EVANGELINE

Family dinners should be a time for emotional, intellectual and cultural stimulation as well as nutrition. I’ve pretty well abandoned TV because family dinners depicted there are usually generational, sibling and Freudian rivalries. The only common thread to real and fictional family dinners is humor. I miss dinners, not merely family ones, of Savannah where, once past sex, politics and religion, wit and humor are essentials. There, one is at a real disadvantage if not well read and educated… unless they bring wholesale humor with them. Some of my best, recent, Savannah memories are amusing table talk with the late writer/editor Arthur Gordon and friend John discussing hoisted upon one’s own petard or which monuments in Savannah’s squares should be replaced and with whom. You’d better know your American History before wading into the latter.
This week’s multiple family dinners covered Namibia and Cajuns, two totally unconnected topics. I knew nothing about Namibia but quickly learned since I was told my oldest son was there and offering a bribe/trip over to his nephew, my teenage grandson. Hmmm…
My father was responsible for my basic knowledge of Cajuns (of Acadia) which has been expanded by frequent visits to family in Louisiana and other trips just because until the 60s it had the only big city in the South. I don’t know who brought up the subject and we were three Southerners and two Nons but I believe it was one of the Nons. After my oldest grandson gave a humorous, verbal Cajun imitation, I shared the first fact my father had given me: that they were kicked out of their original homes in Canada and New England which immediately shocked the Nons. My son, well versed in history, took up the explanation as I mused that such very well educated people could not have known it (and so the previously mentioned rivalry evidently persists).
Since, I’ve spent pleasant hours this week with Mr. H.W. Longfellow, generally considered our nation’s best poet, and his Acadian masterpiece, Evangeline. What DO they teach in schools these days?