Memories of May 1

 When I was a girl I read in a Susan Branch book about the folkloric belief in the healing and beautifying powers imbued in the dew of May 1st. Since then it's been thirty years,  and I have made a point to celebrate May 1st by touching the dew, gathering flowers, crowning Mary and eventually collecting ounces of dew in bottles and pyrex measuring cups. 

Images from my Instagram Memory entitled "May 1"

Wooden Marian shrine nailed to a flowering tree
Dew drops in blue bottles
May 1st by Beach Fossils
A dark recess in the bamboo provides a vignette for a suspended stick,
wrapped by a dead vine like a snake
Black rubber boots and a white April Cornell nightgown
Three miniature bottles of dew on the windowsill, corked
Recipe for Beltane lemonade
Cottonmouth vertebrae, painted gold, used as a crown
Deer tracks and tufts of hair in the cracked, muddy, entrance to the woods
A sighting of a centaur on the dirt road
Sandals with iridescent straps on the cypress porch
A turreted castle surrounded by lilac flowering bushes
A carpet of purple prairie verbena along the dirt road
Multi faceted crystal bottle of May dew with stopper
Thistle sprite
Giant wisteria bunch in the woods we called "our mistletoe"
An aproned woman disappearing into the darkness of the woods, surrounded by fireflies
A fresh bottle of dew with roses
Touching a drop of dew on the cattle fence
White dress and overlay doublet tied twice at the waist
May crowning and goûter at the Academy atop the Holy Coteau
Singing the Magnificat in rounds
Touching the dew that remained in the pine shadow to our faces 
Self-heal flowering on my path
Procession and bouquet of blue Louisiana irises for Mater
Pink, light blue and white linen, a light blue cameo
Fresh swamp roses, a prairie painting 
Marius plays the Mardi Gras song, adds a minor harmony
Blue pool, a clean journal page
Elderflower tops floating in the water

Vale Rosa Palustris

 Vale Rosa Palustris

Swamp Rose season comes with the arrival of the painted bunting's persistent song, blue cardinal eggs in the blackberry bush, red Mamou flower shoots, mulberry trees in full fruit. Both the male and female cardinals tend the nest. The mama bird is so intelligent. She has made her nest in a little Celeste fig tree overtaken by blackberry vines. Within the protection of the blackberry bush’s thorny cage, all surrounded with red and green fruit, her nest is suspended. It is next to a blue kiddie pool of fresh water and a few feet from a mulberry tree in full ripeness. There was a big storm from the west last night and the sound of the rain on the metal roof woke me up at midnight and just before sunrise. I wondered how the mama cardinal protected her three baby birds, and imagined she did so with her wings. The rain turned the nasturtium yellow. I repotted it. I am tending a small garden edged with unused firewood and filled with compost from the Saint Landry Parish landfill. There is a blue runner who visits the garden. Daily I check the cardinal nest and the swamp rose blossoms. Often I have to balance myself on an old bathtub covered in honeysuckle vines in the side yard to reach some of the roses before they fall. This year they traveled up the bamboo, so some blossoms are 15 feet up. Their scent is like baby powder, water, citrus, rose and pink pepper. The chirp of the cardinals and the song of the painted bunting always accompany my gathering. This morning there was a big swamp rabbit in the white clover I observed as I pulled out a loaf of bread I had risen all night from the oven. I'll have to leave prairie in a few days to go to New Orleans and reveal myself by speaking about Prairie des Femmes at the Jazz Fest folk like village. I'll miss the observation of the cardinals, the painted bunting's song, the gathering of the swamp roses and ceremonial dew on the morning of May first, as well as the ritual procession and May crowning of Mary at the Academy on the coteau. The girls will wear white and silently process to crown Mater with flowers. We present her with a bouquet of blue Louisiana irises at the grotto while we sing the Magnificat in rounds.

Update: When I got home from running errands, I heard the incessant  alarm chirping of the cardinals. I ran to the back yard to see the bluerunner standing up fighting the mother cardinal. I scared it off and ran for the shovel, but it was too late, he had gotten one chick and knocked the others out of the nest. I pushed him a few times, in efforts to scare him, with the shovel and it worked. I returned the babies back to the nest with one swoop of my spade, but it was futile. The snake was incessant and came back over and over until we had to let nature take its course. Afterwards I checked the ground to find three cardinal feathers. I listened to the daddy cardinal at the top of a sweet gum tree, a red spot, singing that lonesome song until dusk. That was the first time I understood what Miss Maryanne meant when she talked about the Cardinal Blues, that lonesome sound. 

Quand ils disent,

"C'est p'us pareil!"

Mais ça me donne les blues

D'attendre les cardinaux 

après chanter

Je suis la Prairie des Femmes

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La pluie tombe sur ma reineaume 

Mes larmes font une prairie tremblante 

La terre ondule en bas de mes pieds 

Je suis la Prairie des Femmes 

A note on Cajun Influencing: Comment recommencer la mémoire?

Rocky McKeon created the bilingual gossip column Le Tabloid Cadien! and multiple YouTube series as well as Cajun rap mixtapes and rock music content in the late 2000s.  Evangeline Parish alone had Lucius Fontenot's Pointe Aux Pins site and Mike Hebert's Cajun-Creole blogspot as well as the L'Anse Grise Forum that was active with Dowell Lafleur as chef-en-tête. There was an early Facebook page called "Mais get down and save the dishes next to the ice-box, yeah." After characters like Nonc Chauz and Poo-Poo Broussard went "viral" the Cajun influencing began.

This here PDF blogspot began humbly in 2012 to provide a real, albeit liminal, perspective on Louisiana Cajun and Creole culture. It was shown through the eyes of a self-taught Louisiana French speaking woman who found herself in an old place that was still largely wilderness. I am talking both metaphorically and about the physical realm. The linguistic as well as geographic isolation, coupled with learning my heritage language, doing my genealogy, becoming a mother, observing the seasons and plants and animals was all enriching as well as overwhelming. I was inspired by the language, the place names, the folklore of Louisiana, and wanted to provide something new and more substantial than the usual cliché versions of our culture found in the media and popular culture. I didn’t want to feed into those ideas, but to provide a real look into the values of a modern Louisiana French woman.  I used it as an excuse to explore my own linguistic acquisition, creative whims, as well as document the place where I lived. From the surface the prairie seemed like any Louisiana back country, east of Opelousas, but deeply held the old memory that only the earth can keep.

I hazarded myself to my elders, accepting their corrections, guidance, and stern warnings against some behaviors. I saw, and still see, my role as someone who gathers, protects, expands not just the folklore and language but also the values carried in it, the old Latin ways and Indigenous matriarchy that our great-grandparents operated within, maybe even without  realizing it. I wanted to share my experience learning the language to provide an example of what is possible for other young people as well as what healing can be done  inter-generationally across the reacquisition of our heritage languages, and applied this to my artistic work. It was healing work of my own linguistic wounds as well as those of my community and for years I did it anonymously, with no name attached to my blog. This was my deeply painful and complicated identity work that comes with the responsibility of true language acquisition, and I wanted to be a vessel for it, to transmit it. If you know anything about treatment, faith healing and the beliefs that we still carry, you know this work intrinsically carries a prohibition against capitalizing upon them and even speaking of the work, if the healing is going to happen at all. Otherwise, it’s just American business as usual. This has been my struggle and I still reap little to no financial benefits from my herbal, language or artwork because of my core belief that it may negate the healing. Like saying thank you for a plant, or working on Good Friday. There are certain things we just don’t do. 

Fast forward 20 years and there are a whole crop of “Cajun influencers” Some of them are credible and show an authenticity, have a true feeling of humor and gentility about their approach. They enrich the culture by their contributions and transparency. There are some who, despite their heavy accents and adorable mannerisms, many of which hit us in the nostalgia, still miss the mark.

It's important to honor that we all contribute in different ways according to our strengths and expertise. Some carry the culinary traditions, writing, hunting, fishing, trapping, woodwork, music, instrument making, joke and storytelling, crawfishing, foraging, song, dance, horsemanship, rice farming, trail-riding, mardi-grasing, quilting and tatting, embroidery, basket weaving, language reacquisition, traitment. Many of us carry multiple of these and others. We must take these responsibilities seriously. We allow ourselves to creatively innovate and improvise within ourselves and our modern community values without selling out our ancestors. It is our job to steward the language and culture mindfully across our generation. Cultural work after greater community loss is deeply personal work within the individual that also that spills out into the larger society. If we share it without true understanding and measure, it risks the continuation of Cajun stereotypes, half truths and generalizations that we have endured for centuries, but this time it is metabolized, disseminated and sold out by our own people who think a quirky t-shirt, a seasoning blend and/or some catch phrases is proof of culture deep enough to influence. I fear that Americanization has already influenced the influencer to capitalize on our culture on a surface level to appeal to the general American public.

Hey, teacher, teacher, tell me how do you respond to students? 

And refresh the page and restart the memory? 

Re-spark the soul and rebuild the energy? 

We stopped the ignorance, we killed the enemy 

Sorry for the night demons that still visit me  

KW

 

Comment recommencer la mémoire? This work of figuring out who you are, who we are, how to reengage with the language and apply the values of our ancestors is not to be broadcast and cheapened. It’s personal work full of the missteps made by us, the perpetual children of this culture, who are  just learning how to speak and move gracefully and with humility, as did our ancestors.  If influencers did the private work, and learned the language, experienced the humility of the old ways, felt the embarrassment, ingested the same indignity shown to our elders through the language, they would cease to want to be influencers on an American platform. There is a change in the value system when we metabolize the true essence of our people and of Louisiana French and Creole, and this dignity has parameters, it is not a joke or entertainment. True stewardship of our culture is sometimes silent. It's like a prairie plant that blooms quietly in the pasture even in the face of subsidence and drought, poison and plow, unseen by anyone but the bees who work to pollinate the entire Cajun Prairie.

Radio sur la Prairie

Radio on the Prairie Herbology 

Pixelated Maris Stella

 

Medicines I made in the Spring

 Medicine I made since the early spring

Vinéraire oil and balm

Wild orange flower enfleurage oil

Sweet olive flower enfleurage oil

Poke root oil

Pine sap balm and oil

Cleaver infusion

Lizard's tail infusion

Chickweed oil

Plantain oil

Nettle tea

Nettle powder

Violet hydrosol

Violet tea

Clove, nettle and poke hair tonic

Clove spray for face

Cinnamon Florida water

Wax Myrtle infused alcohol

PDF Official

 

Died at Prairie des Femmes

 

Talking Pâque Eggs with K4 and 2eme

​Pock Pock Talk with K4 and 2eme

We watched Monsieur Calvin Rabbelais of Avoyelles Parish paques eggs with his grandson- they all cheered for the petit garçon
You have to be a judicious paqueur! I tell them. 
The difference between the pockee and pockeur: 

The "pockee" gets pocked, the pockeur pocks.
A round of Queen's "We will Pock you"
A warning against the vieux nonc's unfair and aggressive pocking tactics: 
side and under pocking, efforts to gris-gris by encircling the top slowly, 

ruses of soft taps, sneak attacks. They like to do that, the old uncles. 
Hand position provides protection from side paqueurs and sneak attacks. 
Petit bout vs grand bout: K4 knows the difference. 
Kissing the egg for luck.
They don't pock eggs in France, so say. The kids are shocked.  

A stern warning to the second grade girls not to paint the eggs with nail polish, it's their secret.

No use of guinea eggs except in a separate bracket guinea fight, now that's country.

The men would dye their eggs with old felt hats and the eggs would come out black black. Then they would polish them with oil- some scary pock eggs!

In Ville Platte the men carried their egg in their front shirt pocket 

to pock in the churchyard after Easter Sunday mass.

Why do the French eat one egg for breakfast?

Because one egg is "un oeuf". 

Pointe Blue Toile

Cypress washhouse

Sprouts from the spearmint patch

Sharecropper barn with license plates attached

Manche des Prudhomme blue hatchback

Wild onions and the red sassafras

Chicken trees, soco vines

Brick cistern, fig wine

A child's gumbo, balles de foin

Catalpa tree at the coin

Appalousa paint horse

Under the chinaball

Nonc grows the chat-bouillie and lilas parasol

Point Blue rice pump

Barbwire fence

Beyond the cove

The evergreen isle

Of far off Pointe Aux Pins

Song of the Painted Bunting

April 11- 

Heard the first song 

Of the painted bunting 

In the prairie today 

April to August they sing

Tu peux croire

Ever since I crossed the River 

I aint never been the same

Bathin' in the rice pump

Prayin' on a name

The mint around the wash house

Liane de Ba-Na-Kà

Tu peux croire comme tu veux!

C’est le Bon Dieu qui fait tout ça.

La Prairie des Femmes

Prairie des Femmes ​

Gold Confederate Buttons in Grand Coteau

Civil War General wrote this in his book published in 1879.

"On an occasion, passing the little hamlet of Grand Coteau, I stopped to get some food for man and horse. A pretty maiden of fifteen springs, whose parents were absent, welcomed me. Her lustrous eyes and long lashes might have excited the envy of " the dark-eyed girl of Cadiz." Finding her alone, I was about to retire and try my fortune in another house ; but she insisted that she could prepare "monsieur un diner dans un tour de main," and she did. Seated by the window, looking modestly on the road, while I was enjoying her repast, she sprang to her feet, clapped her hands joyously, and exclaimed : " Voila le gros Jean Baptiste qui passe sur son mulet avec deux bocals. Ah ! nous aurons grand bal ce soir." It appeared that one jug of claret meant a dance, but two very high jinks indeed. As my hostess declined any remuneration for her trouble, I begged her to accept a pair of plain gold sleeve buttons, my only ornaments. Wonder, delight, and gratitude chased each other across the pleasant face, and the confiding little creature put up her rose-bud mouth. In an instant the homely room be- came as the bower of Titania, and I accepted the chaste salute with all the reverence of a subject for his Queen, then rode away with uncovered head so long as she remained in sight. Hospitable little maiden of Grand Coteau, may you never have graver fault to confess than the innocent caress you be- stowed on the stranger ! It was to this earthly paradise, and upon this simple race,  that the war came, like the tree of the knowledge of evil to our early parents..."

Merci Madeline of Mimosa for passing this information along

 

À l’Académie

Gathering nettles, poke root and  

Clear pearls of pine sap 

In the bois de Sacré Cœur 
Making wild neroli enfleurage oil 
Collecting violets under the oak alley 
Je rentre dans l'arcade, l'aire est lourde 

With osmanthus ​and fog - a springtime aerosol 

Marie Antoinette in the gardens of the Sacred Heart / Marie Antoinette dans le jardin de Sacré Cœur

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A Prairie des Femmes Desire Path

Printemps dans la prairie

Je refuse de couper les zabs

Ca fait plus possible à voir

Mon spring desire path

Dark Acadiana

Dark Acadiana

The night sky over Kaplan

Rodrigue's oaks

Maw-maw from Pointe Noire

Fleur d'Asiminer/Paw-Paw flower

La valse de Balfa

L'Anse de Prien Noir

Duck and andouille gumbo

Midnight Teal Sauce Piquante

Cucumbers with the black pepper and white vinegar

Gateau Sirop

The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary

"Carry ya cross"

Malveaux

Jar of cherry bounce

A Sidney Brown Accordion 

Chaudière Noire

Daily mass in Scott

Elton Rice Dryers

The Pine Grove Blues

Reciting the Divine Mercy 

Burning the cane field

Ville Platte Smoked Ponce

The Mamou Teenage Center

Damballa par Beau Joques

Chou gras

"Spidawort can grow unda the black walnut tree, yeah."

Un cafe noir, un cafe' brulot

Blackbird Jambalaya

Sur le Bord de Vaisseau Blind Uncle Gaspard

"Don't dig in the dirt on Good Friday, the ground will bleed."

Rice Fields surrounding the Holiday Lounge

Water from Bayou Vermillion

Madame Grand Doigts

Making a holy hour in the avant-jour

Ash Wednesday

Zin-Zin Road

Les Mortalites on la Tasse de Cafe

Moise Robin's Golden Gate

Blood Boudin

Pray Opelousas

Planter dans la lune

X on your last name 

Light Acadiana

 Light Acadiana

Evangeline Maid Bread

Elder Flower Tops

Maw-Maw from LeBlanc

The Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary

Nannie's Tatting

White wisteria on Church Road

Cherokee Roses along the cattle fields

Lizard's Tail root in water

Chataignier Road after a spring rain

La Danseuse by Blind Uncle Gaspard

Ave Maria Shrine in Prairie Ronde

Rue des Etoiles

Feu-Follet

Daily mass in Vatican

Avery Island salt dome

Cattle egrets

Catalpa flowers

Creole Belle rice sacks 

Tea Cakes 

Mayhaw Sweet Dough Pie

Fish on Fridays

Blonde roux

Coffeemilk

Job's tear Rosary 

White painted gourd birdhouse

The Pine Island Apparition 

Alligator-gar scale earrings

Holy Water from the rice pump

Vineraire flowers at La Toussaint

The Imaculata Center

Avoyelles Parish

Easter Sunday in Abbeville

Magnalite pots

May crowning by the girls of the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau

A bowl of white medium grain rice

Prairie des Femmes Chalk Cave Painting

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O Malheureuse

 

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In Veneration of Life Everlasting

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Quebedeau Picnic at Prairie des Femmes 1899

 

 

Odile Falcon Journal

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Mon cœur quand il me parle

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Équand Bocephus était au Purple Peacock. »

Le grand musicien et garçon de Hank Williams Sr. aussi connu comme Bocephus va être après jouer la musique au bal à Eunice!  Ouais mes amis, c’est Hank Williams Jr. qui va jouer au Purple Peacock a grand Eunice ce vendredi soir à sept heures du soir, Portes ouvertes à six heures! Comment tu crois, hein? Mais monde, il faut se fionner pour y aller! Etre faquin! Hot Dog! Bocephus au Purple Peacock.

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