Indian Women Plant Corn in the Prairie des Femmes

Prairie des Femmes Brick Wall

Prairie des Femmes Map

Summer 2003 Journal Pages

Rabalis Memes

Awesome Louisiana French memes created and submitted by Nathan Rabalais.

It's Saturday night, dear, "shall we" (raccoon) dance?

Preach!

Shut ya mouth you can't speak the good French like me

Me, I know you always gonna listen to the advice of others...

Parrain, I am afraid of monsters. Mais, you don't have to be, dear. You just have to run fast and don't tell them that I am your parrain.

This guy right here farted, yall! Really, I farted.

Chaoui don't like it...

Bruh... I think I just seen a monsta!

Hey fellow, you know what a cayouene is in my parish?

You just simply can't run to Mordor!

Why you dropped the potato!?

I went drop off the kids at the game and not I can run the roads in my suburban and make trouble.

 Born in Eunice, Louisiana, Nathan Rabalais received his B.A. in music from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2007 and pursued graduate studies in musicology at the University of Strasbourg. He obtained an M.A. in French at UL Lafayette, specializing in Louisiana language and culture and North American Francophone literature.  Currently, his main research interests include Louisiana French dialects, oral tradition and music of South Louisiana. More recent research topics and projects include popular and community theater among Francophone minorities, adult literacy for native Cajun French speakers and dialect pedagogy. In other words, Nathan Rabbalais is a pretty righteous dude.

Prehistory in Prairie des Femmes

In the camper

Me and Nonc Dav, circa 2004, Prairie des Femmes, Louisiana

Fact: I am faster than 80% of snakes. Rabalais class memes!!

I feel pretty confident in the future of Louisiana French language and humor after seeing these memes des etudiants de Monsieur Rabalais. Merci, y'all!

Fact: I am faster than 80% of snakes.

I know this feeling, me.

I am not a chat-oui (raccoon) I am a chat-non!

I met a guy in Lafayette. He told me You're a pretty doll! (prostitute)

One can not simply pass through the back door.

I am not crazy! Look! I carved your name on my arm!

Let that bouillie custard fall on the floor!

The snap-beans aren't salty.

I will never let you go. (Lache pas la patate Jacques et Rose!)

Many thanks to Nathan Rabalais and his Cajun French students at Tulane in New Orleans for creating and submitting these hilarious memes to the Prairie des Femmes!


 Born in Eunice, Louisiana, Nathan Rabalais received his B.A. in music from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2007 and pursued graduate studies in musicology at the University of Strasbourg. He obtained an M.A. in French at UL Lafayette, specializing in Louisiana language and culture and North American Francophone literature.  Currently, his main research interests include Louisiana French dialects, oral tradition and music of South Louisiana. More recent research topics and projects include popular and community theater among Francophone minorities, adult literacy for native Cajun French speakers and dialect pedagogy. In other words, Nathan Rabbalais is a pretty righteous dude.

Traditional Ecards of Coastal Louisiana

Lomax Fellow and friend Dr. Joshua Caffery released his fascinating book, Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana recently. There were so many amazing songs and one-liners that Dr. Caff includes in this book. Here are a few of my favorites, done in Ecard, Prairie des Femmes fashion. Thank you Dr. Caff!! 

Buy this book:

http://lsupress.org/books/detail/traditional-music-in-coastal-louisiana/

Louisiana French ECards from Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana by Joshua Caffery

The next morning, after the wedding, the beauty looks at the door. The beautiful girl looks at the door, with a big regret.

I am going to the big woods with my jug of moonshine, brass knuckles in my pocket, cards in my hand, and I am looking for nothin but trouble.

Criminal Criminal! The Cajuns of L'anse la Butte have torn up underpants.

Go away sadness! Go throw yourself in the coulee and go so far, never come back to me again!

The beautifyl girl gave me a beautiful bouquet, all garnished with beautiful white jasmine. It's to heal, heal, heal sadness.

Oh wild nightingale! Oh nightingale of the forest!

Let's drink, dear comrades, Let's abandon amour. Let's abandon girls, we'll court them no more.

Oh, he fell in the road, like an unlucky one.

A bouquet of thoughts, at the four corners of the bed. A bouquet of worry.

He said that he wanted to play until he didn't have any more shoes.

Click here to see a few more memes I did from the book.

CajunNet

THE CAJUNNET

The CajunNet is the information source by which South Louisianians communicate and share all information. It is a familial, wireless, omnipresent, omnipotent and sometimes telepathic communication network used for the transfer of a wide range of information concerning South Louisiana gossip, politics and scandal. It is made up of interconnected networks, like spiderwebs in the Basin, the signal of which is most strong in South Louisiana, but the CajunNet boasts thousands of satellite servers worldwide. The CajunNet is the only entity yet found that exceeds 186,000 miles per second. Not only is it fast, unlike its younger cousin the Internet, information gleaned from the CajunNet is checked and cross-checked by many within the web, so it's usually correct. Also unlike the Internet, the CajunNet is run by grandmas.  Similarly to the Internet, sometimes on the CajunNet, you don't know who you are really talking to, everyone is so connected, you could really get in trouble out there.

I am part of the CajunNet, so are you if you have ever gotten gossip from your Nannie, Ti-Tante, classmate, ya friend's mama or your second cousin once removed about a local event before the Main Stream Media covered it, and it turned out true. CajunNet is hotter than the MSM.

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"Dans la Ville Platte, tu peux pas jongler à quelquechose autrement quelq'un d'autre connait." 

(In Ville Platte, you can't even think something before someone else knows.)  

 

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You sneeze in Evangeline Parish, the people in Saint Landry Parish are already saying "God Bless You."

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Some origins of the CajunNet

The CajunNet is the network by which we are all connected, and it seems that we South Louisianians have kept our connections quite a long time. Our ancestors have lived and intermarried for centuries upon centuries, and in many cases were, in fact, the same people. Our interconnection is the base for the strength, reliability and utility of the CajunNet. In a word, cousins.

After the Grand Derangement of 1755, the Acadians found their way back to each other, and to la Louisiane, by an earlier form of the CajunNet phenomena- letters. After the chaotic deportation that split families and sent them across the globe, the network of letters and family connections were unable to be broken, even by genocide, and indeed were used to pull the scattered Acadians back together in Louisiana. 

Before electricity arrived to the far-flung prairies and swamps of Louisiana, people would go to their neighbor's houses to pass the veille, visit and play music. Here is what Jenee Naquin's grandmother said about the origins of the CajunNet:

Jenee: I once asked her (g-maw) if it was true that they had no electricity. She said yes. I said so how did you get the news, no tv, no radio. Did you get the paper? She said,

Oh no, Cher, we would go visit. That is how we got the news. Passe the veille.

I thought it was so funny that that was their method for news - the original gossip circle!

And a precursor to the modern CajunNet!

The prevalence of small towns where people's orbits are in close proximity contributes to the CajunNet. There isn't much going on, and Cajuns like to talk. No matter if its your uncle telling long lies about hunting or fishing trips, the small town Topix Forums, Facebook confessions pages, or that nosy friend that will follow police cars to the scenes of accidents just to report to the servers of the CajunNet...people like to talk, and be in the know.

And so, next time your mama gives you some hometown gossip about people she identifies by their nickname (You know Hog Jaw?), their lineage (You know, Bee à Tante Lou?) or how they are related to you (You know T-Nonc's Daddy, Mister Earl's, brother? Well, his lil sister! She was married to you friend Monette's brother.) When you hear these things and the juicy tidbits that follow, know that you are not just listening to small town talk, but you are taking part in a communion of the vernacular, you are receiving information about your people, you are part of something bigger than all of us: the CajunNet!

Stay Tuned to the PDF for Stories from the CajunNet...

MORE stories from the Cajun Net:

Click here for the story in which Nananne and the Sheriff's wife's CajunNet secret weapon is a quilt.

Click here for a story about MJ's death and the CN. 

Click here to see how the CajunNet helped catch a killa. 

The CajunNet and the Beatle 

CajunNet in Amsterdam

Gifts and the Other Side of Town

I got the chance to visit with the sister of an old deceased friend, a man who I learned much French from, and I wanted to pass on a few recordings of his stories in French to the family. I went first to pick up a few boxes of Lost Bayou Ramblers CDs for my husband from Flat Town Music, and with them in the back of the truck, went to a side of my own hometown that I had never been to.

It was the broad daylight in the projects. There were people in the yard detailing the car under a young oak tree, doors open, music playing. Children and cats were at their feet. 

As I came around the corner, I passed a young creole woman with a turquoise shirt and matching tignon, she looked me right in the eye. There was a large gardenia bush in fresh spring bloom with the biggest blossoms I had ever seen. To my back the inner yard was as sparse as the central courtyard of a monastery. There Mrs. Viola was at her door, an elderly woman, large, light skinned. She invited me in. We sat in her comfortable little living room and I gave her the discs and we talked about her brother and family and people. She was one of fourteen children! Her brother came to visit her twice a day, and also when he needed advice.

Mrs. Viola's door

She said her brother was lonely after the death of his wife, and now he was at peace. He had just bought a new truck. He had been through a lot. I said I sensed that. She goes Yeah, you can pick that up. That's like they call that the Saint Esprit. So you pick that up through the Holy Spirit. 

That's a gift you got, she told me. I got a gift too. She said.  

I'd prophsy and all dat, yeah. I didn't know about that because when I was younger they'd say I was crazy, when I would tell them something like that, but I knew what I was saying, but it wasn't of me...because that would come in my mind, in my spirit and I'd speak it out. You born with that, that's a gift, the gift of anointed.

It's not everybody that's gifted, you were given that in your mother's womb, la mère de ta mère. God created you with a gift in your mother's womb, and when you were born, you were ready to face the world with ya gift.

She went on to say that our gifts aren't always evident at first, everything has a time. Sometimes people are bad bad, and then they change.

Everything got a time and a season, like the Bible says. Everything. The winter, les arbres commence à jeter leur feuilles. Fruit tree don't bear year round! Every thing got a time and an appointment.

I believe in that. I told her. I got up to leave, sensing that it was the time.


Viens back. I enjoy your company, she said.

J'vas.

I took a picture of her door, and she offered me a cold cup, which I saw she advertised there.

 

 Thank you for coming, she said. Halleluiah! That is a blessin' to me!

I got the frissons.

As I turned the corner into the cloud of gardenia scented air, I saw the group of people were still around the car with different music. There were a few boys on bikes circling on the road, and the woman in the turquoise tignon was standing "guard" behind my truck full of brown boxes. When she saw me approach under the trees, she turned quick and started walking fast down Jackson street. 

In which the PDF gives me the old cold shoulder.

I had been in quite a deep groove out here in my home in the prairie the last eight years.  I don't like to leave home. So when we were asked by Nunu's to represent Arnaudville at a festival in France and would be gone for TWO WEEKS, it was almost too much to imagine. What a great experience, but two weeks away from la Prairie des Femmes? What would happen to the chickens!? Luckily, we had good friends and neighbors who came to visit and feed the dog, chickens and dove. They all survived, save for one chicken.

Now, Prairie des Femmes, she's a fickle one, and she wasn't too happy with me when I got home. Now it's my third day back and we're still gettin' reacquainted, me and her. For one thing, she turned her shoulders and the season changed. We left in the mild October Indian Summer and returned to near-winter November. The golden rod in the field has faded to splotchy browns and tans, and the tops of the mangliers have exploded in tuffs of pure white. The new cold front air is so pure out on the prairie. I had almost gotten used to the slant of the light, the headiness of the air in France, which at first disoriented me for days. There, it seemed the clouds were always back-lit from strange angles with pinks and oranges, there was a difference in elevation and pressure and light. Back in the Prairie des Femmes, the elevation is just 15 feet above sea level, one moves so easily through the atmosphere. It is the air I am accustomed to, the light is straightforward and crisp and blue, especially on these first cool days of Louisiana November. I hear it'll be back in the 70's next week. I hope by that time the old PFD will have warmed back up to me, too.

Update: November 10, She loves me again.