Carnival, a.k.a. Mardi Gras

I won't bore you with a history of Mardi Gras (translated "Fat Tuesday") except to say that around the world, it's often called Carnival. On our continent, it started in Mobile, Alabama, then the capital of "Louisiane". As the capital of Louisiane moved to Biloxi and finally to New Orleans, this lovely party followed as well. Carnival all started as a Catholic tradition set up to allow the faithful to practice all manner of debauchery prior to Ash Wednesday. Since you can hide your identity wearing masks and costumes, it didn't take the Protestants long to catch on, either. If one were to count the Catholics in New Orleans on Fat Tuesday, there would probably be 11 or 12. The rest are Baptists trying to see if the Bible verse: "sin is fun for a season;" holds any merit. Just kidding.

I have been to New Orleans dozens of times but never during Mardi Gras. In a week or so from now, I get my opportunity. My wife, who grew up in New Orleans, has stationed us among her family in the more sedate setting "uptown", though the party in the Quarter is the one tourists see on television. The French Quarter is where you see the wild and wacky behavior of masked revelers as seen on "Cops". To get arrested during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, it would seem you would have to be naked, spewing fire, and holding a bovine sacrifice on Bourbon Street. The Cops in New Orleans have a finely developed sense of humor. Most of the males in the French Quarter will not be paying any attention to pagan rituals around them, as they will be looking up at the balconies full of women, shouting: "Show us your mammary glands", or something similar.

The parades are put on by "krewes", which are basically clubs of people that need an excuse to get out of work for weeks at a time. Krewes actually do a lot of good for the community, and are rewarded by being able to test their liver function and moral center during Carnival. The krewes build floats. The floats have people who throw stuff at you. I am going to wear safety goggles. My wife tells me that years ago, a lot of thought was put into what was thrown off the floats. Now, it's mostly cheap candy, plastic beads, doubloons & stuffed animals. It still pays to catch the trinkets though. I think you get extra drinks if you have the most junk hung around your neck, or stuffed in your pockets, later in the day. I need to ask my wife about that one.

While the bacchanalian tourists are littering the Quarter with their bodies, the locals are holding all types of Balls and rituals that most of the rest of America forgot a century ago. Debutantes enter society with all the fanfare of the Antebellum South. It is really a site to behold. I attended some of the Society functions last year and these people do it up right. My niece-by-marriage, Betsy Ellis, was crowned Queen of Osiris. The entire evening was like being on the set of a Hollywood movie. I felt, despite my misgivings, that it was a spectacular tradition that's lost on the rest of the country. I can't say too much, as males at this point are supposed to grimace, roll their eyes and grunt. I certainly don't want to look out of place.

In reality, Mardi Gras among the locals has nothing to do with the images the media airs from the French Quarter. Those are tourists, mostly kids on Spring Break, drawn to the media images. The parades, floats and other fun are not even in the French Quarter. They're in the neighborhoods of the locals and it's good clean fun for any age group. With apologies to any New Orleanians that read this and find errors, I am looking forward to being there.

Class Discussion

Any discussion of societal class will invariably invoke images in our minds of those with, and those without. We have no "caste" system officially in the West but there can be no doubt that we all view our position in life as "more than" or "less than" someone else. If we eliminate those that are eligible for Sainthood, the rest of us try to arrange our lives around the premise that humanity can be broken down into sub-groups. This helps us to deal with the dizzying tumult of human behavior.

Criminals, liberals, conservatives, whites, blacks, browns, Californians, Elites, snobs, ne'er-do-wells, gay, straight, Southerners, Mid-westerners, prodigies, losers, Commies, Socialists, Capitalists, in-crowd, the inner circle. These are just a few of the ways that we seek to differentiate ourselves from those around us. Of course, we all want to love and be loved, just as we all want to accomplish things and be recognized for it. These are fundamental needs that everyone has.

The bright side is that the motivation to separate ourselves from the masses can be healthy, promoting individual achievement, progress in culture and all types of discovery. The dark side of this part of our personality is also used to denigrate our fellow man, according to the set of rules that is either passed down, or adopted by us.

I suspect the belief that all humanity should be afforded the opportunities envisioned by our founding fathers is universal. The reality is, however, that though we are biologically created equal in terms of our physiology, and even spirituality, we are not all equal. A child prodigy is the single best evidence that we are not all born with the same ability. Though I might struggle a lifetime to achieve musical aptitude, I will never even come close to what a prodigy can accomplish at an early age. And though we are all born with the ability to reason, most of us will never achieve the insight of the great philosophers of human history.

So, then, if we are not all born with the same ability, what does this say about our erecting a class structure within our culture? We all want to surround ourselves with those that look, think and act like us. That's natural. On the bright side, that's called fellowship. On the dark side, that's the Taliban. If I haven't lost everyone by now, let' bring it home.

When the foundations of our economic security are shaken, as in the current global financial meltdown, certain things have happened to the human relationships Stephanie and I share. I dare say that the friendships are stronger, the familial ties are tighter, the encouragement (upon being affected by the economy) warmer. Of course, some of that is projection, or the reaction of others to our being out of our "role" in life- knocked on our keister by the reality of hardship. At that point, we are warmer, more open to giving and receiving love. As it happens, when we find ourselves in medical trouble, for instance, we begin to recognize the value of human relationships and the menial nature of all things transitory. Survival. It strips away everything temporal, all things unimportant.

Yesterday, I had the strangest experience. The burning ban had been lifted by our County in Georgia, so I built a fire pit and began burning all the yard debris from the pruning and tree work we had done. As I sat there all alone, something primal, almost spiritual came over me. I was hypnotized by the fire. I began thinking of all the things in life that matter. I didn't want to leave the fire, even after all that I had to burn was in cinders.

The cleansing fire. It burns away the trash. It leaves only embers. In life, it incinerates all but the core values. It produces the raw material without fetters. It then, becomes our clay to mold.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

There's a new TV series on Fox called "Lie to Me". I would probably never have watched it, but it is pinned into the viewing schedule right after "American Idol", which as you may know, is my wife's favorite show. I don't know if this is a show that's steeped in science, like the hit "CSI" series, or "Bones", though I would really like to know. The characters for this consulting group are called in by everyone from Athletic Directors of Colleges to the FBI to assess whether or not someone is telling the truth.

One would think a simple Lie Detector test would suffice, but early on in the show, the "Lie Squad" dispelled all lie detection by machine as almost useless, as any emotional tumult unrelated to the questions could skew the results. So, this team of geniuses is able to take thousands of years of human history and produce a series of gestures, facial expressions and body language that frame up whether a person is lying or telling the truth.

It really is a fascinating show, but has shed so much doubt on tried and true adages about how to tell if a person is lying that I'm all at sea over the whole issue. The first myth to die was the one about how a person who's lying looks to the left. Apparently, according to this show, a good liar can look you right in the eye and never even twitch. That's pretty unsettling, though it does explain some lawyers & stockbrokers. Of course, remember, we just went through an election, and, well..... Speaking of twitches, a twitch is evidently important around the mouth. The pursing of the lips shows the speaker doesn't believe what they're saying. The slight snarl of the corners of the lips point to contempt by the speaker to the reader of lips. I won't go into any more of this. I'll leave it to the reader to watch and make up their own mind about the premise.

Lying, which is the natural predator of the Truth, is in us all. A classic situation to illustrate this point is when a wife, looking in the mirror, turns and asks her husband, "Does this make me look fat?" At this point, Truth goes out the window. The wife, obviously, wants the husband to lie. On the other hand, when out to dinner, the wife might ask, "Were you looking at that woman?" To which, however he answers, the husband is trapped. He had better tell the Truth, but of necessity, he might be forced to lie. Unless he says: "Yes, she is a beautiful and voluptuous creature that I could easily fall for, leaving you and the children to fend for yourselves, and gladly show her off at the Country Club to all of my buddies," the wife will never believe the husband. You can see how this one commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness", can be a real sin-producer.

In our culture, it is generally accepted that lying to protect the innocent is O.K. Telling our little toddler that Santa Claus is coming to town, does not bring out the same vilification from our peers as saying something like, "Oh, it's great to see you" when a despised family member makes their appearance. Lying, it seems, has become a national pastime. I remember when I was a young lad, a wise old Uncle, Uncle Ralph, told me: "Telling the truth means you don't have to remember what you said today, tomorrow." In other words, though tact is a critical and dying art in America, it's easier just to tell the truth, except to your wife about her weight and that woman at the other table.

The Day The Music Died

Today, 50 years ago, the plane carrying Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) and Ritchie Valens crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa and all perished. And lest we forget, the 21 year-old pilot, Jim Peterson died as well. For the Class of '59, at least, the sock hops took on a somber tone in their senior year.

I was just this side of seven years old at the time, so all I remember was the shock on my older brother's face when the news hit the airwaves. These guys helped pioneer Rock n' Roll. Don McLean later penned this as "The Day the Music Died" in his famous "American Pie" hit. Waylon Jennings, who with Tommy Allsup formed Buddy's new backup band, gave up his seat to the Big Bopper. Talk about life-altering decisions. For those too young to remember, Buddy had a huge influence on rock music that lasts until this day.

Keith Richards of the Stones attended one of Buddy's concerts and his band later did a cover of Buddy's "Not Fade Away" which was an early hit of theirs. Tony Bramwell, a friend of McCartney and George Harrison, met Buddy and through him, the Fab Four were significantly influenced as well. The Beatles did a cover of "Words of Love" and McCartney owns publishing rights to Holly's song catalog to this day.

A young Bob Dylan also attended a "Dion & the Belmonts" & "Buddy Holly & The Crickets" concert two nights before the plane crash and referred to this during his Grammy acceptance speech in 1998 for his album, "Time Out Of Mind".

Buddy Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley on September 7, 1936 in Lubbock, Texas. Buddy grew up in a musical family and learned to play the piano, guitar and violin. His first music was all Bluegrass, following the family lead. This all changed when he saw Elvis perform in 1955. A few months later, he appeared on the same bill with Mr. Presley and the rest, as they say, is history.

The list of those influenced by Buddy Holly and the covers of his songs is way too lengthy to list here. Suffice it to say that there were only a handful of pioneers that profoundly changed the music that we listened to and Buddy was one of them.

We'll adjourn with lyrics from a song of another Buddy Holly admirer, Mac Davis. In his song "Happiness is Lubbock Texas", he wrote the following words:

I set out one night in June
Stoned by the glow of the Texas moon
Humming an old Buddy Holly song called "Peggy Sue"
With my favorite jeans
And a cheap guitar
I ran off chasing a distant star
If Buddy Holly could make it that far
I figured I could too.

A History of Flight

My late friend, Mark C. Anderson, used to joke that he avoided the subject of genealogy because his forebears had been horse thieves somewhere in Europe. He was an extraordinary CPA and I had wondered why he was so adept at keeping the IRS from stealing from me.

Genealogy is interesting but not fascinating to me. My brother Graham and first cousin, Patrick, culminated years of study and have traced our roots back to 15th century France. Don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with a lot of name-dropping, just let you in on an embarrassing truth about my family tree. I often joke that my ancestors were thrown out of every respectable country in Europe. That is not altogether true. We fled. First, the Rives (the original spelling) were Huguenots, who, as you may know, lost their battle with the Catholic Church and more accurately, Louis XIV. We, of course, being good Protestants, took the money and ran. The original property purchase and home in England is still there, a country house in Dansforeshire. The title Mr. Rives bought from the King, along with the castle he built, has long since been lost in antiquity.

We were fiercely loyal to the English crown, from Day One. This worked to our advantage up to the time of King Charles I. We backed the wrong horse in the English Civil War. This all came to me as on January 30th, this Friday past, marked the 360th anniversary of King Charles I being beheaded for treason. Oliver Cromwell, as it turned out, was not a forgiving sort. This marked our hurried departure from England to land in what is now Virginia in the New World. No, you DAR snobs, not on the Mayflower.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years to our plantation in North Carolina perched atop a hill. It was a great view to watch the Union Army's advance to the sea. And obviously, we were on the opposite side of the scorecard in that little scrap. The end of the story has us meandering down into Alabama to become merchants and politicians (which is one reason Stephanie believes little of my passionate oratories).

I guess had we remained Catholic, I would be speaking French, sitting in a small cafe in Marseilles, wondering why the government wasn't protecting my job. Or, perhaps I would be living in Manchester, working in a government supported machine shop. Whatever. Now that the U. S. economy is falling into the abyss, one would expect a Reaves to flee. But where to? This is a world-wide contagion. Rumor has it that New Orleans is booming. If that were to happen, you can be darn sure I'll keep my heritage to myself.