Today in Cajun English: 3-D Hologram Maker

3-D hologram maker! 

You tink an object is dere 

But it's not really dere! 

You gotta see dis in person!

Old Saying about Easter and Weather

The old saying I always heard: wait 'til Easter finishes, the weather will straighten out. That's right, I remember my mom said  

Quand jour de pâques va passer le temps va se nettoyer. 

Alright, well, that's... on dirait je me rapelle d'ça aussi.

Our Lady of Cotton and Chataignier

Best Stop Madonnas

                    Best Stop Pietà

  Mother and Child of the Best Stop 

        Our Lady of the Best Stop

At the Feet of Our Lady of the Best Stop 

Good Friday

Un goût de cafe pour fumer!

Et des fois le café té assez fort tu pourrais mettre une cullière dans la tasse et la cullière restait debout. 

Kaw!!!That's strong! 

And sometimes, like ma dad, he'd make a pot of coffee in the morning and là ça rechauffé quand il buvait une 'tite tasse, une 'tite tasse café, demie 'tite tasse, demie tasse, une demie-demie tasse, et là ça c'était juste assez pour fumer, tu connais? 
Hahahahahaa! 
Un goût de café pour fumer!


Sounds like someone I know!

Prairie des Femmes Topo Map

Bayou des Femmes

A while back my friend Jo Vidrine, who works with the Bayou Vermilion District keeping the bayou clean, tagged a photograph on his Instagram account (@youwillknowwhen) with the tag #bayoudeshommes (Bayou of the Men). The photo was of a bunch of dead red crawfish heads floating in the bayou. I thought the name was an awesome comparison to Prairie des Femmes (Prairie of the Women). Bayou des Hommes recalled for me the work that Jo V and John Oliver literally did in the brown and dark canals of the Bayou Vermilion, but also of the darker, more metaphorical things that we as mankind have done to the bayou.



 Check out www.bayoudeshommes.blogspot.com

Recently Jo and I decided to join forces and mix names to create an art show called Bayou des Femmes. It was held April 12, 2014 at Astra Modern Market in downtown Lafayette. We showed photographs of both of our realms, Jo's parents Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Vidrine played music, Reve Coffee Roasters made a special Bayou des Femmes blend and The Loving Cup did a pop-up coffee bar. We had beer, nests, glow in the dark Mary statues, and a lot of fun. It was a great success and I am so glad Jo and I decided to get together and have a show because the themes of our sites worked perfectly together. 

Here is the audio of an interview we did with Judith at KRVS about the show:


http://krvs.org/post/apres-midi-april-7-joint-exhibit-astra-modern-market-gallery-art-walk-sat-april-12. 

Bayou des Femmes is a collaborative art show of the work of Bayou des Hommes and Prairie des Femmes, blogs run by two young French-speaking Louisianians. Born in juxtaposition out of deep love of place and also as an outlet from the reality of daily life in modern south Louisiana, Bayou des Femmes is an exploration of the timelessness of our homeland, and a reflection of the relationship between nature and culture, prairie and bayou,  homme et femme.
 

 

The man, the muse, the parrain: John Oliver poses with his panoramic

Prairie des Femmes

Gleaux Marie

Pouvoir: Homme et Femme!

photo cred @M. Ryan Dejean

 

the Apex and the Moon

I have always imagined, when I looked out over open water, of all of the fantastic sea creatures that are just below the surface unseen. It's the same out here in the prairie where one can see the undulation of the ground, the swells of earth, and knows the history in the dirt, the treasures below the surface.

When I venture to ask a local elder about the Prairie des Femmes' origins or where I can find an arrowhead, they direct me to this field, which is on a bayou path that I am familiar with.

You can't see it from certain angles, but when you do see it, it is unmistakable; there was a large mound here. The earth swells as a wave, climbing two or three feet gradually, and forming a clear apex out toward the center. It was disorienting to be there. I like being on holy ground. I have passed on idle so many times. I have stopped, too, a handful of times, to photograph the elevation from afar, but I never dared to go out on the field until I happened to correspond online with a local arrowhead hunter, my neighbor up the road. He confirmed again that this was the place, and that indeed there was an old man who walked the field looking at the dirt after they'd plowed and a hard rain had come. He said to just park and go walk. Nobody's gonna mess with you and if they do, just apologize, tell them what you doin. You lookin for an arrowhead. The worst they can do is tell you to get the hell outa there, but... there? Nah. People know what that place is. No one's gonna mess with you. 

It's the harvest time. Just last week I passed the field in question and it was knee deep with weeds grown up in the weeks after the harvest. But the fields on this side of the PDF have been getting plowed, so I had the feeling that it had been, also. I waited until the cool of sunset to go out there. I took my boys, sat them down at the treeline with a bag of potato chips and a pig in a blanket each and told them to stay put while I tramped off into the field. 

I looked around and around, walking, looking down, listening for trucks that passed, watching the little red and white spots of my children against the black of the treeline, yelling at them occasionally or hearing them playing. I was unprepared for arrowhead hunting in my old red leather loafers, now full of fine dirt, as I had sunk eight inches in places as I walked. At the apex of the mound, which is not extremely pronounced, I took some pictures. I detected a death smell, very faintly, yet clearly. Surely from a field mouse crushed under the plow, I thought, but I could not help to think of the place and wonder what it really was.  I picked up clods, but found no stone, no ceramic. I walked crushing the clods in my hands and letting the dust fall. At the high point I found a dark clod of earth, cooler and fresher than that rest, and put it in my pocket. 

It seemed to me strange that I was so worshiping this land, an ironic time for me to come there, the permission and the occasion of the harvest coming at the same time that I have been fuming daily about a near neighbor back on my side of the prairie who is excavating a pond and trucking out dozens of Mack trucks a day of Prairie des Femmes dirt to sell, I assume. I hear the grumbling and beeping for twelve hours a day, I can see the machinery. It's officially started to annoy me, not only the noise way back here in the peaceful prairie, but that they were trucking out the land.  The Prairie des Femmes, being unceremoniously trucked out, and I had to listen to it all day. Selling earth was taboo to me, I realized, especially this dirt. 

I believe it is sacred ground, and it has been desecrated to a point. People have built their own homes on these high places, plowed them repeatedly, dumped and littered them, or else built roads over them, as there are a few roads in the PDF that undulate up over a mound and back down again.

I left as the reds of sunset were fading to oranges and purples. I had found nothing but a dark clod of earth from the apex, but what Frozard had said was true: no one messed with me. Now I needed is a big rain...

the rise of the plowed mound

la terre et mon soulier rouge

Sept Aigrettes

Good Friday at Prairie