Baton Rouge: Baton Rouge Blues Fest 2014: Jimmy Dotson

Jimmy Dotson. Credit: Gulf Coast Entertainment.

One of the coolest things about southern Louisiana is how accessible the musicians are. Well, not just musicians - all of the artists. (No, I'm not gonna say "creatives.")

Jimmy Dotson plays an impromptu song below:

So at the Baton Rouge Blues Fest last weekend, was it richly cool to wander into a large room at what used to be the state capitol and be able to sit in on an interview with Jimmy Dotson, one of the august performers?

It sure was.

In fact, the Blues Fest impresses me with its multi-dimensional presentation. You can listen to big sound on large stages, big sound on smaller stages, watch documentaries about southern Louisiana's blues artists, enjoy quieter sound in small spaces, and be an audience at interviews with the performers.

Mr. Dotson has cut a new album - doesn't seem to be ready for release yet. 'til then, here's an old song.

Rootlessness and Death Review

Today I received a reminder from the Social Security Administration to take a look at my future as it pertains to prospective Social Security benefits. I did take a look and I got some good info there about what to expect in my financial future.

Coincidentally, I noted that today some readers had looked at a post I did on Rootlessness and Death in January 2013.

It's still timely, so I'll re-post it here:

Cemetery, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

A recent article in the New York Times reminded me I need to take care of some business.

Getting your shit together 

The article is A Shocking Death, A Financial Lesson, and Help for Others, which introduced readers to the article subject's website: Get Your Shit Together. As in, start getting your affairs in order now so you or your loved ones don't have a mess to deal with later.  The information that the author, Chanel Reynolds, shares is very basic, but it is a good starting point.    

Cemetery, Istanbul

That includes your online life ... and death

Back here, I mentioned some vendors that keep all of your passwords (and access to online "assets" in general) in one place and pairs that with instructions from you to share the passwords with designated beneficiaries upon your death or incapacitation.  That is a service I want, but have I followed up on this? No, I have not.

Cemetery, Mtatsminda, Tbilisi, Georgia

The Digital Beyond is "... a blog about your digital existence and what happens to it after your death. We’re the go-to source for archival, cultural, legal and technical insights to help you predict and plan for the future of your online content." This site lists and compares "digital death and afterlife online services" here.












What I do have in place ... 

Advance directive - appropriately signed and notarized, with originals distributed to appropriate people. (The link goes to a place where you can download your state's advance directive forms.) Done.


All of my financial accounts have designated beneficiaries. When I say designated, that doesn't mean I wrote a list of my accounts and entered a name beside each entry on a piece of paper and that was the end of it. No, it means the financial institutions have this information and will automatically transfer ownership of said funds to the designated beneficiary upon proof of my death. You don't need a will to make this happen and, in fact, if you do have a will, the designated beneficiaries on your financial accounts will supersede any conflicting direction you may have in your will. (You know that nightmare situation where a guy made his 2nd wife the beneficiary of everything in his will, but he didn't take his 1st wife's name off of the financial accounts as beneficiary? You got it - the 1st wife wins the jackpot.) Done.

Cemetery, Missouri

 What I don't have ... because I don't need it


Life insurance. I have no mate, minor children, business partnerships, or debt. I have enough money to pay the expenses related to the disposition of my remains.  I don't feel the need to create a legacy via life insurance. So I don't need life insurance.

Cemetery, Armenia

The will

Alllaw has a nice list of DIY resources on wills. For my simple situation, I felt comfortable copying and adapting the Basic Will Form at the bottom of the Alllaw's page. Here's another guide to get someone started on doing up a will - with or without help.

I don't have this in the Done section yet because I'm just now completing it.

I'm not entirely convinced one is necessary for me, but it's easy to make a will (for someone, like me, with an uncomplicated asset-and-beneficiary life), plus having one will remove even the slightest hesitation about who's in charge of taking care of my stuff when I'm gone. I mean, I don't have much stuff (like that printer I just bought), but I do have some. And somebody's going to have to deal with it.

Cemetery, Lalibela, Ethiopia

Louisiana: Zydeco Accoutrement

Zydeco Joe. Credit: Cascade Zydeco.

At the Hot Sauce Festival in New Iberia this past weekend, I observed these zydeco accoutrement:

Fans

• Accordion fans, used by men and women
• Change of clothes for when the dancers sweat through the first set
• Terry towel for wiping the dance sweat from one's brow, usually worn in the back pocket of the dancer's jeans

Zydeco is hot work. New Iberia Hot Sauce Festival, April 2014.

• Men often wore a cowboy hat, as did some women
• A common shirt is of the torn-off sleeves variety or a Western shirt, long sleeves intact
• Jeans, naturally
• Nice belt buckle

And I know you're wondering: "Is zydeco attire sexy?"

The answer is, "Yes. Yes, it is."

Said sexiness is ageless, too, as evidenced in this video from a past Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival:

Louisiana: Angola and ...

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. 

Louisiana: "Holy Week Crawfish Supply Should Satisfy Demand"

Crawfish Etouffee, Crawfish Etouffee Cook-Off, Eunice, Louisiana

Here's a newspaper headline you don't see in most parts: Holy Week Crawfish Supply Should Satisfy Demand

Excerpted from The Daily Advertiser: LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) — Louisiana crawfishermen and the merchants who sell the crustacean to retail customers say the supply should be enough to satisfy appetites during Holy Week and Easter weekend.

It's a welcome turn to a season marred by a harsh winter that stunted crawfish growth, limited the catch and made profit forecasts bleak.

In the days leading into Holy Week, prices for a pound of live crawfish ran from $2 at Db Seafood in Morgan City to $2.49 at Tony's Seafood Market and Deli in Baton Rouge.

The price was somewhere in between at D&T Seafood in Abbeville, where live, small-sized crawfish sold for $1.50 a pound and the mediums went for $2.25.

"We're going to have a decent supply" for Easter week, said D&T owner Don Benoit. ..... 

This reminds me of some other Lenten food stories. 


Snails

Georgia: Snails (Part 1)
Georgia: Snails (Part 2)

Snail, Gori, Caucasus Georgia

Capybara

On my first trip to Alamogordo, while on a road trip with my mother, we learned about capybara and Lent.

Capybara, Alamogordo Zoo, New Mexico

The Louisiana Mule

Louisiana mules at ye olde hitching post.

Lafayette: The Sound Track

You know how in a movie there's usually a soundtrack, right?

And you can love the soundtrack and even buy the soundtrack, but you know, of course, that soundtracks don't exist in real life. Because that's only in the movies.

Except in and around Lafayette. Here, there really is a soundtrack.





The soundtrack envelops me whenever I get into the car and comes by way of KRVS - Radio Acadie, or KBON (get it?).

Cajun/creole, zydeco, and swamp pop.

Picture it. Driving down a shaded street over which live oak limbs stretch, and in the spring, as it is now, azalea bushes at their peak of splashy color. Passing shops with delectables by Poupart Bakery, T-Coon's, Chris' Po-boy, Jolie's Bistro .... crawfish signs, signs for boudin and cracklin's .... deep-porched, steep-pitched bungalows sitting atop cement blocks .... drawbridges ... and on the radio you hear English and French, and songs old and new that have you tapping the steering wheel to the beat of a waltz, a two-step, a jig, or the zydeco eight-count.

A real-life soundtrack.

Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux and Louisiana's Shadow Self

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.


Love of (southern) Louisiana

There is no doubt that Dave Robicheaux loves southern Louisiana - its scenery, people, music, food, traditions.

But he doesn't romanticize it.

From a Stained White Radiance (1992):

I sat on the railway tracks behind the French Market and watched the dawn touch the earth's rim and light the river and the docks and scows over in Algiers, turn the sky the color of bone, and finally fill the east with a hot red glow like the spokes in a wagon wheel. The river looked wide and yellow with silt, and I could see oil and occasionally dead fish floating belly up in the current.

From Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002):

Growing up during the 1940s in New Iberia, down on the Gulf Coast, I never doubted how the world worked. At dawn the antebellum homes along East Main loomed out of the mists, their columned porches and garden walkways and second-story verandas soaked with dew, the chimneys and slate roofs softly molded by the canopy of live oaks that arched over the entire street.

... on East Main, in the false dawn, the air was heavy with the smell of night-blooming flowers and lichen on damp stone and the fecund odor of Bayou Teche, and even though a gold service star may have hung in a window of a grand mansion, indicating the death of a serviceman in the family, the year could have been mistaken for 1861 rather than 1942.

Even when the sun broke above the horizon and the ice wagons and the milk delivery came down the street on iron-rimmed wheels and the Negro help began reporting for work at their employers' back doors, the light was never harsh, never superheated or smelling of tar roads and dust as it was in other neighborhoods. Instead it filtered through Spanish moss and bamboo and philodendron that dripped with beads of moisture as big as marbles, so that even in the midst of summer the morning came to those who lived here with a blue softness that daily told them the earth was a grand place, its design vouchsafed in heaven and not to be questioned. 

... Farther down Main were Hopkins and Railroad Avenues, like ancillary conduits into part of the town's history and geography that people did not talk about publicly. When I went to the ice house on Saturday afternoons with my father, I would look furtively down Railroad at the rows of paintless cribs on each side of the train tracks and at the blowzy women who sat on the stoops, hung over, their knees apart under their loose cotton dresses, perhaps dipping beer out of a bucket two Negro boys carried on a broom handle from Hattie Fontenot's bar. 

I came to learn early on that no venal or meretricious enterprise existed without a community's consent.

Louisiana's Shadow Self

From Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002):

"This is Louisiana, Dave. Guatemala North. Quit pretending it's the United States. Life will make a lot more sense," [Clete] said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A love affair with Louisiana is in some ways like falling in love with the biblical whore of Babylon. We try to smile at its carnival-like politics, its sweaty, whiskey-soaked demagogues, the ignorance bred by its poverty and the insularity of its Cajun and Afro-Caribbean culture. But our self-deprecating manner is a poor disguise for the realities that hover on the edges of one's vision like dirty smudges on a family portrait.

The state roadsides and parking lots of discount stores are strewn, if not actually layered, with mind-numbing amounts of litter, thrown there by the poor and the uneducated and the revelers for whom a self-congratulatory hedonism is a way of life. With regularity, land developers who are accountable to no one bulldoze our stands of virgin cypress and two-hundred year-old live oaks, often at night, so the irrevocable nature of their work cannot be seen until daylight, when it is too late to stop it.

The petrochemical industry poisons waterways with impunity and even trucks in waste from out of state and dumps it in open sludge pits, usually in rural black communities.

Rather than fight monied interests, most of the state's politicians give their constituency casinos and Power ball lotteries and drive-by daiquiri windows, along with low income taxes for the wealthy and an eight and one quarter percent sales tax on food for the poor.

From Burning Angel (1995):

.... Any honest cop will tell you that no form of vice exists without societal sanction of some kind. Also, the big players would still be with us - the mob and the gambling interests who feed on economic recession and greed in politicians and local businessmen, the oil industry, which fouls the oyster beds and trenches saltwater channels into a freshwater marsh, the chemical and waste management companies that treat Louisiana as an enormous outdoor toilet and transform lakes and even the aquifer into toxic soup. 

They all came here by consent, using the word jobs as though it were part of a votive vocabulary. But the deception wasn't even necessary. There was always somebody for sale, waiting to take it on his knees, right down the throat and into the viscera, as long as the money was right.

A Stained White Radiance (1992):

... Over the years I had seen all the dark players get to southern Louisiana in one form or another: the oil and chemical companies who drained and polluted the wetlands; the developers who could turn sugarcane acreage and pecan orchards into miles of tract homes and shopping malls that had the aesthetic qualities of a sewer works; and the Mafia, who operated out of New Orleans and brought us prostitution, slot machines, control of at least two big labor unions, and finally narcotics.

They hunted on the game reserve. They came into an area where large numbers of the people were poor and illiterate, where many were unable to speak English and the politicians were terminally inept or corrupt, and they took everything that was best from the Cajun world in which I had grown up, treated it cynically and with contempt, and left us with oil sludge in the oyster beds, Levittown, and the ... knowledge that we had done virtually nothing to stop them.

Dave's words require no elaboration on my part.

Lafayette: The Campus Swamp

Cypress Lake, UL campus, Lafayette, Louisiana

The University of Louisiana - Lafayette campus is compact and pretty.  Live oaks drape the main promenade, St. Mary's Street. Bright flowers leaven the seriousness of red brick buildings. Much-loved Girard Park anchors a corner of the campus.

Cypress Lake, UL campus, Lafayette, Louisiana

You'd never know that in the heart of the campus lies a petite swamp. With alligators, turtles, cypresses and Spanish moss, an array of fishes, and fat squirrels. It's surrounded by an attractive black metal fence to protect residents both within and without the habitat.

 

Cypress Lake, UL campus, Lafayette, Louisiana

 People visit and feed bread to the fish and turtles.

Cypress Lake, UL campus, Lafayette, Louisiana

The "swamp" is more technically Cypress Lake. If one really wants to get technical, I'd propose it was more a large pond than a lake, but historically, the swamp-lake-pond originated as a depression caused by two-stepping buffalo who liked to party in the cypress grove. The depression, which later filled with water, was here before UL was.

Cypress Lake, UL campus, Lafayette, Louisiana

If you look closely at the photo above, you can see turtles sunning themselves on a log. .... or is it a log?

Cypress Lake, UL campus, Lafayette, Louisiana

Lafayette: John M. Shaw U.S. Federal Court House

John M. Shaw U.S. Federal Court House, Lafayette, Louisiana

The federal court house in Lafayette is a stunner.

John M. Shaw U.S. Federal Court House, Lafayette, Louisiana

Especially when you're not expecting it when you walk to your car behind the temporary library at night and see it gleaming from the darkness on the other side of a pocket park, with its resident homeless settled in on their benches, and a lone security guard standing watch on the steps.

John M. Shaw U.S. Federal Court House, Lafayette, Louisiana

The people who designed and approved this construction had a vision.

John M. Shaw U.S. Federal Court House, Lafayette, Louisiana

What does the security guard think about all night?  

Lafayette: Vermilionville Spring

Vermilionville Living History and Folk Life, Lafayette, Louisiana

A couple of spring scenes at Vermilionville.

Vermilionville Living History and Folk Life, Lafayette, Louisiana

Lafayette: 2nd Saturday Art Walk: March 2014: Coby Cox

Coby Cox

At the March 2014 Art Walk, the work of Coby Cox, on exhibit at the Acadiana Center for the Arts, pulled me in.

Coby Cox

I admire how these paintings poke my imagination. Are these sentient creatures? Robots? Machines? Vehicles? Bacteria? Flora?
 

Coby Cox

 And when I subsequently find Coby Cox' profile here, my response seems to align with Cox' vision.

Coby Cox

Louisiana: Broussard's Happenin' Goodwill

Backpack left on trail while owner finds a bush

The need to empty one's bladder can lead to unexpected encounters.

Sometimes it's a dead animal.

If I didn't already have to go, this would have scared the pee out of me!

Or a descanso.

An altar on the other side of a wilderpee

Yesterday, on my way to the Dragon Races in New Iberia, on Highway 182 in Broussard, I noted that I had to go to the bathroom. Hmm, wait til I get to New Iberia - find a McDonald's - or ..... oh, look there's a Goodwill Store, and I need a skillet.

I pulled into the parking spot in front of the entrance and saw a woman taking a photo of a man there. Then a photo of the man and a woman. Then I think the 2nd woman clicked a photo of the man with the 1st woman and the man. Cognitive dissonance. Taking pics in front of a Goodwill? Why? New marketing campaign? Some famous person who shops at Goodwill? Both seemed unlikely.

Walked into the store and asked a man within, "Who is that guy?" - referring to the subject of the 1st woman's photos. "Oh, that's a guy on .... what's that pawn show?"

I suggested, "Swamp Pawn?"

"No, that other one ...."

I suggested, "Oh! Pawn Stars?"

"No .... " 

And a woman shopper offered, helpfully, "Cajun Swamp Pawn."

"Yeah, that's the one," the man said. "He's the guy who comes in with crazy stuff to sell. He's the one who makes that show fun."

This guy is no slouch himself - he's a five-time winner of a local pepper-eating contest. He also plays fiddle at a weekend jam in Breaux Bridge.

I love my job as a tourist-in-residence.

I even found a skillet, and used the restroom, of course.  

Louisiana: Country Mardi Gras, Part 2: The Personal Personal

Meat on the grill, getting ready for the parade. Church Point Mardi Gras Parade. Louisiana.

I did say that Louisianans know how to enjoy a parade, right?

Set up shop early in the day. Bring a shade tent. Chairs. Long table. Barbecue grill. Many, many foodstuffs. Beverages. Music. Family and friends.

But for maximum event enjoyment, Louisianans even bring their own personal porta-potties.

Now that is doing it up right, sha. 

 

The private porta-potty is the way to go. Carencro Mardi Gras Parade, Louisiana

Travel Blasphemy #6: It's OK to Pay for Photos

There are travelers who refuse to pay locals in exchange for taking their photos. Some tourists indict locals as greedy or exploitive (!) if they ask for payment. Some tourists think their photos aren't "authentic" or "candid" if they have to pay for them. Then there are those travelers who believe it is corrupting a traditional society if they pay for photos.  


And yet these very same photographers use the photos for their own tangible or intangible benefit, and in ways that the subjects have no control over.

This makes no sense to me. Especially when we're snapping pics of folks who live in a place where it's difficult to earn a sustainable income.

We've all got the right to support ourselves and our families, don't we? 

Doctors and attorneys aren't going to dispense their services for free just because they happen to be standing on the street, are they?

Louisiana: An Addition to the Crawfish Collection #2

In wooden form:

Crawfish, Iberville Parish Visitor Center, Louisiana

In metal:

Crazy Bout Crawfish Cajun Cafe, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

And in signage:

Crazy Bout Crawfish Cajun Cafe, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

And here's a lagniappe below - Elvis Presley and Kitty Bilbrew (White) singing Crawfish, in the movie King Creole:

The lyrics: 

Crawfish
Well I went to the bayou just last night
There was no moon but the stars were bright
Put a big long hook on a big long pole
And I pulled Mr. Crawfish out of his hole
Crawfish

See I got him, see the size
Stripped and cleaned before your eyes
Sweet meat look, fresh and ready to cook
Crawfish

Now take Mr. Crawfish in your hand
He's gonna look good in your frying pan
If you fry him crisp or you boil him right
He'll be sweeter than sugar when you take a bite
Crawfish

New Mexico Loose Ends: Mora, New Mexico

 

Mora, New Mexico

In August, 2013, passed through Mora, New Mexico, during a weekend whirl around some state parks.  

Mora, New Mexico

Whenever I see the word mora, I think of the delectable blackberry juice I drank in Quito, Ecuador, many years ago. Cold, dark, with seeds. Mmmm.

Mora, New Mexico

 Before I swung into Mora, I went around this block building, cracking like an egg:

Outside Mora, New Mexico

 

And before that, I checked into Coyote Creek State Park.

Coyote Creek State Park, New Mexico

I didn't find the park all that remarkable. Except for two things. It had the coolest - the coolest - campsite shelters I may have ever seen. I say that as a tent camper who likes shade and, obviously, shelter from rain.

Coyote Creek State Park, New Mexico

I think the shelters were constructed by a sort of CCC-model organization for teens.

The other notable feature about the park was the affability of the campground hosts who, it happened, were snowbird friends of a couple from .... get this ... Lafayette, Louisiana! I don't think I'll be compromising anyone's privacy by revealing their friends' surname is Broussard and that they dance.

Before Mora and before Coyote Creek State Park were these cabins on Highway 64:

Highway 64, New Mexico.

 

Getting back to Mora - it was the launching off point for the little jewel of a state park: Morphy Lake State Park.

Morphy Lake State Park, New Mexico

New Mexico Loose End: A Monsoon Day in the Neighborhood

The other night we had a wicked thunderstorm in Lafayette.


The storm the other night reminded me of the start of monsoon season in New Mexico. And specifically of this one day in July 2013, outside my apartment:

A rainy, windy day doesn't draw much comment in other parts of the country, but in the high desert, after years of drought, it's something of note.

Louisiana: Country Mardi Gras, Part 1: Throw Me Sumtin' Sha!

The Carencro Mardi Gras Parade was my first for the 2014 season. It was the weekend before the weekend that preceded actual Mardi Gras day.

Carencro Mardi Gras Parade, Carencro, Louisiana

It was at the Carencro Mardi Gras Parade that I learned that southern Louisianans know how to enjoy a parade.

More to come. In the meantime, look at the photo. Chairs, of course. A tent. A long table. Said table covered with soon-to-be displayed foodstuffs for the inner circle who staked out this spot. You can be pretty sure there's some form of alcohol in the vicinity, as well.

Not to mention the hopeful bead catcher.