Prairie des Femmes : July 2026

Monday, July 27, 2026

Sunday, July 26, 2026

Friday, July 24, 2026

The First Arnaudville Table Française July 2006

This summer marks twenty years that I live in the Prairie des Femmes. In 2004 I began to come here and spend time as a camp and a wild place. « We’re going to the prairie » we’d say.

It was a dream place where a house was being raised. This house was a curiosity and then a wonder to me. No one had ever brought me to a new land and hand built me a home. The day before we married I found myself alone in the central room of the house. I sat on the fresh wooden floor with my back on the cypress tree pillar in the middle of the room and imagined the future that would pass in this room. This would be the room where I lived, celebrated every Christmas, conceived and raised children. Though I didn’t know it then, it was where I would become a woman of the prairie.

I moved here permanently on my wedding night, July 14, 2006. I remember the moon casting our enormous shadows on the wall as he carried me over the threshold through the French doors he’d kicked open. It was fine, the doors had holes for knobs. The next morning we had an open house party in our unfinished prairie cottage. My grandparents showed up earlier than anyone else the morning after my wedding night and made me scramble for my modesty. Everyone showed up later and were able to eat their own personal pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, the groom’s favorite. We drank and played music surrounded by family and flower arrangements from the wedding.

The next week was dream like. I hand-washed my wedding dress and dried it in the porch. We ate at Myran’s Maison de Manger. We went to Nunu’s first potluck. We lived and worked in our new house to make sure it had a front wall, doorknobs, hot water and reliable electricity, all of which we had moved in without. I was preparing to begin as the new French teacher at nearby Beau Chêne high school while my new husband was a Cajun musician. He left for tour after our marriage. I was brave about it, but at 25 I was alone for the first time in the Prairie des Femmes. The house was sparse. There was no internet in those days. I boiled water in a red kettle for my baths and used a fancy bath oil, Mary Black by Florence Gunnarson, because it was all the soap that I had. I was sure that I had moved to the far countryside and bid goodbye to the cultural scene around the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette but soon I realized that nearby Arnaudville was emerging as its own cultural bastion, mainly through NuNu’s cultural arts center with George Marks and his mother Rita. There were events there such as the community pot luck, bands like Joe Hall and the Louisiana Cane Cutters, and at the end of July, a new French Table headed by Arnaudville matriarch Mavis Arnaud Frugé. I wrote the information about the a French table on the back of a card and pinned it to our post. I looked at that card every day as a beacon, my only social outing while I was alone and first French event before I became the « Madame » of Beau Chêne.

I attended the table that day and made acquaintances and friendships that I hold still today. Madame Mavis served us beignets she hand fried on the steep edge of Bayou Têche. I have continued to attend her monthly French tables at Nunu’s. It was there and through the strong French that still exists in Arnaudville that I was able to integrate into this community. Last year i was asked to lead the Arnaudville French Table and today I find myself in the unique position to be leading it 20 years to the day that I first attended as a newlywed. I find myself no longer married, but still choosing to stay in this place and serve this community and to stay in this house on the prairie that was my refuge all those years ago. I raise three beautiful sons in the Prairie des Femmes and still serve my community as Madame as I teach French to the girls of the Sacred Heart of Grand Coteau, just west of the prairie.

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Alphonse Ardoin and the Zydeco Kingz

My clear journal pouch with prairie paintings, iridescent cloud hydrocoloid patches, nail art patches, dried elderflower, found prairie ceramics, holographic cellophane, vintage wall paper, bracelet from the zydeco