Yes, Marthe, a special, and now specially upset, system that like the much
different Florida systems was home to a certain sort of hybr idity...
On Jul 11, 2012 10:56 AM, "Marthe Reed" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Viewed from Cajun country and the vantage of time, it is hard to see "A
> Louisiana Story" without recognizing the devastation of the wetlands and
> coast that have come, in no small part, from the exploitation of oil and
> gas. The access canals cut through the swamps changed the rate of water
> movement, allowing high levels of salt into brackish and fresh water,
> killing the plants that stabilized the sediments. Each year those channels
> widen further and further, allowing even more salt into the area. It
> strikes me as no accident that the clean, friendly oil company message was
> bank-rolled by Standard Oil Company. The Cajuns end up colorful folk
> fortunate to have new wealth and no negative consequences. Unlike the
> poisoned waterways and land from oil refining in the state, where children
> are not infrequently profoundly compromised in utero. One wonders, too,
> where the incredibly hybrid world of the swamps -- a world of Chitimacha
> people and Creole people, of African Americans, Cajuns, and diverse
> cultural blendings between them.
>
> Marthe
>
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 4:47 PM, Catherine Daly <[log in to unmask]
> >wrote:
>
> > I just spent a few days with a good friend whose family has had a
> > chunk of land on the Arbita River since the early 1800s; he knows some
> > of the Swamp People reality TV personalities (one recently arrested;
> > media attention is a mixed bag, but spousal abuse?); I'm down here in
> > Gator Boys (SE FL) country instead...
> >
> > All best,
> > Catherine
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Marthe Reed
> Director of Creative Writing
> Assistant Professor
> English Department
> UL Lafayette
> 337-482-5503
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~mxr5675/home.html
>
> http://www.blackradishbooks.org/Reed.html
> _____________________________________
> *
> Poetry is made in a bed like love*
> *Its rumpled sheets are the dawn of things*
> *Poetry is made in the woods*
>
> --Andre Breton, "On the road to San Romano"
>
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