November is National Novel month, and so we celebrate literacy and creativity. Here, in what I am now calling Sola, Southern Louisiana, we know the importance of literature and the written word. Sometimes word choice lends itself to emphasis- in this case, maybe a gender skew.
Please also note the clever off-rhyme in the church slogan: reaching the lost by way of the cross- clever.
Of course, then there is dialect. The standard Sola vernacular is heavily debated between creole, cajun, southern, etc, but when we write like we talk we make meaning, we embed character, and we celebrate our identities. Its a style of writing that many appreciate, or perhaps its jussa bisket.
We have the ever-witty puns-in-the-bayou approach: endless opportunities and seriously, it gets me every time!
We cannot ignore pride-inducing bumper sticker culture, especially when it presents a good play on words.
If you don’t know, the crawling home is a spin off of the post-Katrina rebuilding messages that read, “New Orleans: Proud to Call it Home.” and yes- that is a cockroach printed on the sticker.
So, on behalf of a certain public writer and your trusted culture spy, I leave you with this:
