MaBlog

I began the Prairie des Femmes blogspot one year ago this month, and today, on the Feast of the Assumption, I have been thinking about what the project really is.

 

I began this blog at a time when I stopped teaching to stay home with my children and needed an outlet before I caved. My husband was touring and traveling a lot for work and I was alone in the Prairie des Femmes with two young children. Then there were many family changes including the deaths of beloved patriarch and matriarch and the unraveling that can follow. Around the same time, an article about our house came out in the New York Times (Click here for the article.) Feeling a little exposed, and in desperate need of a refuge, I began this blog spot (that I jokingly called "mablog" when talking to friends) in hopes that I could organize the information that I have always kept in journals about life in Louisiana, French, and family stories/local folklore. I wanted a place where I could share my writing and possibly provide a tool for other young Louisianians to learn about the Louisiana French language/culture from a younger person's perspective. I wanted to share the story of how I learned Louisiana French and the struggles of teaching it to my children and my students, as well as the things that helped me learn: friends, funny local French, lyrics, Sainte Anne, KVPI. I began the blog also as an excuse to research the history and origins of the name Prairie des Femmes, which is a real place where we really live. 

 

I had a want to capture what it really felt like to live here, in Saint Landry Parish, Louisiana in modern times. I wanted to capture a certain juxtaposition of the richness of the land and culture of the people, and the poverty of the system and the state amid hurricane, oilspill, crime, poverty. I wanted to document the beautiful things about out culture, the good things that have not dissipated, but have lived and changed and thrived, but I wanted to not make Louisiana or the PDF look like a utopian haven of beauty and culture, which it is, but it isn't. No place is perfect, not even Louisiana (and that's the only time I'll ever admit that). I wanted to explore the things that cloche- or that are croche- what it is like to drive down a littered dirt road lined with grottos to the Blessed Mother, next to a gorgeous but polluted bayou, while booming vulgar rap music, or maybe Cajun music. I wanted to capture the way that the old intersects with the new in this wild country.

Since I began the blog, it has grown into what it wanted to. I started making crazy French memes, ECards that explain French music lyrics. I have enjoyed translating some rap into Louisiana French, or doing cards on a Louisiana French rapper. I recorded and transcribed snips from the Tasse de Cafe Radio Program. I explored the oxbow woods and the most beautiful house in there; I hope to one day help save this jewel of Louisiana architecture. I started to explore the concept of the Prairie des Femmes, The history of this place being a refuge for women at different times for different reasons, and the mystery of the story of the Women's Indian Camp found here at the Prairie.  Just down the road from me my neighbors had two grottos to the Virgin Mary in their front yard- two Femmes- in the prairie. One day,  I stopped and asked to take a picture, and began a friendship with them. Then I took pictures of all the Mary statues in the Prairie des Femmes, Grand Coteau, Leonville... La Prairie des Femmes was revealing herself as a land whose people still venerate the Virgin Mother unquestioningly. As a balance to the beauty of this divine feminine, I started taking pictures of local car decals, vulgar and tacky slogans local boys emblazon on their mud-encrusted (or clean clean) trucks. I began taking seemingly mundane pictures of what was happening in Prairie at this very moment- a bridge out, a boy on a horse or a bunch of girls on a four wheeler (la prairie des femmes!).  I took pictures of goats and cattle blocking the road, a storm coming across the prairie on les jambes de pluie, the old houses crumbling in the woods or smoke rising from nearby fields. I transcribed wisdom from the neighbor, Chat-Tigre, or recorded the neighbor yelling at his cows in French and the other neighbor just yelling. I recorded gunshots, birdsounds, and the howl of the coyotes at night. I took pictures of the moon, the sunset and foggy sunrise, my children as they grew.

I have to thank my sweet husband on this Feast of the Assumption, for dragging me out here and leaving me to fend for myself in the PDF. I have learned a lot. I also thank the Blessed Mother for always leading me ever closer to God through the wilderness of the Prairie des Femmes.