I've decided to make a concerted effort to learn python, so I just purchased O'Reilly's "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz. I might even consider porting Nexista to Python, but I'd also work to make it more compliant with some evolving standards suggested by Cocoon and followed by Popoon. I wonder if there is a python version of ant / phing?
UPDATE December 16, 2007:
There are projects for both cocoon and ant in python:
You really don't need a python ant though, if you have php phing will work fine.