Word: mardi
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There are, of course, enclaves in a lot of American cities that feel foreign because one group or another clings to a way of life that originated in some other country. In New Orleans the mainstream can have foreign ways. No one who ever took a close look at Mardi Gras could come away with the impression that it's merely a straightforward American spectacle in the tradition of, say, the Indianapolis 500 or the Pasadena Tournament of Roses. In 1964 I was in New Orleans to do a piece on the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a black...
...collars in the early '70s. It's possible to argue that the Protestant work ethic never caught on in New Orleans because it isn't Protestant. But it's dangerous to assume that the character of New Orleans is derived from the origins of its inhabitants. The New Orleans Mardi Gras was started by Protestant businessmen. The traditional New Orleans neighborhood guy, sometimes known as a yat -- that character who greets people with "Where y'at?" -- is likely to be of the same Irish or German descent as the Brooklyn dockworker he sometimes sounds like. The person I have known...
Sometimes, though, I'm not so sure. In the nearly 30 years I've been writing about New Orleans, part of what I've been writing about is the gradual fading of its foreignness. I suppose yats still hold practice parade the week before Mardi Gras, but in a lot of ways Mardi Gras has become a more American event. The number of people roaming the streets of the French Quarter on Mardi Gras day seems to have increased steadily and the percentage of them in costume seems to have decreased, as that part of the Carnival celebration has changed...
...tooth and nail against the federal government's effort to raise the drinking age to 21, a state that required schools to give equal time to creationism, a state that until last winter outlawed Sunday hours for stores. It is as if the state of bayous and alligators, of Mardi Gras and hurricaines, spoke a language incomprehensible to other Americans...
That session was followed by a rousing youth festival, where 50,000 onlookers brandished blue and green flash cards and roared as John Paul attempted to don a gaudy Mardi Gras mask. "I love it," gushed twelve-year- old Kim Harrigan of Port Sulfur, La. John Paul then traveled to an outdoor Mass; some 200,000 rain-drenched worshipers attended...