Makers

Southern people--whites and blacks and Cajuns--are makers of things.  As I was looking at, listening to, and eating some of the good made-things, I kept hearing Paul Simon's Graceland playing in my mind:

The Mississippi Delta was shining
Like a National guitar
I am following the river
Down the highway
Through the cradle of the civil war

Some Acadian women told their stories in a quilt I saw in the  St. Martinsville museum of Acadian and African-American culture:

Women have often made the practical beautiful in patchwork quilts, pieced with fabrics from old dresses:

People make rag dolls, musical instruments, wedding dresses, and paintings.  The old timers dyed their own fibers and spun them into yarns, then crocheted and knitted them into sweaters and hats and scarves--and younger people are reviving these arts.  Some build their own furniture, grow flowers and fruits and vegetables, and some paint murals on the sides of buildings.

Ocean Springs

a wedding gown
in a boarded up thrift shop by the side of the road

Dyed wool--using copper and indigo
Breaux Bridge

Made by a North Carolina man for
his sister, a weaver in Breaux Bridge

one of many Blue Dog paintings
in Lafayette

a necklace around a weathered building
made of crab trap floaters

A window display in New Orleans

A lunch restaurant just north of Natchez called Mammie's

Southerners make songs and sermons and screenplays.  They save old stuff.  Like this fire truck, all rusted out and Gautier.