Ebola in the Louisiana French News

D'autres nouvelles à travers de l'état, les leaders de la Louisiane, dit ils avaient devise un state-wide response plan pour proteger la Louisiane si il y'aurais un cas de Ebola. Ils ont dit ils sont après travailler avec les hôpitaux pour identifier les certaines locations de traitment et ça veut dire ça icitte là-là, l'officier de santé de l'état dit ses officials sont après rester in touch avec les universités, les imports et le Coastguard pour track équand le monde après rentrer de notre pays avec le Ebola outbreak. Jusqu'à asteur pas d'cas avait éte rapporté dedans la Louisiane.

In other news across the state, the leaders of Louisiana say that they have devised a state-wide response plan to protect Louisiana if there is an Ebola case. They said they are working with hospitals to identify certain treatment centers, and they want to say this here: the the state health officer says that his officials are staying in touch with universities, imports (?) and the Coastguard to track when people are returning to our country with the Ebola outbreak. Until now, no cases have been reported in Louisiana.

Deal Avec Le Evangeline Bank and Trust Company

L'Evangeline Bank and Trust Company 

Eux-Autres sont là par rapport à vous-autres, monde. 

Il veut vous servir dans tout les manières té possible 

Quand vous-autres a besoin de faire un loan 

avec le viallant monde 

Allez pis find out 

Ça un tas du monde connait dejà 

L'Evangeline Bank and Trust Company 

Est la place pour vous deal avec deal avec, deal avec 

L'Evangeline Bank and Trust Company 

C'est la place pour vous deal avec

As-tu jamais flush ton hot water tank?

 
Mister Floyd recommends flushing your hot water tank periodically.  


J'ai une suggestion, peut-être, au monde qu'après écouter. C'est flush les hot water tank. J'connais pas si le monde qu'après écouter a jamais flush leur hot water tank, mais je te garontee, si jamais tu l'flush, ça supris, avec la rouille et les chemicals qui sort de le bas de ce tank-le, et ça, ça affect ton eau une manière ou l'autre aussi bien! Et ça fait le tank durer pour plus longtemps, je pense, et ça va certainment improver la couleur et la qualité de l'eau qui sort de ton hot water tank! Quand l'eau sort claire à l'autre boute, tu tournes le faucet-le off. Tu peux mettre un paper towel en dessus parqe-que l'eau il va couler un ti peu là. Mais c'est une chose on devrait tout faire si on veut protéger notre hot water tank, et je voulais juste passer ça au monde à ce matin. Ça c'est notre plumbing tip pour l'aujourd'hui!

The Ditches of the PDF

Arrowheading on the Plowed Mound, October 7, 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!

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.

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

Rootbeer from Sassafron

Yesterday at the Prairie des Femmes School it was arrowhead digging. Today it's sassafrass identification and "rootbeer" making.

The Process

the beautifully colored sassafrass root tea

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

I have always imagined, when I looked out over open water, of all of the fantastic sea creatures that are just below the surface unseen. It's the same out here in the prairie where one can see the undulation of the ground, the swells of earth, and knows the history in the dirt, the treasures below the surface.

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

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"!

The Cœur de la Prairie des Femmes

The Cœur de la Prairie des Femmes

Jambes de Pluie over Prairie des Femmes

Belle Terre

Mistric Mary

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!

Exit 11 Yard Sale

Yon Yon and Couillon

How many yon-yons does it take to make one couillon? Dix.

A Perfect Persimmon Bread from Monsieur Menard

 

Persimmon Bread

 
Two 9-inch Loaves/ 1 bunt pan

 
Using the higher amount of sugar will produce a moister and, of course, sweeter bread.

3½ cups sifted flour
1½ teaspoons salt
2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 to 2½ cups sugar
1 cup melted unsalted butter and cooled to room temperature
4 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
2/3 cup Cognac, bourbon or whiskey
2 cups persimmon puree (from about 4 squishy-soft Hachiya persimmons)
2 cups walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped
2 cups raisins, or diced dried fruits (such as apricots, cranberries, or dates)
1. Butter 2 loaf pans. Line the bottoms with a piece of parchment paper or dust with flour and tap out any excess.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Sift the first 5 dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
4. Make a well in the center then stir in the butter, eggs, liquor, persimmon puree then the nuts and raisins.
5. Bake 1 hour or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Storage: Will keep for about a week, if well-wrapped, at room temperature. The Persimmon Breads take well to being frozen, too.

recipe and photo via the Virtual Table et Monsieur Randal Menard

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.

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.

A la recherche du sassafron

When we first moved to the PDF, there was open cow field on all but one side of the property, and on that side was a swamp wilderness I call the oxbow woods. Back on the prairie, near the treeline of the cow field de Monsieur Vacheur there was a small grove of native sassafrass trees with their leaves in all sizes and shapes. I remember Miss Kary giving me some sassafras root to chew on a kid and I loved it. The first winter out here I had harvested some from the little grove and made file and root beer and tea with it. But then the neighbors (who love their bush-hog) started to clear that land more and more, cutting their trees and some of ours in the process. They ignorantly chopped the only native producing plaquemine that grew on the very corner of our property. The fruit I ate from it that first fall out here was like no persimmon I had ever eaten off of the trees that are in people's yards, those are Japanese varieties. This native persimmon was like une cuillère à café of velvet spice butter. Then when the parish came in and started ripping out our tree-line (for drainage, and, I was told, paid for by "BP stimulus money") we stopped them and asked they leave our side of the ditch and tree line alone. Half the damage was done but at least we didn't have to watch them tearing out any more of our trees. They agreed to leave our trees alone, but then one day on our walk, I saw they had left every tree on our side alone except the big producing mulberry, my favorite tree.... ahhh.... La Prairie des Femmes. She giveth, and she taketh away.

So imagine my surprise and elation this morning when I took a walk back there to see if any sassafras could still be found. I had looked recently, but wasn't able to go far enough to where I believed it was. I could remember when there was the little grove, but now it's all grass with a few mowed-around hardwood trees. At the back of our pasture where the overgrowth shadows fall on the uncut grass I stopped and stomped my feet. The grass was dripping wet with dew and the left overs of a the morning fog. As I proceeded from the shadows and to the spot where the sunlight hit the grass making it gleam, a black snake slithered in front of me and back into the green jumble of the tree line like a long smooth piece of silk. I frissonered and thanked God that I always have the presence of mind to watch the ground as I walk, but seeing the snake told me something: I would find the sassafron this time! Sure enough, at the base of a few of the trees, the odd shapes of the leaves caught my eye. I collected some and prepared the soil around the root of a sapling for a little transplant. When I got back to the house, I put some of the small branches to dry in the sun on the old Burger Chef Table and made a tea with the fresh loose leaves. Today, the Prairie giveth!

Triangle Goddess

Je M'Endors

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.

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 hommes sont partis

Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Je crois je peux attendre

Quand dans la silence j'entends 

dans la nuit

 

Prairie Marys

Hurricane Season Update

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?

Walmart est toujours 
le même nom

Comme le nom 
de Emile Veillon, 
tu connais?

Walmart est toujours 
le même nom.

 

Comme le nom d'Emile 

Walmart, tu connais?
 Walmart est toujours 

le même nom

 

Comme le nom d'Emile 

Walmart, tu connais?

Walmart est toujours 
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!

What is dat?

In da woods

Fee Follet
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

Mary Black

The first weeks that I lived in the Prairie des Femmes in the summer of 2006 I was a newlywed in a refurbished cypress cottage hand-built by my husband and a crew of friends and family. Everything was new and like an old dream, the clean linens, the wood and family antiques that looked so beautiful and were freshly oiled or white-washed. Scents can bring you back in your memory. I remember the smell of the cypress and linseed oil and the fresh air of the prairie coming in through the doors those first few weeks at my new home. The clean smell of Egyptian cotton and the ozone smell of the prairie at night. There was another smell that brings me back to those weeks, and it was that of a bath oil my aunt bought me on my wedding day called Mary Black by Florence Gunnarson. It came in a real French glass bottle with a heavy square stopper. It was nearly the only bath soap I had in the house those first sparse days I spent out here. My husband left for a small tour a few weeks after our marriage, and I was alone in the prairie for the first time. There was no hot water for some reason, maybe because we had no electricity except for one extension cord stretched across the field from the branch that we only used for necessities, so I spent time at night heating our new red kettle full of hot water on the gas stove over and over to fill the tub with just enough to have a few inches of warm water. I would put the kettle on a cypress stump next to the old tub. I remember laughing to myself at the process, and wondering what to make of this new existence alone in a dark house in the Prairie des Femmes, but in retrospect, it was one of the most luxurious times I have ever had. Mary Black bath oil, like the good friend she was named for,  filled the house with the woody and vibrant citrus smells those first candlelit nights here and indeed kept me company. She seemed like she belonged in the Prairie des Femmes, so much did she smell of the fog, the prairie grasses and the resins of freshly planed Atchafalaya old growth cypress.

Rue Royale on Pont des Mouton

One of the Hamlets of Pont des Mouton: Rue Royale

Royal Road

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!