Storms and Movies

I know I've been scarce with posting. I've had a few extra things going on in the background and I've had trouble getting adjusted to the anti-depressant I've been taking. I am starting my third month on it and I'm still not sure the benefits are worth the side effects I seem to have. Month one was okay. Month two, all I wanted to do was sleep when I came in from work. The medicine has calmed my thoughts down somewhat and has made me a bit more mellow, but the truth is, I am already pretty darn mellow. But the price for the calmness is my creativity. It just seems to run out the door when I get on this stuff. I thought the cost of coping with the depressive thoughts was too high on me physically and emotionally. It was hard work, but I was coping. Now I don't have to work at coping with depression, but it comes at the cost of expressing myself creatively. I'm not so sure that is a worthwhile investment for me.

In other news, if any of you get the chance to see an independent film called Little Chenier, go see it. The brother and sister team who wrote the screenplay and produced the movie are from here. It does a fairly good job of giving a peek into Cajun life and the story is a good one. There are a couple of places where the plot turns in directions that you just can't imagine. The ending turned out so totally unexpected that I walked out of the theater madder than an old wet hen about it all! I saw the movie again with my mother and daughter and all is now well, since I already knew what was going to happen!

Always when I see a movie like this, (or a movie about Southerners) the first thing to irritate me is the accent. Cajun accents sound different depending on what area of the state they are from. Be forewarned, the accents in the movie sounded slightly off to our ears, especially to the ears of the woman I work with, who is Cajun. I think part of the problem is that they tend to exaggerate it a bit. One of the quirks of Cajun pronunciation is that many of them can't (or don't) pronounce the "th" sound, so that "three" sounds like "tree", or "third" sounds like "turd" (which was always entertaining to us as youngsters). In the movie, I noticed it a lot with the word "think", as in "Ya tink we'll ever get rain again?" Anyway, in real life, the Cajun accent is melodic and beautiful to hear, especially from the older folks.

I've lived and worked around Cajuns all my life, but I am not Cajun. I was pretty much unaware of the lifestyle depicted in the movie before the last few years, when my son was staying with my Cajun father-in-law and crabbing with him. He was staying in Pecan Island which is up the road from Grand Chenier. Little Chenier is somewhere in there, close to Grand Chenier. The map shows the route we would take to go visit him. All the area along the coast was devastated by Hurricane Rita. They had finished filming the movie a month before Rita came through. At the end of the movie there is a before and after photo of Little Chenier Road.

This is a photo I'd taken of the post office in Grand Chenier, about a month before the storm.

Sand Hill Crane Birth

This series of photos was taken by a Florida dentist. He did not actually catch the hatching, but he took some gorgeous photos and put them in a slideshow. Even if you don't normally like nature photos, these are worth seeing. Go take a look, enjoy the sheer beauty and relax!

Sand Hill Cranes

Angel Trumpets

Great beauty can be found when traveling through darkness, but you must first have eyes to see beauty in hidden places.

Soon enough, blue skies will shine again.

Happy New Year!

I tried to take photos of the fireworks but that is difficult, as most people with any photo sense at all know. I stood out in the street in the cool night air and never did even catch an interesting blur of color in the sky. While I was waiting, I shot a few night time tree portraits. This is one of the ones I liked best. I also entertained myself by taking a few self portraits in which I looked rather goofy so I won't be showing those.

I don't usually make resolutions but I have been mulling over the blessings of 2007. There were many, and I am grateful.