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La Toussaint et Le Jour des Morts (All Saints Day and All Souls Day)

Although I am essentially a Midwesterner (evinced by my never-ending impatience and my love of work and of baseball), I have enough family roots and time spent in the city of my choice to be able to follow certain traditions here without needing an accompanying festival or a story in a hip magazine to guide me to it.

Of course one of those is the deep observance of All Saints Day (la Toussaint) which begins at Vespers on October 31 running through November 1 which is a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics, marked by a mass to remember the dead “who have attained heaven” but also by New Orleans families going to the family tomb with flowers, to clean, to toast or even picnic with their ancestors. In some areas,  it is also marked by lighting candles  as”tradition dictates that each living person burn one candle for each departed member of his family,” but also in anticipation of All Souls’ Day on November 2 (Le Jour des Morts).  All Souls Day day is dedicated to those who have died and not yet reached heaven. Of course, all of this closely follows Celtic and Latin traditions.

bserving All Saints' Day in Bayou Barataria, just below New Orleans, children place candles on a family grave. The plot on the right, marked by oyster shells, is said to be the resting place of Pirate Jean Lafitte. November 1, 1946. (ACME Telefoto/The Times-Picayune archive)

Observing All Saints’ Day in Bayou Barataria, just below New Orleans, children place candles on a family grave. The plot on the right, marked by oyster shells, is said to be the resting place of Pirate Jean Lafitte. November 1, 1946. (ACME Telefoto/The Times-Picayune archive)

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All Saints’ Day coincides with the first day of the Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) celebration. Known as “Día de los Inocentes” (Day of the Innocents), it honors deceased children and infants.

October 31 marks the last day of the ancient Celtic calendar. According to ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, the supernatural, including spirits, were free to roam the night and into the morning of November 1. This represented the blurring of lines between this world and the next. Celts believed the presence of these spirits allowed for the Celtic priests to better predict the future.
During the festival to ward off bad spirits, the youth would participate in superstitious activities that they believed to bring good fortune and predict their marital statuses. One of these festivities, Pou (Pull) the Stalks, required the young, eligible men and women to uproot kale stalks while blindfolded. After choosing their respective stalks, each stalk would be analyzed to discern information about each participant’s future spouse.
Characteristics of the stalks revealed signs about their future partner. For example, a short and stunted stalk meant the participant’s future spouse would be just that, short and stalky. The flavor, as well, determined the disposition of the potential partner such as bitter or sweet. Moreover, the amount of dirt remaining on the stalk post determined the dowry size one was to expect from their future husband or wife’s family. If the root was clean, poverty was in store.

I will go tomorrow morning to lay flowers at my great-grandmother (Gaspard Pappas), grandparents Barrios’ and brother’s graves which happen to be across the lake from New Orleans in Mandeville. The rest of this branch are buried at various spots, including in the original parish of Lafourche. Someday I’ll drive down there to check it out for myself.

Pics of my great-grandparents graves in Lockport:

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Think of your ancestors today and the recently passed through All Souls Day. They deserve it.

and do yourself a favor-read Anne Rice’s excellent book of the same name about the life of the Creoles as you roam about the Quarter or parts of the city where you feel and see the past.

Here is also a great map with linking database of the St. Louis #1 just outside of the French Quarter. Unfortunately, the Diocese which owns it has limited access to those with a tour guide only.

The “Dead Space” survey of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 conducted in 2001-2002 by the University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts graduate program in historic preservation includes an online searchable map and database for every tomb in the cemetery. The map has an accompanying database.  Dead-Space-map

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French Quarter’s Lalaurie house gets elegant makeover that plays to its haunted past 

The Lalaurie Mansion has been updated again and so I spent an hour rereading some of the old stories that nola.com has been gracious to offer-or one could opine that since running old articles doesn’t require paying reporters to find new stories, it is a calculated move by the old TP. Still, this story comes back to life every All Hallows’ Eve.

‘Every time I went to Lalaurie, I would say my prayers and put on the holy water. It was my perfume.’

Source: French Quarter’s Lalaurie house gets elegant makeover that plays to its haunted past | NOLA.com

Here is one of the original stories from the New Orleans Bee about the mob that destroyed the furnishings after the fire. The writing is delightfully dense and difficult for a modern reader but so fascinating still. I love this:
The whole of yesterday and the preceding day, the police jail was crowded by persons pressing forward to witness the unfortunate wretches who had escaped cruelties that would compare with those of a Domitian a Nero or a Caligula.

This story from The Daily Picayune in the 1890s shows how tabloid journalism and lurid details had become the fashion since the Bee story’s restraint:
Her manners were sweet, gracious and captivating, her voice was said to be as soft as a low strain of music; even in New Orleans she was noted for her charitable deeds, and yet – and yet – there were wild rumors that madame inflicted the most cruel torture upon her slaves, that she whipped and flogged them unmercifully; that in that splendid house behind those attic windows there were human beings chained to the floor, confined in darkness and actually starving to death And the curious door in the wall ? – well there were rumors enough about it, but they were very vague and floated about the rue Royale like a shadowy mist at evening.

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The Phantasmagorical Clarence John Laughlin

Just saw this marvelous tale at the Prytania Theater during the 2015 NOFF about local boy-made-good Clarence John Laughlin, known as the father of surrealist photography, writer and significant mid-century book collector.  It’ll make you want to pore through the collection at HNOC, check out this current exhibit and to purchase his book Ghosts Along the Mississippi. What I loved about the movie was the frank appreciation among his fellow artists for his talent, mostly accompanied by shrugs about his particular way of existing in the world. That regard from peers is quite poignant, especially when compared to the barely-hidden impatience of the curators interviewed or talked about in regards to his manner of interacting with them. It sheds some cruel light on the difficult lives that artists fashion for themselves when they rightly refuse to be in step with their times and are forced to fight against the process necessary to be “successful.” Throughout the movie, the words “enigmatic” and “genius” are heard as much as “irascible” and “difficult.” That might give you a clue. In cases like Laughlin, you can see how that protectiveness can become destructive to the person and to their legacy, and is illustrated by the alternatively hilarious and painful video interspersed of Laughlin and the creator of the documentary, Gene Fredericks, attempting (unsuccessfully it turns out) to get footage back in the 1970s of the artist talking about his book collection..

New media artist Dawn Dedeaux, also an extremely well-regarded New Orleans artist, captures him best with humor and sensitivity in her comments in the film. In essence, she says time marches forward unceasingly, but Clarence was always headed in the other direction….

…and that she’d love for him to haunt her as a ghost-I totally agree.

The many Laughlin photographs that Fredericks labored to get in the movie (bartering his videographer talents to offset the fees) give the viewer a stunning understanding of his artistic eye. Each photo chosen could easily have lingered on the screen for many seconds more to view them from corner to corner and then drawing back, to see the entirety…but as they say, if you like what you see, then buy the book. The text that Laughlin wrote to accompany each photo and the quotes in the film about artistic choices all seem quietly wise and necessary to understand his vision.

It seems to me that Laughlin could have only lived in New Orleans in the time that he did to become a great artist, but might have been happier at other times in history, even if it meant being a less realized artist. Especially if it was in those lovely days when fame was not a goal in itself and when having deep eccentricities and an uneven personality was not necessarily a deal killer to being deemed worthy of review or respect.

Even so-as one autodidact to another, I salute you Clarence.

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Membership – Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc

One of the best parades and since it’s a walking parade through the Quarter, it is doubly special. January 6th is the Feast of the Epiphany and the kickoff day for Carnival each year. It is also Joan’s birthday, so the parade is one of two that revelers can enjoy, along with the Phunny Phorty Phellows’ streetcar parade.

This krewe has open membership and has slots open now for the 8th annual Joan of Arc Parade January 6, 2016. Two types of membership: Full Members: Full members “Officers” walk in the parade portraying medieval French townspeople and characters associated with Joan’s story.

Source: Membership – Krewe de Jeanne d’ArcKrewe de Jeanne d’Arc

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Money is the crop.

Capitalism
Is the plantation owner
Money is the crop

My wise friend Peter’s daily haiku is the perfect way to start off a post about a recent opinion piece posted on The Lens that I link below. The writer is leaving after 5 years here and gives us his opinion on us before he hightails it to higher ground. So many people are like the opinion writer Sam and don’t even see themselves as wage slaves or ever sharecroppers living on the scraps allowed by their owner. And maybe they do know this but won’t admit to it- that they’d throw everything of real value over the side of the boat if they could paddle faster to the gold they seek.

Following that link is my response that I wrote to young Sam, who I have taken to task before (poor Sam). It’s on the site but comment section sometimes get lengthy and the newest are most easily found, so I stuck it here too.

Opinion

And my response to it:

Entertaining as usual, but I not surprised that this writer once again lays the core impulse of his youth on external issues. He did it in his job seeking column and does it again here. Sam, you write well, yet with a great deal of self-importance and either a lack of understanding about systems or for self-preservation’s sake, using a disingenuous style of discovery, neither of which is gonna fly here. Here is the thing Sam; The truth is that young white Northerners like yourself are searching for something that small Southern port towns cannot give you and have never promised to give you. Full disclosure: I was once one of you; yes I have a New Orleanian parent and generations of family here and can join in the high school naming game but I had an out. Being partially raised up North in a small suburb that was (back then) lily-white and clean as hell meant I had experienced another life. And so at one point, I bolted from here, telling my family and friends a whole bunch of reasons why I left, but the truth was, I needed more than New Orleans could offer. Simply that I needed more and knew that in places with industry and middle-class comforts, I could get them. The difference is I knew I would come back to live among family and that the pull of the diverse culture for me would be to much to block out after some years; I was right about that (after a dozen years away), I came back to stay. So i get the impulse, but own up to your decision that is being done for reasons that are not to do with New Orleans really but to do with your ambition for things not offered in towns like ours, a restlessness of youth, and discomfort with the way a colony operates – all fine by the way. To talk (on a news site read by locals) about festivals, and wild partying shows the visitor in you even after your five years. Those things never keep anyone here. You didn’t talk about the families lining the parade routes and the multi-generational celebrations within neighborhoods and the blue-shirted men who are the heart and soul of their workplace and the St. Joseph altars and the purple light at night in the sky…
I can see that both of us romanticize the place and so I’m no better, but do us one a favor – tell the complete story when you go and not just tales of your “exploits” of staying up all night, of drive-thru daiquiris and “knowing” Kermit. New Orleans bides in a state with a misanthropic governor, a non-existent regional system and has to withstand waves of new people that come to extract value and comment on our pitiful existence and, somehow, rises above it still with a great deal of grace. It has a problem with race as does every American city (including the one I grew up next to in my suburb and yours too) and it does have widespread corruption and commodity industries that do not support creativity or informality, also like other cities. Some of them have “solved” some of that by pushing out those without enough resources rather than offering a hand or by criminalizing things like homelessness. Other cities focus on attracting virtual industries that allow their workers to live in a bubble, high above the mean streets, without the regular interaction necessary when you have a physical job to go to and work at among neighbors. What has to happen to fix these systems is embedding yourself in it, fixing it by being present and by being open to the new and the old and finding what works best from either and both and talking openly about all of it. I’m not saying we have accomplished any of it, but the opportunity remains for it to come to fruition as long as we commit to being here.
I wonder if you ever really meant to stay, ever really committed yourself to the place where people like you (and me) are minorities and our talents are not that useful. Because that is what I suspect is true among your peers; you were always meant to go and so you cannot blame us for knowing that and not offering you the golden ring you seek. Good luck in your search and thank you for your kind words for us during your stay. Tell the rest that we’ll stay as long as the water can be contained, because we can’t go anywhere else.

A site devoted to tracking the goodbyes: http://fleur-de-leaving.tumblr.com/

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Newcomb Pottery exhibit

Update for 2015:  Still up as an exhibit; if you haven’t seen it, I recommend it heartily. And now you can have lunch afterwards at Petit Amelie right across the street, which is the most beautiful cafe in the Quarter.

(original 2012 post)
Over a sunny lunch hour, I dragged my 1970s Crescent folding bike out from behind the lawnmower (been raining a lot lately is my only excuse) and headed to the Quarter.
After a delightful lunch at Stanley’s-well except for the wait staff’s obsession with their new iPhones, although I think a very good idea to have them for taking orders. The real issue today was the less than stellar bar staff but  I’m still loyal to this chef and his wife, so stayed for a cherry-limeade Italian soda and a bowl of their gumbo with potato salad dumped in and was glad I did.

Afterwards, I unlocked the Crescent and headed to Dumaine, between Chartres and Royal.
Madame John’s Legacy is said by some to be either the oldest or the second oldest building in the Quarter. Ursuline Convent is usually considered to be the oldest and since MJL burned in the first fire that swept through the Quarter and had to be rebuilt, I’m not sure why some fight for the oldest designation.
Okay, maybe its just wild talking mule carriage drivers that say that. I am also sure that the many expert historians could make a case for either if needed.

In any case, it has to be the plainest building in the Quarter.

I like that about it, but it must be hard for people to believe its a museum with its undecorated green front (historically accurate colors by the way) and its entrance at street level under the stairs. As locals know, the gingerbread and vibrant colors came with that nutty Victorian age. The name itself comes from a George Washington Cable story, a writer interestingly, who worked in part of the same time period as the Newcomb Pottery folks and was known for his sympathetic and sensitive portrayal of the complex culture found in New Orleans.
Once you get upstairs, a very courteous security officer at the desk gives a short overview of the fact that this exhibit is free (thanks to the Friends of the Cabildo, you’re very welcome) and that pictures are allowed.
I was the only person in there until the end when a couple of French men came in and went directly to the house descriptions rather than to the Newcomb exhibit. The exhibit is set up in 4 rooms, with one or two cases in each laid out in different periods. For those unfamiliar with Newcomb, pottery or even the name, it was a celebrated liberal arts women’s college at Tulane University. Until 2006 that is, and then scandalously to many Newcomb graduates, the management of Tulane ceased the operation of this endowed college and folded it and its endowment into the larger university. I can understand the argument that there may not be a need for a women’s college any longer but talk about kicking people when they’re down…
In any case Newcomb operated this pottery business for about 50 years really, from the late 1800s through the early 1940s. Its pottery became quite the collectors item for arts and crafts pottery enthusiasts and it is some of the loveliest work you’ll see. The detail is striking, especially since they often used local flora and fauna for their motifs.
The arts and crafts movement itself was an artistic response to the industrialization of America and also a way to allow women to work on their degree. Having grown up also in Ohio, I was already familiar with Rookwood Pottery, which was the most well known of the arts and crafts pottery-a friend in Cincinnati has Rookwood fireplace detail in her apartment, which is not that unusual to find there….
The Newcomb school allowed women to design and paint designs, but the actual pottery wheel was handled by men! ugh. I’m gonna leave that alone….

Interestingly, the most well known prolific potter at Newcomb, Joseph Meyer, was the son of a French Market vendor who sold utilitarian wares.
This modest exhibit is at the perfect venue and is well worth the trip to Dumaine.

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RIP Paul Prudhomme

I met him in the mid 1980s while I was working in the kitchen at the Royal Sonesta. He was gracious to our entire staff and even made our evil sous chef behave. What he did for New Orleans, for Louisiana and for talented chefs who want to create their own place and use their own ideas is incalculable; I remember well the daily excitement and long lines at KPauls for so many years. The love pouring out from the restaurant community around town shows the deep respect the entire community had for him and I’m sure that admiration is multiplied around the state.

Oral history

Source: Paul Prudhomme, the internationally-known superstar Louisiana chef and restaurateur, has died after a brief illness.