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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