Sunday, November 16, 2014

Louisiana: Rayne Frog Festival

November 2014 Rayne Frog Festival



After 42 years, the Rayne Frog Festival is moving from November to May.


November 2014 Rayne Frog Festival. Chubby Carrier.



So the 2014 Rayne Frog Festival is the last one that will be held in November.

November 2014 Rayne Frog Festival. Chubby Carrier.


Probably a good idea.

Mzuri is cold at the Rayne Frog Festival in November 2014.


South Louisianans don't come to such things in cold weather.

November 2014 Rayne Frog Festival. Chubby Carrier.

 
Despite the wonderful music one would expect, there weren't many people present to enjoy it.


Saturday, November 15, 2014

Rootless: Letting Go

November 24: What I have below is my first draft. Since I wrote it, I took back the hat. And some of the coozies. 



Getting ready for my move at the end of the month.

Letting go of some things are easy, like the saucepot I bought second-hand years ago, which takes forever to heat up its contents on an electric stove. Enough! Out you go.

The 20 coozies I've collected this year. Easy come, easy go. Plastic parade cups, ditto.

I tried to find a reason to keep some of my Mardi Gras bead collection, and I feel a little wrench about letting them go, but groups recycle beads here and I like the idea that my beads will get re-thrown and caught by another happy reveler.

Can you believe I've carted around a plug-in electric burner for longer than my daughter has been alive? I can't even think of when I've used it last. Time for it to go. Irrational, but this hurts a little.

I'm releasing a hat. 



 A couple of reference books will go.

I already donated back three of the chairs I bought from the local Habitat for Humanity's Re-Store.

A box of clothes for Goodwill stands by.


 

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Louisiana: Plaisance: The Step-n-Strut Trail Ride


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


One of my goals for Louisiana was to go on (the term "go on" being open to interpretation) a trail ride. Not just any trail ride. A zydeco trail ride. A Creole trail ride.

I had my chance with the Step-n-Strut Trail Ride in Plaisance.


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


To set the stage about the trail rides in Southwest Louisiana:  

Below is a lil diamond of a video (and love the song track) about Creole riders by documentarian Tabitha Denholm:




A companion article she wrote is here.


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.



Cajun filmmaker Connie Castille created a lush documentary about the Cajun and Creole history with horses in her two-hour movie, T-Galop. You can watch the documentary in its entirety on Louisiana Public Television here.
2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


There was lots going on at the Step-n-Strut's home base


Food


Below is a man with a vertical griller/smoker that he made:

2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


This man was cooking up some pork steaks early on, preparing for sale a little later.


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


Pig tails. Squeak.


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


Foot care

Look at this horse's beautiful tail:


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


There was more than one way to do the trail ride


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.




2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


Coming back


It was pretty to watch the tired riders and horses return as the sun was sinking. The light and the dust made a lovely backdrop.

2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride, Plaisance, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.


Videos

I took several videos. I really like this one because it has everything in a short piece - pretty horses, cantering horses, dancing, good music, a trailer with not only a port-a-potty but a full-size grill and a big sound system.



Here is a 13+ minute video of the trail ride rolling out. It has drama and flair and flash. It shows the various ways one can participate on the ride. There's even a bit of an altercation.

Here is a short-short with a lot of drama. Some poor dude is missing his jeans. One can only wonder at the story there.

Rolling out #3 is pretty jumpy, but it's short and it gives a good idea at the huge number of horses and riders participating on the ride.

Rolling out #4 shows fun on both trailers and horses.



A slide show here:

2014 Step-n-Strut Trail Ride 
 
#30



Oh, yeah, and there was live music, too. This is South Louisiana, after all.




Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Louisiana: Plaisance: 2635 at Sunset

2635 Highway 167, near Plaisance, Louisiana.
  

Just as the sun was preparing for setting, I drove by a cluster of irresistibly-picturesque buildings on Highway 167, outside of Plaisance.

Plaisance is in St. Landry Parish, northwest of Opelousas and southeast of Ville Platte. 

The feed store photos are here.

Today is about #2635, which is next to the feed store.


2635 Highway 167, near Plaisance, Louisiana.



A cultural informant told me that the giant numbers on these buildings are for emergency responders.

Put your shades on for this next pic. 

2635 Highway 167, near Plaisance, Louisiana.





Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Lafayette: Lafayette: Scenes from Festivals de Acadiens et Creoles, #4

I listened to Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys play. Watched the dancers. Tapped my toes. Slapped my hand on my thigh.

But then all of a sudden I heard the transcendent quality of the fiddle playing. Magnificent.





Here's a 2006 video of Kevin Wimmer (the fiddler in my video above) playing Fiddlesticks with another musician at a Roots festival in Tennesee: 



And here he is with his other band, Red Stick Ramblers, in a 2008 performance in Connecticut:




Speaking of Connecticut, I met an accordionist at the festival, Bill, who lives in Connecticut - who loves Cajun and Zydeco music, and who has been coming to the festival for eight years. He comes on the train.


Monday, November 3, 2014

Louisiana: Plaisance: The Feed Store


Allen Joubert's Feed Store, Plaisance, Louisiana

Driving on Highway 167, just outside Plaisance, as the sun was setting on the first day of standard time, I saw the feed store.

Allen Joubert's Feed Store, Plaisance, Louisiana

Felt good to get out of the car and take some snaps of a building like this. Very New Mexico-ish thing for me to do.


Allen Joubert's Feed Store, Plaisance, Louisiana


Allen Joubert's Feed Store, Plaisance, Louisiana





Sunday, November 2, 2014

Lafayette: UL Homecoming Parade


UL Homecoming Parade 2014, Lafayette, Louisiana.


November 1 was the UL Homecoming Parade. Oh, right, there was also a game and other stuff, but I'm all about the parade.

UL Homecoming Parade 2014, Lafayette, Louisiana.


Even the Pope was there.

UL Homecoming Parade 2014, Lafayette, Louisiana.


And, as always, Louisianans really know how to make a parade up nice.

UL Homecoming Parade 2014, Lafayette, Louisiana.

OK, well, I was standing in front of the UL Alumni Center.

Marching bands. My favorite part of a parade. 

UL Homecoming Parade 2014, Lafayette, Louisiana.

 Here's a video from the Opelousas High School Marching Band:




And from the Franklin High School Band. It makes me smile to see how the drummer smiles at :34.



Oh, those drummers.

UL Homecoming Parade 2014, Lafayette, Louisiana.


A slide show:

#30



 

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Louisiana: Opelousas: A Holy Ghost Party


Men of Vision, 2014 Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival, Opelousas, Louisiana

So. Halloween. Not being a trick-or-treater or wear-a-costume sort of gal, my annual strategy is to get out of the house on Halloween and hide out til the littles have completed their rounds.

In Lafayette, it being a party kind of place and Halloween being on a Friday this year, you would surmise correctly if you thought that most getaways included dressing up.

But then I saw the perfect place to go - the 22nd Annual Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival. The festival is the first weekend in November, beginning on Friday. Gospel music on Friday night.

Here's a video from St. Landry's Parish, focusing on Holy Ghost women making potato pies for the 2011 festival:




I got to hear different styles of gospel music at the church: 
  • Rap
  • Jazz
  • Blues
  • and I guess what I'd call the traditional gospel style

Here's a gospel rap song called "Having a Holy Ghost Party," performed at the concert Friday night:

 


And one of the songs from the Mount Olive Baptist Church Men's Chorus:




And from three women whose group name I forget:




There was even a performance of liturgical dance by the youth, and at first, I thought, aha, this is a new idea for me, but wait .... liturgical dance is just a fancy way of talking about sacred dance, which has been practiced in many cultures for eons.


2014 Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival, Opelousas, Louisiana


Sheesh, didn't I just spend a year in New Mexico, where traditions of sacred dance are carefully protected and handed down through the present generations?
 

2014 Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival, Opelousas, Louisiana

 
It was a perfect way to spend All Saints Eve.


Men of Vision, 2014 Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival, Opelousas, Louisiana




Sunday, October 19, 2014

Louisiana: New Iberia: St. Peter's Cemetery

 
St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana

St. Peter's Cemetery is across the street, sort of, from the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office.


St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana



Fictional Iberia Parish sheriff's deputy, Dave Robicheaux, could look out his fictional office window at the cemetery from the imaginary, but real, office. (Later, when the real-life detectives moved from this building to a new sheriff's building behind the library, fictional Dave moved with them.)


St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana


It was a viciously hot day when I visited the cemetery toward the end of July.

St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana


Here's what Dave said:

After lunch I drove to the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department and went upstairs to my office .... From my second-story office window I could look out on a canopy of palm and live oak trees that cover a working-class neighborhood, and behind the cathedral I could see a cemetery of whitewashed brick crypts where Confederate dead remind us that Shiloh is not a historical abstraction. (Tin Roof Blowdown, 2007)

  
St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana


I saw this marker (below) and wondered, ah, a relative perhaps? My people include some Courtois. The Hebert name is ubuiquitous here; the Courtois name more rare.

St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana


The light was intense the day I visited.

St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana



St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana


Adjacent to the cemetery was some sort of machinery yard. Unlovely. As was the barbed wire fence separating the cemetery and the yard.

St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana





Saturday, October 18, 2014

Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux' Music



Songs marked important periods in Dave Robicheaux' life.

Who is Dave Robicheaux? 

He's the protagonist in 20 books written by James Lee Burke, a New Iberia, Louisiana, writer.

Dave is a homicide detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. Cajun. Recovering alcoholic. Vietnam war veteran. A man who marries. A father.

You can read more about Dave here. And what he thinks about north Louisianans here. And alcohol here. And some music here. On human exploitation here. On Angola here. On Louisiana's shadow self here. And on police violence and our complicity in same here. (My selections might give the impression that Dave Robicheaux (channeling James Lee  Burke) is a real downer about South Louisiana. Of course, Dave Robicheaux is a homicide detective, so that has an effect on the topics he talks about, but even so, Dave's love of Louisiana, the people, and culture do shine through.)

Dave's music

I've now read all 20 of the Dave Robicheaux books, and I'll roll out some more posts on same. But here's my round-up of Dave's music.

Dave talked about four songs in the last book I read (not the last Dave Robicheaux book),  Creole Belle.

The first is called Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar, by Will Bradley:




Then there's Just A Dream, by Jimmy Clanton:



And Faded Love, by Bob Wills:




Bob Wills' San Antonio Rose played a role in the book:




James Lee Burke, by way of Dave Robicheaux, has introduced me to music I wouldn't have otherwise known.




Other songs from prior posts:


From Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux and Some Fine Music (March 2014):




Dave on some fine music of his youth

From Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002):
"The lyrics and the bell-like reverberation of Guitar Slim's rolling chords haunted me. Without ever using words to describe either the locale or the era in which he had lived, his song re-created the Louisiana I had been raised in: the endless fields of sugarcane thrashing in the wind under a darkening sky, yellow dirt roads and the Hadacol and Jax beer signs nailed on the sides of general stores, horse-drawn buggies that people tethered in stands of gum trees during Sunday Mass, clapboard juke joints where Gatemouth Brown and Smiley Lewis and Lloyd Price played, and the brothel districts that flourished from sunset to dawn and somehow became invisible in the morning light."

Clarence Gatemouth Brown. Source: wikipedia


Here's the song Gatemouth Boogie, which Mr. Brown says he made up on the spot one night during a performance, when he stood in for an ailing T-Bone Walker:




Here's a song by Lloyd Price - Stagger Lee:




From Louisiana: Angola and... (April 2014)

 
Angola prisoners. Credit: Angola Museum


Angola is the Louisiana State Prison.

Like a few other American prisons - such as Alcatraz, Folsom, Attica, Rikers - its infamy also elicits a perverse ... awe? reverence? pride? I don't know, but whatever it is, it says something uncomfortable about humans. 


Dave Robicheaux on Angola

(See references to fictional homicide detective, Dave Robicheaux here, here, here, here, and here.)



From Jolie's Bounce (2002): 
It is difficult to describe in a convincing way the kind of place Angola was in the Louisiana of my youth, primarily because no society wishes to believe itself capable of the kinds of abuse that occur when we allow our worst members, usually psychopaths themselves, to have sway over the powerless.

For the inmates on the Red Hat gang, which was assigned to the levee along the river, it was double time and hit-it-and-git-it from sunrise to sunset, or what the guards called "cain't-see to cain't-see." The guards on the Red Hat gang arbitrarily shot and killed and buried troublesome convicts without missing a beat in the work schedule. The bones of those inmates still rest, unmarked, under the buttercups and the long green roll of the Mississippi levee.

The sweatboxes were iron cauldrons of human pain set in concrete on Camp A, where Leadbelly, Robert Pete Williams, Hogman Matthew Maxey, and Guitar Welch did their time. Convicts who passed out on work details were stretched on anthills. Trusty guards, mounted on horseback and armed with chopped-down double-barreled shotguns, had to serve the time of any inmate they let escape. There was a high attrition rate among convicts who tried to run.
(links added)




'course, when I thnk of Angola, I think of the old state prison in New Mexico, site of the massacre at the 1980 New Mexico State Penitentiary Revolt.

And of the growing unsettledness about solitary confinement of our prisoners.

Which brings me to this March 2014 article in The Guardian:  Why Do We Let 80,00 Americans Suffer a 'Slow-Motion Torture of Burying Alive'? The article compares the experience of Sarah Shroud, who spent 13 months in solitary confinement in Iran, with that of American prisoners who face similar conditions for the indefinite future.

You can read more about solitary confinement here





Friday, October 17, 2014

Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux and The Beautiful Whore Called Louisiana



Dave Robicheaux sees Louisiana as a woman who is ravishing and who is also a whore. Dave and I don't always see eye to eye on the subject of women, but that's a conversation for a different day.

Who is Dave Robicheaux? 

He's the protagonist in 20 books written by James Lee Burke, a New Iberia, Louisiana, writer.

Dave is a homicide detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. Cajun. Recovering alcoholic. Vietnam war veteran. A man who marries. A father.

You can read more about Dave here. And what he thinks about north Louisianans here. And alcohol here. And some music here. On human exploitation here. On Angola here. On Louisiana's shadow self here. And on police violence and our complicity in same here. (My selections might give the impression that Dave Robicheaux (channeling James Lee  Burke) is a real downer about South Louisiana. Of course, Dave Robicheaux is a homicide detective, so that has an effect on the topics he talks about, but even so, Dave's love of Louisiana, the people, and culture do shine through.)


My definition of a whore

A whore is anyone - man or woman - who debases himself, another human being, or his habitat for money or power that goes beyond his needs.

How Dave views Louisiana as a whore

 ... the irony of falling in love with my home state, the Great Whore of Babylon. You did not rise easily from the caress of her thighs, and when you did, you had to accept the fact that others had used her, too, and poisoned her womb and left a fibrous black tuber grown inside her. (Creole Belle, 2012)

How about oil? Its extraction and production in Louisiana had set us free from economic bondage to the agricultural oligarchy that had ruled the state from antebellum days well into the mid-twentieth century. But we discovered that our new corporate liege lord had a few warts on his face, too. Like the Great Whore of Babylon, Louisiana was always desirable for her beauty and not her virtue, and when her new corporate suitor plunged into things, he left his mark. (The Glass Rainbow, 2010) 
 
In the  state of Louisiana, systemic venality is a given. The state's culture, mind-set, religious attitudes, and economics are no different from those of a Caribbean nation. The person who believes he can rise to a position of wealth and power in the state of Louisiana and not do business with the devil probably knows nothing about the devil and even less about Louisiana. (Crusader's Cross, 2005) 

In Louisiana, which has the highest rate of illiteracy in the union and the highest percentage of children born to single mothers, few people worry about the downside of casinos, drive-through daiquiri windows, tobacco depots, and environmental degradation washing away the southern rim of the state.
Oil and natural gas, for good or bad, comprise our lifeblood. When I was a boy, my home state, in terms of its environment, was an Edenic paraidise. It's not one any longer, no matter what you are told. When a group of lawyers at Tulane University tried to file a class action suit on behalf of the black residents whose rural slums were used as dumping grounds for petrochemical waste, the governor, on television, threatened to have the lawyers' tax status investigated. The same governor was an advocate for the construction of a giant industrial waste incinerator in Morgan City. His approval ratings remained at record highs for the entirety of his administration.  ..... Last spring, when the wind was out of the south, I could stand in our front yard and smell oil. It was pouring in black columns, like curds of smoke, from a blown casing five thousand feet below the Gulf's surface.  (Creole Belle, 2012)


To add to the above excerpt (related to the 1980s), a quote from Oliver A. Houck in his article, Save Ourselves: The Environmental Case that Changed Louisiana, published in the Louisiana Law Review, Winter 2012:

"Louisiana corporations, led by the oil, gas, and chemical industry, continue to perceive environmental policy as a nuisance, and Louisiana agencies continue to see these agencies as their clients. Neighborhood and environmental groups are still “others” in the equation. We are still Louisiana."

In 2010, from the article Kneecapping Academic Freedom, published by the American Association of University Professors in its November-December 2010 journal:
... the Louisiana Chemical Association (LCA) pushed for legislation, ... that would forfeit all state funds going to any university, public or private, whose clinics brought or defended a lawsuit against a government agency, represented anyone seeking monetary damages, or raised state constitutional claims. The bill also would have made clinic courses at the state’s four law schools subject to oversight by legislative commerce committees. The LCA sought the legislation after a Tulane University clinic filed a lawsuit that would have required LCA members to pay millions of dollars in fines for violating air pollution laws. The bill was part of a leaked LCA strategy to force Tulane to drop its environmental law clinic. The strategy included ... getting the governor and congressional delegation to pressure Tulane to close its clinic. ... Legislators debated the bill while oil was gushing in the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s oil rig, and the bill was defeated in committee, although its supporters were unrepentant in defeat and threatened to return with a revised bill that would more narrowly focus on Tulane. [Emphasis added.]

In case you didn't check out the link about that governor and the Tulane lawyers and the Morgan City incinerator? That was four-time Louisiana governor, Edwin Edwards. Who served time in federal prison for corruption. And who is now running for Congress.

Current governor, Bobby Jindal, was in office for the 2010 assault against the Tulane Law Clinic.


Thursday, October 16, 2014

Rootless: It's Getting to be That Time Again

It's mid-October and my year in South Louisiana is almost up.

It means consolidating spices. I know, I know, this may make some foodies cringe, the idea of pouring leftover spices into one container. Also, I'm not gifted in knowing which spices complement each other, so it's a gamble if it will work out OK. As long as salt is involved, however, it's good enough for me.

Here's my current list of things I'll need to consume, release or decide to keep before I quit my 2014 spell in South Louisiana (notice how carefully I am wording that): 

  • Spices (consolidating as already noted)
  • Four side chairs
  • Folding table (large)
  • Full-length mirror
  • Mardi Gras beads! 
  • Salvaged cabinet
  • My wonderful red "bed" 
  • Tent + tarp
  • Camp stove
  • Sleeping bag
  • Tea
  • Canned soup
  • Coozies
  • Coffee mug
  • Various pots and pans
  • Vacuum cleaner (which worked when I left New Mexico and then, inexplicably, didn't when I arrived in Louisiana - probably an easy fix)


For now, I'll keep these as part of my rootless trousseau:

  • Bed linens
  • Bath towels/cloths
  • Dish towels
  • Plastic, child-size plates/cups
  • Stainless flatware
  • Folding table (small)
  • Tension curtain rod
  • Fabric shower curtain
  • Plastic storage drawers on wheels
  • Technical devices
  • Shelf stereo
  • Two coffee mugs (one from New Mexico and one from South Louisiana)
  • Two folding canvas chairs

At the end of November, I'll return to Missouri for a one- or two-month visit before going to my 2015 base (which is kinda open for grabs again). My car will be significantly lighter this year than last.

In September 2013, here were lessons learned in my New Mexico year about furnishing a temporary home. Below are two views of what I packed into my car when leaving Alamogordo:

What I took with me when I left New Mexico

What I took with me when I left New Mexico

If I decide to do another domestic turn for 2015, I think I'll do some of my second-hand shopping in Missouri and carry it with me to my new place. The difference between second-hand Lafayette and second-hand Alamogordo was a shocker, both in price and selection. Second-hand Lafayette is more expensive than Alamogordo and Lafayette's selection of household items is abysmal.