worth 20 minutes

bitter? sure she's bitter...

This weekend we had a little sleep over visitor... Be (aka Kramer) came and stayed with us for 3 nights. Marie was less than amused...She went on a partial hunger strike, she refused to eat her crunchies. Only canned food, that's where she drew the line.



Things were lively over here as they are when Be enters the equation. It's generally a non-stop action packed adventure.

Sparky LOVES him. As far as she's concerned, Be can do whatever he wants...

Marie wants to kick his ass. (to put it bluntly) and by the way, "I'm not eating my crunchies!!!"

Since we didn't seem to get the message with the partial hunger strike, she took matters a step further and shredded a roll of toilet paper... The levels one has to stoop to in order to communicate in this household!!!

check this out!! Long story short, or more accurately medium... through any number of coincidences and happenstances we ended up getting to see this fantastic display/parade of the mardi gras indians. Now my understanding of all of this is rudimentary at best... but here goes. In the old days black people were not allowed to participate in the mardi gras celebrations/parades. so they had their own celebrations in other parts of the city. To honor the Indian tribes that protected the run away slaves they began to dress up as indians and developed "tribes" and like the 'krews" of the more traditional mardi gras parades had a hierarchy and structure of their own. any hoo...
They don't have a set route for their parades even today, but on st. Joseph's day (after mardi gras) they all gather and have another parade and celebration in a park. This year the traditional St. Joseph's day gathering aka Super Sunday, was postponed because of rain and it happened to be when we were there. It was amazing:

the scenes you see on their fronts and backs are all beaded. The detail is absolutely amazing. It takes a full year to make these costumes and cost thousands in materials not to mentions the time involved.
these people in blue are from the 9th ward.
the head dresses can weigh 150 pounds



there were bands that marched along with the "indians" and you could just go along as part of the parade if you wanted to, or stand on the side and take pic's. I've never in my life seen anything like this. And as it turns out just got to see it as a matter of luck. It couldn't have been planned. what a dang blast this trip to New Orleans was. The whole thing was like this in the sense that just by luck we'd end up in the middle of one exciting event after the next. I keep thinking, perhaps I'm done having to go there... but you know, maybe not....

New Orleans

I just got back from New Orleans ...again. For some reason I seem to find myself going there again and again this past year. This is the 3rd time. There's something about the feel of the place and how everyone calls me "baby". Ok that does me in. Call me 'baby' and I'm in your power. It's my kryptonite.
This trip there was a parade every day for one reason or another, or no reason at all really. I spilled off the plane and into the pirate parade... the theme was "it takes a pillage"
sorry this is so blurry, but I'm afraid we'd experienced a bit of the local custom of the "go cup" by this time... I got into the pirate parade big time, arrrg matey! ("matey", is almost as good at "baby")We all collected quite a hoard of beads by the end.


Hey, who dat callin me wench??