Jimbaux is still tryin' to figure it out, still tryin' to find a way to keep the dogs at bay.
[This essay is a modification of an essay that was written and published here in August of 2015 shortly after these images were made on the 15th of that month and is being reposted here because the original article published then was destroyed in a website crash in 2017.]
Photographs And Their Stories
So, here are the first 2015 pictures on the website in three months.
It Is What It Is Where It Is When It Is
We went west in the hopes of videoing the rice harvest of southwestern Louisiana, and we were aided by a family of local farmers who helped us coordinate such moves.
On my way there, I stopped at the Whataburger on University Avenue in Lafayette. Damn, those honey-butter chicken biscuits are good! And, damn, do they make me fat!
While there, an officer-of-the-law showed up, apparently responding to a complaint of a homeless man in the area. One of the Whataburger employees was rightfully indignant about the whole thing, saying that the man wasn’t harming anyone, and I could not disagree with that assertion. I eventually figured out, thanks to her confirmation, that this was the same man I had seen begging at the I-10 off-ramp.
I could see if the guy was on private property and refusing to leave that a use of force would be justified or at least justifiable, but I do not know if such happened. I just wonder why someone would call the police because of a homeless person in an unambiguously commercial area.
In a more heartless time in my life, though, I might have, even if not calling the police on a homeless person myself, not had a problem if someone else did. Time has revealed that either unrealized privilege, cognitive dissonance, or both are the cause of such attitudes toward the less fortunate.
The young Whataburger employee then told me that maybe she could empathize at least partly because her father is “on the streets,” perhaps increasing her empathy and sympathy for him upon whom the police were called. For the rest of us, should it take having one of your parents in such a position to have such empathy? And should the state’s role here be nothing more than to evict the homeless man from wherever he is? Could the police show up and give the guy a ride to a shelter?
Soon, it was time to make my way to Maxie, to Kelly’s Landing, about halfway between Crowley and Eunice, a little bit closer to Crowley.
I got this image, my first SLR image in more than two months, the previous one being that overhead shot of the southbound Crescent in New Orleans in early June.
Now it was time to head back to Kelly’s Landing to wait for the videographers and to coordinate the next moves. This guy had an insane collection of toy tractors and such! I felt like I was at a model railroad layout.
Then, the video crew arrived; we chatted and developed and discussed a game plan.
So, then, it was time to return to the field. While the videographers were getting video, I got some still shots.
I had never before seen a rice harvest.
The rice was being dumped into the trailer of the truck on the ridge at the far left.
After this, we hopped onto the combine to take a ride and get some shots from it.
Now, back on the ground, with the lighting getting better, we would get a few more shots.
At this time, the head videographer was, by his own suggestion and with my blessing, standing atop my truck to get his video. This is the first time that anyone has asked to get on top of my truck!
He would later jump down off of my truck onto the ground, at which time I said to not do that, as I have the hardware installed in my lower back to prove that jumping off of the top of one’s truck is a bad idea!
All this time, we are in the heart of Donovan Reed country; Donovan is a talented young railroad photographer, and you really should see his amazing images of the Acadiana Railway very near this area, a railroad for which rice as a significant traffic source.
I’d love to learn more about this process, and I found what I learned this day to be fascinating.
After that, we returned to Kelly’s Landing to regroup, and we eventually decided that that’s all that we’d do today.
To The Track
So, I then headed south to spend the night at the camp, and on the way there, I stopped at BNSF Railway’s Lafayette Yard.
Yeah, that’s not a good shot, but it gets better.
There had recently been a noteworthy change to BNSF operations out of and into New Orleans, and perhaps there is some evidence of this change in these pictures, specifically in the form of Norfolk Southern Railway locomotives operating – now frequently – on BNSF trains across southern Louisiana.
NS had recently started to run its train 141 straight through to BNSF via the NS Back Belt in New Orleans! Prior to this change, the 141 terminated at NS Oliver Yard in New Orleans; it had carried – and, for all I know, still carried – all BNSF, Kansas City Southern Railway, and Canadian National Railway interchange traffic that NS runs to New Orleans, but it now set out the CN and KCS blocks in Oliver Yard before continuing onto the Back Belt where a BNSF crew, sometimes a road crew, gets on the train, greatly expediting the movement of the NS-BNSF manifest traffic in New Orleans.
I was still trying to figure out how BNSF is doing NOPB and CN interchange traffic, but the most visible result of this change west of the New Orleans area is the sudden spike in the frequency of seeing NS locomotives on BNSF trains; prior to this change and for about the entirety of BNSF’s existence, it was always rare to see foreign power on BNSF manifest trains (or any BNSF trains) in Louisiana.
Yes, toward the end, we are finally getting better; how’s this as a way of ending this?
Now, it’s time to head to Whataburger – again – before going to the camp; I really need to bring some fruit and vegetable snacks the next time that I come this way, but, damn, that sweet-and-sour burger thing at Whataburger was good!
That’s all for the pictures today.
Site News and Philosophizing
Trumped By Trumpites
Some of the reaction to the recent issue between Donald Trump and Megyn Kelly is very revealing, and not in a good way to those who ostensibly appear to be doing the right thing. Whether or not Trump was referring to menstruation when saying that Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever,” many people thought that, but the most disturbingly revealing thing that many conservatives did in response was to say that they were “defending Megyn Kelly,” “supporting Megyn Kelly,” or some such.
So, whether such a comment is appropriate depends upon the identity of whom it was said? That matters?
Apparently so; apparently, that is how many FoxNews followers think. It’s okay to say mean and nasty – and irrelevant – things about some persons, so long as they’re not your persons.
Even if Kelly’s question in the debate to Trump would have been inappropriate, how is “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever” even a response to its inappropriateness? Either the question was appropriate, or it was not appropriate; the identity of the person asking it is irrelevant, but not if you’re Donald Trump or any of his far-too-many followers, for whom personal attacks are an acceptable substitute for debate. That is tribalism in the USA in 2015, folks; it’s okay, if you are a Trumpite, that certain bad things happen to or get said about other people, so long as they don’t happen to or get said about you.
That may be why so many people see Kelly’s question as inappropriate, why they can’t – or don’t – see why a question of how a candidate treats and thinks of other human beings is somehow appropriate.
When Your Own Side Grates You
Tell me if you can relate to this. Among the things at or near the top of the list of things that very much frustrate me is the phenomenon in which someone or several people on your same ‘side’ of an issue, argument, conflict, etc., behave – in the context of the issue in question – in a ridiculous manner or make foolish non-sequitur arguments. Few things are more frustrating when those on your ‘side’ stoop to – or, worse yet, below – the level of those on the other side, even if the “other side” initiated the conflict.
I do not accept the idea that an opponent behaving childishly, rude, petty, or confrontational gives me any excuse to do the same, so long as defending myself or my position doesn’t require such. Regarding one particular issue some months ago, Steve Boyko recently made the good point that “people just like to pile on,” and maybe that applies here too; we should be wary, as this desire for piling-on is what gives life to angry mobs, whether physically gathered in real life, or on the internet. Perhaps it is also a reflection of American culture (versus, say, Asian-Confucian culture) in how we seem to value punishment and even revenge more than we value rehabilitation, reconciliation, or at least conflict resolution.
Do you have any stories that fit this dynamic?
That’s all.
Merci,
Jimbaux
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
1Steve Boyko August 26, 2015 at 08:15
That’s quite a collection of tractor and plane models!
I remember the “piling on” conversation.
We here in Canada are in election season as well, and we’re whining that it’ll be going on for another two months. At times like this I’m grateful we don’t have the endless election cycle that the US seems to have these days. So much money spent for no good reason.
About the Trump-Kelly issue. It’s so far outside the realm of what seems reasonable that I have nothing I can say that hasn’t been said by others in a better way. Mind-boggling.
2Charlie Kilbourne August 26, 2015 at 08:59
Nice coverage here, James, felt like I had taken the trip. …. Charlie
3Tom Yuska August 26, 2015 at 15:46
Hey James! Love the pics of rice harvest…me being a farm boy and Iowa landowner…these were some nice pictures of something I don’t get to see. Nice to see that the tractor being used was green/yellow…John Deere made right here in Waterloo, Iowa…and the combine doing the harvest was made at John Deere Harvester in Moline,Ill. just across the river. Keep the pictures and commentary coming…I don’t respond much but do read your adventures. Yuska
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