I was wondering why the professional photographers I know who occasionally post their photos on Facebook and Google+ really capture the spirit of the people, the moment, and the feel for what that second was like. I looked at the Mardi Gras photos in the newspaper and none seemed to come across the way my friends’ photos did – here’s one from Marc Pagani, got us en media res – you can feel the excitement:
Last night, we went to friends’ house to celebrate their 5th anniversary with a fish fry and a group of people that no one told Carnival time is over. Tonight we have dinner at another friends’ house. It’s 7:30 and Tin is humming Carnival time in bed even if yesterday he said in his sleep: Mardi Gras is over and now it’s Jazz Fest and I’m super tired. The world is crazy. This morning I…
Yesterday I was telling a friend that I’m starting lent today along with all the Catholics in the world. I give up alcohol for forty days. My friend asked why I, a Jew, would be observing a Catholic holiday and I said because I can. But I was reading a friend’s blog this morning and saw that perhaps the tradition had some roots in Judaism, a religion that certainly knows how to suffer and commemorate…
Today is Fat Tuesday and we are about to head out in our costumes to the Marigny to catch the St. Anne parade as it wends through the French Quarter all on Mardi Gras day. We’ve eaten our weight in king cakes, we’ve caught sparse amounts of beads having sat out a great deal of our parades due to illness, we’ve played our Mardi Gras playlist and heard Mardi Gras mambo, mambo, mambo, Mardiiiii Gras…
I’m reading a book a friend from Tin’s school recommended called Simplicity Parenting. The good thing is that it is falling pretty much in line with the Simplicity Being that I’ve been working on in my Plan B. The simple truth being that I am wresting myself from the place of being that has had me in chains for the last 16 plus years. We all know the drill only too well. We arrive at…
A short time ago I read James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain for the first time, and it prompted me to pick up, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone. The first book was a study of black religion in America and the second a study of the black man in America. Baldwin’s novels are experiences that you can’t just dive into, you have to wade around because they’re harsh, and glaring,…
I struggled my whole life with my mother’s addiction wanting nothing more than to pull her through to the other side and it took nearly fifty years to learn that I could only give her love and support, but could not change or help her overcome. I was sitting in Zahara de los Atunes, when I read that Amy Winehouse had died of an overdose and I read that her mother had said that her…
I read this post by a friend/blogger and I could not have said it better myself. We live right here near the parade route for Endymion but I would never invite anyone over for a parade that I don’t go to myself. The crowds are the worst part of the parade – however they have come to be, whether it is from the suburbs (but that doesn’t make sense because when I have gone to…
Well it is that time of year again – Endymion Saturday – and much like last year it is pouring down rain, only last year Endymion Saturday was also Tin’s 2nd birthday and we stupidly thought we would have a pool party since it had been so warm. Not. Now it is raining so hard you can’t see out the windows but Endymion is saying they will roll at 5:30 and supposedly this too shall…