Louisiana: A Government on Posts

Cameron Parish, Louisiana

It is a peculiar sight to see bricks and mortar government buildings atop posts.

Cameron, Louisiana

Somebody got this sparsely-populated area a lotta money to construct these government buildings.

Cameron, Louisiana

The population of the all Cameron Parish is less than 7000 people. Fewer than 2500 households. Looks like 1600 or so people under the age of 18.

Cameron, Louisiana

Not all the buildings are new.

Cameron, Louisiana

I love the ubiquitous Louisiana port-a-potty, this one owned by the sheriff's department. 

Cameron, Louisiana

 Cameron gets hammered regularly by hurricanes.

In 1957, Hurricane Audrey killed 300 residents of the town of Cameron.

In 2005, Hurricane Rita blew through.

And in 2008, it was Hurricane Ike that wreaked destruction.

About the money

An excerpt from a 2012 news report:

Horn says the parish is still working on a new $12.6 million jail. She says a $5.5 million courthouse annex including Police Jury administrative offices should be completed in August. Horn says the courthouse basement had to be flood-proofed, the outside repaired and windows replaced, among other work.

From a congressman's website in 2011: 

Congressman Charles W. Boustany, Jr., M.D., (R-South Louisiana) released the following statement today after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced a grant totaling $4.7 million was awarded to Cameron Parish to replace contents damaged throughout its library system during Hurricane Rita ...

A coastal protection project from 2013: 

The restoration project mines sand from federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico and transports it onto the Cameron Parish shoreline, restoring a beach that was eroded to the point of threatening the only east-west highway in the parish and one of the main routes for evacuations, State Highway 82/27. ... The $45.8 million project is being paid for entirely with state funds set aside for shoreline restoration

The new high school, from a 2010 New York Times article   

  .... new $28 million building with two gyms and three elevators.


Coastal restoration - I get that. A major investment in Louisiana's future, benefits reaped by all. But these big new government buildings for a parish with so few inhabitants? I don't know. I'd like to understand the reasoning along two lines: 

• Decisions on how to allocate finite financial resources for the greatest good; and 
• Decision to rebuild in a location that regularly gets decimated by forces majeures.

Louisiana: Sabine Wildlife Refuge

Wetland Walk, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

Do you know that when you're walking on a trail where there is tall grass between you and the water channel, so you can't see the water, that when you hear a sound like a glub-into-water right next to you, and it makes you jump a little bit, that you don't know if it's an alligator ker-plopping into the water from the bank, or a boat drifting by with fishermen, with water slapping against its side?

Wetland Walk, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

Louisiana's so flat that you have to build a rise.

Wetland Walk, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

 Once you walk up that long, long plank to the raised deck, you feel a cool, restorative breeze. Then, when you walk back down the plank, you descend into the heavy, heated air of sea level (or, in the case of Louisiana, perhaps below sea level - sad laugh).

Wetland Walk, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

Lafayette: The Mardi Gras Tree

Mardi Gras tree, Johnston Street, Lafayette, Louisiana

The parade route for most of Lafayette's Mardi Gras parades is long.

Mardi Gras tree, Johnston Street, Lafayette, Louisiana

So there are actually a number of  "Mardi Gras trees"  along the way. 

Mardi Gras tree, Johnston Street, Lafayette, Louisiana

One of them is on Johnston Street between St. Mary's and Cajundome. 

Mardi Gras tree, Johnston Street, Lafayette, Louisiana

Year 'round, the beads remain on the tree, with a new accumulation at each Mardi Gras.

Mardi Gras tree, Johnston Street, Lafayette, Louisiana

Mardi Gras trees. They don't grow just anywhere.

Rootless: On Getting a Puppy

It's not really a puppy, but kind of like a puppy

No, I haven't got a real puppy. But I have acquired something like a puppy. I've got to learn its ways, train it, and be trained by it.

I've got to keep track of it, so it doesn't get lost or stolen. I can handle it playfully, but not roughly.


It's not really a phone, but it's called a phone

It's a smart phone, my first. Only to call it a smartphone is a misnomer. It is a mini computer with a phone application.

This is not just semantics. How I view my new puppy affects how I socialize it with the world.

With my soon-to-be-old "dumb phone" - let's say my pet "turtle" - I could:

• Make and receive phone calls;
• Laboriously write texts and check email; and
• Make limited forays onto the internet. 

I had little concern about privacy boundaries or theft or malware because the dumb phone itself was like a turtle. A built-in shell for protection, by dint of its limited features, and thus easily monitored or caught if it meandered off, too humble to attract unwanted attention from strangers.

It's an entirely different story with my mini-computer.


Why did I get this puppy?

Being rootless, why would I want to be tied down with a puppy? Sheesh, now I've got to worry about dropping the damn thing or the glass will crack. It's cute and sweet and thereby attractive to strangers who might like to adopt it for themselves, so I've got to always have my radar on to make sure I know where it is. And it requires so much training - for the little one and me - to become true pals.

There are several reasons why I went this route: 

1. My turtle phone was on its last legs - that reliable, albeit limited, $30 phone I've had for years, with the cute little teeth marks on the top left-hand corner.  
2. My laptop is getting on in years and it could go belly up at any time, and I need a sophisticated, on-the-spot back-up to turn to for my work. 
3. I'll be headed out of the country again soon and I want an unlocked mini-computer that can run by wifi or a data plan. 

An invisible fence

When I bought my little puppy, I was still thinking of it as a phone. A phone with a lot of very cool enhancements. Consequently, I was startled by the decisions I had to make right away. Such as:

• What personal bits about myself - my data exhaust - did I want to have on this device? 
• What apps did I want to download - and what information was I willing to share in order to get these apps? 
• How could I enjoy all the benefits of a mini-computer without leaving a trail of personal me everywhere I went? 
• How many ads - if any - can I tolerate in exchange for a "free" app? 
• What data am I willing to lose if my mini-computer falls into the hands of strangers? 
• Like a puppy, I'm not willing to let my little device sit in a hot car for hours while I'm off canoeing or swimming or doing something else that puts it at risk. So do I change my habits and just leave it at home for such activities? 

Some decisions I've made (and it might make sense here to note that I've bought an Android device): 

1. Thank God, I have more than one email address (hehehe), so I chose one of my little-used accounts to be the email account on my device. I can put some distance between this account and me-central.
2. Do I really need to download a free game that requires access to my contact list? Hell, no! No games for you, little puppy! 
3. Do I need to download Kindle to my mini-computer? No, I've got a kindle e-reader, and I don't want to connect my Amazon account to my device. If I want to read, that's what my e-reader is for. Or an actual book. 
4. Do I want to stay signed in to my Skype account on my device? No; I've only got it on there as a back-up, and I don't ever want to make another mistake call to a work-related client.Whoops. (The lil' puppy is so eager to please, it tries to anticipate what you want by going to fetch somebody else's paper. Bad girl.) 

I'm trying to find the right balance between security and maximum fun + utility.

Again, it's all about safe sex.


What'd I buy? 

Short answer: Moto G 4LTE.

Longer answer: It was all about: 

• Excellent reviews;
• Budget; 
• Long battery life; 
• Unlocked and GSM for international use; and
• Android operating system. 

  

Louisiana: A Woman Without Her Own Name

In The Louisiana Story, the mother is played by E. Bienvenu, aka Mrs. E. Bienvenu.

I was reminded of this when I saw the tombstone at a cemetery outside Abbeville, on Highway 82.

Cemetery outside Abbeville, Louisiana. Highway 82.

Louisiana: Watch Out for the Stobor

At the end of the Blue Goose Trail, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

In Robert Heinlein's sci-fi classic, Tunnel in the Sky, the professor warns the survival-class students: Watch out for the stobor.

The students assumed the terrible stobor were large, fierce beasts such as lions or dragons. So the students chose their survival gear with these threats in mind. Little did the students know that the stobor were actually .... well, I don't want to ruin it for you.

I had feral pigs and alligators in mind when I packed gear for my tiny foray to the Sabine Wildlife Refuge south of Hackberry, Louisiana. I had a long stick and I had my knife.

But neither pigs nor alligators were the stobor. .... the stobor were the dratted flies that plagued my face, hat, and neck! Thank God I brought my bandana! And now I know to invest in more earplugs because all I thought about as I swatted and swore like a crazed woman was that my ears were exposed.

Louisiana: The Yankee Chank

Before I tell you what a "Yankee chank" is, I have to tell you what chank is, or more specifically, "chanky chank."

Chanky chank

Back in the day, chanky chank was a derogatory term used to describe Cajun/Creole (and early zydeco) music.  Go here for a thorough explanation in an article, From Chanky-Chank to Yankee Chanks: The Cajun Accordion as Identity Symbol, by Louisiana music ethnomusicologist, Dr. Mark DeWitt. The article is from the book, The Accordion in the Americas: Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydeco, and More! edited by Helena Simonette.

Dewey Balfa. Source: Smithsonian Folkways

Chanky chank gained some prestige when: 

In 1964 [Dewey] Balfa and his band were asked to perform as last-minute replacements at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, a premier event in the world of folk music and a top outdoor venue. Friends in Louisiana knew that he would be playing the old-fashioned Cajun music they called "chanky-chank," and suggested that the group would be laughed off the stage. Instead, Balfa received a standing ovation.

Source: Encylopedia

Yankee chank

I'd never heard of chanky chank until I attended the last in a series of discussions about how documentaries have portrayed Cajuns, beginning with The Louisiana Story.  Dr. Barry Ancelet, a folklorist, facilitated the series. Don't remember how we got on the subject, but we talked about how sometimes transplants to Acadiana are stern arbiters of the right way to dance Cajun or zydeco. (These are referred to generally as dance nazis, who are by no means exclusive to the Cajun and zydeco genres.)

Dr. Ancelet immediately said, "Yankee chanks."

I love this.

Yankee chank refers to people from outside southern Louisiana who play the Cajun and zydeco music, especially accordions. Meant somewhat derisively at first, perhaps, it looks like at least some of the targets of this label have now embraced it with pride. Also, I should note that at the Saturday Cajun jam at Vermilionville, the emcee always introduces and expresses appreciation for visiting musicians from outside Louisiana.

Source: Yankee Chank

Louisiana: Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

The Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival!

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

It's always the first weekend of May, and in 2014, the town celebrated its 54th festival.

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

Bags checked at gate - not even a bottle of water alllowed in.

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

Fabulous music. Fabulous.  Six months ago, I didn't know these people existed, but today, I can tell you it is very satisfying to see venerable musicians such as Ray Abshire and D.L. Menard in person.

Ray Abshire and company, Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

I filmed Mr. Menard's performance (with the band Jambalaya) of his famous song, Back Door, here. How I love this song! I'm not wild about the quality of my video, though, so I invite you to watch the superior video below, which someone filmed at the 2009 Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival:

It was also fun to see people I "knew" from having watched videos before I went to the festival.

Like this good-lookin', good-dancin' couple below:

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

I first "met" them in the much-viewed video below from the 2009 festival:

Now look at that still photo again (above the video). See the slender guy on the right? In the flappy-eared hat? Well, that's Leon of Cafe des Amis renown, and you can watch him dance in the video here, taken by a visitor to that cafe:

Note: Leon's dance partner is doing a damn fine job herself.

It's pretty hot and sunny in BB, Louisiana, and as I have learned from watching southern Louisianans with parades, they know how to attend a festival. It's first come-first serve at the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, but you can bring your own shade tent and set it up in permissible areas. This is a life-saver when you're at the festival for the long haul. 

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

Of course, everyone has a chair.

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

If I were staying longer, I'd definitely invest in one of those folding chairs with its own awning.  Below, you can see one or two of these awning-chairs, but otherwise, you'll see a variety of umbrellas:

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

I never tire of watching people dance, especially zydeco. It's fun to see the same people at the different venues. You get to know their styles, their signature moves.

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

(Between you and me, though, I've learned that a lot of people dance whatever the hell they want to zydeco music, especially the jitterbug, the two-step, some form of swing, or just whatever the spirit moves them to do.)  

As my dance teacher said, as long as you're moving to the beat, it really doesn't matter.

DL Menard with Jambalaya, Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

Lake Martin, Louisiana: In Lotus Bloom

Lotus, Lake Martin, Louisiana

On Father's Day, June 2014, the lotus are in bloom on Lake Martin.

Lotus, Lake Martin, Louisiana

The lotus leaves billow like baby elephant ears when they stand alert from the water.

Lotus, Lake Martin, Louisiana

 When flat on the water surface, birds use the lotus leaves as momentary resting spots.

Lotus, Lake Martin, Louisiana

In the boat, we glide through a field of lotus and dragonflies.

A slide show below, which includes scenes from Lake Martin in June and April 2014 and of January 2012:

#30

Rootless: Life-Work Balance Out of Whack

In his book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge used the analogy of a kitchen faucet to make a point about the lag time between making a change and seeing the desired results. Well, it was about more than that, but I'm going to borrow it for my own purpose.

Say you want some warm water. You turn on the hot and cold water handles, but the water remains cold. So you open up the hot water handle some more, and the water's still too cold, so you close up the cold water a little bit, and then all of a sudden the water's too hot, so you have to adjust the hot and cold handles again til you get the temp where you want it. There's always a lag time between an action and a reaction.

I wanted more EFL students so I could increase my income ... and little by little I got more. Yay!

Then came this one night when I realized that even though I'd completed my last class a few hours earlier, I was still doing related administrative work. About the same time, I was wondering, damn, what's happening to my creative life? 

You see what happened is this: I suddenly found myself with too much of a good thing! (I love teaching English online.) There wasn't much administrative work with my online teaching job, but what there was hadn't grown incrementally, it had grown exponentially, with the result that my work-personal life was completely out of whack.

But fortunately, the Universe looked kindly upon me. Because almost to the day that I realized my predicament, a hand reached out to me with an enticing invitation to consider a professional zag from my current zig. I accepted that invitation and one week from tomorrow, I will be working full time and yet have more personal time for creative, tourist-in-residence pursuits than I do now.

I'll still be in the EFL world, but not as an EFL teacher. I am wistful about not teaching, but enthusiastic about my new role. 

For now, I'm looking forward to a resumption of balance.   

Lafayette: Cemetery With Two Names

Protestant Cemetery, Lafayette, Louisiana

There's a cemetery on Pinhook that has two names.

Masonic Cemetery, Lafayette, Louisiana

More correctly, one part of the cemetery is the Masonic Cemetery. 

Protestant Cemetery, Lafayette, Louisiana

The other part is the Lafayette Protestant Cemetery.  The specific generality of the "Protestant Cemetery" name makes me so curious.

For some, the war never ends. Protestant Cemetery, Lafayette, Louisiana

Louisiana: St. Martinville Festival Grounds: Old Garage

Garage in disrepair, St. Martinville, Louisiana

There's an old garage, now a disintegrating building, owned by the city of St. Martinville (so I was told), that is part of the St. Martinville Festival Grounds.

Garage in disrepair, St. Martinville, Louisiana

It's got the proverbial good bones that some buildings have, if it would ever get reborn into something useful, but for now it falls mostly into the category of the decrepit picturesque.

Garage in disrepair, St. Martinville, Louisiana

The broken windows refract the fading light of a day in pleasing ways.

Garage in disrepair, St. Martinville, Louisiana

Louisiana: An Addition to the Crawfish Collection #3

Crawfish chair, Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

I have not been remiss in my crawfish collecting activities.

Crawfish crossing, Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival 2014, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

There is an idea that some animals are easier to rally for, such as in protecting, if they have large eyes and they're furry-ish and you can anthropomorphize them. Pandas, baby seals, puppies and kittens, and the like.

Crawfish undertakers, Crawfish Etoufee Cook-Off Festival 2014, Eunice, Louisiana

Crawfish don't fit this profile, but nevertheless, they are beloved.

Well, they are boiled and eaten and beloved.


A crawfish slide show:

Louisiana: New Iberia Hot Sauce Festival 2014: Big Ass Fans

Big Ass Fans at Sugarena, New Iberia, Louisiana

The New Iberia Hot Sauce Festival (April) is in the Sugarena (get it?), which is like a very large barn with cement bleachers.

It's a festival indoors! Kind of! 

Real restrooms.

Everyone gets to sit in the shade because it's inside!

Is it raining outside? Who cares?! The festival is inside! 

And there are Big Ass Fans!

Big Ass Fans at Sugarena, New Iberia, Louisiana

Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux, Police Violence, and our Complicity in Same

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. Ack. I just realized that my selections might give the impression that Dave Robicheaux (channeling James Lee  Burke) is a real downer about southern 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 and violence 


Dave Robicheaux is a violent son of a bitch. So violent, it can be difficult at times to rationalize that Dave is a good guy, and not one of the bad guys. It doesn't help that Dave has tremendous admiration for sometimes-partner Clete, who's got to be a psychopath. (Lucky for Dave, he's not Clete's enemy.) 

Dave does have some insight into his violence, which he attempts to explain in Dixie City Jam below.

Police violence - or abuse of power


From Dixie City Jam (1994)

I always wanted to believe that those moments of rage, which affected me almost like an alcoholic black-out, were due to a legitimate cause, that I or someone close to me had been seriously wronged, that the object of my anger and adrenaline had not swum coincidentally into my ken.

But I had known too many cops who thought the same way. Somehow there was always an available justification for the Taser dart, the jet of Mace straight into the eyes, the steel baton whipped across the shinbones or the backs of the thighs.

The temptation is to blame the job, the stressed-out adversarial daily routine that can begin like a rupturing peptic ulcer, the judges and parole boards who cycle psychopaths back on the street faster than you can shut their files. But sometimes in an honest moment, an unpleasant conclusion works its way through all the rhetoric of the self-apologist, namely, that you are drawn to this world in the same way that some people are fascinated by the protean shape and texture of fire, to the extent that they need to slide their hands through its caress. 

A Stained White Radiance (1992) 

Policemen often have many personal problems. TV films go to great lengths to depict cops' struggles with alcoholism, bad marriages, mistreatment at the hands of liberals, racial minorities, and bumbling administrators.

But my experience has been that the real enemy is the temptation to misuse power. The weaponry we possess is awesome - leaded batons, slapjacks, Mace, stun guns, M-16s, scoped sniper rifles, 12-gauge assault shotguns, high-powered pistols and steel-jacketed ammunition that can blow the cylinders out of an automobile's engine block.

But the real rush is in the discretionary power we sometimes exercise over individuals. I'm talking about the kind of people no one likes - the lowlifes, the aberrant, the obscene and ugly - about whom no one will complain if you leave them in lockdown the rest of their lives with a good-humored wink at the Constitution, or if you're really in earnest, you create a situation where you simply saw loose their fastenings and throw down a toy gun for someone to find when the smoke clears.

It happens, with some regularity.

People like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona, are real-life examples of what Dave Robicheaux is talking about above. Including how we are complicit in such activities. Since my September 2013 post referencing Sheriff Arpaio, Maricopa County has spent even more millions of dollars to settle lawsuits that have arisen during Sheriff Arpaio's watch. .... And the people of Maricopa County keep him in office, re-electing him as recently as 2012. He won't be up for re-election until 2016. Reminds me of the perhaps-apocryphal statement made by a past president about one of our murderous allies in Central America: "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

The New Orleans Police Department has a woeful reputation for corruption and brutality.What does it signify that "everybody" knows this, and has known it for a long time, and yet ... it continues?
  

Rootless: Goodbye, Friend

Time to say good-bye, friend.

You went with me to innumerable festivals, and to Ethiopia, to Mexico, to Caucasus Georgia, to Dubai, to Istanbul, to Armenia, to New Mexico, and finally, to Louisiana.

We were such a perfect fit. I liked resting my hand on your shoulder, and to have your arm draped across mine. You protected my valuables. You carried my books. My water. My camera. You never complained.

Who could have predicted all of the adventures we'd share when we first met at that second-hand store? 

I'll never forget you. 

Yes, even though I must replace you, know that you will always be my true love.

Goodbye, bag.