Baton Rouge

I am not a fan of LSU because I like their colors. My parents met when my father was in medical school at Tulane in New Orleans. My grandmother grew up in Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana and once worked as a dietician at LSU.

CBS ran an interview with two women whose husbands were among the police officers killed in Baton Rouge a few days ago. I usually have little patience with these productions, which normally involve much display of weeping and self pity, but this was Southern Louisiana. These women spoke of deep love and respect for their husbands. There was great sadness, and there was dignity that just tore the heart right out of my chest.

This is Cajun country; a people who have a inner core strength that puts the rest of us to shame. They are why Katrina did not beat New Orleans. They are of French heritage by way of Canada, and arrived in southern Louisiana when even native Americans disdained it, making their homes in an uninhabited and formerly uninhabitable swamp.

Cajuns look adversity in the eye, turn it around and kick its ass, and they don’t cry while they are doing it. These women will not raise damaged children. They will raise kids into healthy and happy adults unharmed by the adversity of their childhoods.

But I do like purple and gold.