Hanaba: Lotsa journals, one pink fiddle
If you want to be different, walk around making notes in a journal, preferably in cursive, with a pen or pencil. 
I’m looking back over a week at a Cajun music camp. I went to learn Cajun fiddle and didn’t. But there’s hope.
Things traditional prevailed. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see a fountain pen, but I didn’t. Everybody had a smartphone, sure, but it was the way so many attendees wrote faithfully in their notebooks that made me think they were, in effect, connecting to past days and ways.
I’m using “Cajun” to describe the trademark music of all Acadia, South Louisiana and French Texas to Canada. The quintessential sounds of one or two fiddles, a ten-button accordion and a triangle resonate with aficionados from all over the world. They showed up. En force.
The camp celebrated “roots” music of other genres too, Conjunto to zydeco to whatever. Zydeco is Cajun’s cousin.
Me in my Walmart teepee tent, I slept every night to the sounds of the jams. If a vacation is supposed to get you away from life as you know it, Camp Blackpot did it for me.
En route I’d stopped for church in Alexandria. The preacher’s name was Ambrose LaCaze. I was off to a good start.
That afternoon I mailed my absentee ballot from the post office in Eunice, Louisiana, imagining the folks back home would notice the postmark. Do absentee ballots openers look at postmarks? I hope so.
Yes, I guess I like attention. I could imagine someone saying, “Well, Hanaba must have gone off to Louisiana. She mailed this from Eunice, wherever that is.”
But upon arrival at camp, all I had going for me was my name. Everybody wanted to know how to pronounce it. I told them I didn’t know and that it was probably Navajo and misspelled. That got me some points.
Next, I played my pink fiddle. Nobody paints a good fiddle pink, so I figured not much would be expected of me. Sure enough, in improvisation class they seemed surprised I could play at all.
Then I remembered it was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Everybody nodded when I reminded them. You can’t argue with pink in October.
Regarding attire, I couldn’t outdo the girl camped next to me. You’ll think I’m making this up. I’m not.
One day she wore a blue dress with polka dots and ruffles. I wore one like it when I was 3, except mine had a sash. Her accessories were a straw cowboy hat and lace-up leather knee boots with thick socks that spilled over the tops. One of her many tattoos was a big eagle on her throat.
I got to know her. Wanna guess her profession?
PAUSE TO GUESS.
She packs trail mules for the forest service in Arizona. The mules are beasts of burden for the crews that maintain the trails.
I took her picture with my phone.
Even better, I got her to write in my journal.
