Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Monday, October 6, 2014
Nonc Bob est La!
Et là, tu peux le suivre asteur sus l'Facebook!
C'est bien!
Sur l'Facebook, Nonc Bob est là!
Sur l'Facebook, c'est bien!
Sur l'Facebook, Nonc Bob est là!
Nonc Bob est là!
Nonc Bob est là!
Sur l'Facebook, c'est bien!
Sur l'Facebook, Nonc Bob est là!
Sur l'Facebook, Nonc Bob est là!
Nonc Bon est là!
C'est bien!
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Flint Shards at the Olivier Site
Research of the name Prairie des Femmes has pointed me to a particular field near my house, a big open field where milo and soybeans are rotated. It's been farmed for decades at least, but it sure is curious how the whole thing has been left open and otherwise undeveloped. As if there is memory there. It was brought to my attention that there is a slight elevation in the middle of this field that is a plowed Indian mound, possibly a site of the "village" of native women la Prairie des Femmes is named for.
After I found out about the location, I took every chance to pass by this field, in complete awe, seeing at different times of year how the grain undulated out toward the center. You couldn't see it at certain angles, but there is surely a mound out there, even though it has been plowed hundreds of times. I would idle down the dirt road that skirts the south side, I would even stop sometimes just to look and maybe take a picture when the rise was visible, but I never dared to go out into the site until I talked to a neighbor who encouraged me to go, saying that no one would protest my presence there. So I waited for them to plow, and it's as if I felt it when they did; I had a hunch. Sure enough, it was bare dirt, the mound like a long still wave out there. I went. I was woozy to be out there on that sacred ground. But I was too focused on my children and every crunch of gravel from the road to concentrate. I did feel that place, though. I took the clods of dirt in my hands and let them break to the ground. I looked out across the land, purple in sunset, to watch a lone starling flit around, or, to jump, startled by the wind's song in a surviving stalk, or the buzz of an insect, the call of the killdeer. But the field was dusty and coarsely plowed. I needed a big rain to wash it all down and reveal what was underneath. I took a clod of dirt from the apex and went home, happy. I waited a day, and as if on cue, the first cool front of the season came, hand in hand with the opening of squirrel weekend. The front had woken me up at dawn with the thought of arrowhead hunting. The cool snap had everyone out and feeling good. Harvest and the scent of fires were in the air. The moon waxed past half, and I took the chance to go back to the site. This time, the rain had smoothed things out, but the mud was so sticky it felt like I was hauling ten pound boots across the expanse, and my children were covered. We settled on collecting a bag of the biggest and sweetest pecans I have ever found which were falling from the nearest tree to the mound, and even picked up a few pieces of white ceramic from the mud before going home to hose off.
When I told my neighbor that I'd found no artifacts, just big pecans after the rain he said, well you must be lookin with ya eyes closed! I know for a fact that there are shards all over that north side, right over the hump... that field is full of shards.
Well, novice as I was at all this, I didn't know what a shard was, I was looking for arrowheads! I anxiously went back anyway that evening, after the field had dried a little more. This would be the time, I knew it. I knew where to go, I had appeased (or at least tried to appease) the ancestors. Third time's the charm, I said. I started scanning the northside of the mound. The north wind blew through the good pecan tree so loudly it broke my concentration, and there were squirrel hunters in the woods to both sides of the site, their lone shots ringing every few minutes, also breaking the calm of my mud scanning. I felt like I had been training for this my whole life, though, as I normally scan the ground for things (like rocks and snakes), and have found treasures in the dirt (the first was a tiny, ornate key in the compact dirt of the neighbor's dooryard) since I was young. Still not seeing anything in the mud, I began picking up anything that seemed out of sorts, anything hard, not mud or vegetation, and put it in my pocket. Then I saw a little rock... hmmm, it was flat and white and seemed insignificant, a chip. I felt it between my fingers before hastily dropping it behind my back... just as I was bending over and saw two more in front of me. Shards, I thought. I began picking them up. This is the place. They were not densely scattered, but by the time I left, I had a pocketful of strangely shaped rocks, two smooth white marbles that reminded me of the full moon and a planet, white ceramic pieces, and twenty small, very sharp flint shards from arrowhead making at the site. They are all in pastels, sharp as shark's teeth, like jagged wampum, each one impossibly thin and complex. Their texture is so foreign to me, so unlike what I usually find in Louisiana mud, it is old, old rock, traded and chipped centuries, even millennia ago. I now keep the colorful assortment together in a small ceramic dish, examining their elegant shapes and qualities with my fingertips. I find I like their vibration so much when they are stirred, their dry rasp, it's so quiet it's almost like a whipser.
After I found out about the location, I took every chance to pass by this field, in complete awe, seeing at different times of year how the grain undulated out toward the center. You couldn't see it at certain angles, but there is surely a mound out there, even though it has been plowed hundreds of times. I would idle down the dirt road that skirts the south side, I would even stop sometimes just to look and maybe take a picture when the rise was visible, but I never dared to go out into the site until I talked to a neighbor who encouraged me to go, saying that no one would protest my presence there. So I waited for them to plow, and it's as if I felt it when they did; I had a hunch. Sure enough, it was bare dirt, the mound like a long still wave out there. I went. I was woozy to be out there on that sacred ground. But I was too focused on my children and every crunch of gravel from the road to concentrate. I did feel that place, though. I took the clods of dirt in my hands and let them break to the ground. I looked out across the land, purple in sunset, to watch a lone starling flit around, or, to jump, startled by the wind's song in a surviving stalk, or the buzz of an insect, the call of the killdeer. But the field was dusty and coarsely plowed. I needed a big rain to wash it all down and reveal what was underneath. I took a clod of dirt from the apex and went home, happy. I waited a day, and as if on cue, the first cool front of the season came, hand in hand with the opening of squirrel weekend. The front had woken me up at dawn with the thought of arrowhead hunting. The cool snap had everyone out and feeling good. Harvest and the scent of fires were in the air. The moon waxed past half, and I took the chance to go back to the site. This time, the rain had smoothed things out, but the mud was so sticky it felt like I was hauling ten pound boots across the expanse, and my children were covered. We settled on collecting a bag of the biggest and sweetest pecans I have ever found which were falling from the nearest tree to the mound, and even picked up a few pieces of white ceramic from the mud before going home to hose off.
When I told my neighbor that I'd found no artifacts, just big pecans after the rain he said, well you must be lookin with ya eyes closed! I know for a fact that there are shards all over that north side, right over the hump... that field is full of shards.
Well, novice as I was at all this, I didn't know what a shard was, I was looking for arrowheads! I anxiously went back anyway that evening, after the field had dried a little more. This would be the time, I knew it. I knew where to go, I had appeased (or at least tried to appease) the ancestors. Third time's the charm, I said. I started scanning the northside of the mound. The north wind blew through the good pecan tree so loudly it broke my concentration, and there were squirrel hunters in the woods to both sides of the site, their lone shots ringing every few minutes, also breaking the calm of my mud scanning. I felt like I had been training for this my whole life, though, as I normally scan the ground for things (like rocks and snakes), and have found treasures in the dirt (the first was a tiny, ornate key in the compact dirt of the neighbor's dooryard) since I was young. Still not seeing anything in the mud, I began picking up anything that seemed out of sorts, anything hard, not mud or vegetation, and put it in my pocket. Then I saw a little rock... hmmm, it was flat and white and seemed insignificant, a chip. I felt it between my fingers before hastily dropping it behind my back... just as I was bending over and saw two more in front of me. Shards, I thought. I began picking them up. This is the place. They were not densely scattered, but by the time I left, I had a pocketful of strangely shaped rocks, two smooth white marbles that reminded me of the full moon and a planet, white ceramic pieces, and twenty small, very sharp flint shards from arrowhead making at the site. They are all in pastels, sharp as shark's teeth, like jagged wampum, each one impossibly thin and complex. Their texture is so foreign to me, so unlike what I usually find in Louisiana mud, it is old, old rock, traded and chipped centuries, even millennia ago. I now keep the colorful assortment together in a small ceramic dish, examining their elegant shapes and qualities with my fingertips. I find I like their vibration so much when they are stirred, their dry rasp, it's so quiet it's almost like a whipser.
Squirrel Season Warning: C'est Pas Des Bébelles
La grande fête de la Paroisse Evangeline
La fête des écureuils!
La saison des écureuils
Va commencer officialment demain matin.
À tous ce vous les chasseurs
Qu'après nous écouter
On veut souhaite vous-autres va se comporter
a'oir un bon temps
et rappellez-vous de
Les fusils et des armes
C'est pas des bébelles.
C'est pas des bébelles.
Les fusils et des armes
C'est pas des bébelles.
C'est pas des bébelles.
Les fusils et des armes
C'est pas des bébelles.
C'est pas des bébelles.
C'est pas des bébelles.
Vent dans l'arbre dans la PDF
Les vents dans cet arbre pendant que j'faisait du arrowheading à ce matin
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Un Ti Buzz, you know?
Tu connais
Quand ti manges
Dessus les jalapenos bourés, le
Ça, ça donne
Un ti buzz, tu connais?
Un ti buzz, tu connais?
Un ti buzz, tu connais?
Un ti buzz, tu connais?
Stuffed Jalapeno Peppers?
Ça, ça donne
Un ti buzz pimenté
Un ti buzz, pimenté
Un ti buzz, tu connais?
Un ti buzz, pimenté.
The Plowed Mound
 |
| the Apex and the Moon |
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, like being on holy ground. I have passed on idle so many times but never stopped.
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 tree line, 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 |
Monday, September 29, 2014
This is the place!
Word on the Prairie Streets is that this slight elevation in the field in the Prairie des Femmes is the location of one of many Indian mounds that has been plowed many times over for agriculture. I pass here often, waiting for a chance after they harvest, plow and then it rains a big rain so I can go arrowhead hunting. I have even stopped a few times at the elevation in the road. It is definitely "the place"!
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
Thursday, September 11, 2014
LES CCC
Les community crime cameras
va venir avant longtemps!
va venir avant longtemps!
va venir avant longtemps!
Les community crime cameras
va venir avant longtemps
community crime cameras
va venir avant longtemps
community crime cameras!
community crime cameras!
community crime cameras!
va venir avant longtemps!
va venir avant longtemps!
va venir avant longtemps!
va venir avant longtemps!
Les community crime cameras
va venir avant longtemps
community crime cameras
va venir avant longtemps
community crime cameras!
community crime cameras!
community crime cameras!
va venir avant longtemps!
Monday, September 8, 2014
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Friday, September 5, 2014
Collecting Sassafrass for File'
Pick the leaves before the first cold snap, ideally the last full moon in August. The nutrients are
still in the leaves then. Hang the branches to dry in a pillowcase on the line, or in a the cabanne, and at
Thanksgiving, with the family all get together, clean out the
twigs, crumble the leaves by hand, picking out the leaf stems. Then use a spice mill, blender or mortar and pestle to grind and then you can sieve it to make it a very smooth powder.
If a tree is not near, replant it before spring in the new location, before the budding begins, while it is still dormant. Usually you can find a few younger plants near the older, as the roots run, and offshoots develop.
If a tree is not near, replant it before spring in the new location, before the budding begins, while it is still dormant. Usually you can find a few younger plants near the older, as the roots run, and offshoots develop.
Rime de Rose du Bois
Ça c'est ma portfeuille
ça c'est mes mouchoirs,
ça c'est tout mes piastres de l'or
pour aller au festival.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Monday, September 1, 2014
A New Crop of Random ECards
 |
| YOU need to put some kerosene in the cistern to kill the tadpoles! |
 |
| If you T-Galop all the way from la Pointe-aux-Pins to T-Mamou, you will burn some calories. |
 |
| OUAIS! And I can name them... Allons 'oir.. there's drought, flood, bolls weevil and worm, rayon, nylon and .... hmmmm.... |
 |
| Ohhhhh she is as fine as a syrup cake! |
 |
| La Ville des Manteau.... |
 |
| Go West Young Man! Go West and Go To Mamou! |
 |
| Just Stop. |
 |
| This reminded me of when Mr. JD was at the Mamou Mardi Gras and all the young guys were dancing on top of their horses and he stood up and said "Hey! I'm fifty years old!" |
 |
| Watch em, now! |
 |
| So THAT's how they knew to come to Ville Platte... |
 |
| C'est vrai! |
 |
| Here's some veggies and cheese for yall to snack on. |
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Les oiseaux chantent tout le temps
Même ils chantent
au milieu de la nuit
Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Les guêpes et les serpents
Et dans l'été
Ca tombe les jambes de pluie
La Prairie des Femmes
Pointe Claire
Prairie Laurent
Les femmes restait
Les femmes restait
les hommes sont partis
Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Je crois je peux attendre
Je crois je peux attendre
Quand dans la silence j'entends
dans la nuit
Monday, August 25, 2014
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
How do you say Walmart in French?
Comment t'apelles
Walmart en Français?
Walmart!
Walmart!
Walmart!
Comment t'apelles
Walmart en Français?
Walmart!
Walmart!
Walmart!
Comme le nom
de Emile Veillon
tu connais?
de Emile Veillon
tu connais?
Walmart est toujours
le même nom
le même nom
Comme le nom
de Emile Veillon,
tu connais?
de Emile Veillon,
tu connais?
Walmart est toujours
le même nom.
le même nom.
Comme le nom d'Emile
Walmart, tu connais?
Walmart est toujours
Walmart est toujours
le même nom
Comme le nom d'Emile
Walmart, tu connais?
Walmart est toujours
le même nom.
le même nom.
Fee Follet (in the woods)
Fee Follet
In the woods
Fee Follet
Fille Fille!
Fee Follet
In the woods
Fee Follet
Fille Fille!
What is dat?
Fee Follet
In the woods
Fee Follet
Fille Fille!
Fille Fille!
What is dat?
In da woods
Fee Follet
Fille Fille!
Fille Fille!
Crazy Fire!
Crazy Fire
In the woods
Crazy Fire!
Crazy Fire
In the woods
It was vary scary
Vary scary
Vary scary
In the woods
Crazy Fire
Crazy Fire
In the woods
It would make a glowing light
a glowing light...
a glowing light...
in the woods
Fee Follet would lead dem
the wrong direction
Uh huh
Feu Follet
Uh huh
Uh huh
Feu Follet
Uh huh
Uh huh
Feu Follet
Uh huh
Uh huh
and low ground
In the woods
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Huitres Bien Rares en 2014
Et finalment
Ça dit que les huitres est biens rares
au long du Gulf Coast
et le plus bas depuis les passeés quatres ans
quand le British Petroleum Oil Spill...
quand l'huile avait vidé dans le Golfe.
Ça dit que les banc des huitres après produire moins que un tier de ça ça faisait
avant le oil spill.
C'est tout le temps on avait pour
les nouvelles en français à ce matin
presenté à vous
avec les compliments
de la Banque Evangeline!
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Monday, August 4, 2014
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