From Acadian to Cajun

Back in the olden days of American history, there was a southern region, Louisiana, that had been settled by French people. When Napoleon was in charge of France, there were regions of the New World where the French were calling the shots. One of them was Louisiana, a vast region, named after a French king, extending northward from New Orleans to St. Paul and beyond. There was another French region, way up north, in what is now the state of Maine; but the original name was: Acadia. Today I am learning about the British expulsion of the French from that region . . . and the historical identity of those refugees who later fled to Louisiana, the state where I was born, and where I heard, all throughout my young life, about the “ ‘Cajuns” who were so numerous in my hometown. It just so happens that I am, today, as a visitor, a tourist, in Acadia, on a beach near Bar Harbor, Maine. And I am learning about the history of this place. I am learning that the Brits came in, back in the 1700’s, and took control of the region; they ran the French people out.

Most of the French folk who were banished from Acadia fled down to Louisiana, because Napolean was in control of that area, in the deep south, the mouth of the Mississippi River, in the region where was born and spent my early life. Later, much later, I was born into that world, in July 1951, in Baton Rouge, the capitol city ofLouisiana. My mother was of French heritage, as were many natives of Louisiana. My father’s ancestors, Scotch/Irish had traveled from the piney woods of Mississippi. Papa was a of southern Baptist heritage; mama was a Catholic of French pedigree. South Louisiana is a decidedly French region, historically blended from the French settlers who had sailed from France to New Orleans, back in the day, during the early stages of our United States. But most of the citizens of French south Louisiana are what we call Cajuns, who, in modern times, speak American English, but with a cajun accent, which is a unique dialect of French that was brought to south Louisiana by the Acadians who had been banished from the Acadia region of Nova Scotia, back in the day. Today, April 21, 2026, I am a tourist, touring the Acadia region of Maine. And I am wondering about my “Cajun” connection. . . reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem, “Evangeline”, and wondering about the “cajuns” with whom I grew up, back in the day, in Baton Rouge. Yet I still do not know how to sort out the historical mysteries between “Acadia” and “Cajun.” But Just now, sitting in Geddy’s pizza pub in Bar Harbor, Maine, I see a very real obsession/connection. I enjoy their servings of lobster; and I see a profound resemblance to their serving the Maine lobsters in Acadia. . . and the Cajun’s serving of crawfish, down in south Louisiana. And I am pondering this connection between “Acadian” and “Cajun.” It seems to me they morphed from big lobsters in Maine to little lobsters in south Louisiana. Glass Chimera

Glass Chimera

“Well, out with it, my boy.” Simon laughed good-naturedly. “Was there, ah, a message, something special?” “A, uh, computer chip.” Simon’s eyes narrowed. He was amused. “Very small, eh?” “Right. Very small.” “And were you able to read the contents of it?” asked Simon, as if this happened every day. “I did read it.” “And what did it say?” “Hell if I know,” blurted Mick, and looked out the window, taking the last gulp of his drink. Simon laughed, totally at ease. “The chip contained, perhaps, a message that you don’t know how to interpret?” Mick looked back at the spiffy Brit, and laughed, relaxing again. “That’s right. That’s exactly right.” “Well, my boy, what did it say exactly? Maybe I can help you understand the meaning of it. I’ve done this before you know.” Mick sighed. He didn’t want to repeat the message, with its mysterious numbers and letters. Reaching in his shirt pocket, he produced the little paper with Italian printed on it. On the back he had written the message that had been retrieved from a glass horse’s gonads. He slid it across the table to Simon, who picked it up and looked at it, with an expression of mock seriousness on his face, an expression which then metamorphosed into a faint smile. “These are genetic codes.” “Genetic codes?” “Locations on the human genome, in the DNA chain.” Simon smiled, as if this is common knowledge that people sent through glass horse sculptures every day of the week. “Okay. . .and?” “The second one refers to human growth hormone. The other three, I’ll have to look up.” Simon looked directly into Mick’s puzzled eyes. “Does this mean anything to you?” “Uh, no, not really.”

Glass Chimera

At the Lincoln Memorial

a scene from my novel, Glass half-Full

They walked up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. When they reached the top, Bridget was gazing, like most everyone else who ascends here, with rapt interest at the seated statue. But Marcus, holding Bridget’s hand, gently prodded her to keep moving, slowly to the left, through the myriad of ambling visitors.They came to an inner sanctum. Carved on the white marble wall infront of them were the words of the slain President’s Gettysburg address. Marcus stopped, taking in the enormity of it, both physically and philosophically. He was looking at the speech intently. Bridget was lookingat him. After a few moments: “Isn’t that amazing?“Yes.” She could see that he was thinking hard about something. The great chamber echoed a murmur of humankind.“Supreme irony.” The longing of a nation’s soul reverberated through the memorial… in the soundings of children, the whisperings of passersby. Deep within Marcus’ soul, something sacred was stirring, and she could see it coming forth. “The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.” He was reading aloud Lincoln’s words on the white wall. But for the echoes of a million people who had passed through this place, there was silence. After a moment, Bridget responded. “…and yet, there it is carved on the wall, for all to see: ‘the world will little note what we say here….’” “Right, Bridget. Isn’t it amazing?” Suddenly, amid the noise was a loud shouting. Marcus could hear where it was coming from. He moved quickly away, toward the noise, to see what was happening. Bridget felt the sudden coolness of air on her hand, in the absence of Marcus’ gentle grip. As soon as he emerged from behind the marble column, Marcus was puzzled by an incongruous, glistening wet flash of red upon the feet of Lincoln’s statue. What the hell? Instinctively, he ran over to it. He could stillhear a constant shouting; it was a ranting. Then his attention settled on the man who was yelling. He had a bucket in his hand, dripping with red paint. The rant went on, and suddenly Marcus was comprehending it: “…you sonofabitch see if you can get that off and then rub it on your white ass, your sorry white ass that destroyed what this country could have been you’re atraitor to your race.” This must be a dream, a very bad dream. Marcus was noticing the speaker’s bald head, goatee, his moving mouth spouting insult. Then Marcus was deciding to do something. It seemed to him that it was someone else speaking when he asked, loudly, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Glass half-Full

Flanders Fie;d

. . . in final chapter of my novel, Smoke, spoken by an old Frenchman. . “How could this place have been a battlefield for a world war?”

The old Frenchman cast his eyes on the passing landscape, and seemed to join Philip in this musing. He answered slowly, “War is a terrible thing, an ugly thing. I did not fight in the war; I had already served my military duty, long before the Archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo and the whole damn world flew apart, like shrapnel. But I had many friends who fought here, and back there, where we just came from in my France, back there at the Somme, the Marne, Amiens. Our soldiers drove the Germans back across their fortified lines, the Hindenberg line they called it. By summer of 1918 the Germans were in full retreat, although it took them a hell of a long time, and rivers of spilt blood, to admit it. And so it all ended here. Those trenches, over there in France, that had been held and occupied for two hellish years by both armies, those muddy hellholes were finally left behind, vacated, and afterward . . . filled up again with the soil of France and Flanders and Belgium, and green grass was planted where warfare had formerly blasted its way out of the dark human soul and the dark humus of lowland dirt and now we see that grass, trimmed, manicured and growing so tidily around those rows of white crosses out there, most of them with some soldier’s name carved on them, many just unknown, anonymous, and how could this have happened? You might as well ask how could. . . a grain of sand get stuck in an oyster? And how could that oyster, in retaliation against that rough, alien irritant, then generate a pearl—such a beautiful thing, lustrous and white—coming forth in response to a small, alien presence that had taken up unwelcomed residence inside the creature’s own domain? The answer, my friend, is floating in the sea, blowing in the wind, growing green and strong from soil that once ran red with men’s blood.” Smoke

MAGA donald Has Bombed Out

“No kings” cried the maddened thousands, as American protests echoed through our nation. Yet still more magamaniac babble spewed from donald’s bellicose contagion They watched his mind go wacky and so weird; they saw his sanity erase, and they knew his Iran war was a genocidal disgrace. The pride is gone from donald’s proud boys; three-percenters down to none; oath-keeper antics now but maniacal toys.

And now the donald mounts his war, aimed at the Iranian people As Americans recoil in horror; magamania renders us feeble.

Oh somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright. The band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light. Somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout But there’s no joy in America; might donald has bombed out. Glass half-Full

From Lennon to Lennox

When I was a teenager, the Beatles were a big deal for us baby boomers.John Lennon sang a song called “Imagine.” It went something like this: “Imagine there’s no heaven. . .no hell below us. . .above us only sky. . . no religion too. . . imagine all the people, living life in peace. . .. . . you may say that I’m a dreamer; but I’m not the only one. “ I was a dreamer too; but I was also a working man. I was working, helping to build a quarter-mile-long bridge, the Linn Cove viaduct. near Grandfather Mountain in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina.

One December morning, while our rodbuster crew were tying rebar in a huge work shed, our foreman, Rod (funny that: Rod, foreman of the rodbusting crew) came in aand told us that John Lennon had been shot dead in New York City. It was a moment I’ll never forget. . . not quite the JFK-in-Dallas memory of ’63, but close. My g-generation’s loss of our prophet, John Lennon was a terrible, tragedy. By the time of Lennon’s demise, I had been following a different prophet—actually a whole heavenly host of prophets—those found in the ancient book. In that literary collection of prhistorical and prophetic documentation, we learn of several more “Johns”. There was John the Baptist, thenn John the apostle who wrote a gospel account of Jesus’ life, death and Resurrection, and later, the book of Revelation. A fellow-traveler of John’s gospel-spreading project was the apostle Paul, who wrote, in his letter to the Romans: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.” For me, part of that “doing away with” included admitting that John Lennon’s dream of world peace and harmony was —as the saying goes—a “pipe dream”—especially if, in the pipe, the smoke was cannabis, as so many of us boomers were doing at that time, ’60’s, ‘70’s . . . but I digress. . . Now today, I was watching a youtube discussion between John Lennox

and David Perell, in which the Oxford scholar was explaining to the young interviewer the difference between gospel truth and everything else. They had gotten into some heavy topics. Lennox was talking about the human genome, DNA, a code that is 3.4 billion letters long; he was making the point that any code of such complexity, length and extremely long historical longevity could only have been written by God, theCreator of the universe.

In my life journey, roundabout 1977, I had decided to affirm John Lennox’ world view—the gospel one— by expositing the fact that his biblical explanation far surpasses the world view that I and John Lennon had, back in the day. I mean, John Lennon was a great musician and poet. Who knows? Maybe I’ll meet him in heaven. I’m not the judge of such things. I’m just one ole guy pecking away on a laptop, trying to figure it all out. Boomer’s Choice

Boomer Streaming

Back in the day, Don McLean sang: “there we were all in one place, a generation lost in space”. . . Then, recently, I heard Simon and Joan singing : “nor is it strange that the changes upon changes are more or less the same; after changes, we are more or less the same. and it all comes back to me now:

Kangaroo Howdy Doody then Elvis RayCharles . . . Kennedy said moon landing by ’69, but the answer’s blowin’ in the wind, saith Dylan, Baez, Peter Paul and Mary. . . . Then along comes Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, but then the Birmingham jail. . . by ’n by as push comes to shove. . . March on Washington,Lincoln Memorial dream: “all God’s children” together . . . but that’s not the whole story. . . President John F. Kennedy dead in Dallas (Where were you when the news broke?) . . .when Walter Cronkite took off his glasses at one o’clock November 22, 1963. . .I heard the news in a seventh grade classroom, from our school principal, Sister Georgia. She said, “He had ‘em backed up against the wall.” . . . speaking about JFK v. Khruschev and the Soviets during in the Cuban missile crisis. But life goes on. . . Warren Commission Great Society LBJ and Civil Rights Act. . . Malcom X. . . Hard day’s night but Sinatra sang its a very good year . . . Eleanor Rigby, ballad of Green Berets, SixDayWar, Black Power, Thurgood Marshall but Dr. King assassinated in Memphis after being warned with a phone call from an “ugly voice” the night before. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Robert F Kennedy shot in L.A. . . the the Chicago Democrats fiasco: boomer kids in Grant Park. . . but hey, turn on, tune in, drop out. . . then Leary-eyed in San Francisco, where crooners had left their heart, and hippies tripped in Haight Ashbury. . . meanwhile back at the motor city. . . along came Motown, Aretha, Smoky Robinson, Four Tops, Drifters. . . then in ’69 first troops out of Vietnam. . . celebration in Yasgur’s field, Woodstock, flower power, good luck with that! . . . three days, man! CSNY singing Joni’s song. . .then there’s Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind”, thanks to visionary JFK, back in the day. But just when you think you’ve finally got it made, bad news comes knockin’ at your college gate: Kent State “four dead in Ohio.” and later, Altamont. . .

. . . and Nixon bombing Laos, Cambodia. . . kinda like trump bombing the middle East. But I digress. I mean, hey! It’s not all bad. We’re like a fiddler on the roof, just trying to stay alive . . . . .and the Beegees agreed. Meanwhile back in DC, Nixon shut down the gold window . . . just before his dirty tricks backfired on him. . . unlicensed “plumbers” in the Watergate. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, we’re waitin’ in line for gas, coast to coast, then the Pentagon papers, double digit inflation. . . Sam Ervin Senate Watergate committee. . . but the good news was: Sadat/Begin peace, good for a while. . . Even so, we seem to have lost our way, starting back in the day . . . dot.com fiasco and, and. . . where were you on 9/11? and as if that wasn’t bad enough. . . the MBS and CDO’s fiasco oon Wall Street in the 2008 crash. All ye baby boomers out there, my compatriots, we just have to view the world through faith-colored glasses . . . even though it all went wrong, we stand before the Lord of Song. . . (and of all history) with nothing on our tongues but Hallelujah! King of Soul