Celebrations

The title of this post is both ironic and non-ironic.


I'm writing about two funerals--hardly material for celebration. Yet here in New Orleans, a funeral can be as much a celebration of life as it is mourning for the dead.

Two local celebrities died last week, both of them closely connected to the New Orleans music community.

Eaglin jazz funeral; photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune



The first was Snooks Eaglin, a blind R&B guitarist known for his virtuousity, who influenced many other musicians. This excellent article about Snooks includes a YouTube video of Snooks playing at his favorite venue, Rock 'N' Bowl, and simultaneously giving a music lesson to another local musician, George Porter, Jr. The video is vintage Snooks: he treats Porter--famous as a member of The Meters and considered one of the greatest living bass guitarists--like a newbie. (Porter was one of Snooks' biggest fans and loved playing sets with Snooks.)

The second celebrity we lost was Antoinette K-Doe, widow of Ernie K-Doe, who revived Ernie's musical career and reputation in his last years, kept his memory active after his death, and helped many musicians and others in the community.

Apart from their fame on the local music scene, Snooks and Antoinette had something else in common: Their funerals were held at nightclubs.

Snooks' funeral service at The Howlin' Wolf featured tributes, both verbal and musical, by numerous stars of the New Orleans music scene, and concluded with a traditional jazz funeral escort to the cemetery.

It was the Warehouse District nightclub's first funeral.

"We've had people laid out here before," noted Howlin' Wolf owner Howie Kaplan, "but they were still breathing."

(From music writer Keith Spera's blog on the Times-Picayune website)

Antoinette's wake was held at her own club, the Mother-in-Law Lounge, which she had made into a shrine for her late husband. Her funeral service was at a church, and she too had a traditional jazz funeral escort to her interment.

K-Doe jazz funeral; Photo by Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune

All the coverage of the events shows how much the funeral guests celebrated the lives of the deceased. There was sadness, but also joy and happy memories.

Celebrations.

Katrina Tattoos

I live in Metairie, a suburb that suffered far less than New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. As we approach the third anniversary of the storm, I can drive around Metairie and see few signs of storm damage except some empty lots where buildings have been razed, and the occasional FEMA trailer still remaining in someone's yard.

If I go into New Orleans, however, it's a different story. No matter where you go in the city, except perhaps the French Quarter, you cannot escape evidence of Katrina. First, many devastated homes and businesses remain, neither rebuilt nor razed. Second, the streets--in bad shape before the storm--now are truly dangerous, with enormous potholes, sinkholes, and other damage either unrepaired or worsened or recently developed. Third, there are the Katrina Tattoos remaining on many homes, even those that have been restored and are reoccupied.

(Photo from the International Journal of Health Geographics, http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/5/1/44)

What I call the Katrina Tattoo is the marking made by Search-and-Rescue teams as they made house-to-house searches for humans and animals in the months after the storm. If you saw pictures of New Orleans in the months after Katrina, you'll have seen the S&R markings on houses. S&R teams supposedly searched every building in all the flooded areas. Many houses were searched twice, by official teams and by animal-rescue teams. To notify others that a house had been searched, S&R teams marked each building with spray paint in a specific manner.

First they sprayed an "X" on the front (or roof) of the building. In the photo, it's on the roof, which means that the water was so high that searchers could access the house only through the roof. You can see they had to hack through the roof to get into the attic of the house.

(In other cases, people hacked through the roof from the inside after being trapped in their attics by rising water. I know people who keep a hatchet in their attic for precisely that purpose.)

The letters/numbers inside the quadrants of the X have specific meanings. In the top (north) quadrant is the date of the search; in the left (west) quadrant is the search-team identifier; in the right (east) quadrant is a notation of any hazards or unusual conditions in the building; in the bottom (south) quadrant is the number of victims found and their condition, e.g., live or dead. You can find an official explanation in the Army's Catastrophic Disaster Response Staff Officer's Handbook.

Interpreting the X in the photo by these guidelines, we can see the house was searched by team CA-8 on September 11, the team had to break into the attic, and they found one victim, who was dead. I interpret the arrow at left of "1 dead" as indicating to subsequent searchers that the victim can be found inside the attic, through the hole nearby. On the right side of the photo are the pieces of wood the searchers removed when they hacked through the roof. It's obvious the hole is too small for the searchers either to have entered through it, or to have removed the body at that time. The initial searchers were looking for the living; the dead were removed later.

The second X, on the front wall of the house, would have been made after the water subsided. It indicates the body inside was removed on September 19 by "Kenyon."

Ray in New Orleans blogged about these markings a few months post-Katrina, with a couple of photos. I'm sure many other bloggers and articles have discussed the S&R markings, but I'm not going to take time to do a full Google search.

After Katrina's second anniversary Travel and Leisure magazine wrote in "Soul Survivor":

Even in mostly recovered neighborhoods, you’ll notice the persistence of "Katrina tattoos," the X marks spray painted on façades by rescue workers after the storm, noting when the property was searched, by whom, and whether any survivors—or bodies—were found. Most have been painted over, but some are intact, left deliberately as symbols of perseverance. One Marigny resident has even had his cast in iron and mounted by his front door.

They were documented most famously in Chris Rose's columns for the Times-Picayune, which he later turned into 1 Dead in Attic, a book chronicling the aftermath of Katrina on the populace as well as on Rose himself. (I did a blog entry on Chris's work when the book was nationally released.)

What makes me think of this? Well, of course, it's only a few weeks until the third anniversary of the storm. (We are daily reminded by local news media, even if we wanted to forget it.) And, as I said earlier, you can't drive through New Orleans without seeing Katrina Tattoos still present on buildings. Some people, even after renovating their homes and returning to live in them, have left the S&R markings on them.

What message are they sending? I think it's something along the lines of "Remember the Alamo" or "Remember the Maine": We suffered and we survived, but others died; we came back, but we won't forget, and we'll keep a reminder ever-present.

For those of you who thought this entry would be about body-art, rest easy. Tattoo parlors, both local and around the country, have reported a huge number of requests for Katrina remembrances since K-Day (8/29/2005). You can see some of the results here and here.


Finally, I came across this while searching for links for other things: the most poignant reminder of Katrina--Unidentified Victims from Hurricane Katrina.

The Running of the Bulls...er, Cows,...er, Roller Girls

(Photo from http://nolabulls.com/default.aspx.)

Ah, the Big Easy! New Orleanians are always coming up with new things to celebrate and new ways to wear costumes and get wild. The latest craze is the Running of the Bulls, New Orleans-style. Imitating the annual encierro in Pamplona, Spain, a local group has organized to celebrate the Festival of San Fermin by analogy to the bull-running made famous by Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises; Death in the Afternoon).

Like the runners in Pamplona, the participants here dress in white pants and shirt with red sashes and neck scarfs. Unlike the runners in Pamplona, however, the New Orleans runners are chased by the Big Easy Roller Girls, a local team of roller derby pros. For the event, Roller Girls (self-described by one Roller Girl as "a bunch of bad-ass chicks on wheels") carry wiffle bats and wear horns.

The Running of the Bulls, New Orleans style, first took place last year. I don't recall reading or hearing anything about it back then, so I was doubly amused to read Chris Rose's column on Thursday announcing it. The 2008 bull run took place on Saturday (July 12) and hundreds of people participated. The route goes through the French Quarter (of course), and includes stops at two "watering holes" (e.g., bars) along the way (of course).

I've come across some amusing blog entries on the run. Pontchartrain Pete calls it "a winner of a new tradition." Humid City has photos: Roller Girls in their bull costumes; the field of runners in their costumes. Local TV station WWL's website has photos of a guy in full toreador garb, as well as The Rolling Elvi--Elvis impersonators on scooters. And there are videos posted on YouTube, of course.

Looks like the Running of the Bulls will become one of N.O.'s midsummer draws: Last year 150 runners were pursued by 14 Rollergirls; this year there over 600 runners and 33 Rollergirls--exponential increases!

And animal lovers can rest easy: no real bulls are used.

(The official title of the event is San Fermin in Nueva Orleans. I briefly considered that perhaps the subtitle should be The Running of the Cows--since all the "bulls" are in fact females--until I realized it would have completely different implications. Dropped the idea quickly.)

Louisiana Queens

In the midst of writing a new post that is going to be elegant, discursive, and celebratory, I realized I couldn't finish it today--I have to look up further info to make it complete, fact-check, etc., etc.

But I wanted to put up something new on the blog, so here we are: Ta-dahhhh! Louisiana Queens!

I'm thinking Louisiana has more queens than any other state. We have carnival queens, festival queens, and of course, cross-dressing queens. We even have dog queens.

Photo: 2008 Louisiana Association of Fairs and Festivals Queen of Queens, Brandi Stout (2007-2008 Miss Zwolle Tamale Fiesta Queen)


If the legislature ever decides to change the motto on our auto license plates--which has been "Sportman's Paradise" for as long as I can remember--I suggest LOUISIANA--THE QUEENLY STATE.

And, by the way, creds for giving me the idea to a couple of local blogs I just discovered--NOLA Notes and Pontchartrain Pete. (Their Queens entries are in their archives--here for NOLA Notes and here for Pontchartrain Pete.)

And this is off the subject, but too good not to share: NOLA Notes' "Ode to Galatoire's" (one of the storied New Orleans restaurants).

Closing thought: Being a blogger is like being a stand-up comic--we "borrow" a lot of material.

FAT TUESDAY, NOT SUPER TUESDAY

Over most of the U.S., today is Super Tuesday, the day when 24 states hold their presidential primary elections to elect delegates to the national party conventions to be held this summer. The candidates have been campaigning madly for months. Those with the most delegates pledged to them will be the official candidates of our major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. (Flag clipart from http://www.historyimages.com/.)

Here in Louisiana, however, it’s Fat Tuesday, better known as Mardi Gras. Louisiana’s presidential primary election won’t be held until Saturday, February 9. (Good thing, too—if it coincided with Mardi Gras, the vote turnout would be really low. In fact, the state wouldn’t be able to get enough poll commissioners to run the precincts in south Louisiana.)

The long weekend just past was a hearty-partying celebration featuring a multitude of parades—not only in New Orleans, but all over south Louisiana. In New Orleans alone, the “super krewes” of Endymion, Bacchus, and Orpheus paraded successively on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights. These parades are fabulous, the sheer beauty and glamour of their floats and costumes beyond description. Rolling at night, lit by millions of fiber optics, they create a incomparable experience. (Photo of Orpheus float by Sharon Keating, About.com’s Guide to New Orleans Travel.)

Today is the final big blowout. Ten parade krewes will roll within the 30-mile area around New Orleans. In the city itself, the day begins with Zulu, followed by Rex (King of Carnival), followed by hundreds of truck floats in the krewes of Elks Orleans and Crescent City; in suburban Metairie, Argus, followed by the truck krewes of Jefferson Trucks and Elks Jefferson; across the Mississippi in Gretna, Grela; on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, Lions and Covington. (The Northshore is home to Charles Gramlich, for readers of his Razored Zen blog.) Not to mention walking groups such as Pete Fountain’s Half-Fast Marching Club and the Jefferson City Buzzards, both of which have been trekking from Uptown to the French Quarter on Mardi Gras for over 40 years.

The festivities officially end at midnight tonight, when a phalanx of New Orleans Police Department officers, led by the Chief of Police, sweep down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, warning the revelers, “Mardi Gras is now over! Mardi Gras is now over!,” followed by a fleet of sanitation trucks sweeping up the mounds of debris.

Ave atque Vale, Annus MMVII

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day." -- Edith Lovejoy Pierce (b. 1904), poet

I thank my friend Shauna Roberts for the quotation, which is perfect to start off the New Year.

I believe in new beginnings, and I like them. I always make New Year's resolutions, although I rarely stick to them for long. I am an optimist. I always try again.

2007 was not a good year for me. I suffered through a variety of worries: extreme anxiety for a beloved family member dealing with addiction, as well as my own health problems, financial worries, caretaking responsibilities, job issues, and free-floating anxiety.

Today marks the end of 2007, however, and tomorrow is a new year. I mentally erase the blackboard of 2007, washing it clean for the new self-history I will write in 2008.

Things for which I was especially thankful in 2007:

• My Family: I love them and they love me, even when we are in conflict.
• My Friends--especially Brenda, Carolyn, Cheryl and Joanne: their love and support have rescued me from despair.
• My Writer's Group, Wordsmiths (Laura, Candice, Charles, Steve, and Emily): They are not only professional colleagues, but also good friends; their opinions, tastes and judgment in literary and other matters are significant to me; their concern during my dark times over the past year has helped enormously.
• My Pets--the dogs (Dozia, Galadriel, Squeaky) and the cats (Katy, Harmony, Precious): their unconditional love and eagerness to please have comforted me through dark times.
• My Job: Even when there is chaos at home, at the office things are orderly, logical, peaceful and predictable.
• My Books: Reading them lets me escape into other minds, other lives, and other worlds; possessing them makes me feel rich, replete, rapturous and reverent. When I am anxious I sort out piles of books and I am calmed.

I will post my New Year's Resolutions for 2008 tomorrow.

Happy New Year to all my blog-friends. I'm grateful to have "met" you over the past year, through our exchanges of posts and comments.

A Few Interesting Links, and Some Greetings

A few interesting articles:

If you like Top Ten lists, Time Magazine has 50 Top 10 Lists of 2007 for you.

Over at The Outfit: A Collective of Chicago Crime Writers, Kevin Guilfoyle talks about how media coverage of books nowadays tends to focus more on the business of publishing rather than on the products of the publishing houses. As an example, Guilfoyle links to "Anatomy of a Thriller," the Wall Street Journal's recent article on the prepublication promotional machine kicking into high gear for a debut book by a new thriller writer who received a million-dollar advance (28-year-old screenwriter Tom Rob Smith). Cleverly, Guilfoyle titles his blog entry "Don't Know Much about Anatomy."

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it; Season's Greetings to those who don't. And for those who not only don't celebrate, but don't want anyone else to celebrate, Bah Humbug!

Memento Mori II: All Saints Day

Today marks the anniversary of my first posting on this blog. On November 1, 2006, I wrote "Memento Mori," in which I talked about our South Louisiana custom of visiting the cemeteries and remembering our dead on this day, All Saints Day. In keeping with our custom, I plan to visit my family's plot in Metairie Cemetery, one of the most beautiful and historic cemeteries in New Orleans. Buried in our plot are my maternal grandparents; my brother and a cousin, both of whom died in their early 20s; several uncles, an aunt, and other more distant relatives.

Setting aside any religious overtones, I find the practice of remembering our dead soothing and comforting. It's good to revive memories of those we loved. And don't we all hope we, too, will be remembered when we're gone? I shed a few tears when I follow the yearly rite, but tears are good for the soul.

For more information about New Orleans' cemeteries, visit "New Orleans Cemetery Tours" on my friend Sharon Keating's New Orleans for Visitors blog. The photo above is by Sharon Keating.

(Oh yeah, another good thing about All Saints Day is that I get the day off work.)

It's Carnival time!

The greater New Orleans area is in the thick of the Carnival season. The first Carnival parades ran a couple of weekends ago--the ultra-satiric (and raunchy) Krewe du Vieux in the French Quarter, as well as others in the suburbs--with bigger parades last weekend. Now we're into the real frenzy of festivity. Mardi Gras is next Tuesday--February 20--so this weekend is a huge pre-Fat Tuesday celebration. The most famous parades will roll on Saturday (Endymion), Sunday (Bacchus), Monday (Orpheus) and Tuesday (Rex and Zulu). In addition to the superkrewes, there are numerous other parades every night and, on Saturday, Sunday and Fat Tuesday, during the day.

If your idea of Mardi Gras comes from the Girls Gone Wild shows or other coverage that emphasizes only the lewd, rethink your concept. Most of the Carnival celebrations are family-oriented. Yes, if you go into to the French Quarter, or Canal Street, the nearby "main street" of New Orleans, you'll see all those sights you've seen on TV that make your eyes pop and your hair stand on end.

But go into other parts of the city, further away from the French Quarter, and you'll see lots of families, with children of every age...and the suburban carnival celebrations are even more family-oriented. To quote from a San Francisco Chronicle article by Craig Guillot, a native New Orleanian, "Despite the legions of naughty videos, rumors and the fact that the New Orleans' tourism board does little to deny the image, Mardi Gras is far from the adults-only free-for-all that it's portrayed to be. The reality is that -- outside of the French Quarter -- families far outnumber flashers and drunks, and the only breasts one is likely to see are those of fried chickens."

This year it looks like we're going to have pleasant weather for Mardi Gras. It's been downright cold for this area the last couple of weeks--temps in the 30s at night (to New Orleanians that's COLD). It's warmed up today (in the 60s, which I love) and there's a touch of spring warmth in the air. The prediction for Fat Tuesday is a high of 70, with cloudy skies but no rain on the parades. Ought to be a great day.

The Gamut of Life

My week started with a wedding and ended with a funeral...from the ceremony that signals a new start in life to the final ceremony for each of us. Both events were out of town.

The wedding was in Lafayette, Louisiana--known for its Cajun hospitality, wonderful food, and friendly people--in a reconstructed Cajun village called Vermilionville (within the city of Lafayette itself), which is charming, warm and welcoming. The ceremony was in a little wooden church lit by candlelight (battery-operated--real candles a fire hazard) and the reception in an authentic "fais-do-do" hall. I am sentimental about weddings and found this one especially meaningful. The couple, both in their late 30s and both getting married for the first time, met via an online dating service, at a point when each had nearly given up on ever finding the right person. They had promised themselves to take one last chance, but to quit if it didn't work out. Amazingly, each knew from when they first met face-to-face that This Was It. Romantic. It was a terrific wedding, too.

Then two days after I returned home, a lifelong friend called with news that her father had died. The funeral was the day after Thanksgiving, in Baton Rouge. His death was neither a surprise nor a shock--he was ninety years old and had been ailing for a while--but we all grieve at the loss of a dearly loved person.

There were a few customs at this funeral different from the funerals I have known in the New Orleans area: (1) As the vehicle procession drove from the funeral home to the cemetery, a distance of several miles--lights and emergency flashers on, escorted by two motorcycle cops--all the oncoming traffic pulled to the side of the road and waited for the procession to pass. In the New Orleans area, drivers stop when halted by a motorcycle escort to let a procession pass through traffic lights, but none in driving lanes not directly affected by the procession stops or pulls over to wait. (2) At the cemetery, the family members went to the graveside upon arrival, but the non-family mourners waited until the pallbearers had carried the casket to the grave before following the family members. (3) At the end of the graveside service, all the pallbearers pulled out their boutonnieres and placed them on the casket, presumably to be interred with it.

I always finds funerary customs fascinating. (Naturally, since my ancestor, the Great Sphinx, was once a tomb.)

Memento Mori: All Saints Day

I have lived most of my life in the New Orleans area. One of our local customs is the celebration of All Saints Day, November 1, on which the living remember the dead.

It's a tradition arising from the Catholic faith. For Catholics, All Saints Day is a holy day of obligation: Catholics are required to attend Mass on the day. In addition, traditionally they refurbished their family tombs -- pulling weeds, whitewashing or cleaning the headstone or tomb, decorating the grave with flowers, praying for the departed. When I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s, schools, government offices, and local businesses were closed to allow families to pursue this devout tradition.

Over the last few decades, however, lifestyles and funeral customs have changed. Many people no longer observe All Saints Day. Schools, even Catholic schools, no longer take a holiday for it. Most government offices remain open (although most state courts still close). Businesses ignore the day. Cremation has become more common, so fewer people are interred after death. If cremated, their ashes may be scattered, or their family may keep the urn with the ashes at home. Others purchase a niche in a mausoleum in which to keep the "cremains." Even those who still have family tombs or cemetery plots no longer take care of them. Instead, they purchase perpetual care contracts and let the cemetery maintain the graves.

For New Orleans cemeteries, however, it is still the biggest day of their year. Crowds of people flow through the gates. For many this is likely their only visit to the family plot except for specific funerals.

I like All Saints Day. I like the idea of remembrance. I like to visit my family's plot in Metairie Cemetery and think about those who are buried there. Their names carved on the headstone are a visible link with them, a reminder of their lives. I like the peace of the cemetery and I like to wander around it, looking at the many fantastic or extravagant tombs, and meditating on those who had them built.

What I treasure about All Saints Day is our culture, which does not ignore death, but recognizes it as inevitable -- not to be escaped, but to be accommodated. In some other parts of the country, people are appalled by open-casket wakes, which are common here; or they are disgusted by funerals, preferring to ignore death and brush by it with little ceremony. To me, they are deep in denial. Our way is healthier. We remind ourselves that no one escapes death. By ritual and ceremony, we comfort ourselves on the loss of those we love. We contemplate and prepare for our own eventual entries into that "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns."

Memento mori...