Dear Friends;
I am sorry i have been out of touch...we are 200 miles North of the Gulf of
Mexico in the broad American Delta that borders Louisana and Mississippi. We
have only generators and cell phones here and have been tenting the last 4
weeks along bayous with names like little Pierre and bayou Fouch and the
River  Yazoo near  of the mother of all rivers the Mississippi. Day time
temps this august  hover around the 105 mark. It is not a dry heat like the
blast furnace of a desert; we have a steam heat equivilent to Vietnam or
India. In fact alot of America.s domestic rice is grown nearby.As far as the
eye can see thare is nothing but cotton,rice and football fields of catfish
ponds surrounded by inpenetrable swamp infested with dangerous  snakes and
aligators you could surf on,
.In the early mornings we pass streams of convict labor in stripe pants and
crude strraw hats of cane working road beds under armed men on large mules.I
must add these are men who volunteered to be outside on the chain gang.
Inside all day can be dangerous and deadly especially  if you are white.
 There is however no where to run to if you wanted to;
it would be shear death  to head off into this terrain unarmed and  without
compass or drinking water. So they work and we work cutting and carrying
stone..We are building a mini chateau out of texas limstone that no one will
ever see.
The brazos stone has those yellows in it not unlike the french kalkare of the
south giving it a soft pastel look,.
My crew is French just out of Brittany;;former cathedral builders
with hard bodies who work shirtless as the sweat glisstens off muscular backs
and tight abdominals.My laborers are Mexicano who sport gold teeth and broad
smiles of no understanding who make childs play of the heat and giggle at
your intlorence for the suns capacity of belittling a gringo.
We camp along the wide white sand banks of the bayou and enjoy the pleasure
of each others songs accompanied by guitars and a french  squeezebox into the
early hours over cervaso and rough cut tequila
.Sometimes their women join us  and it makes for a decent chorus.The men sing
of bravery and love; the women of love and romance,For desert we cut large
green casabas melon and pass pieces accompanied by roughly rolled blunts of
homegrown.
I pass on the cigars and focus on the billion stars overhead listening to
soft guitars over the meander and gurgle  of the river  Sometimes when you
close your eyes and listen ,its a perfect world. ...Blessings Michael