cameron, louisiana

The intersection of highways 61 and 49 near Clarksdale in northwest Mississippi doesn't look particularly special: there's a car yard, a service station, a couple of kids listlessly kicking a ball outside Abe's barbecue shop . . . Just the usual stuff. The only thing to distinguish it from hundreds of other such intersections in the state is...
> blues/1801/travelling-riverside-blues-robert-johnson-the-blues-and-clarksdale-mississippi/

In small-town Blackball the locals have a saying: “Blackball, the centre of the universe . . . the part where nothing moves”. It helps to have a sense of humour when you live in the centre of a silent universe. These days Blackball, less than half an hour inland from Greymouth, can only boast five major buildings other than...
> travelstories/1929/blackball-new-zealand-they-wont-make-them-like-this-anymore/

Norbert shuts off the small outboard and pulls the propeller out of the brackish water. He loosens the weeds which have fouled it and tosses them away. We sit in the silent stillness of Lake Martin beneath cypress trees and Tupelo gums, some of which are 300 years old. They have their roots in soil more than a metre below the still surface....
> travelstories/268/breaux-bridge-louisiana-in-cajun-country/

In 2005 smalltown Cameron in southwest Louisiana was washed away by Hurricane Rita and I suppose battered to hell again by Hurricane Katrina. It seemed tragic and . . . Well, let me tell you my memory of Cameron, a place we stayed in for one very long night while driving the Gulf Coast before heading up to Breaux Bridge then on to New Orleans....
> travelstories/275/cameron-louisiana-the-stink-of-shrimp-and-petroleum/

In my travel book Postcards from Elsewhere I write about being in cajun country in Louisiana where the bayou seems mysterious and the food is exceptional. That chapter about Breaux Bridge and the people we met is reproduced here for your amusement. As I say, one of the great things about that part of the world is the food, so here is a...
> recipes/2887/louisiana-shrimp-etoufee/

C.C. Adcock has done a lot of living in his 34 years, from playing in bands around his hometown of Lafayette in southern Louisiana when barely into his teens to making a glam-metal noise in LA, then backing the late Bo Diddley and Zydeco legend Clifton Chenier to hanging out with the undead . . . Yes, these days Adcock's music is used...
> absoluteelsewhere/3471/lil-band-of-gold-2010-the-journey-of-swamp-pop-from-past-to-present/