Categories: uncategorized
Date: 19 February 2006 03:26:20
I was finishing up my workday, talking to Humberto, trying to explain our South Louisiana Mardi Gras to him.
I gave him my husband's short description: "It's the last big blow-out before you be good for 40 days to appease the angry God."
He replied in his Argentinian accent, "But in Rio they do it to celebrate the King of Carnival."
Well, yes, I added a few words about the start of the traditions in New Orleans, the half-satirical, half-earnest adulation of glittering honorary "royalty" --
About the naming of the carnival krewes after Greek and Roman deities, after heroes, after historical figures (Aphrodite, Shaka Zulu, Cleopatra).
I touched on the partying -- All over town yesterday, in a modern variation on the old Courir traditions, groups from the Krewe of Hercules were riding in open purple/green/gold buses, or being pulled in open trailers, loud party music blaring, alcohol in hand, tossing out doubloons and beads and what-all else.
I told him briefly about being a little girl at my uncle's barber shop, which sat on a main parade route in Thibodaux -- the eager stepping out into the street after the police cars and the flashing lights and the deputies on horseback had cleared the roadway of traffic, looking into the far distance for the first marching band. The refreshments on ice! The pedestrian peddlars of all things tacky and wonderful and purple/green/gold! I was the little girl with the sunburned shoulders, clinging to the top of the concrete barber pole in my little seersucker suit.
I don't know if I ever actually answered his true question -- "What is Mardi Gras for, here? What do you do?"
Since the storms of last autumn, it has been doubtful in some folks' minds whether there'd BE a Mardi Gras this year. I had no doubts about it though. For one thing, all of Mardi Gras does not happen in poor New Orleans.
And so what if there was 10 feet of water in the "dens" of the major krewes in New Orleans? So what -- and please understand the way I mean this -- So what if several of the leaders of New Orleans' beloved Zulu organization actually drowned in the Katrina debacle, bless their souls? This horror, this setback, would not keep them down, I knew. Ol' Katrina would have had to wipe out every last Carnival Zulu to end their reign -- and now this morning I heard that a big group of "real" Zulus are coming over for Mardi Gras.
Can you see it? The pageantry and zest and tongue-in-cheek poking of fun at the stuffed shirts of society, as awake and alive as ever, and added to that, a number of modern Zulu people who still dress and dance in their traditional way on special occasions. Oh my goodness, what I wouldn't give to see Zulu roll by and hand me a golden coconut!
Endemyon features this year, I believe, Dan Ackroyd and John Goodman -- a re-created Blues Brothers to honor the Big Easy. Bacchus has Michael Keaton, the dark conflicted Batman himself, for their king this year. I was on the boulevard neutral ground by Touro Synagogue the year "Frodo Baggins" was king of Bacchus. It's nice to know they're on for this year despite it all.
The big krewes, the eldest ones, have even more members right now than they had pre-Katrina. The ones who had flooded-out dens have vowed to roll anyway, even if they have waterlines on their floats. Some of the biggest floats ever commissioned have been built in the past couple of months, against all odds of having the manpower and materials come together in time. Huge things, thousands of pounds, on huge truck chasis, double-decked, with storage space for all the loot and restrooms and coolers and music equipment galore.
Sheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish has done his usual job of marshalling (heh, was that a pun?) and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars related to parading -- creating jobs, supplying the flow of cash and goods that keep many a business afloat. He's got his usual monster float, a rolling double-decker small city, and with him ride the Sunshine Kids, children with terminal cancers, masked and dressed up and tossing their flashy carnival largesse to adoring crowds.
All year long these enthusiasts do charitable work. They fund-raise amongst themselves for their fun, and for others.
At my local level, there are krewes who focus on the kids and families. There are men-and-women krewes, men's-only and women's-only krewes. There are krewes who dress up their dogs in costumes and parade them. There are krewes who parade in boats down the bayous.
I believe tonight is Cleopatra, here on my side of town. Younger son is marching in the parade, about an 8-mile route I believe, playing his French horn in the cold drizzle. You see, the show must go on. Spouse is walking with the band. Given the way an occasional drunk might get out of hand, Spouse was likely a valuable addition to the group -- would you behave badly if a huge fellow, shaven-headed, in a black leather jacket, carrying a big old walking stick, told you to straighten up? See, I thought not.
I don't know if I got it across to Humberto. He will really need to go out into the crowds and see it for himself to know it -- and to compare it to Rio.
And when Sonia passed by and asked me pretty much the same question, I gave up, and smiled, and told her a good place to watch the fun. Where I would go, if it were me and my hubby and no little ones to watch over --
I'd go to the courthouse square, where the kings and queens of the parades must stop and be received by the mayor and the other local and regional dignitaries. The champagne toasts are toasted and the twilight falls, and the twinkling lights draped along the great snaking live oak branches glitter as brightly as the rhinestones on the riders in the torchlight.
Tomorrow the telephone wires and the business awnings downtown, and the branches of all the roadside trees, will blossom with wild color. They'll wear a coat of brilliant necklaces, accidentally and purposefully tossed there by the float riders and the exuberant crowds.
I really cannot understand the logic of the naysayers and mourners who predicted and demanded that there be no Mardi Gras in the wake of the storms. I can understand their sentiments -- many-many lives were injured and disarranged and over 1,000 lost to Katrina alone -- then came Rita, insult after injury. But there is no logic in wanting to act solemn and cowed when the living have a living to make -- and the world loves New Orleans, and the region, and they smile when you tell them where you're from, even when they are far far away and know nothing of us but "Mardi Gras", "Cajun", and "Jazz".
Thanksgiving was important -- we were thankful more than ever this time.
Christmas and Hannukah and the turn of the year were important -- there is great holiness in them and it takes a disaster sometimes to open our eyes to the Light.
But Mardi Gras is the grace note.