Louisiana Avenue and Plum Street

Roses via the Tasse Cafe

A Rose
Tu dis en français une rose!
Rose of Sharon: un Althea 
A dwarf rose, ça appelle ça un cinq-sous!
A moss rose, une mousse fleur, ça dit.
Cherokee rose, on est familieux avec ça
les grandes talles d'éronces, les cherokis!
Around Grand Prairie ça appellait ça
la Manche des Cherokis
because there were lot of those roses that were used as a fence because it was so thick the cattle couldn't pass through.

Nous-autres on restait
Là àyou Cameron est asteur,
et le chemin de l'Anse de Tate jusqu'à Cameron
Ça appellait ça la manche des rosiers
C'était les grosses fleurs blanches
les éronces épais, oh yes!
Les fleurs était blanches...
Ça me suprenais pas s'il ya toujours quelque pieds de ça là dedans c't manche là, mais asteur c'est un chemin! C'est tout changé asteur.
Asteur c'est pu un lane! 
Ça appellait ça Brésil dans ses temps là.
Ça change, tout!
Asteur y'a le chemin Theophile.
Mais la Manche des Rosiers té après le chemin Theophile.

Écoute, les cherokis!? You can still find some on the railroad tracks.

Dans la Bible ça dit...

Dans la Bible ça dit, le Dieu dit: Tourne à moi, écoutez les messages de Dieu et pis repentez! Changez votre vie et priez et j'vas venir à le secours de votre pays et votre monde. Ça c'est-- on a besoin de ça!

Our Lady of the Yellow House, New Orleans

Intro

 

I grew up Catholic in South Louisiana where shrines dedicated to the Blessed Mother are so common in homes and in yards that they go nearly unremarked. Yard grottos seemed as part of the landscape as the rosebushes and bird baths, hand pumps, and Victorian gazing balls that Cajuns and Creoles decorate with. Like most Catholic women, I inherited and cultivated a venation for the Blessed Mother, I saw the statues, but it was such a normal and quiet thing that it was unquestioned by me until I grew up, learned about myself, and looked around the prairie highways of my homeland with new eyes.

When I was twenty one I went to Church Point, Nova Scotia to learn French at the Université Sainte Anne where I was immersed in the language of my French and Acadian ancestors on the the very land where they lived four hundred years ago. I realized that our modern Acadian cousins shared more than last names and French blood with us, but that they were aware of our history in a different way than I had been growing up in South Louisiana. They were proud of their language and especially of their flag, the French tri-color, with one addition: a brilliant yellow five-pointed star in the field of blue in the top left corner that I was told represented the Maris Stella, Mary, Star of the Sea, Protectoress of the Acadians who had shepherded them on their sea voyage across the Atlantic from France.  While on excursion to an old Acadian graveyard, I entered a small chapel that had an altar and large statue of Our Lady of the Assumption inside. She crushed the serpent underfoot. She reminded me of home and family in a new and profound way. Back in Louisiana, the more French I learned, the more sensitive I was to our uniqueness and also our interconnectedness with other French speaking, Catholic cultures around the world.  I seemed to hear French everywhere, and the grottos to the Virgin Mary became a physical representation for me of the beauty, humility and faith of our culture. As I documented more local history and French, I thought someone should also document the grottos, but I never thought that person would be me.

    I was married after the Storms of 2005 and moved to the country of Saint Landy Parish, to an unincorporated area called la Prairie des Femmes, or Prairie of the Women. I struggled to teach French at the local high school, run a country household, and be the wife a mother I really wanted to be.  My husband was supportive and encouraged me to stop teaching and stay at home with our children, and we made the necessary sacrifices. Needing an outlet and unable to travel outside the Prairie des Femmes, I decided to go deep into the place where I lived, to accept it as my humble place in the world and to do research the origins of the name Prairie des Femmes and also document the daily life and French language that exists there. I started a blog site, www.prairiedesfemmes.blogspot.com, to organize my thoughts.

 There were a few yard shrines down the Prairie des Femmes road. One of my neighbors even had two separate grottos in their front yard with a Pieta in the side yard. This really is the "Prairie des Femmes", I thought to myself. I took pictures with my Iphone of all of the statues in the Prairie des Femmes. Because of the everywhere nature of the statues, and also because I had no real camera, I always brought my Iphone with me and photographed the statues that I encountered naturally in my community. Then I branched out to the adjacent prairies and towns and everywhere I went, I saw her. The statues, like the veneration, were such a part of the landscape, that it took slowing down to really see the beauty and mystery of my own surroundings. Incorporating the Marian veneration I saw in the Prairie des Femmes and eventually across South Louisiana became a natural extension of my research through the Praire des Femmes blog.

Through interviews I was told that the Prairie des Femmes has been a place where women and children found safety from different events: wars and floods and the struggles of life. It was also said that it was where the first French-speaking settlers to this land found an Attakapas village of only native women. None of these claims are substantiated, but as least for me, the Prairie was a refuge and a tough-loving mother. It was clear that the Prairie des Femmes was a wild place in Saint Landry Parish, but it had also became a metaphor of South Louisiana French-Catholic culture where veneration of  Mary is abundant, visible and unquestioned, an enclave where she still finds protection.

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