisance. It was one of my first years in Nashville that Brood XIV emerged, and ever since then, to me, the cicada song has just been a part of summer in the south.

I was starting to think we wouldn’t see any around these parts. I live in Germantown, a small (old) neighborhood just north of downtown. There aren’t many in general because of all the changes the area has seen (with every generation digging up the ground anew for construction of some sort), and the relative lack of trees. In just the past few days, though, we saw a ton emerge underneath the relatively old tree in our front yard.

The cicadas pictured here are just emerging from their carapace — hence the white color. It’s not until they’ve dried out a bit in the air that their wings begin to harden and their color starts to darken. They’re supposed to be pretty good eatin’ in this state, but I don’t know if I could eat them now. They’re just so CUTE!

A couple more pictures here.

Legislative Plaza, Nashville, TN.

Stormy spring here in Nashville. Lots of late night storms, too, which makes it a constant dilemma between going to bed and staying up all night taking the same lightning shots over and over.

A few years ago they introduced a bunch of hawks to downtown Nashville in an attempt to combat the pigeon problem. I don’t know if it worked, but it sure looked cool at times. No word on what they plan on doing about the starling problem.

Bicentennial Mall, Nashville, TN.

An army of air conditioning units after a spring storm. North Downtown Nashville.

Overpass – Downtown Nashville, 2011.