Take Me to the Mardi Gras

 

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Have you ever been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras?  

Having just returned from my first, let me recommend it to you.

Here are some things to know:

1. It's not a day, it's a season! Mardi Gras in New Orleans is known as Carnival Season. It begins on Little Christmas--January 6th and lasts until Fat Tuesday...the day before the Easter Lenten Season begins. This date changes every year.

 There are events, balls, parties, and parades galore uptown, downtown, the French Quarter and the suburbs of New Orleans. They get bigger and more frequent as the season goes on.

2. King Cake is served throughout...King Cake is a beautiful confection that comes in many forms--sweet and savory. Wow, it's delicious! Everywhere you visit to socialize during the season, bring a King Cake and you'll be most welcome. And yes, there is a baby in it.

King Cake...can you find the baby?

New Orleans food is fantastic. Have you ever had the delightful donut-like confection called beignets? If you go to the African American Museum in Treme you'll find the Calas Cafe, serving beignet's predecessors: calas..made with rice instead of wheat flour and first created by enslaved people on the 17th century streets of New Orleans. It's served with lemon curd.

With Chef Brendon at the Calas Cafe

Calas with lemon curd...yum!

3. Carnival Season is all about Family. You've probably seen some lurid images of Mardi Gras. (and yes, as my daughter tells most of her hotel guests..."nothing good happens after midnight, so get in by then.") But the season is all about family...from float participants making sure all the children get thrown beads and toys, to accomplished high school marching bands and cheering squads, to lesser known krewes (sponsors of parade marches and floats) like Krewe of Barkus ... dog lovers dressing up their pooches (many who need to be adopted by loving folks), and 'Tit Rex with its tiny wagon-pulled floats that imitate the gigantic ones, to the fantastic Black Masking Indians who visit the elderly who are no longer able to stand on parade routes. These wonderful dancers visit their elders on their stoops and porches. They also honor the Native Americans who took in and hid their enslaved ancestors.

Black Masking Indians look fantastic!

4. New Orleanians love the lost art of conversation, consisting of the fine arts of listening and expressing curiosity.  So get ready to learn things about people from all over the world during Mardi Gras.

5. Don't forget the music...it is everywhere! From jazz to classical to down-bayou Cajun. What a gumbo of delightful sounds, with places like the New Orleans Jazz Museum offering free concerts at least twice a week. Here's the wonderful Christien Bold and his band scatting some Duke Ellington at an afternoon performance...

Christien Bold and band keep Jazz thriving!

6. EVERYTHING is political! My daughter organizes mini krewes among her friends for Mardi Gras day marching downtown into Jackson Square. This year Ed and I joined in as personifications of our wonderful U.S. National Parks. We thought this non-political, until their funding started being slashed. So we added 500 stamped post cards to pass out to folks who chose to notify our elected representatives that we are NOT pleased with this decision!

Krewe Save Our National Parks

I hope you'll visit the beautiful Big Easy any time, but especially when it's all decked out for Mardi Gras!

The Inimitable Josephine Baker

Josephine Freda MacDonald was born in St. Louis, Missouri on June 3, 1906, to Carrie MacDonald, a part-black and part-Native-American woman, and Eddie Carson, of black and Spanish ancestry. When her father abandoned them, the family was left destitute. Josephine, at the age of eight, had to work cleaning houses and babysitting for wealthy white families.

She ran away from home at the age of thirteen and found work as a waitress in a club. There, at the same age, she met and married her first husband, whom she divorced soon after. 

Young Josephine had always loved dancing and performing, so when the opportunity to join a travelling band arose, she quickly accepted the offer, though she was considered too young and skinny to be a chorus girl and often had to take non-performing parts. At the age of fourteen, she married William Howard Baker, whose last name she kept, though their marriage dissolved after four years.

Her big break came in 1925, in France, during the explosion of interest in American Jazz on the European continent. She opened in the “La Revue Negre” at the Theatre des Champs- Elysee and became a huge hit, famous for her uninhibited performances and scanty costumes. Her fame grew and among her fans were Christian Dior, Grace Kelly, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 She returned to America in 1936, but was not well-received. Infuriated by the racial discrimination she encountered, such as being barred from hotels and refused service in clubs and restaurants, she returned to Paris after renouncing her American citizenship.

The Second World War opened the most interesting period of her life. She used her fame as a cover to gather intelligence for the French underground. She carried sensitive documents and messages to neutral countries, sometimes using invisible ink on sheet music. She rose to the rank of lieutenant in the Free French Air Force and, after the war, was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Légion d’Honneur and the Rosette de la Résistance.

Her personal life was also out of the ordinary. Men fell madly in love with her and she received approximately 1,500 marriage proposals. She married four times, but had no children of her own. Rather, she adopted twelve orphans, from different parts of the world, whom she called her ‘Rainbow Tribe,’ to show that children of different colors and nationalities could live together.

In the Fifties and Sixties, Baker frequently returned to the United States to fight racism. She participated in demonstrations and boycotts of segregated clubs and concert venues. In 1963, she joined Martin Luther King Jr. in the famous March on Washington, and became one of the notable speakers at the event. In honor of her efforts, the NAACP eventually named May 20th “Josephine Baker Day.”

In 1973, she performed at Carnegie Hall, after decades of rejection and racism. Greeted with a standing ovation, she openly wept in front of the audience. The success of the event marked her comeback on the stage. 

On April 12, 1975, Baker died in her sleep of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was 68. More than 20,000 people lined the streets of Paris to witness the funeral procession and the French government honored her with a 21-gun salute, making Josephine Baker the first American woman to be buried in France with military honors.

Mohan Ashtakala (www.mohanashtakala.com) is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)