pt at large

Blizzard of 2015: Provision Panic

Monday, January 26, 2015

The end of the world, at least for a few days, is at hand. Blizzard warning, storm mania, words like 'catastrophic', 'historic' on line, in print, on the air. Down to last tablespoons of coffee, I need to trek to Whole Foods on Washington Street Newton at 10 AM. Days without coffee? Are you kidding me?

You woulda thought the populace was preparing for a statewide 'shelter in place' edict.  

Lines of cars inch forward on the road before even entering the jammed parking lot, deciding which lane to enter to find a place to park, eyeing patrons exiting with cloth bags hefty enough to substitute for barbells on the rack at the health club, trying to figure out where they are headed. Gasoline powered vultures.

This does not bring out the best in us. A few kamikaze moves from especially crazed drivers, the rest wait, white knuckles gripping the steering wheel.  A social scientist would have enough material for a doctoral thesis with a few hours of observing cars vying to slip into a parking place vacated seconds before - and do it in a manner that wouldn't embarrass us if it were videoed on omnipresent cellphones. We're all looking for that parking spot that will get us a trip into the store and salvation - and supply us with provender for the oncoming hyped-up, historic event.

We are in a mild state of panic. The fear of scarcity rules us. Aisles in the store are clogged, register lines queued with carriages packed to the gunnels. Black humor and anxiety vie for primacy in snippets of conversation. Your handwritten list, created in the sanity of your kitchen an hour before, doesn’t seem to be sufficient. You double down on milk and more basics. You pray that the power doesn't go down and you suffer as you watch $100 of perishables perish in your warm fridge.

Brainstorm. Buy cans of soup. The gas stove will work even if power goes poof. Once through the cashier aisle, a wave of relief...and reckoning. You wonder how you could have spent so much for so much more than you thought you'd need. You turn on the radio. Nothing but Blizzard of 2015 updates. You imagine being home bound for weeks. Maybe you didn't buy enough.

 

 

 

Dispatches From Chile2015: Photo Essays Coming Soon

January 22, 2015

ChileFarms,Nogales, Chile

The internet has been so cranky I haven't been able to send little stories that fill every day here. Today, ironically my last day here, the 'net' is robust. I'm going to write little photo essays about farm life when I get home,with words to go with photos like the ones below.

 

 

  

 

 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

 

 

Dispatches From Chile2015: A Crisis On The Horizon-H20 Part2

ChileFarms
Nogales, Chile
January 19, 2015

During my annual visits to ChileFarms, I see a well-run farm that treats its workers fairly, lots of interesting local activities, including Chilean rodeos in which Ricardo excels, eat Susaan’s delicious mid day meals every day, and find loads of everyday farm goings-on that fascinate me. My blog from past years is full of stories documenting this. I have taken the weekly water flow from the Aconcagua River into local canals and through this farm for granted, unaware of the politics and infrastructure involved. 

After talking with Ricardo and Susaan this year, I opened my eyes wider to discover a complex and volatile combination of politics, a faltering natural water cycle, climate change, and Chile’s cultural history.

Two recent stories and one government initiative about water consumption for avocado and other crops are startling and point to Chile’s growing water management crisis.

The first story shows a shocking graph that depicts the average amount of irrigated water, in gallons, that it takes to grow a pound of avocados in several countries.http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/10/avocado-drought-chile-california

Chile produced 200,00 metric tons of avocados in 2014. Do the math. Think about that next time you dive into a bowl of guacomole.

Charts for Mother Jones by Julia Lurie, who notes that the figures in this chart, and the one later in this post, include only blue water—which comes from rivers, lakes, streams, and aquifers—and not rainfall or recycled water.

Think about this next time you walk down the beautifully displayed produce in your local market.

Much of Chile’s avocado crop is exported to America. Statistics suggest that because of demand from the United States and the EU, avocado farmers in Chile have used so much water that some towns' wells have run dry.

Here are some facts from this story in Mother Jones October 2014:

• Chile's Central Valley (in which Nogales is located), like California's, lies between a snowcapped interior mountain range and a coastal mountain range.

• Chile is in the midst of a drought for the past several years.

• Chile's Southern Hemisphere location gives it a "counter-seasonal production schedule with the United States", that is, Chile's summer starts around the time that ours ends. That’s why your local market has such a range of fruits and veggies all year long.

• As in California, climate change and drought have meant less surface water flowing from mountain ranges to irrigate crops—and a shift to pumping water from underground aquifers. As a result, producers have "used so much of the region's waters that small farmers with shallow wells—and some nearby towns—are left with no water"

• Like California, Chile takes a laissez-faire approach to groundwater regulation. The results are scary.

• Large, export-minded farm operations have the wherewithal to drill larger and deeper wells, squeezing out small farms and nearby communities, author of "Civil Eats" Eilis O'Neill reports. Meanwhile, the profits from Chile's farm export boom remains pretty concentrated in the hands of large landowners.

The second story titled “Avocado farming straining Chilean water supplies” hits close to home for ChileFarms. The theme of the story is that a perfect storm of climate change, privatization of water rights dating from Augusto Pinochet’s reign from 1973-1990, and 5-year drought is leading to extreme water shortages.

A farmer near La Ligua (36 km from Nogales) stands in a dry riverbed that once fed water to his avocado trees. He says the problem began when avocado farmers who used to cultivate on the valley floor began to plant trees on hillsides and mountainsides. When water was pumped to vast tracts of avocado trees on the hillsides, it depleted his supply at ground level.

Couple this with a drought of five years, sometimes towns and small farmers get drips when they turn on their taps. Shortages this dramatic haven’t reached ChileFarms and Nogales but the issue was raised last week at a meeting Ricardo Ceriani attended in Quillota, a large city 23 km from Nogales.

An American author quoted in this story says the water problems began during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1973. Individuals and companies could apply for water rights. In the free market environment, the government granted water rights free and forever and those rights could be sold to others.

“There were no avocado trees planted on hillsides when Ricardo and I first arrived here in 1996,” ChileFarms Susaan Straus recalls. Now even the hillsides of the road leading to ChileFarms have avocado trees planted on them.

Avocados on hillside along road to ChileFarms about two kilometers away (January 2015)

According to the story, Adolfo Ochagavía, of the Committee of Chilean Hass Avocados, says building better infrastructure such as large reservoirs could help solve La Ligua's water problems. Both he and Felipe Martín, president of the Chilean government's National Irrigation Commission, agree that as much as 85% of snowmelt from the Andes is lost because it flows into the Pacific Ocean.

I was shocked (again) today when Ricardo and Susaan agreed that there is an accumulation problem, that huge amounts of river water flow into the Pacific especially during winter months when there’s little need for irrigation. I thought for sure that the officials claiming Chile allowed 85% of water from the Andes to flow into the Pacific was a bureaucratic ploy to play nice to wealthy landowners who have powerful connections in the government.

Rodrigo Mundaca, an agricultural engineer and the general secretary of the organization Movement for Defense of Water, Earth, and Environmental Protection, says, Chile needs to "have a deeper discussion about renationalizing the country's water, about enshrining water access as an essential, unalienable human right in the constitution." The deeper the current crisis becomes, the more traction this discussion will get.

The most promising proposal comes from the government of President Michelle Bachelet which is considering a program to spend US$1bn over four years to tackle water scarcity. The three parts of the proposal:

• Build desalination projects benefiting the country's north in particular, to build reservoirs and to bring existing storage and regulation ponds back into operation.

• Restructure the government departments to create a water resources ministry or a dedicated department within the public works ministry.

• A reform of the country's water law so that water rights can be restricted or terminated, and for an end to perpetual water rights and a Constitutional reform to prohibit ownership of water rights.

This proposal could be a Chilean version of “The New Deal”, with the familiar tag line of “job creation.” But the third part of the proposal is certain to meet strong opposition from the most wealthy and powerful ranks of corporations and landowners.

President Michelle Bachelet has had the proposal on her desk since June 2014. Ricardo Ceriani has told me “the government doesn’t do anything for the farmers, only for the people of Santiago.”

If history is any guide, he is probably right. For the sake of the farmers of the central valley, I hope he's not.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Dispatches From Chile2015: A Crisis On The Horizon-H20

January 18, 2015
Chilefarms, Nogales, Chile

The repressive Augusto Pinochet government in the 1980s was free-market oriented, much to the benefit of large farming and mining corporations. In the decades since, water consumption by these companies has soared, particularly by gigantic avocado growing corporations. It has reached the point at which owners of small farms in this valley have seen their water supply diminishing.

Ricardo Ceriani of Chilefarms attended a meeting recently in nearby Quillota at which area farmers relayed their concerns and anger to Congresswoman Andrea Molina, a member of the Chilean Parliament from V Region (Valparaiso). Ricardo's wife Susaan Straus says that local farmers complain but rarely organize. Congresswoman Molina listened to their concerns and surprised Ricardo with her response. "Keep coming to these meetings, your attendance here sends a message I can use to help you," he recalls she said.

Chilean farmers in this region, especially ones without deep pockets, have never felt empowered to have any effect on the vested interests of wealthy landowners, some of whom are members of the Parliament themselves. Some of the wealthiest landowners and farmers live in Los Andes and San Felipe. Situated at the base of the Andes Mountains, they are the first to be supplied with the annual snowmelt that courses over land through rivers and streams and underground through subterranean rivers flowing through cave systems in the mountains.

The wealthy farmers with political clout in these two towns already control water distribution into the valleys westward toward the Pacific. They release water into the Aconcagua River from their reservoirs once a week. Farmers downstream, including Nogales, divert water from local canals into their farms.  

For some small farmers, this is the only water they have to irrigate their crops. Farmers with more resources are digging reservoirs on their property along the canals to capture water to use the rest of the week. Chilefarms and several nearby farms have done so in the past year. Farmers with even deeper pockets and increasing concern about a reliable source of water have begun drilling deep wells to pump water from the aquifer. A drilled well could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The value of farms with independent access to water immediately increases. All well and good for the near term but what about the future?

Areas of California that have supported huge avocado farms have gone through a similar series of events being played out here in Chile. The avocado farms in California are exhausting the water supply. Entire towns, let alone farms, have run dry. Informative graphs on the link that follows:
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/10/avocado-drought-chile-california

The farmers in this valley have a two-pronged uphill battle ahead of them. They fight powerful vested interests in the agricultural sector and their own belief that the government will not respond to grass roots organizing to affect change.

Without some form of regulation, water usage and management is going to become a contentious issue with dire consequences to the people of the central valley of Chile.

Dispatches from Chile: The Corner Store in La Peña

La Peña, Chile

January 10, 2015

La Peña.  The affectionate or 'little' ending = 'ino'.  Corazon is heart.  So I take it to be The Heart of Little La Peña... or La Peña's Heart.

Every town needs a little corner store, close enough so you don't mind paying a few cents more for milk, cheese, bread...everyday staples. The row of video games just inside the front door is a magnet for kids and adults alike.

Supermercado Spiri, "Corazon Peñino"The Heart of La  Peña: Sign reads as follows:

Groceries
Sweets
Stationery
Soft Drinks
Bread
Icecream
Cigarettes
Fruit
Vegetables

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Dispatches From Chile2015: Prepping The Fields, Water On The Way

Chilefarms, Nogales, Chile
January 11, 2015

A big story is brewing on this farm and in the entire central valley in central Chile. Water, the resource once thought to be limitless here, is reaching its capacity to supply farms and homes alike. Farms like Chilefarms are increasing their capacity to store and conserve water. Ricardo Ceriani and Susaan Straus, the farm owners, have been voicing their concerns to me as I visit. More about this subject to come. In the meantime, this post shows a typical Sunday, a day of water is supplied to valley farms.

Water is delivered to the orange trees, walnut trees, alfalfa, melon and corn fields from different sources on different days of the week.

The melons, corn, and alfalfa are watered once a week Sunday into Monday when water flows into the farm's canal from the Aconcagua River. Don Pedro is a regular Chilean Pythagoras when it comes to devising and managing a system of channels criss-crossing the fields. Before he opens the gate into the fields, he prepares dams to guide water where he wants it to travel.

 

 

Water is diverted into these fields when Don Pedro opens the third portal along the canal which is nearest the fields.

He and Juan Vila open and close hand dug channels along the fields that irrigate one row of crops at a time. As each row is saturated, he or Juan Vila move the barrier along the side of the fields to admit water into the next row.

Elsewhere on the farm, water is used to irrigate the orange and walnut trees on a regular schedule during the week. Farms of varying sizes growing fruit and produce line the roads through this valley. All of them use water. More and more of them have begun drilling wells. Concern is mounting about the capacity of the aquifer.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Dispatches From Chile2015: Debut of the New Reservoir at Chilefarms

Debut of the New Reservoir at Chilefarms

Sunday, January 11, 2015
Chilefarms
Nogales, Chile

By noon on Sunday, water released from Los Andes reservoirs has reached the section of the Aconcaqua River running through Nogales and La Peña. The valley farmers heave a collective sigh of relief.


A complex system of canals that wind through the valley fill with water. There are three major portals from which water from this canal can enter Chilefarms.


The first is through a portal on the southern side of the farm that is opened for approximately 36 hours, Sunday to midday Monday, each week. Water from this portal fills the small reservoir behind the tractor barn and horse barn. Water from this reservoir is used to irrigate the orange and walnut trees on this side of the property.

This portal is padlocked for the rest of the week. An official rides his motorbike onto the farm, unlocks this portal and returns in about 36 hours to chain and lock the gate closed. Chllefarms pays a local agency for this service. The service also includes an annual maintenance in which weeds are cleared from the canal bank.

The second portal admits water into the larger reservoir on the north section of the property. This reservoir (tranque) was enlarged this past week and a new cement entry point with an adjustable gate was installed; workers will close it when the reservoir is filled. Water from this reservoir is used to irrigate the orange trees on this side of the property and to supply the smaller reservoir with water as needed.

Farm workers and their familes gather to see the grand opening of the new entryway into the enlarged reservoir (tranque).

 

The third portal is at the far north side of the farm next to the neighbor’s property line. Don Pedro opens this gate later on Sunday.

Water from this portal is used to irrigate the corn, melon, and alfalfa fields on this side of the property.

Figuring out the complexities of water management - how water arrives, how it it distributed during each week, and the impact of increased usage  - is worthy of a Sherlock Holmes novella. pt at large is spending the week unraveling the story.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Dispatches From Chile2015: Reservoir Ready, Water Flows Tomorrow

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Chilefarms, Nogales, Chile

The excavators have spent the past six days enlarging the major farm reservoir (tranque). By Saturday morning, their work is complete.

Heavy equipment operators check facts and figures with Ricardo and farm manager José Pablo

Tomorrow, water held in reservoirs in Los Andes to the north will be released into the Aconcagua River. As the river meanders through this valley, it will flow into a myriad of smaller canals throughout the valley providing farms with water to irrigate their crops. The water release is a weekly event, begins Sunday and continues for between 24 and 36 hours.

Ricardo says he pays an annual fee to the local water agency to access water as  one of these canals passes through Chilefarms.

The new portal into the canal was finished Thursday. Don Pedro will lift the gate into the reservoir when  the canal begins to fill tomorrow around noon.

By tomorrow afternoon, the canal bed that runs through Chilefarms, now bone dry, will be filled with water.

Saturday night, Susaan surveys the new reservoir (tranque). Tomorrow is a major test of the new reservoir and the newly constructed gateway into it (visible in the reservoir bank at right of photo above).

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Dispatches From Chile2015: Water Management2

January 9, 2015
Chilefarms, Nogales,Chile

The excavator and payload machine work in tandem to scoop out thousands of cubic yards of clay rich soil. Once dry, the reservoir bed will be quite impermeable. Water flowing in will not seep through it.

The reservoir is about four times larger than the original size.

This is an expensive but necessary undertaking. In the event that the weekly discharge of water from Los Andes higher up in the mountains is interrupted, it's critical that there's water available to continue watering thousands of orange trees, walnut trees, melons, corn and alfalfa growing on the farm.

The project began on Monday, January 5 and will be finished by Saturday, January 10.

  

There's a palpable sense of anticipation today as the project nears completion.The new gate into the reservoir (visible just behind Ricardo in photo above) is untested, as is the capacity of the enlarged reservoir. The excavators carefully kept in place the wall of the original reservoir to keep water from flowing into the newly excavated section. The sight of Ricardo and Otoño in the pit gives you a sense of scale of the area being expanded.

and Otoño has to check the water in the late afternoon sun.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Dispatches From Chile2015: Water Management1

January 9, 2015

Developing story at Chilefarms: the water supply to the farm, abundant in previous years, began to diminsh last year and continues to be questionable this year. As a measure to prevent shortage, Ricardo has hired a company to enlarge the "tranque" (reservior) that is used to irrigate the orange trees.

The water saga, like the Aconcagua River, has twists and turns and drama to boot. Over the next few posts, pt at large will attempt to illuminate the dimensions of the problem.

 
Large bucket excavator and a front-end loader have been enlarging the "tranque" (reservoir) since Monday (the original size is contained behind the levee seen at right of photo above).

They have finished for the day Friday afternoon. Ricardo hired a mason to construct an adjustable gate that will allow water to flow into the reservoir when water flows down the valley waterways one day a week, Sunday in Nogales.

LEFT The new gate. The canal, dry until Sunday, is to the right of planks above. RIGHT The dry canal bed at left and the new portal into the reservoir visible top right.

Dry canal bed heading toward the new reservoir. View from the farm of the earth piled up from excavating the tranque (reservoir). The heavy equipment operators will finish excavating tomorrow, Saturday. Just in time. Water released from Los Andes in the mountains to the north will flow through the canal Sunday.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Dispatches From Chile2015: Traditional Chilean Dinner

January 9, 2015
Chilefarms, Nogales,Chile

For my first dinner at Chilefarms, Susaan prepares my favorite Chilean dish - pastel de choclo. And Ricardo prepares the tangy salad that's part of every dinner here, peeled chopped garden tomatoes, diced cucumber, cilantro, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and olive oil.

Pastel de Choclo: preparation as written.

It is the custom to spoon the tomato salad into a nest inside the paila (clay pot in which the pastel de choclo is cooked). The tastes marry beautifully. The honey dew melon fresh from the melon field!

Dinner al fresco: Ricardo's nephew Christhian, Susaan, Ricardo.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Dispatches from Chile2015: A Birthday, A Welcome Back,A Hemispheric Change in Weather

Dispatches from Chile2015: A Birthday, A Welcome Back,A Hemispheric Change in Weather
January 8, 2015
Santiago to Nogales

Today is host Ricardo Ceriani's birthday! Susaan made a reservation at Eladio, renowned for its choice selection of steaks, Ricardo's favorite dish, on Pio Nono Street in the bohemian Bellevista neighborhood and invited surprise guest Erica Gardener. The steaks and the company all first rate!

Welcome back from Ottonio, then Glenda, old Akita in background. Occita, Olvideo and Monkey watched from their comfy spots in the shade on the lawn.

My neighbor just informed me it is -2 F at home in the northern hemisphere. The temps at my digs in here in Nogales...mid 80s F. How sweet it is.

  
My bedroom in the rear quarter of the farmhouse is visible through the French doors photo left - also pool dining table where we have lunch; one of two twin beds.

Second twin bed and second French door leading to deck and pool; view inside bedroom from rear deck.

Bathroom; scene from deck facing south.

I jumped out of my skin when I glanced at the shower curtain i just closed. "Susaan!" I yelled. "Oh, it's just a tarantula," she said with equanimity then slid the creature the size of a small mouse into a jar and released it over the deck. Now i shake ny shoes before putting them on. Susaan says they're  pretty rare around here. I am on Code Red every time I enter the bathroom.

Adventures to follow as long as Internet service is up and running (always dicey). Great videos shall be added upon my return - impossible to upload here.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr (and one guest at Eladio!)

 

Voice Recognition

January 6, 2015

I’m a radio guy. I have no idea what some of my favorite “on the air” voices look like in person. Just the way I want it. I don’t want to know. It is an unnecessary layer, a subliminal distraction between me and the news, sports, and commentary.

Unlike TV personalities, I associate these reporters, anchors and commentators with a voice, not a face. I could be riding an elevator with one of these men or women and I wouldn’t be tempted to whip out my phone and ask for a photo. In this age of ubiquitous digital imagery, these voices emanate from radio, the last bastions of non-visual media.

Recently, I came across a photo of WBUR newsman Bob Oakes. Since then, I can’t shake the image of is face every time I hear his voice on the air. Of course, I associate lots of radio names with faces. I just don’t go out of my way to discover the ones I don’t connect that way.

I love Siri. She’s got a great voice plus a sense of humor. I’d be disappointed if all of a sudden, Apple gave her a face. I like the mystery. She’s faceless but not characterless. So are the voices on my Garmin GPS system. They get the job done.

Way back in the first days of radio, most listeners had no idea what the entertainers and announcers looked like. There was comfort listening to familiar voices. I love listening to The Moth Radio Hour, a throwback to the old days of radio when stories were king. Who knows what those storytellers look like, who cares?

Here’s a list of some of my favorite faceless voices: Peter Sagal (and all his spirited panelists) of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Ira Glass, Sylvia  Poggioli, Bill Littlefield, Joe Pesca, Andre Codresceau, all of NPR, and Bob Edwards of Bob Edwards Weekend.

Sooner or later, one of their faces will pop up unexpectedly on the internet and the genie will be out of the bottle. Until then, I happily know them only by their voice print.  Maybe I’ll ask my therapist if there’s some dark meaning behind my wish to enjoy listening to faceless voices.

Deb Waldman's New Year's Day Party 2015: Video Edition!

Deb Waldman's House - Open and Packed
New Year's Day 2015
Lafayette, LA

The video edition...

 

The players keep showing up for the jam...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn_xu91Qw4M

Cajun story teller Chris Trahan...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbDJNKY4-ls

 

A classic Cajun ballad, new players, a T fer clangs away, and no accordion player!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkPN80pJQDg

 

A Cajun sing-along...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAnmTZQSCOs

 

Bluegrass, old time Appalachian fiddle, guitar, banjo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPnLlBFKGyA

 

Appalachian/Bluegrass old time music inspires dancing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om1N_6iODlY

 

Old time rags, picked and fiddled to perfection...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ATASOhQ1qQ

Videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

 

Deb Waldman's New Year's Day Party: Y'all Come on down!

Deb Waldman's House - Open and Packed
New Year's Day 2015
Lafayette, LA



Last year when I heard that a woman named Deb Waldman (above left) of Lafayette, Louisiana, intended to have a New Year’s Day party and announced it on the internet, I thought she was out of her mind. I mean, she owns a modest modified shotgun house in the midst of a quiet neighborhood. It’s filled with, you know, good furniture, art work on the walls - a real grown up’s house. I wondered whether her abode would survive. How many would come? Were they all house broken? Or would Deb end up with a broken house?

Well over 100 locals and dancers from all over the USA who had flocked to Lafayette to dance morning noon and night for the previous three days, filled the place from the front porch to the enclosed patio at the other end of the house. They sang, danced, yakked it up, and somehow managed to bring a ton of food.

By the time the tide ebbed a few hours later, dear ol’ Deb’s house stood proud. Rather than send a thank you note, many simply emptied a trash can, picked  up stray glasses and plates, or cleaned up something or other. As I discovered, Deb’s been hosting this high volume party for years, most of the guests know the drill, and first-timers learn it out of sheer appreciation.

Counter-tops and every other horizontal surface were covered with appetizers, gumbos, red beans and rice, jambalaya, pasta, roast chicken, fresh salads, pot stickers, stews and a two tables of pies, cookies, donuts, angel food cakes, brownies, and one huge peach cobbler that disappeared before it had time to cool down.

A spirited jam got going around 4 pm. “Here’s Deb Duplant,” says guitar player, storyteller, and co-host Chris Trahan pointing to a woman in a red dress, “She just learned to play the fiddle and this is her first jam…give her a hand!”

Cajun jams are the most musically democratic events imaginable. There’s usually one leader at a time, often a fiddle player or accordionist, who takes the lead and sings then passes the baton to others. Despite Chris's remark that "the best place to learn how to play the fiddle is in the woods," Deb did just fine.

When you get around twenty people of widely ranging abilities twanging, fiddling, strumming, squeezing music out of old or shiny new instruments, you get a musical caucus that’s exuberant, joyous, and traditional. People around here have been doing jams at house parties for over two hundred years.

Scores of guests with paper plate in one hand and a cup of something cold in the other circulate from the front room where there’s an Appalachian/Bluegrass trio playing old time music and that Cajun jam in the back patio. Guests sprawl on couches in the middle rooms, new friends are made, conviviality is in full force. If you're anywhere near Lafayette next January 1, put this event on your calender. Deb and co-hosts Jeannie Heller and Chris Trahan already have.

   

Guests from all over the country...photos of co-host Jeannie Heller are somehow missing, apologies, Jeannie.

A party in Lafayette always includes food and desserts..

 

generally lots of them...

 

A Cajun jam  breaks out in the enclosed patio in back...

and some Appalachian/Bluegrass pickin' gets going in the front room...

  

 

 
Lots of socializing

 

Roger and Roslyn...etc...

Roger and Rosyln (top row left side) got this series going: after I took the first photo of them, Roger asked me to get in the photo, asked someone else to take the photo then asked that person to get in the photo and have someone else to take a photo...etc. This could have gone on all night!

Smile for the camera...

and more socializing...

   
until time to 'wrap it up'

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. and a few volunteers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Louisiana House Party: Guitar and Flute and Pass the Gumbo

Louisiana House Party: Gumbo, Guitar and Flute
December 29, 2013

Lafayette, LA

It’s inevitable around here in southwest Louisiana. When guests show up for a house party, along with the gumbo and jambalaya, someone is going to bring along a guitar, accordion or something else that makes music. After dinner, said people will break out the instruments and an event will transpire that reminds you that music is as essential an ingredient to life in Lafayette Parish as what is referred to around here as the holy trinity of cooking – the onions, celery, and bell peppers that go into the gumbo.

This house party was no exception.

“I’ve wanted to be a singer since I was three years old,” guest Katy Richard says (pronounce Ree-shard, accent second syllable, you're in Louisiana, remember?).

The Hamilton Lab School in Lafayette had a rich program of arts and theater. Katy was all in, took flute lessons from grade four to eight, sang in the chorus for 12 years and found time to take piano lessons along the way.

All the kids in the music program rented instruments from Prof Erny’s Music Store, a mom and pop music store that found ways for every family to afford to pay. A Lafayette institution, the store’s been doing that since 1948.

When your father blasts opera or big band swing while he’s tending the Sunday BBQ, you know you’re in a household where appreciation for music runs deep. Saturday nights, Lawrence Welk ruled the airwaves at the Richard home in Lafayette. The four Richard sisters would gather around the black and white TV and put on a glorious floor show for their mom and dad, costumes, dancing, choreography, the works. About the time she was 15, Katy waited till the show was over before going out with her girlfriends, never letting on that she was taken, body and soul, with a program that was totally uncool with her teenage friends.

When it came time for college, Katy’s family steered her into dental hygiene school. Music, which she was dying to study, was not going to cut it as a practical way to make a living, they said. The twists and turns of life intervened, Katy opted out of Northern Louisiana University after two years, moved to New England via Austin, married a Yankee, and lived in New Hampshire until 2007.

Louisiana looks damn good when you’re shoveling several feet of snow every week in frosty New England. Katy and her husband Chris moved lock, stock and barrel (in this case, tools, cooking implements and instruments) to Lafayette. Chris continues work as a sought-after skilled carpenter. Katy started up the highly regarded “Taco Sisters” eatery with her sister Molly. Slicing and dicing took the place of shoveling. Katy was in her natural element.

Tonight Katy’s husband Chris Hinchliffe is playing a $2500 guitar he won at a raffle at the annual Dewey Balfa Cajun and Creole Heritage Week in 2009. He’s no stranger to French culture, having experience in Woonsocket and other New England towns into which Acadians from Nova Scotia emigrated after the “Grand Derangement” in which the British expelled them for not pledging allegiance to the English king. And, as Chris says, had their own way with language, with cars parking “side by each.”

VIDEO 1: "Please Tell Me Now"

VIDEO 2: "Your Cheating Heart"

VIDEO 3: "Summertime"

VIDEO 4: "The Bayou Blues" (Katy Richard original)

After watching these video clips, who wouldn’t want to invite Katy and Chris to a party? Katy sings with emotional authority and a stylist’s sense of interpretation with her voice and flute. This is music that’s been begging to be released since childhood.

Who would guess that Katy recently revived her flute playing after about 20 years (and bought a new flute from the same store that rented instruments to her and her classmates when she was in school in Lafayette)? And that Chris has taught himself to play that “Composite Acoustic” guitar, a one-of-a-kind signed edition made especially to be raffled at the 2009 Festival. A few more house parties like this and they could take their show on the road!

Music in southwest Louisiana is as deeply ingrained a part of the culture as red beans and rice and grillades and grits. And is part of the menu on many a Lafayette house party.

Photos and video by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Black Eyed Peas and Cabbage: A New Orleans Traditional January 1 Meal

January 1, 2015
New Year tradition New Orleans style: Cabbage, black-eyed peas, ham hocks.

Chances are if your family lives in New Orleans this is one of the meals you ate on this first day of the year.

Lucky me…my host Rubia Solis, New Orleans born and bred (Ninth Ward), now living in Lafayette with her husband Bernard Ussher (Lafayette via Dublin and Boston), cooked the dish.

Rubia’s late mother, Momma Jane, cooked this dish without fail for her family every New Year. According to Momma Jane, the black-eyed peas are for good luck and health and the green cabbage represented wealth, money.

Whether you liked the ingredients or not, this was tradition - and in New Orleans tradition has the gravitas of the Dead Sea scrolls. Rubia recalls that Momma Jane herself thought black-eyed peas tasted like dirt. And her children wrinkled up their noses when the cabbage stunk up the kitchen, but no matter. Tradition would be honored.

The recipe includes ham hocks. Momma Jane grew up in the Depression years when any kind of meat was a luxury. She remembered when women would tie a string to a ham hock and dip it into the makings of red beans and rice, the traditional Monday meal in New Orleans. They’d remove it, let it dry, and dip it in the makings of the rest of the week’s meals until that little piece of ham had given up every smidgeon of flavor it had.

Sautéing the cabbage in garlic, black pepper and cayenne boosts the taste of the cabbage. A liberal drizzle of Tabasco gives the black-eyed peas a New Orleans jolt.

Add this New Orleans First Day dish to the good company of my hosts and I’m off to a dandy start in 2015.

An informative explanation I found on January 5, 2015!

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.