Mardi Gras now. New Orleans forever.

...When the floats go by and you look into the eyes of the masked riders, realize that there is a really good chance that the people throwing you baubles and beads lost their homes or their jobs this fall.

But they're doing Mardi Gras -- and life -- on their terms. They want to do this. Riding in a parade with the same group of folks they've been riding with for years latches on to the very thing they love most about this place.

It's a way to reclaim who we are.

Time and Mardi Gras march on. We dance to the beat of a different drummer, as always. We celebrate ourselves.

Mardi Gras now. New Orleans forever.



http://www.nola.com/rose/t-p/index.ssf?/base/living-0/114076724339890.xml

of an outsider. I'm not from New Orleans, and really didn't understand how much Mardis Gras meant to the people down there. I thought, "How insensitive, to hold a party when so much suffering continues." But now I have come to understand it as more of a healing process. I cannot help but think about NOLA and the gulf coast every day, and wish you all the help and healing that you need and desrve.

I thought and think everything that is important should have gone on, the courts, balls and such but I still think the parades are very inappropriate.

Why would the inclusive parades be inappropriate yet the exclusive balls be appropriate?

Joseph Pierre "Monk" Boudreaux sits on the bed of his temporary apartment Uptown. The complex is on South Front Street, near the Mississippi River, and Boudreaux has been staying there while repairs are being made to his mold-, wind- and flood-damaged home over on nearby Valence Street.
Secluded in these temporary digs, his small, thin-lensed glasses perched on his nose, sewing needle in hand, he threads yellow and red beads into designs on a beige piece of circular canvas. The lighting is sharp despite the cloudy glass of the ceiling fixture, and the sun has just set with a little glow creeping in through the window. A portable TV sits on a dresser with the sound of a sitcom turned down low. There are other beaded pieces of canvas in various states of completion surrounding him on the bed. Some hint at the beginnings of designs on them. Some are further along, with colored cloth ruffles on their edges. A few pieces are completely finished, mainly from his suits of previous years. Somewhere in a case, with his traveling suit, is one of the great iconic Mardi Gras Indian images -- the patch of an Indian head with braid and crown that was the cover for the first Wild Magnolias recording back in 1974.

The 64-year-old pauses to find a cigarette filter to thread on top of the beads to hold them in place as he picks up more of the small beads. These are the tasks that Boudreaux churns through, focusing on details big and small, just as he has done for more than 40 years.

He looks up and says in a low, melodious voice, "This isn't just a thing we do. It's in our blood...."

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/current/cover_story.php