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That is your view there, others completely consider the region a city is in. Of course both are valid reasons depending on your lifestyle. Personally the surrounding region for me is very important b/c I like to go out of town a lot and explore around. Others as I'm saying, stay in their bubbles and are fine with it. You seem like you like to basically stay in the bubble. The parts that are liberal and progressive in Atlanta do not compromise even half of the metro though is what others are saying.
Scenarios like that play out all the time and you have somebody staying in Providence for instance, even though it doesn't match up with everything going on in Atlanta b/c it's in a much more liberal region.
Also others take liberal/conservative policies much more seriously than others and the laws of the state as Mutiny mentioned are certainly considered.
Well yeah, "YMMV" I guess. For me, where I'm immediately living is what's important because that's where I'm going to be living the majority of my day to day life. I mean, I can only speak to my own preferences, but generally, if I get out of "the city" 90% of the time it's to do something outdoor-oriented such as hiking or something, and the political climate of the venue is generally a non-issue.
Regarding state laws, I can also see why people would place an emphasis on that, but for me it's more about feeling comfortable and accepted in the community in which I'm going to be interacting with people. I.e., of course for me it'd be better if gay marriage was legal everywhere, but it's not something that has a profound effect on my life so it isn't big on my list of factors. And I think many people feel this way as evidenced by the existence of large gay populations in states where gay marriage is not legal.
Yeah there is nothing wrong with either. For doing stuff on weekends, some people stick to a few neighborhoods and are your pro community/neighborhood types becoming regulars at the local shops, some stick to the city and like to do a different neighborhood every weekend, some stick to the metro mostly, some explore outwards around other cities in the region , some fly all around the country or leave the country.
I definitely fall into the exploring region/country level more, not that I don't do stuff in my own neighborhood, but it's mostly during the week or every other weekend, but I'm a huge travel junkie/enthusiast, pretty much all of my disposable income goes to travel or eating out, otherwise my stuff is very minimal/modest such as tv, phone, shared car, small apartment, etc. I try to leave once a month at minimum, but mostly it's a couple weekends a month I go out of town. I start getting antsy if I am stuck in one place too long. If I could, I would travel all the time. I know other people in Chicago who only leave like once a year to see their parents at Thanksgiving or Christmas.
I am from Lafayette, LA and my father is from New Orleans. The southwestern parts and coastal marshes (Lafayette, New Iberia, Houma, Lake Charles) of the state have a strong Cajun heritage. I think the closer you get to New Orleans it changes to Creole. The accent also changes. The northern part of the state is kind of a mixed bag. I think Baton Rouge is sort of its own deal as it's mostly a college (LSU) town with people from various states. I would say Northern Louisiana is similar to Mississippi and Arkansas. Maybe places like Gulfport, MS and Mobile, AL... However, I think the majority of Alabama is its own beast. I've lived in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas.
I am from Lafayette, LA and my father is from New Orleans. The southwestern parts and coastal marshes (Lafayette, New Iberia, Houma, Lake Charles) of the state have a strong Cajun heritage. I think the closer you get to New Orleans it changes to Creole. The accent also changes. The northern part of the state is kind of a mixed bag. I think Baton Rouge is sort of its own deal as it's mostly a college (LSU) town with people from various states. I would say Northern Louisiana is similar to Mississippi and Arkansas. Maybe places like Gulfport, MS and Mobile, AL... However, I think the majority of Alabama is its own beast. I've lived in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas.
I'm from Baton Rouge, Baton Rouge is largely a Cajun influenced city. Even far flung parts of the MSA and CSA are Cajun towns (Pierre Part). We do have a strong connection with New Orleans but mostly a business/political relationship. Most people in Baton Rouge are from there. There are plenty of out-of-town LSU students but they leave after graduation. Northern Louisiana is not like Gulfport or Mobile in my opinion. They are much more like Vicksburg, Jackson, and Texarkana. All southern baptist towns with less French history than the gulf cost cities. Mobile is also very different from the rest of Bama.
As for the Creole thing, the Creole culture is mainly a French and Spanish based culture. The mainstay of what people generally regard as Louisiana Creole culture consists of a series of identical and even similar cultures beginning in East Texas going into Louisiana to Mississppi, Alabama, and West Florida. It extends further into other states but these are the areas that ppl often look at first. But the Creole culture is much more wider and vaster than just the Gulf coast states region.
It overlapped and even went hand in hand with the Southwest due to shared and lumped together colonial administration.
As for the Cajun thing that is nothing but a semanticized, politicized racially divisive myth. All peoples were and are Creole, but with the USA trying to seperate and dictate and control Creole and Latin peoples the English speaking Americans sought to reconfigure and dictate and divide peoples up.*
Also Creole does NOT mean mixed race. Creole is based on a shared CULTURE and is an ETHNICITY. Creoles can be of any race or racial admixture. There are WHITE Creoles, Black Creoles, Native American Creoles, and mixed race Creoles. Also NOLA/New Orleans is only one small part of Creole people and culture. In South Louisiana, there is a unique culture that is very traditionalist and keeps traditions that still remain in tact. The rural interior carnivals are rich and remain from the earliest of colonial times. Other states have areas where the Creole culture is kept in tact.*
Also I would not refer to Louisiana or Creoles as necessarily being Southern and their culture is NOT Caribbean either. That's a big misconception that people have
For example people have stolen and hijacked Creole cultural traditions and customs and marketed them as Cajun. For example gumbo andokra was brought into the Louisiana Territory from the Bamana/Bambra of Senegal and Senegambian regions. Music and food and language was developed by Creoles. The Cajuns share many of the same ancestors and families of Creoles who they try to claim are different than them because Creoles have been lumped as being black or of color which is not accurate. The Cajun thing is a myth. It's much more complex. It's all Creole. But that's another story.
A good book I suggest you read is "Africans In Colonial Louisiana"
But in Louisiana, East Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, West Florida, Creole, Spanish, and French are still traditionally spoken by Creole populations descended there from colonial times.
Louisiana Territory was a vast colonial land and the populations of this land still practice their traditions.
Don't let the whole Cajunism movement fool ya. It's all Creole culture. There are lots of Whites that are Creole and Native Americans that are Creole and blacks that are Creole as well as mixed race peoples that are Creole. Being Creole is about culture. Creoles can be of any race or race mixture.
The Cajunism movement and Cajun thing is just revisionist myth history.
A very important and informative read written by a fellow Creole scholar:
"Did Hispañola Create Louisiana culture?" by Christophe Landry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These are some points I offered to a contact who asked if Louisiana Creole culture was most influenced by Saint-Domingue (Haiti/Dominican Republic) refugees who fled to Louisiana at the beginning of the 19th century.The answer is NO. See why below.
This not at all exhaustive, but offers some channels through which to understand cultural synthesis that created Louisiana culture as defined by the beginning of the 19th century, when Saint-Domingue refugees arrived.
Some key points:
1. Most people are ill-informed.
2. Most people rely on hearsay, rather than research.
3. If you consider the population makeup of Louisiana, it contained the same ingredients as other Latin colonies: roughly, Europeans, Africans and folks who predated them in the Americas.
6. We have reason to believe that during this period, there was some, but limited, traffic between other French colonies in the Americas (Saint-Domingue, Martinique).
7. Along the Mississippi, John Law, the economist who was awarded a monopoly trade deal with France called The Company of the West (Later, Company of the Indies), successfully establish about 1,000 Prussians at that point on the Mississippi called The German Coast, or, La Côte-des-Allemands, now St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes. Families well known in Louisiana in 2010 descend from these resettlers: Folse (Foltz), Vicknair (Wickner), Waguespack (Wagenspack), Darensbourg (von Arensberg/d’Arensbourg), Theal (Thiel), Ritter, Matherne (Mattern), Wagner, Troxler and Frederick (Friedrich). These families were predominantly Rheinlanders (from the Rheinland region) and Germanophone Swiss.
8. There is evidence suggesting that during this period, lands west of the Mississippi in present-day Louisiana, virtually had no geopolitical boundaries distinguishing it from Spanish Tejas and that through the Caddo and Ishák (Atákapa), the French military commandants in Natchitoches, Opelousas and the Attakapas benefited economically and militarily from interactions with these three groups and their relatives on both the “Louisiana side” and the “Spanish Tejas” side. The military commandant at the Natchitoches Post, Louis JUCHEREAU de Saint-Denys, was imprisoned on several occasions in Mexico City for illegal trading through the Caddos in areas around Nacogdoches, TX.
12. The Spanish officials arrived in 1766 with Antonio DE ULLOA (first Spanish governor) and were met with bayonets and guns from the local Francophones who were not happy, nor interested in Spaniards running their affairs. He deserted the governorship in 1768.
Charles-Philippe AUBRY, the last French governor, replaced DE ULLOA until 1769 when Carlos III sent Irish-born Captain-General Alejandro “Bloody O’Reilly” O’REILLY to take over. Which he did for only one year, before being replaced by Luis DE UNZAGA.
Right off you notice the turbulent legal affairs with the colony. The Spanish crown could not keep a governor in office and the local Francophones** (and Creolophones***) wanted them out.
13. There is evidence that suggests, in Louisiana primary historical documents (civil), that the Spaniards were determined to beef up the colony with their own kind, that is, speakers of Spanish (Hispanophones). A few *of the attempts were successful at establishing permanent inhabitants, one being the 60 Malagueños and Granadenses that gave New Iberia its name, another 1700 Canarios from Las Palmas, Fuerteventura and other islands of the Canarias on Bayou Lafourche (the city of Gonzáles, LA gets its name from them and their legacy lies in the “Spanish Town” Mardi Gras parade in Bâton-Rouge), another small settlement at Gálveztown (Bayou Manchac, which turned out fatal due to military conflict) and the ones most known, the Canarios (y otros hispanohablantes) at Bayou Terre-aux-Bœufs (Tierra de los Bueyes) and De la Croix Island in St Bernard Parish.
14. We’ve also strong reason, through civil records, to believe that the Spaniards, abhorred by Muslims, switched the pool from which slaves from West Africa came. The previous French administrations took from their own concession of Senegambia, which is/was heavily Muslim. The Spanish halted that all together and sent mostly Congos to the colonies.
15. Between 1765 and 1770, Louisiana administrators accepted resettlement of some 1300 refugees from Maryland, Halifax (Nova Scotia), Saint-Domingue and Georgia. 660 of them were sent to present-day St. James Parish (called La Première Côte des Acadiens). 241 were sent to resettle at St-Gabriel (Mississippi-Bayou Lafourche juncture). 195 were sent to the Attakapas District (along Bayous Teche, Vermilion, Carencro). Finally, 149 were sent to San Luis de Natchez (Natchez, MS). Between 1785 and 1788, 7 more ships arrived with (1400) refugees, this time from France by way of England. 600 of them were sent to upper Bayou Lafourche at Ascension and Assumption parishes (then called La Deuxième Côte des Acadiens), 271 at Bayou des Écores (Thompson’s Creek), 145 at Bâton-Rouge and about 124 at Manchac (Tangipahoa Parish).
16. I’ve provided figures in question 14 only to illustrate that when considering the population at Upper Bayou Lafourche in 1790, Acadians (850 of them) represented roughly 33%, whereas the Canarios represented nearly 67% (almost 1700 at this location alone).
At the Attakapas, in 1771, Acadians only represented roughly 30% of the Attakapas population.
17. In the 1770s and 1780s, Irish and Scotch (or, Scots, if you prefer) descended folks from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, predominantly Catholics, such as the COLLINS, settled in Louisiana in places like The Opelousas Post. Other families included the O’BRYANs, O’CONNORs, FULTONs, JOYs and HOPKINS. They were then met by growing number of Anglo-Saxons, some directly from England, like the WHITEs.
18. You should consider that each settlement in the colony remained a bit isolated (there was no TV, mobile phones, etc) and their evolution was not linear, but clustered, meaning, what happened in NOLA did not influence daily life in Natchitoches, the Canarios on Bayou Lafourche did not influence life in the Attakapas, and what happened on the Louisiana Savannah in ranching, did not effect NOLA folks.
19. By the time the insurrections took place on Hispañola/Saint-Domingue, Louisiana already had a full-fledged colonial/creole/Latin culture (and sub-cultures) of its own, with French, Louisiana Creole already spoken there since the beginning of the first French period. That’s 60 years of cultural synthesis.
20. Through perusing civil records from the first French period, we know that Louisiana Creole was already spoken as early as 1735-1740 from court proceedings related to conspiracies and slave revolts and petty crimes for which slaves were brought in to testify, and their testimonies were transcribed verbatim: Louisiana Creole, not French.
21. The waves of Saint-Domingue refugees must be understood from two prisms: those directly from Saint-Domingue and those born in Cuba then arriving in Louisiana.
The latter group, culturally, were at the very least Cubanos, not Saint-Domingue Creoles. They likely spoke Saint-Domingue Creole and perhaps Saint-Domingue French, but they also spoke Cubano, which isn’t spoken on Saint-Domingue’s western portion. So, culturally, this group of refugees are most akin to the canarios at Bayou Terre-aux-Bœufs than they are to folks in Port-au-Prince.
The former group, clearly were culturally Saint-Domingue Creoles, speaking either or both of S-D’s languages.
22. Roughly 10,000 refugees from both Cuba and Saint-Domingue arrived in New Orleans between 1800 and 1810. 2,710 were whites, 3,100 were Free people of Color, and 3,200 were slaves. Once in Louisiana, the general scope of the S-D refugees was NOLA, with a few exceptions (St. Mary Parish). All other districts only received a handful, at most, of refugees (free and slave) from NOLA.
It is therefore safe to argue that NOLA and NOLA alone was most influenced by the Saint-Domingue revolution.
23. Within Louisiana, as mentioned above, each district had its own sub-culture and only the leading elite families there had ties to NOLA, physical ones, and visited back and forth. They, naturally, would not be in a position to sit and chat with former slaves from Saint-Domingue or GDCL about it, they would sit and speak with the slave owners with whom they shared that affinity.
How then would that change what happens in the districts? The owners of slaves freaked out! Afraid of a similar fate. They most often rejected slaves from Saint-Domingue at market (Afraid they’d contaminate spirit of slaughter among their own LA-born slaves).
In closing, refugees from Hispañola (Saint-Domingue) contributed immensely to the blossoming of the arts (theatre, opera, plays), skilled labor (silversmiths, ironsmiths, architects, bakers, engineers). The ranks of educators, composers, writers, poets, statesmen and visionaries skyrocketed as a result of the Saint-Domingue revolution and specifically in New Orleans.
I'm from Baton Rouge, Baton Rouge is largely a Cajun influenced city. Even far flung parts of the MSA and CSA are Cajun towns (Pierre Part). We do have a strong connection with New Orleans but mostly a business/political relationship. Most people in Baton Rouge are from there. There are plenty of out-of-town LSU students but they leave after graduation. Northern Louisiana is not like Gulfport or Mobile in my opinion. They are much more like Vicksburg, Jackson, and Texarkana. All southern baptist towns with less French history than the gulf cost cities. Mobile is also very different from the rest of Bama.
I was saying Gulfport and Mobile are like Slidell and New Orleans, not Northern Louisiana. When I was younger I went to summer camp in Bay St. Louis, MS at St. Stanislaus. I would fish in the sound all the time. I know these things. My relatives live in Covington and Old Metairie.
Maybe Baton Rouge has locals but I think the majority are college students. It's a college town in my opinion.
Maybe Baton Rouge has locals but I think the majority are college students. It's a college town in my opinion.
Baton Rouge certainly has a sizable population of college students, but it's not Oxford, MS. Baton Rouge has a metro area of over 800K people.
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