✍ LEJ's Mardi Gras Glossary and Stories / February 2025
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February
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2025
~ Fiction ~
Roman à clef, cher.
Created A. I. free
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
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~ Carnival 2025 ~
LEJ's
Mardi Gras Glossary
and Stories
⭐ Part One ⭐
BY Leonard Earl Johnson
© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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The following Carnival terms are used by everyone in
Louisiana, from Rex to thee.
Follow them and become one with the Greatest Free Show on Earth.
There are many Carnival terms listed here, and a few historically mystical Louisiana stories sprinkled amongst them.
Read as needed.
A few now,
perhaps more later!
Laissez les bons temps rouler
Let The Good Times Roll
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Many the
Carnival carpetbagger
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| Mardi Gras 2025 Voodoo Doll, New Orleans |
They come, sway with our musicians and dine with our chefs.
Then they dance off home with our rhythms sounding in their ears, and a peptic re-flux marching in their stomach
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We show them our "dis and dats," they fill our hotels.
We give them beads, they pay our rent and laugh at our jokes.
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"You ever hear the one about the tourist who ate the paper bag at Antoine's!?"
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Be Advised:
Carnival is like the Catholic Church,
the deeper you look the more there is to see.
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| Carnival celebrants / NOLa |
Carnival's colors are
purple, green,
and gold.
Carnival Season begins every year
on the Christian Holy Day of Epiphany, January 6.
It ends on different dates of the month ~ but always on Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent.
LENT IS THEOLOGICALLY THE OPPOSITE OF CARNIVAL.
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To never lessen the suffering abstinence of Lent, joyful Carnival shrinks some years. Other years it swells. This calendar shapeshifting is done for the expressed purpose of keeping Lent ever forty-suffering days long ~ the longest holiday in the Christian calendar.
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Les Jours Gras (Shrovetide) A term little used in today's Louisiana, denoting activities for the last three day weekend of Carnival. Sunday is for going to Mass; Monday and Tuesday are called Lundi Gras and Mardi Gras ~ Fat Monday and Fat Tuesday. They are for everything you probably think is Carnival.
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LEJ and Alyse Morgan shopping for Mardi Gras
Rêve Coffee Roasters, Lafayette~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mardi Gras dates
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February 13, 2024
March 4, 2025
February 17, 2026
February 9, 2027
February 29, 2028
February 13, 2029
March 5, 2030
February 25, 2031
February 10, 2032
March 1, 2033
February 21, 2034
February 6, 2035
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"It moves,"
L. A. Norma says,
"it's alive!"
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"it's alive!"
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Bal Tableaux ~ A masked party featuring performances of scenes in still-life representing a specific theme. Can be deadly dull. Can be uproariously funny.
Movable tableaux on Carnival Day (Mardi Gras) are the funniest. Who can forget the Westbank Big Hair Emergency Repair Krewe marching along, stopping in freeze-motion to fix misshapen bouffants along parade routes of yore?
Movable tableaux on Carnival Day (Mardi Gras) are the funniest. Who can forget the Westbank Big Hair Emergency Repair Krewe marching along, stopping in freeze-motion to fix misshapen bouffants along parade routes of yore?
Boeuf Gras ~ The fatted bull or ox in the Rex parade ~ representing Carnival's sweetly excessive death-to-the-flesh, and Lent's beginning
abstinence (true death). Said by Louisiana journalists-emeriti and Mardi Gras overseers, Arthur Hardy and Errol Laborde to be the most photographed sight of Carnival.
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| Boeuf Gras ~ Rex parade ~ Mardi Gras ~ NOLa |
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Captain ~ Leader of each Mardi Gras organization.
Captain ~ Leader of each Mardi Gras organization.
Carnival ~ Late Latin for Farewell to Flesh.
Court ~ The king, queen, maids and dukes of each Mardi Gras organization. There is a hierarchy here culminating in Rex (Latin for King) However, no court or krewe is more important than the one you are in.
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| Rex Doubloon Wikipedia |
Rex ~ One of the "Big Four" oldest krewes of Louisiana Carnival. Founded in New Orleans in1872, calling itself, The School of Design. Ponder such a krewe name ~ with its religious, mythological and historical resonance ~ and you will see dimly into the mysteries of Carnival.
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Doubloons ~ Coin-like objects bearing some
Krew insignia on one side and the parade theme on the obverse. Doubloons were first introduced 1959-60 by New Orleans artist H. Alvin Sharpe. They were gold colored aluminum and first thrown by Rex in 1960. For a few years ~ even after being adopted by other krewes ~ they were generically called Rex Doubloons. Today doubloons are thrown by many krewes in various colors, themes and names. Favor ~ This is a personalized souvenir. Given by organization members to friends. More precious than float throws.
Invitation ~ A non-transferable printed request for attendance at a Mardi Gras ball.
King Cake ~ This is an oval bread or cake gussied up (traditionally brioche but today anything).
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| King Cake with Baby |
with Mardi Gras tri colored sugars, and baked with a plastic baby doll hidden inside.
It is called 'King Cake' because it commemorates the visit of the Three Kings to see the Baby Jesus, literally a Christian epiphany.
Epiphany ~ means a first-appearance or manifestation of a divine being. In this case, the Three Kings (representing the peoples of the world) seeing for the first time the Baby Jesus, a new God (at least a new branch of an old one).
The baby doll in the King Cake is loosely seen as the Epiphanous Baby Jesus, and concurrently all temporal joys-on-Earth.
Widely overlooked by brethren of the secular press, the J-6 Insurrection at the United State's Capitol occurred on Epiphany ~ January 6 ~ symbolic timing for religious minded romantics and blood lusting insurrectionists alike.
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| Al Johnson (purple robe) and Krewe of Fans photo credit: Mark Konikoff |
beloved song,
opens with the line:
"The Green Room is smokin' and the Plaza's burnin' down / Throw my Baby out the window, let those joints burn down..."
An act of rescue or callous disregard? Or, as we see it in Louisiana, both!
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The person who finds the Baby Jesus in their cake slice is crowned "King." A king without duties other than buying the next colorful cake and giving the next King Cake Party.
In New Orleans, the first Carnival parade each year is organized by the Phuny Phorty Phellows, a happily knit group of swells, on January 6.
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| Phunny Phorty Phellows Street Car Parade / NOLA.com |
Originally they paraded on foot Mardi Gras Day, behind Rex. Today they ride the Saint Charles Streetcar in colorful costumes on Epiphany night. Sometimes with brassy music.
Around street car stops and the Car Barn are good spots to see this first-of-season show.
Krewe ~ a generic term for all Carnival organizations and clubs. Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology are sources for half the krewe names. Some clubs are named after neighborhoods, while others are named after historical figures or places.
Amid large parades in Acadiana's Hub City of Lafayette rolls the samba-swinging Krewe of Carnival en Rio.
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Krewes are chartered by cities as non-profit entities and are financed by dues or sales of krewe-emblemed merchandise to the members, who give them as favors to friends (again, more precious than the 'throws' tossed from parade floats).
Lundi Gras ~ French for Fat Monday (Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday). "Fat" is a broad term for prosperity and joy, the very things being done in Carnival-excess before somber Lent takes them all away.
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The Day before Mardi Gras (Lundi Gras) from 1897 to 1917 was celebrated by arrival of Rex aboard a steamboat on the Mississippi River. Revived in 1987, under the New Orleans Mayoralty of Sidney Barthelemy, a local book learned
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| Courtesy of Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club |
With mild manners and movie star looks Barthelemy revived the practice with the addition of King Zulu.
Each year since ~ aboard separate vessels and for a few years Rex came on the streetcar. (Louisiana kings and gods are, like the King Cake Baby Jesus, very much human.)
Eventually Zulu and Rex arrived at Spanish Plaza and greeted each other, "There at the foot of Poydras Street."
"One River Two Boats!"
L. A. Norma wrote at the time in a letter to the old Times-Picayune daily.
Comus ~ One of the oldest krewes. First paraded in 1857 ~ four years before the Confederate Secession ~ with the parade theme: The Past, The Present, The Future.
Comus does not currently parade ~ a bitter hangover from political battles at the end of the last century, with former New Orleans City Council Woman, Dorothy Mae Taylor, over race restrictions in business luncheon clubs and Carnival krewes.
Comus and Rex still hold an elaborate meeting-of-the-courts ball on Mardi Gras night. But only Rex parades.
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| Lee Circle, pre-2015, Saint Charles Avenue, New Orleans from Confederate Memorial Hall Museum |
Nineteen years after The War, in 1884, the first Queen of Comus was Mildred Lee, daughter of defeated Confederate General Robert E. Lee, subject of the Lee Monument once on Saint Charles Avenue at Lee Circle, sculpted by Alexander Doyle. Targeted in 2015 and removed that year by Mayor Mitch Landrieu
"You lose, you blues,"
a musician we know says.
a musician we know says.
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New Orleans is often described as a city built along a bend in The Mississippi River, and organized around Mardi Gras.
Old line Louisiana comedians tempered with cheeky Carnival spirit have been seen feigning the Sign of The Cross while saying, "Comus, Momus, Proteus and Rex," the big four of the old line New Orleans krewes. Every Louisianan alive today understands this joke.
Zulu ~ A black krewe formed some forty years after the Civil War and the post- War wars.
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| click image to read caption |
Battle of Liberty Place ~ a Reconstruction era battle that took place at the foot of Canal Street in front of today's Harrah's Casino. The battle's monument was in the news lately as it, too, was targeted by Mayor Landrieu for removal.
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The obelisk ~ erected 1891 ~ commemorates the bloody post- Civil War battle of 14 September 1874. Part of a terrorist plot that hoped to remove the elected governor, William Pitt Kellogg. The inscription on the monument refers to the National Elections two years later ~ 1876 ~ as the moment that ended failed-Reconstruction, and united Louisiana White Supremacy with Yankee complied Jim Crow Laws. Names of whites fallen in the battle were chiseled in the stone. Names of fallen blacks, though they were sworn and uniformed policemen, were not.
Heartless tradition? Yes, and prognosticator.
The 2021 US Capitol Rioters, today's ideologically transformed Republican heirs of Mr. Lincoln's party, also attacked and killed police; even though the police were uniformed officers of the law, and they were not. A classic example of insurrection and violation of riot laws.
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| New Orleans Civil War Era US Custom House and Post Office free downloadable poster |
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Some people think both insurrections should be remembered and kept sharply in focus.
In the words of William Faulkner, "Our past is not forgotten, it is not even passed."
Two out-of-town deconstruction companies hired to remove New Orleans' Confederate memorials asked out of their contracts because of death threats. One, H and O Investments owner, David Mahler, had his $200,000 Lamborghini torched in the company's Baton Rouge parking lot.
Eventually down the statues came. They are being warehoused somewhere undisclosed.
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For three days, in September of 1874, Governor William Pitt Kellogg and his cronies (krewe?) took refuge in the recently built U. S. Custom House and Post Office, a handsome Union thumbprint first opened in 1856 ~ as war clouds gathered ~ and serving through the Nineteenth Century (including all the years of War Between the States) as the U. S. Post Office and U. S. Custom House.
Remember, NOLa mostly spent The War occupied, having surrendered about one year to the day after New Orleanian, P. G. T. Beauregard fired The War's 'first shot' on Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor (April 12, 1861). The first Yankee soldier reached the steps of Gallier Hall (then City Hall) on April 29, 1862. New Orleans surrendered without resistance.
"After all, Carnival was coming," Norma concurs with two bead laden members of Endymion Super Krewe.
The Old Custom House still stands, at 423 Canal Street, across North Peters Street from the Yankee haberdashery, Brooks Brothers; and not more than a block away from the site of the Battle of Liberty Place. Today the crestfallen edifice is home to the Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium.
"The Bug House," Norma calls it.
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LEJ's Mardi Gras Glossary
and Stories
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| LEJ with Mardi Gras Maidens Photo by Anson Trahan |
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| LEJ at Carnival Time Photo by Anson Trahan |
LEJ's Mardi Gras Glossary
and
Stories
⭐ Part Two ⭐
BY Leonard Earl Johnson
© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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It involves some Louisianans leading all Louisianans to the political shackles of a disaster hobbling as today's romanticizing of the
"Lost Cause War Between The States."
Unbelievable as it sounds, those clueless white folks sent a delegation to meet Ulysses S. Grant, who was just home from That War; home from Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and home to be elected President of the now
re-united
United States of America.
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The Louisiana White League delegation arrived in Washington and proposed Grant resuscitate commerce in
The War stifled Port of New Orleans by establishing a new confederacy with its capitol located in New Orleans.
1874
Louisiana
A Post- Civil War Insurrection
The insurrection was drummed up by the Crescent City White League. A quirky gang of Confederate sympathizers, planters, and
Commemorated by the now removed monument at the foot of Canal Street, known as the Liberty Place Obelisk. A monument often targeted by Civil Rights demonstrators during big events like Carnival, and removed to a secret place of storage, in 2015.
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| Liberty Place Obelisk |
World traders who wanted what everyone wanted ~ at least everyone who was a World trader, planter, or Confederate sympathizer.
Hell, even President Grant wanted this, the White League reckoned, because an ill-functioning Port of New Orleans made for an ill-functioning Western Expansion of the United States.
If the Louisiana Purchase... Hell, the very War Between the States itself, were for anything ~ more than evil slavery ~ it was for this Western Expansion, and the newly discovered California gold!
Grant would be too, or so felt the White Leaguers.
It was, however, the establishment of another confederacy, though this time, they said, allied more with Washington and less with London.
London?!
"Yes," Norma explained, "London, England!
"London was long in a tissy over Spain and Portugal getting all the New World gold. When all England got was stuffy Bostonians ~ and later T. S. Eliot."
England built physical support for the South. Notably providing the Confederate blockade runner, CSS Alabama. The Alabama was a screw sloop-of-war built in Birkenhead, on the River Mersey (opposite Liverpool) for the purpose of running round Northern blockades of New Orleans and other ports.
She captured, sank, or burned 68 ships in 22 months before being sunk herself, in 1864 by the USS Kearsarge, off the coast of Cherbourg, France.
In 1871-72, a post War tribunal crafted the Treaty of Washington, which ordered England to pay the United States $15.5 million for damages inflicted by the Alabama. Mind you, this was 1872 dollars. During the negotiations one proposal illuminating the magnitude of the compensation, asked for secession of Canada from England and ceding it to the United States.
Yes, London supported the South and would have been on the first train to the mine fields had The War ended differently.
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Back to the Louisiana White League.
These masterminds pled their case before Grant, the very person recently elected to set true a course for the newly becalmed U. S. ship of state. They told President Grant, their Big Swamp City's Port of New Orleans would make a fine seat for this new confederacy.
Having personally just fought to defeat the old Confederacy, Grant reckoned not to take the advice of these good ole boys from Louisiana and sent them safely home to moan and mumble over their grillades and grits for the next two centuries.
One wonders if Grant might have considered hanging the delegation. It was, after all, treason-come-lately they were preaching.
Were they, however, civil and polite at meetings that might have taken place at the Willard Hotel? Grant is known to have favored the newly built Willard, and this was not the kind of meeting done openly in the White House. Did they drink whiskey? We figure Grant did. Did any of the Louisiana boys call on the famous pleasure houses of the victorious capitol? We figure they did. Hopefully more successfully than their audience with Grant.
Some in the delegation were from Grant Parish, founding site of the Louisiana White League (the group inciting the Liberty Place Insurrection).
Grant Parish is a "Reconstruction Parish." There were eleven such parishes created after The War, in 1869, from what had been Winn and Rapides Parishes before The War. It is located in an English section of Louisiana ~ around Alexandria and Pineville ~ and where United States Major General William Tecumseh Sherman once lived.
Sherman was from Ohio, and like Virginian, Robert E. Lee, a graduate of West Point. Lee, as you may know, was wooed to join Lincoln's Northern Army but chose to stay with The South, though he privately thought the secession unlikely to succeed.
Sherman, though a Northerner, had not yet hired on to Lincoln's army when he was appointed, in 1859, the first president of the newly founded
at Pineville, Louisiana.
Known in its day as "The Little Seminary," it later moved to Baton Rouge and changed its name to
Louisiana State University.
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Yes, boys and girls, the first President of
L. S. U. was William Tecumseh Sherman!
"He was like Governor Bobby Jindal," Norma giggled inside her cloud of cigarette smoke, "a carpetbagger makin' Louisiana hay.
"In Jindal's stupid run against Donald Trump for President, Jindal starved
L. S. U., as advised by heartless D. C. handlers, and headless hometown politicians."
Our Pedicab Driver interjected:
"Long as you keep payin'em, they'll keep telling you, you can be President!"
We all laughed, tippled, and tossed Carnival beads to smiling tourists.
"Sherman burned Atlanta,"
our driver said,
"Bobby Jindal burned Baton Rouge!
our driver said,
"Bobby Jindal burned Baton Rouge!
"Both of them Republicans, too!"
Norma laughed, from inside her cloud.
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| Courtesy of Louisiana State University Libraries |
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After The War
Formed forty-some years after The Civil War, the black krewe, Zulu came on the scene poking heavy handed hit-and-run fun at the white krewes.
Zula would neither publish their parade route nor apply for City parade permits. They preferred 'spontaneously catching up' with Comus, Momus, Proteus, or Rex, and taunting them unannounced.
The old line krewes did not like this and had been working to stop it ever since it started.
"You can imagine their indignity at a float full of white-faced blacks coming up behind their Fatted Ox throwing coconuts!" Norma says to visitors, as she blows Carnival smoke in their faces.
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Mayor Barthelemy's 1987 peace plan of Rex meeting the Zulu King at the foot of Poydras Street softened the satirical sting.
Zulu had earlier agreed to obtain parade permits and publish their route ~ today, always preceding the Rex Parade ~ and politely passing their Coconuts (now prized collectables) by hand, to avoid injuries ~ for reasons of insurance as much as respect.
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| Rex Members of Rex generally feel Carnival is built around their focal point. If not them alone then the four Old Line Krewes of Comus, Momus, Proteus, and Rex. For some celebrants this is true. For most it is not, but for everyone Rex is one glorious part of the spectacle. ~ ~ ~ L. A. Norma says, "Carnival is what you make of it." |
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Throws ~ These are inexpensive souvenirs tossed from floats (since around 1871) by costumed and masked Krewe members in response to traditional calls of "Throw me something, mister!" Sometimes heard among Acadiana French as, "Pour moi, m'sieur!"
Throws include doubloons, plastic cups and beads with and without krewe emblems.
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| Celebrant, NOLa / photo: Carlos Detres |
Some Krewes
have uniquely
tailored throws, such as the highly sought after Zulu Coconuts, Krewe of Iris's Sunglasses, and the High Heeled Shoes of the Krewe of Muses.
Ash Wednesday ~ The day after Mardi Gras, and the beginning of the Lenten fasting season.
Hangover ~ This one you may already know. It is most appropriate for Ash Wednesday.
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Carnival is celebrated in most towns in Coastal Louisiana. One town most famously not celebrating Carnival is Abbeville, home of Steen's Pure Cane Syrup, and Louisiana troubadour, Bobby Charles (Walking to New Orleans, See You Later Alligator). I do not know why. When you ask locals they say it is because they host the yearly Louisiana Cattle Festival, a large effort.
"And don't forget their Giant Omelet Celebration," L. A. Norma adds, in a staccato of chortling smoke signals.
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| LEJ.world T-shirt |
It should be noted in Louisiana one often hears it said, We lack the civic energy to do anything but Carnival!
This is a typically self-deprecating humor spoken with self- love and pride.
In truth, it is not unheard of in Louisiana to shepherd civic responsibilities and still entertain more than one festival. You can find them almost weekly in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, or New Orleans.
"Daily in Baton Rouge," Norma says, "when the legislature is in session."
The most colorful Louisiana Carnivals outside of New Orleans massive effort are the Courir de Mardi Gras (Mardi Gras Run). These are events where participants ride horseback from house to house asking for contributions to a communal gumbo pot.
Among the items given will be a live chicken or two. A grand drunken chase ensues. Hardly anyone is injured ~ if you do not count the chicken.
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| Courir de Mardi Gras |
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This Saga of Carnival is a perfect example of a kind of Louisiana social studies practiced by those poorer souls who come to "watch Carnival."
Those in the know know Carnival as a participatory thing. More better done than studied or written about. So take another turn round the dancefloor, Louisiana. Them smart folks are here watching us again.
If you happen to be one of those 'smart and glum' watchers, perhaps you should consider Mobile, Alabama's Mardi Gras. Folks from Mobile held the New World's first Mardi Gras, in 1703. Mobileans brought the practice to the New Orleans colony in 1718.
Carnival in Mobile, today, is famously family/boredom friendly, and perhaps just what you are looking for.
Louisiana mounted a horse of another color and rode off in grandeur greater than Mama Mobile ever expected.
In Louisiana we party til the Purple Vestments come out on Ash Wednesday.
And a Moon Pie in New Orleans is an entirely different thing in Mobile.
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Lagniappe du Jour
White League and Ku Klux Klan alliance,
an illustration by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly,
October 24, 1874
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| The Day After Mardi Gras |
💧
of
The Red Women Warrior Stories
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💜💚💛 © 2023, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved |
They are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years. ~ ~ ~ LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world, Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER, and historically at Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans publication of the It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana |
posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 3:54 AM
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