Mardi Gras: A Day's Miching

Vibrant, vivid Mardi Gras Banner
-- best party favor ever!
Thanks Cathy McK!

A Mardi Gras letter to my favorite professor:

The other day, I randomly picked up an old reading journal from Spring Semester 1982 and came across a few entries that I thought you might enjoy, or at least find somewhat droll, such as this note jotted down in late January: " . . . felt bad for Prof Orr -- seems no one is reading Swann's Way." Aside from me, of course.

But then just a few days later -- in fact, Feb 2, James Joyce's birthday (duly noted at the top of the page), things take a turn for the worse: "To school just in time to get to class. Prof Orr started The Trial after just a few moments on Proust. I haven't started The Trial and was embarrassed at being able to contribute nothing." Oops!

There's a follow - up entry explaining that a classmate and I stopped by your office to "talk about Proust and other things," and also to "put a note on Orr's name plate: Leonard O. In honor of The Trial and Joseph K." Grad school hijinks I guess!

Later in the month, I fall behind again: "Made the mistake of going to 20th C without having read The Master & Margarita." [Mikhail Bulgakov]

Entries for the next few days say only, "Reading M & M."

Then I have another lapse: "To school in the nick of time, but decided against going to 20th Centry Lit."

What was wrong with me? I never realized until looking back on this notebook what a terrible student I was. You were a very patient professor to forgive my many lapses!

It is mystifying to think that there was ever a time in my life when I didn't know The Trial and The Master & Margarita by heart, but clearly that's the case. The question now: to shred this notebook, or to put it back on the shelf?

I found another journal entry that made me laugh and I thought you might enjoy.

On Tuesday, February 23, 1982, I note that it was unusually warm weather (80F) for Mardi Gras. Inspired / misguided by the good weather, I stay home from school, skip both of my classes (Continental Lit with you & English Bible with Lyna Lee Montgomery) and spend the morning "baking Mardi Gras Bread."

As I said in the previous note (above / below) I am shocked, shocked to realize what a haphazard student I was that semester!

Anyway, later in the afternoon, my journal tells me, I jump on my bike and cycle to campus as quickly as possible to go teach my class. Despite letting my professors down by skipping the classes I was taking, I apparently never let my students down by skipping the sections I was teaching.

Here's the part I thought you would like: As luck would have it, "After class, ran inadvertently into Prof Orr and explained my absence -- kind of embarrassing." I don't mention giving a fake excuse, so maybe I just told you the truth, that I felt compelled to do some baking and hide a tiny inedible doll inside a Mardi Gras Cake (well, kind of related to my dissertation topic).

I do mention that the next day the temperature dropped back down to 40F. Time to face reality. So much for my "day's miching," right?

A word to the wise from
Matthew Yglesias
on keeping up with the Great Books!

Take Me to the Mardi Gras

Illustrations from Carl's Masquerade by Alexandra Day

"Mardi Gras. The farewell to flesh. I dressed in feathers. Pointed beak and glitter. How we danced, through lights and confetti. The good-bye to the body.

Not forever, but for now" (66).

from Carole Maso's novel AVA

******************
Take Me To The Mardi Gras

C'mon take me to the Mardi Gras
Where the people sing and play
Where the dancing is elite
And there's music in the street
Both night and day

Hurry take me to the Mardi Gras
In the city of my dreams
You can legalize your lows
You can wear your summer clothes
In the New Orleans

And I will lay my burden down
Rest my head upon that shore
And when I wear that starry crown
I won't be wanting anymore

Take your burdens to the Mardi Gras
Let the music wash your soul
You can mingle in the street
You can jingle to the beat
Of Jelly Roll
Music and lyrics by Paul Simon

March Begins: The Heart's Desire

Some poems for a new month & earliest hints of Spring . . .

Jenny Kiss'd Me

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add
Jenny kiss'd me.

Leigh Hunt (1784 - 1859)

March
from A Shropshire Lad, #X

The Sun at noon to higher air,
Unharnessing the silver Pair
That late before his chariot swam,
Rides on the gold wool of the Ram.

So braver notes the storm-cock sings
To start the rusted wheel of things,
And brutes in field and brutes in pen
Leap that the world goes round again.

The boys are up the woods with day
To fetch the daffodils away,
And home at noonday from the hills
They bring no dearth of daffodils.

Afield for palms the girls repair,
And sure enough the palms are there,
And each will find by hedge or pond
Her waving silver-tufted wand.

In farm and field through all the shire
The eye beholds the heart’s desire;
Ah, let not only mine be vain,
For lovers should be loved again.

A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

P.S. Happy Mardi Gras!
Click here for a chart showing how rarely
Mardi Gras falls on March 1st,
coinciding with Martisor

"Mardi Gras. The farewell to flesh.
I dressed in feathers.
Pointed beak and glitter.
How we danced, through lights and confetti.
The good-bye to the body.
Not forever, but for now."

~ Carol Maso ~

P.S.
Instatoon

Spring Hopes Eternal

Happy Vernal Equinox!
Wishing you a world in perfect balance
& a season of symmetry!
Hope springs eternal! Spring hopes eternal!

Outdoor . . .

and Indoor . . .

Labyrinths at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco

Stand right in the middle . . .

. . . and look up . . .

. . . the ribbons were still there!

When I visited on Mardi Gras ~ 4 March 2014 ~

walking on the ribbon shadows was mesmerizing!

So thrilled to discover that the ribbons had remained up
so far into the Spring, so much longer than expected!
So glad I got the chance to bear witness
on Mardi Gras / Ash Wednesday.
A truly mystical, cosmic experience!

Click to learn more about the Grace Cathedral Ribbon Installation
and to see more photos in my album Points West

Like Mardi Gras Beads

"Look for a lovely thing
and you will find it,
It is not far --
It never will be far."
Sara Teasdale

“The truest answer
to a question that really matters
can be found very close.”
Alice Walker

The most detailed model of ONE human cell to date,
obtained using x-rays, nuclear magnetic resonance,
and cryoelectron microscopy data sets.
Aren't we all just so filled with magical possibilities?

As Emily Dickinson said many years ago
about the use of microscopes:
" 'Faith' is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency!"

I love what my friend Gary said
about this dazzling image:
"This is really quite difficult to comprehend.
We are a walking, talking, breathing universe.
All within our cells.
Each cell is so complex, and there are 30 trillion of them.
Like stars in the universe."

And Gary's friend Sue said:
"i spilled the tangled baubles of my gramma's
jewelry box onto the dresser top.
and i'll never find that other earring ❤"

Mardi Gras ~ Cat Mask ~ Previous Post

Also . . . for Ash Wednesday

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy.
I always knew a bottle of Port would do that.
If you want a religion to make you feel really
comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
C. S. Lewis

Next time, Rosary Beads . . .

Don We Now Our Mardi Gras Apparel!

Wishing You a Festive Mardi Gras,
in all its manifestations!

Even if this is a Christmas illustration . . .

. . . and this one says Twelfth Night,

still, they capture the essence, right?

Gaudy Night

Court Jester ~ by Norman Rockwell

The Saturday Evening Post
Cover for February 11, 1939

Come,
Let’s have one other gaudy night. Call to me
All my sad captains. Fill our bowls once more.
Let’s mock the midnight bell. ~ Act 3, Scene 13

Shakespeare ~ from Antony and Cleopatra

*************

"But the glittery balls and the rustic down-home meet-ups had one thing in common . . . they came to an abrupt halt at midnight [on Shrove Tuesday / Mardi Gras]. It was even said that the devil was lurking somewhere in the shadows making a list of those who kept on partying after the stroke of 12. The following day was. . . Ash Wednesday, which would usher in a 40-day period of severe fasting and penance and zero amusement."

*************

Today: Happy Mardi Gras!

Tomorrow: Ash Wednesday

Belated: Happy Birthday Norman Rockwell!
February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978

Snowy Snowy Night

Snowy snowy night,
paint your colors pink and green . . .

“People make a great deal of the flowers of spring and the leaves of autumn, but for me a night like this, with a clear moon shining on snow, is the best -- and there is not a trace of color [except for green and pink!] in it. I cannot describe the effect it has on me, weird and unearthly somehow. I do not understand people who find a winter evening forbidding.”

― Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973 – c. 1031)

This beautiful color scheme for my outdoor Christmas lights came about not so much by design as by a happy combination of what was leftover after all the indoor trees were decorated and illuminated. Thank goodness the lights were still up for the big snowfall, although there was never really much doubt that such would be the case. With so much green, I had every intention of leaving them up through Mardi Gras and St. Patrick's Day.

When I woke up at 7am on Wednesday, February 2nd, I looked out the window, saw the garbage truck going by in the usual manner, and sadly said, "No snow!" I was wrong, however, to doubt the prognosticators on Ground Hog Day. When I awoke a second time, at 9am, it was a different story and a different world outside my window!

All Day

&

All Night

Here's how it happened . . .

Wednesday
February 2nd ~ 11:30 am

February 2nd ~ 2:30 pm

February 2nd ~ 5:30 pm

February 2nd ~ 6:30 pm

February 2nd ~ 8:30 pm

Thursday
February 3rd ~ 11:30 am
24 hours in:

February 3rd ~ 3:00 pm
The clearing crew has arrived!
A 4 - snow blower event:

February 3rd ~ 6:30 pm
34 hours after snow began

Coronavirus: Our Plans Died

Coronavirus ~ Franklin Institute
The highly contagious coronavirus is killing not only our fellow - citizens but also our plans: travel plans, family reunions, Spring Break, Passover, Easter, weddings -- even those scheduled months from now. Going back to late February, a few towns (Venice but not New Orleans) cancelled Mardi Gras; nearly a month later, St. Patrick's Day celebrations were cancelled the world over. Even just hanging out has been cancelled. With cancellation comes loss, and with loss comes grief. As Scott Berinato explains,

"The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air."

I am also thinking of one of my long - time, tried and true poetic standbys, "The Nose Poem," in which poet Lee Perron highlights the significance of plans:

"your mate dies, or parents
or one of your other friends
there is nothing fearful in the death
the deadman is not the problem
his letters perhaps
some phrase he spoke that rings every after
the way he died, what the surgeons did to his brain, or kidneys,
or heart
what you & he would have been doing now
next week, all summer long as you always did
the deadman did not die
your plans died
and this is what is so upsetting
this makes us so sick we cannot even think . . . "
[emphasis added]

Plans, glorious plans! Remember Adela Quested (from E. M. Forster's A Passage to India)? "She loved plans." It's funny how just a couple of weeks ago, we thought our plans were up to us -- whether we went out for lunch or maybe dinner. But no! Turns out we don't get to decide after all.

During this season of social distancing, Perron's final stanza seems more pertinent than ever. We may shake one another's hands, or not:

". . . in this beauty the car stops
the arm reaches for the doorhandle
and there is nothing left to it but the pulling up on the handle...
and one of you looks back through the car window
you may touch one another's lips, or not
it hardly makes any difference, so beautiful is desire"

Passages from "Desire a Sequence" by Lee Perron
Published in The Chariton Review, Fall 1977
Editor, Jim Barnes

Continued thanks to Jim Barnes for teaching me this poem back in 1977; and to Lee Perron for befriending my family back in 2003 after receipt of our fan letter.

*****************

So group hugs are temporarily
cancelled, but all is not lost.
We can all adopt this gracious custom:
Understanding The ‘Wai’ Thai Greeting!

Mardi Gras: Don't Hold Back

Sam's Multi - Dimenionsional Mask Project, 3rd Grade
“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world,
that is something you are free to do
and it accords with your nature,
but perhaps this very holding back
is the one suffering you could avoid.”
Franz Kafka

"Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding . . ."
Robert Frost
These cautionary words against withholding seem to be true in so many ways: personal communication, relationships, growth, ambition, dreams and desires. Or how about my life - long To - do list? What I withhold from it all is what makes me weak, and the biggest weakness of all is how long it takes me at every single juncture to realize that indeed it is myself I am withholding. When will I ever learn to live and let live, to "give myself outright"?

The Gift Outright
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

Sadly Frost's poem only works at the National level if we suspend for a moment the painful knowledge that in fact the land, when we arrived, was not entirely "unstoried, artless, unenhanced." But that is another story.

***************

And one more thought from Kafka, 1883 – 1924:
"You may not destroy someone's world
unless you are prepared to offer a better one."

"And what you are withholding from the world
is what you are also withholding from yourself."
Thanks Natasha!
~ More Tolle ~

Tarot Favs

My Halloween Tarot Cards
are perfect for Mardi Gras!

Tarot Readings Daily

They’re reading Tarot cards right now,
in the little pink house with the sign in the yard.
Shadows spider across still-green lawn
whose fate, so far, defies the frosts.

Someone asks the right question,
draws the right card.
Many cups in the immediate future;
radiance pouring down.

They know the future,
the creatures in the yard:
night, thirst, frost.
Only the sapiens in the house believe

fire, water, air, and earth
would bother to reveal
when to fear and love.
The one who’s paying

draws another card.
Outside, in the yard,
a squirrel noses seed that fell
like radiance, from above.

Joy Ladin (b 1961)

Tarot Readings ~ San Francisco

And for Lent, you can simply
re-new your New Year's Resolutions!

Christmas Cake

In England at Christmas time, there is a Christmas cake in every house and one in every bakery window, and they all have the most wonderful snow scenes on top. Many of the little figures that Gerry's mom puts on her Christmas cake are things that she has saved from her childhood (little children riding on tiny sleds, a miniature cottage, some little plastic deer). The cake itself is really no different than a conventional American fruitcake, sweetened up by the layer of marzipan, then covered entirely by snowy Royal icing.

Gerry and Sam made ours this year, creating a Santa's Wonderland on top, with little deer, snowy trees, and a set of miniature Santas, each playing a different musical instrument -- they were the charms out of our Christmas crackers one year.

If you're too full for a piece of cake on Christmas Day -- as is often the case after the Figgy Pudding and the Mince Pies -- you can save it 'til the next day, and it will make a pefect Boxing Day dessert. This year, we're saving ours for New Year's Eve. It will also keep until the 6th of January, when it becomes known as Twelfth Night Cake. Or wait for Mardi Gras and call it King's Cake!

TRADITIONAL BRITISH CHRISTMAS CAKE
1 cup butter (8 oz)
1 cup soft brown sugar (8 oz)
4 eggs
2 tsp Allspice
grated rind of a lemon
grated rind of an orange
2 Tbsp sherry

3½ cups all purpose white or whole meal flour
¾ tsp salt
5¼ tsp baking powder

½ cup glace cherries (4 oz)
1 cup chopped pecans or English walnuts (4 oz)
2 cups regular raisins (3/4 lb)
2 cups golden raisins (3/4 lb)

Beat the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl (8-cup size or larger) until pale and creamy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour with each egg. Beat in the allspice, orange and lemon rinds. Fold in the remaining flour (plus salt and baking powder) along with the cherries, nuts, and raisins, and stir in the sherry to give a smooth dropping consistency.

Spoon the mixture into a greased and lined 8-inch round cake tin or medium sized spring-form pan with 2½ inch sides, lined with brown paper and rubbed with butter. Level the top of the cake with a smooth spatula. Bake for 2 - 3 hours at 300 F until golden brown and firm to touch. Leave to cool in the tin before turning out. Ice with Royal Icing.

Another option is to make the cake a week or two in advance, soak it with sherry or whiskey, store in an air - tight container, checking every few days to re-saturate. Making the icing and decorating the top can be a fun family activity for Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Day, or New Year's Eve.

ROYAL ICING
First, spread a thin layer of any brand of apricot jam on the top and around the sides of the fruit cake. Second, roll out some ready made marzipan (approx. two 7 oz. Tubes) into a circle the size of the top of the cake and into a strip the height of the cake (I have to do this part in two or three sections). Third, stick the marzipan onto the cake, using the apricot jam as "glue."

In the food processor, beat 6 cups powdered sugar (1 1/2 lbs)
3 egg whites
3/4 tsp lemon juice
2 drop of glycerine or mineral oil.

Now, spread the frosting on top of the marzipan, using a smooth, rounded butter knife to create the effect of snow drifts, paths, etc. Finally, when the frosting is nearly set (not too long -- maybe 30 minutes), decorate with your favorite Christmas miniatures to create a snow scene of your own design. It’s also nice to stick a row of plastic holly or little red poinsettias around the sides. This cake keeps very well without being covered, so you can admire your work for several days! Then, slowly but surely cut around the decorations until nothing is left but a few crumbs!

Merry Christmas! Happy Boxing Day!
Sam Explains How It's Done, New Year's Day 2000
An Expert From Way Back, Christmas 1995
CHRISTMAS CAKES
THROUGH THE YEARS

Twelfth Day ~ Twelfth Night

"Lucinda had the gift for festival.
She spread out Christmas to last from Saint Nicholas Eve
until Twelfth Night; and burned the greens on the hearth
with a choked feeling of utter desolation" (103).

from Roller Skates (1936)
by Ruth Sawyer
[more on my book blog]

Can it really be time to take down the greens?
Seems so short a time ago that we were bringing them home.
In fact, this picture of Ben and our neighbor Tammy,
carrying home her greens from the Farmers' Market,
was taken a long time ago --
just before Christmas 1995, on Beaumont Avenue, Philadelphia

*********
If you start counting with Christmas Day as the First Day, then January 5th is the Twelfth Day of Christmas (as in the song), tonight is Twelfth Night (as in the Shakespeare play), and tomorrow is the Epiphany -- the day the Wise Men arrived with the gifts.

For the last hundred years or so, in England and the U.S. anyway, the Christmas Season pretty much comes to a close with a New Year's Eve Party & New Year's Day Parades; but pre - Dickens, it was more the custom to celebrate the full Twelve Days (as suggested by the elaborate gifts in the song; or in the church with a saint for each day). Twelfth Night was the time for a big party with a huge frosted King's Cake, containing hidden surprises (nowadays the British Christmas Cake or the American Mardi Gras Cake).

In either tradition -- whether you conclude the season on New Year's Eve or Twelfth Night -- January 5th was considered a good time to put away all the decorations, though earlier medieval custom allowed the greens to hang until February 2nd, the cross - quarter day that brings the Winter Solstice half-way to the Vernal Equinox (which explains why we celebrate with the Ground Hog on that day).

PS. My personal tradition allows me to keep the trees up WAY past any of the above designated dates . . . but that's another story! It always seems to me that you can leave the tree up beyond Twelfth Night if you want; however, any leftover Christmas Cake or Pudding must be polished off before midnight!

Gatsby: Sad Eyes

But I --
Ah, sooner would I die
Than see tears in those eyes of my soul.

Stephen Crane, 1871 - 1900
from The Black Riders and Other Lines, #LIII
Original book cover for The Great Gatsby

"It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes
at things upon which you have expended your own
powers of adjustment." (105)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896 - 1940

**********************
Poor Gatsby. The form of his dream is pure, but the content is corrupt. Or is it the other way around?

" 'You can't repeat the past.'

'Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why of course you can!' " (111)

No, you can't.*
**********************
P.S.
Since it's Mardi Gras,
just pretend that the fun fair
pictured at the bottom of the book cover
is New Orleans!

*Similar sentiment:
"Forgiveness means giving up all hope of having had a better past."
~ Anne Lamott ~ Lily Tomlin ~

**********************

from "Like Pale Gold"
John Green's Crash Course on The Great Gatsby
Dear Heroic Past,

Like champagne poppers, you’re always a little bit underwhelming.

The thing is, Heroic Past, which of our pasts was so heroic?

Was it the part where we owned other human beings?

Was it the part where we fought over the right to own other human beings?

Was it Gatsby’s Jazz Age, with its fast cars, deliciously illegal alcohol and rapidly expanding stock portfolios?

I mean the amazing thing about the Great Gatsby is that Fitzgerald didn’t know the Great Depression was coming, [or did he?] but his book sure reads like prophecy.

The truth, Heroic Past, is that we may think we want to recreate you, but what we actually want to do is we want to recreate you without all the problems we don’t remember.

And that’s how you ruin your life over a girl you dated for a month five years ago.

Best Wishes,

John Green

Plastic Pumpkins

Guess who got to come up from the basement this morning, to be fitted with a new light bulb and placed near the window to brighten up a gloomy rainy overcast eerie pre-autumnal day? Yes, you guessed -- the big black and orange Halloween pumpkin - cat yard lamp that my friend Cate gave me back in 2002.

She and I and my in - laws, Ron and Rosanne, were meeting to enjoy a cup of our favorite pre-Halloween coffee (pumpkin spice!) at one of our favorite spots, the Restaurant School Coffee Shop in West Philadelphia. Cate had rescued Pumpkin - Cat from a yard sale, and brought it along to sit proudly on its own chair and draw lots of attention at the coffee shop! I wonder if whoever put that cat in a Philadelphia yard sale would be surprised to know that it now celebrates the season year after year in Indiana!

I also have some smaller plastic pumpkins that my father - in - law Ron and I were pleased to purchase at Walmart one year, on the day after Halloween for seven (7) cents each! One day last winter, I had just bought some new round cookie sheets and before taking them to the basement, where I have some pantry shelves for excess baking supplies, I piled them up with other things that needed to go downstairs -- a couple of the plastic jack - o - lanterns, Mardi Gras beads, Christmas bows. As I set them on the shelf, I thought, "Voila -- Still Life!" So many favorite holidays, all present simultaneously!


Some years Pumpkin - Cat stays out until Christmas!
Keeping watch from the Roof - top!
P.S.
~ 2011 ~

~ 2013 ~