"Papa Noel" Louisiana Christmas song

Louisiana Christmas video (embedding was disabled). The scenery really does not match the Louisiana theme (we DON'T get white Christmases here on the bayou!), but it's still fun. A few words in the song are in Cajun French. When my husband joined the military and we moved to California, I was eighteen. It took me a while to learn how unique my home state really was, that my new friends from other places did not know what a "pirogue" or a "banquet" was. "Papa Noel" is Santa Claus in Cajun country.

Papa Noel

These Are A Few Of My Favorite (Louisiana) Things

First, I just want to say that I've worked out the issue about the other person in my house knowing where my blog is. I talked to him about this, made it clear that my blog has kind of also become my journal (my fault for showing it to him when it was just political rants & blog round-ups). I told him that he has his 12-step program journals in the house, and that I've never cheated by reading any of them. Then I found out how use the blog stats thing so that I can always sign on and be sure the last time anyone here went to my blog, it was ME - and I told him I would be checking from now on too!

Thanks for the supportive comment.

And now, on to some of my favorite (Louisiana) things.

Thanks, Katrina explains how we can be tourists in our own backyard.

This weekend is Super Sunday, which involves the Mardi Gras Indians. The Mardi Gras Indian tradition grew out of the respect and affection African-Americans had for native-Americans, who often harbored escaped slaves. The traditions involved are unique, fascinating, and very complex - and way beyond my ability to explain here, so instead I will provide a link.

This video is offered as a f**k you to the "just let New Orleans die" crowd - and a polite rebuke to the otherwise fabulous Barbara Ehrenreich, who wouldn't include New Orleans in her book on celebrations of joy in the streets because she said Mardi Gras is too commercialized and because she has apparently seen one too many ads for "Girls Gone Wild: Mardi Gras edition." Here you are, Barbara! Come see for yourself!

This video is of two tribes of the Mardi Gras Indians doing "battle." In the old days, actual fights broke out and scores from other times during the year were settled. In modern times, this is how the chiefs do battle. Ultimately, one chief will bow to the one who is "the prettiest."

If you're interested in this, go to the original of the video above at youtube and there is a link to a New Yorker article. Also, try a search for "Mardi Gras Indians" at youtube.

I'm sort of working the event on Sunday. I am volunteering to be a legal observer for the ACLU, observing and then noting what happens between attendees and the police (more at LaACLU).

I did this kind of volunteering once before, when I was a first year law student and member of the National Lawyers Guild (I went to type that last night and it came out "National Lawyers Guilt - how Freudian!). Anyway, that was when friends at the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane held this protest in which they sat down on the highway outside of the Air Force base. At the time, I was so amazed by how professonal and polite the many police and military and riot control units present were. Now that the ACLU has used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain our FBI files (the law students referenced on page 12 would include moi), it is abundantly clear why law enforcement were SOO nice. Anyway, so I am going to do that for Super Sunday.

Next, my favorite author in the world, James Lee Burke, gives an interview to the Sydney Morning Herald. (sigh)

NEW ORLEANS isn't just a place for bestselling crime writer James Lee Burke. Nobody could describe it - the good and the bad - the way he does without a deep well of affection. Love even: "You woke in the morning to the smell of gardenias, the electric smell of the streetcars, chicory coffee and stone that has turned green with lichen. The light was always filtered through trees, so it was never harsh, and flowers bloomed year-round."

That's a blues musician talking, a character from Jesus Out To Sea, one of Burke's most personal stories. He's clinging to a roof in "the Big Sleazy" after Hurricane Katrina has ripped it open. He goes on: "New Orleans was a poem, man, a song in your heart that never died … I only got one regret. Nobody ever bothered to explain why nobody came for us."

I went to a book signing of Burke's at a fabulous indie bookstore called Auntie's. At the time, I had been living up North for about ten years, and Burke's books were the closest thing I could afford to a trip home. When it was my turn to have him sign my book, I told him that I was from New Orleans and that I used his books for mental transport back there, then I said, "Thank you so much for writing to life some quirky, recognizable Louisiana characters who aren't just the same old Scarlett and Rhett stereotypes. It means a lot to me." He stopped in the middle of signing, looked up abruptly, kind of searched my face for a moment, then said, "Why, thank you, ma'm." (another sigh)

I walked into my therapist's office one day carrying one of Burke's books and was amazed to learn that she'd never heard of him. She wanted to know specifically what I like about his novels (especially since, as I'd told her, I rarely read fiction). As I tried to describe the complexity of the Dave Robichaux character and the complexity of the world as Burke - accurately - depicts it, where cops have Vietnam flashbacks, occassional violent tempers, and weekly 12 step meetings, where there is honor among thieves but little among politicians and patriarchs, my therapist pointed out that Burke's novels and characters reflect the complexity of my life's experiences. It's true. I've found the good guys aren't easy to tell from the bad guys. I've found little of the black and white I crave, but lots of the gray I dread.

She's right. Burke's complexity gets me (and, if you read the interview, that complexity of ordinary characters, what he calls "the bottom up story" is what he is trying to tell). It's also, however, the simple fact that his descriptions of my beloved Louisiana are melt in your mouth poetry.

Perhaps I carried too many memories of the way the city used to be. Maybe I should not have returned. Maybe I expected to see the streets clean, the power back on, the crews of carpenters repairing ruined homes. But the sense of loss I felt while driving down St. Charles was worse than I had experienced right after the storm. New Orleans had been a song, not a city. Like San Francisco, it didn't belong to a state; it belonged to a people.

When Clete and I [had] walked the beat on Canal, music was everywhere. Sam Butera and Louis Prima played in the Quarter. Old black men knocked out "The Tin Roof Blues" in Preservation Hall. Brass-band funerals on Magazine shook the glass in storefront windows. When the sun rose on Jackson Square, the mist hung like cotton candy in the oak trees behind the St. Louis Cathedral. The dawn smelled of ponded water, lichen-stained stone, flowers that bloomed only at night, coffee and freshly baked beignets in the Cafe du Monde. Every day was a party, and everyone was invited and the admission was free.

The grandest ride in America was the St. Charles streetcar. You could catch the old green-painted, lumbering iron car under the colonnade in front of the Pearl and for pocket change travel on the neutral ground down arguably the most beautiful street in the Western world. The canopy of live oaks over the natural ground created a green-gold tunnel as far as the eye could see. On the corners, black men sold ice cream and sno'balls from carts with parasols on them, and in winter the pink and maroon neon on the Katz and Besthoff drugstores glowed like electrified smoke inside the fog ...

Every writer, every artist who visited New Orleans fell in love with it. The city might have been the Great Whore of Babylon, but few ever forgot or regretted her embrace. (a little more...yum)

Hat tip New Orleans News Ladder for the James Lee Burke interview.

I'll close with this, "Unsuffer Me," by Louisiana GODDESS Lucinda Williams. This isn't really a video, but it plays the song, which is fabulous. Lean back and let Lucinda massage the sore spots in your soul.

Hot 8 Brass Band and other things NOLA

Great video:

Hattip to The Periphery.

Same blog has a wonderful piece about trying to figure out whatever the hell is the problem that the rest of the country has with us - they don't like our values, they imagine the place is a den of vice, they're racist, they don't like poor people - and what we might do about it:
here

Ashley Morris on when those crazy Vermonters threaten to seceed from the Union and why the same thing wouldn't work for us.

Honore has his say:

The gruff, cigar-chomping general who led federal troops in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is convinced that the United States hasn't learned its lesson from the storm.

As Lt. Gen. Russel Honore prepares to retire from the Army and hand over his command Friday, he says he wants to spend the rest of his life creating a "culture of preparedness" to prevent another post-disaster disaster.

"There's an attitude everywhere else that people are smarter than they are in New Orleans and in Mississippi. They're not," Honore, 60, said at his office at Fort Gillem outside Atlanta. "What happened in New Orleans could have happened anywhere on the eastern seaboard."

Also a blog that includes some interesting and kind commentary about relief work in New Orleans (hattip to Ashley Morris).

Amanda Shaw's Rounder Debut is a Hit

Burlington, MA –Critics are not running out of great things to say about the January 8th release of 17 year old, New Orleans based, Cajun-fiddler, sing-songwriter and actress, Amanda Shaw’s Rounder debut Pretty Runs Out. Shaw will also be opening for country superstar, Taylor Swift on January 25 at the Family Gras Festival in New Orleans, LA.

listen some

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When Will New Orleans Sing Again?

In wrapping one's head around the Louisiana primaries, here are a few disclaimers: I am not the California fires. I am not the Minnesota Bridge. But I am an infrastructure-displaced New Orleans resident almost three years down the road. Louisiana is so politically unique, being displaced from there should require a passport....The L.A. Times quoted a reviewer saying there were no good Katrina songs because there are no good 9/11 songs. With all due respect, jazz was not born in the Twin Towers.

read more | digg story

Yes, It's Carnival Tiiiiiime!

It looks like I'll be moving my blog over from myspace to here.

Yes, it's carnival tiiiiime:

And just in time, there's a new album by the "Blind Boys of Alabama" coming out on January 28, one recorded in New Orleans and featuring New Orleans musicians. Check out the video:

Chris Rose has been busy the past ten days or so. He tells us about being "Clueless in Seattle" and then tells us about "Party Time on Tiger Mountain" when LSU won their big game:

Cruising down St. Charles Avenue, we passed streetcar stops packed with ready revelers. You could feel it in the air, a strange brew of humidity and history.

In the Garden District, we passed a middle-aged couple decked out in Ohio State colors. They were walking the long walk. "Let's offer them a ride," I told my friend. It seemed like the right thing to do. So we pulled over.

They got in the back seat. Before making introductions, I admonished them: "Are y'all crazy?" I said. "Haven't you heard about crime in New Orleans? How could you just jump in the back seat of a stranger's car?"

They had no answer at hand. They hadn't thought through all the things that could go wrong. Truth is, they just wanted a ride. It seemed like the right thing to do.

They were Amy and Allen Glass from Columbus. First timers to New Orleans unless you count Allen's three hours here many, many years ago and by all accounts, it was a very long three hours.

I asked how their visit was going this time around. It was going very well, Amy said. "What we have noticed," she said, "is that everyone here seems to be so in love with this town."

I reckon so, I told her. We've all had ample time, opportunity and reason to move on, I said. If you're still here, well, yeah . . . it must be love. Crazy love....

But first: I heard drumbeats down Poydras. Then horns, a glorious echo from the heavens. There, to greet my arrival downtown for this hallowed occasion, was the St. Aug Marching 100. God's own band, the way I see it. I don't know whose idea it was to have these guys march down the street before the game, but it was a good one.

It began to rain. A good rain. Louisiana rain. The tower of the Hibernia Bank building was lit in purple and gold. Through the mist, it was perhaps the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

The band played on. The crowds swelled behind the Marching 100. A motorcycle cop played his siren in rhythm with the band, and I wondered how he did that. There was so much noise, so much commotion. I fell in with the second line. It seemed like the right thing to do.

We marched to the Dome, a legion of strangers in the night. The group disbanded. Most headed for the Dome. I turned to head back down Poydras, toward my perch on Tiger Mountain. A guy said to me -- yelled to me, really -- "ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?"

Football, I thought? Who gives a dang about football? Let's do life.

I saw Sean Payton dancing with a police officer on the neutral ground and . . .

OK, that didn't really happen, but you got the sense that it could, that you just might see or hear anything on this night. It was like Mardi Gras, except it was just us. Just us, and a few thousand friends from Ohio.

I started thanking people dressed in red, doing my Love Potion No. 9 routine, thanking strangers for being here, for coming here, and it is a very annoying habit I have. Many folks shook my hand and said "You bet!" and "Thanks for having us!" and many averted their eyes.

My favorite, however, is this story about a New Jersey man who read about the murders in New Orleans and came here to start a peace project as well as to memorialize and humanize the dead. Until I read this, I hadn't thought about my stepbrother in many years. I didn't know him particularly well, as my mother married his father when I was seventeen, and he lived with his mother. One night back in 1989, when he was seventeen, he was in a car with some friends underneath the Earheart Expressway. As a gunman aimed at my stepbrother's face, he put his hand up and was shot three times - once each in his hand, his wrist, and his neck. At dawn, a truck driver reported the scene to police. As our recent New Jersey transplant understands, over time only a handful of people remember each murder victim. Their stories soon fade from public memory - if they were ever even there, as most of the murdered children of New Orleans, like my stepbrother, merit only a brief paragraph in the Metro section of the Times Picayune. It's nice that someone is keeping their stories, their very individuality, alive - here in a city where murders are the most mundane of statistics. Rest in peace, R.B.

Krewe de Vieux rolled last night. I managed to miss it yet again, in bed with the flu this time. This year's theme was "The Magical Misery Tour." Call them raunchy or brilliant, love it or hate it, this is carnival, organic, home-grown. Someday soon when I finally get around to emailing Barbara Ehrenreich (whose blog I stumbled across last night and who dissed us a while back by refusing to include New Orleans' Mardi Gras in her recent book on partying in the streets because, the heretofore-brilliant-but-on-this-subject-ignorant Ehrenreich said, Mardi Gras is too commercialized to count as an organic street party), I'm going to send her the preceeding link. I'm going to tell her about the Cajun Mardi Gras (and here - le Courir de Mardi Gras a Cheval, riding on horseback and dancing, begging, and clowning for the chicken and other ingredients to make a communal gumbo feast; how commercial is THAT?) and New Orleans' Mardi Gras Indians and about second lining. Really, it's shocking that an academic of her caliber would demonstrate such ignorance. There is no corporate sponsorship of any sort for Mardi Gras, and the fact that lots of tourists come here to watch our home-grown holiday doesn't MAKE it commercial. It's still a party we throw for OURSELVES, young and old. It's still "dancing in the streets," Ms. Ehrenreich, and it's very much about "collective joy" (these terms come from her book title, which I'm not going to mention).

The New Orleans News Ladder has a great dedication (check down the left side, in purple).

Also check out great political satire at The New Orleans Levees (We Don't Hold Anything Back).

The Huffington Post suddenly joins the "earth is round" society and dares to ask, ""Did Oil Canals Worsen Katrina's Effects?"

Unfortunately, I won't be in town next weekend for the usual family gathering for the ALLA parade on the West Bank. I am very excited to be attending the "Stop Porn Culture" conference in Austin, Texas, although I'm amazed how after months of NOT having a life, suddenly three things I wanted to do all came up the same weekend (the third being a house party to watch the results come in from the South Carolina Democratic primary). Sigh.

Finally, in honor of the Martin Luther King holiday, some youtube gems.

King's last public speech (been to the mountaintop):

King on war (so relevant today, American is NOT the policeman of the world, he said):

King on the drum major instinct (if you want to be a drum major - meaning the star of the show - be a drum major for justice, for peace, for righteousness):

This sermon - about being a drum major for peace - was the last sermon Dr. King gave before his death. In it, he talked about what he hoped could be said about him at his funeral when the time came. Re-rediscovering it tonight, I was thinking about how some family and friends have been emailing about what our "bucket lists" would include (prompted by the new movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) and I realized that my bucket list needs to include having lived a lifetime of commitment and activism, or, as Dr. King said:

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically
(Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized
with what is life's final common denominator—that
something that we call death. We all think about it.
And every now and then I think about my own death and
I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it
in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask
myself, "What is it that I would want said?" And I
leave the word to you this morning.

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I
don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to
deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long.
(Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them
to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel
Peace Prize—that isn't important. Tell them not to
mention that I have three or four hundred other
awards—that's not important. Tell them not to mention
where I went to school. (Yes)

I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin
Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving
others. (Yes)

I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin
Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on
the war question. (Amen)

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try
to feed the hungry. (Yes)

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did
try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my
life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve
humanity. (Yes)

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say
that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I
was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major
for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things
will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave
behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of
life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a
committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to
say.

If I can help somebody as I pass along,

If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,

If I can show somebody he's traveling wrong,

Then my living will not be in vain.

If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,

If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,

If I can spread the message as the master taught,

Then my living will not be in vain.

Rest in peace, MLK (with a footnote to the Clintons: I'm just wondering, um, how many dark nights DID Lydon Johnson spend in a jail cell to get civil rights legislation passed??? P.S. Dear President Rape, please shut up, shut up, shut up.)