Complexes of Apartment

Old Plantation on Gloria Switch 

Rue Royale on Pont des Mouton

Rue Royale in Summer

La Petite Place Apartments in Grand Coteau

Pointe Claire Plaza on the Pointe Claire side of Arnaudville

La Belle Maison in Kenner

La Bonne Vie in Lafayette

Prairie des Femmes Origins

Had a good visit with my new little babysitter who lives across the prairie a half mile south as the crow flies. A beauty, she seemed to be a direct descendant of the very women the Prairie is named for. We swapped ghost stories and information about old sites and neighbors and talked about the Indian artifacts that are found here. When I asked her what was the story she had heard of the Prairie, she said her daddy said it was where the Indians "hid" their women when they went off hunting or fighting. It was the first time I'd heard it told like that, and I liked it! 

 

Click here for more PDF Origin Stories

The Presbytère of Prairie des Femmes

This is the Presbytère, known as the Lagrange House circa 1830. Its original location was in Prairie des Femmes, and now it is a registered historic structure located at Vermilionville in Lafayette. I was happy to be able to explore it yesterday. When I walked in to it, I felt the scale and form of the space was exactly like the old Lagrange house in the woods out here, except in miniature. I have written about here and here and most recently here. It made me hopeful that one day we can do something to save the big Lagrange House, but for now, she remains the hidden jewel of the Prairie des Femmes woods.

Red, White and Green, just like the LaGrange House.

The LaGrange Family House 1830

Inside the House

bed and candle

Our Lady and Kneeler

Up the garconiere, where the boys slept. This angle and exposed bousillage looks exactly like the big LaGrange House out here in the PDF woods.

Job's Tears in a bottle and candle

Same angles in the second room of the house as at the big Lagrange House

Red, Green and White.

The Presbytère of Prairie des Femmes

Small Talk about the Vent Nord

Mista Charlie-

Hey! 

This is John Pitre from Plaisance.

Allo Mista Pitre!

Comment les affaires à ce matin?
Haaw, 'coute! Les tit' zydecos après profiter dans l'vent nord!
Tit' vent nord, là, il chiffone la robe de Nananne des fois!

_______________________________________

Mista Charlie-
Hey!
This is John Pitre from Plaisance.
Hello Mister Pitre!
How are things this morning?
Aw, listen! The little snap beans are growing in the north wind!
The north wind there, it blows Nananne's skirt up sometimes!

Praying for the World at the Prairie Ronde Shrine

 I was driving the Opelousas Road today and had a few hours to myself, so I decided to turn off on the Prairie Ronde Highway, a road that despite having passed easily ten thousand times in my life, I had never once traveled down. People ask me if I've photographed the Ave Maria Shrine out there, so I thought today was the day. I traveled the broad turns through the prairie communities of Andrepont and Frilot Cove, places that despite their proximity to my hometown, I had never seen.

It was very peaceful out there on the Prairie Ronde and I could immediately smell the citrus scent of the rose bushes planted around the perimeter of the shrine. I was surprised to find the shrine bustling with people, there were ladies and men holding rosaries and speaking in English and French. 

There was an open air metal pavilion with benches that protected the inner room of the Shrine, and there was a fine mist all around from small tubes piped to spray cooling water on the faithful. It was very misty indeed, and the metal benches and prayer cards got damp if the wind was right, but it was so pleasant and cooled us in the mounting heat of a June afternoon.  In the small central room is a replica of the Fatima statue carved by the same family as the original in Portugal. I spent a good 20 minutes alone in the little shrine listening to the group singing and praying the rosary. It was very cool, and very, very calm in there. The statue in the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima is the most beautiful and peaceful I have ever seen.

I met a Mrs. Soileau who said that I happened to be there on the first Saturday of the month, when it was promised that, if this shrine was built on this "Holy Land" of Prairie Ronde, the Blessed Mother herself would come there for five minutes from 6:00 until 6:05 to take the petitions of the faithful to her son.

Well it was 5:00 and if the Lady herself was coming in an hour, I was sure to stick around. I learned that the group had been there since 3:00 (and really since 1996), praying the rosary repeatedly and also saying the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, which I had never prayed before, and found it to be quite beautiful. I sat on the metal bench praying the rosary and listening to the voices of the women and men, feeling the cool mist and watching trucks and old tractors pass on the road. 


 

For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

At one minute to six they began to ring a bell, and rang it more loudly when the hour came, when a younger man in a blue work shirt opened the door to the shrine, and as if divine light spilled out, everyone fell to their knees and the whole scene went into a silent prayer-scape. The scent of roses again was in the air; all you could hear were the bird songs of the prairie, and the soft hum of the mist, which covered us like dew.

La Manche des Rosiers

Two weeks ago I transcribed this where the people of Ville Platte remembered that Cherokee Roses grew thickly on both sides of the lane going to Tate Cove, and that it was called la manche des rosiers, the lane of the roses.

Today on my drive back from a birthday party at my cousin's in Whiteville, I cut across the cove on Rue de Coton and hit Tate Cove Road where I knew they had called it la manche des rosiers dans les années passées, and sure enough, all along the road after the Theophile Road, there you can see the grosses fleurs blanches and éronces verts of the fabled cherokis rose.

les cherokis

les éronces gone à l'anse de Tate

Les Pas Trop Bonnes Nouvelles: Criminelle!

Alle est dit d'être cinq pieds de haut
cent-cinq livres à peise et
les cheveux noirs
avec des star tattoo sur le poignet gauche
et un autre tattoo sur le poignet droit
Alle est voulu pour attempted first degree murder
Home invasion, 
armed robbery, 
false imprisonment, 
criminal conspiracy
et quelq'un connait l'information dessus où alle peux être
'sont demandé de contact l'office de sheriff de la paroisse...


They caught her! Click here to see la criminelle...http://www.katc.com/news/welsh-police-one-person-killed-following-double-shooting/ 

Congratulations Loretta, Girl!

 

Prairie des Femmes Cabinet

A Trip to New Iberia

The Rosary House

Our Lady of the Rosary House

No Hand Mary

Across the Street

Lourdes Grotto on "Shadow Street"

Petitions and Offerings in the Grotto

In Memory of the Pioneer Families of New Iberia and in gratitude to God for His abundant blessings to the Teche Country.

Charming the Ladies at Victor's

Of course a trip to the New Iberian Teche Country wouldn't be complete without pulling over, putting the truck in 4 wheel drive in a soybean field, and digging up wild Cherokee roses by hand! Talk about tear your hands up, but I had been scouting the ditches of Acadiana for them all spring, and there, in New Iberia with my tolerant best friend Marie, I found the prize that was accessible. Marie said it was o.k. with her. She used to pull over with her grandmother to dig up wild Louisiana Irises, and "now her yard is full of them."

Hurricane Season Update

More Origin Stories

I ran into my neighbor at the New Silver Slipper (Cajun Hibachi!) and asked her about the name Prairie des Femmes. She said that her mother or grandmother said it was because of the Indians. When the Indians would go off to fight and were killed, their widows came here to live together.

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.

Soul Creole: Isis Plays the Cajun Triangle

Things I learned on the Tasse de Cafe Radio Program: Verrat

Ils ont avait eu un bon temps au festival des écrivisses à L'anse Belaire.

Ça était bien nice et j'crois tout quek'un va enjoy si ça va là bas.

"Teet's New Boudin"

Cotton was King in the Paroisse Evangeline

Pop rouge à la glaçe at the cotton gin in Pointe Blue.

Ils ont commencé a tirer les contes!

J'après attrapper hell à la maison à ca matin!

Now what does saloperie mean in English, Charlie?

You know another expression they usta say da ole people, verrat (boar hog). Like un vrai rat but they'd say it real fast so you couldn't get it. Like, a real rat? Un vrai rat?

A couple years ago a couple of ladies and I went out shoppin, went to lunch. And we had some men sittin by us, and we were in Lafayette so we didn't think they could speak French or understand us, so we were speakin in French. So one of the girls says to me, she says, Shirlene, look at that one, he's real bad, and I'm like, shhh! ça c'est un verrat. Then this man at the table, he turned and he says Hey cher! Y'all speak French? Tu peux dire que
ça c'est vrai, je le connais pis il est un vrai verrat!

It was very funny and I'm like, oh no!  I said, we have to be careful where we go because they do still have people our age that do speak French, ya know? So we betta learn Spanish!

But y'all are not les verrats, y'alla good guys, c'est des bons-z-hommes, et vous-autres aye un bon weekend et de la bonne santé.

Mais thank you beaucoup!

Une Chasse-femme

 Je cherche une chasse-femme sans pareille

À la recherche de la chassepareille