Here we are, in our full costumed regalia. D wanted to walk in comfort and warmth while ripping on the NFL and I was going for a Saint / winged-football-goddess sort of look. Not many notice that the mask represents a football field with yard lines. Yes, I am a dork.
It doesn’t look too shabby in the picture above, but I wasn’t pleased with the quality of my costume this year for a number of reasons:
a) Notice severe lack of headdress. Thanks to bad weather all across America over the weekend and the classic incompetence of Delta Airlines gate agents, I didn’t reach New Orleans halfway into Sunday. Therefore and alas, between abuse taken during repeated trips to the airport and the fact that the sealant fumes still coming off it would have rendered our entire airplane unconscious, my headdress had to be left behind. An almost-seizure-inducing hour on the phone yesterday with Delta corporate customer service got me a $100 voucher good towards the purchase of a future flight. Woo to the hoo.
b) Too tired on Tuesday morning to do anything more glam with hair. Boo!
c) The wings didn’t make it past the car. Yes, I forgot to put them on once we reached our destination, leaving me prey to an endless string of tourists asking, “What are you supposed to be? An Indian?” D and I wanted to say, “Yeah, Mardi Gras Indian!” But, we didn’t think they would understand.
d) Costume 2010 would have been decidedly more spectacular had I not been forced to wear a whole sweatsuit under it. Damned cold. Actually, damned fluctuating temperatures, which made poor Loki so ill he had to go to the doctor on Mardi Gras Day instead of leading the annual Krewe of Chartreuse walk. Ick.
We caught some of the Zulu parade, walked into the Quarter, ate chili cheese tots at the Three Legged Dog and ended up at home away from home, i.e. Fahy’s. As usual, our evening ended early. To quote Editor B: “Mardi Gras is primarily an early morning holiday, at least to me. It’s kind of like Christmas in that way. This is contrary to the image many casual tourists might have in mind, due to the common association linking revelry with late nights. But I rarely stay out late on Mardi Gras, and for me the best part of the day is generally before noon.”
This picture was taken yesterday in the downtime between the MidCity and Thoth parades. Girl on left = unruly, attention-demanding pain in the ass. NOPD officer on right = patient, professional and extremely generous to little children and abusive, space-hogging idiots. And I mean generous to a fault. If I see this officer again tonight, I am going to have to remind him of certain New Orleans ordinances prohibiting fencing of public property, especially when people cordon off whole quarter to half city blocks with Caution tape and pitch teary, obscenity-laced fits as soon as parade-goers Invade Their Space. Required reading for folks attending Mardi Gras parades in uptown New Orleans: If I Were Carnival Dictator
We had a great time at Thoth this year. Great weather, gorgeous floats, lots of quality throws. Thanks, Thoth!
A guy I knew ages ago had me read a short story he penned called The Futility Of Being A Gopher. If I remember correctly, it’s all about a gopher who goes about its business in a hobbity burrow. Once you start to feel for this gopher, by sheer virtue of having spent five valuable minutes of your life reading about it, and again if I remember correctly, an alien spaceship crashlands into Earth, said portion of Earth including the gopher. Gopher is teats up, or teats flattened given a spaceship is on top of it. The End.
I was 19 at the time and had no use for such pointless bilge. The gopher was to start its epic journey towards Z’ha’dum or Mount Doom or something that rhymes with Oom and save the planet from a threat we were blissfully unaware of, thus shedding a limited gopher-shaped body to transform into something bigger and more heroic. Super Kryptonite Investi-Gopher or Gophero, the sworn enemy of mutant carrots everywhere. Now that I am in my 30s and think back on that story, my friend may have been onto something. I’m sure there were some other clever, post-modern metaphors in there, but the most obvious one stands out: Life is out of your control, and crap happens when you dream about the great plans you just made. Or that the gopher was doing it all wrong and could be Herr Commandant of the Underground Resistance if it had simply armed itself. The futility of being a pacifist country gopher, as it were.
Chippy The Attack Gopher (don't ask)
All of this is to say that I’m terribly frustrated today. I was supposed to be in New Orleans tonight, but will not leave Ohio until early Sunday. See this horrible monster in the Southeast that doesn’t even have the common decency to dress in complementary colors? Thanks to it, I will putz about my house – rearranging the folded clothes and plowing my driveway yet another time – for an extra 36 hours and lose an important day of Carnival. Even more irritating is that I haven’t spent any meaningful time with D in three weeks and he has been down there waiting for me. I really don’t know how much longer we can handle this financially- and emotionally-burdensome business travel lifestyle. Something has to give.
Could be worse, could be gopher pancake under an alien spaceship.
A geospatial and engineering study, recently conducted by my firm in support of relief operations in Haiti, shows that much of the island nation is susceptible to landslides. And by “much,” I mean MUCH. About 80%. This should not be surprising considering young volcanic rock, active tectonics and steep slopes. Easily-weathered, clay-rich soil at an angle will slide when shaken, right?
A structural geology and geophysics nerd, I was initially more enamored with and engrossed in the earthquake’s ground motion numbers, which were fed into predicting building failure, than ground sliding. Thankfully, the Katrina levee failures have led me to a more holistic view of disasters. To come up with solutions, we do need subject matter experts, but it is crucial that the general scientific attitude is less “I’ll take the seismic stuff, you take the soil stuff and let’s not be bothered by policy which is for suits in Washington” and more interdisciplinary cooperationin the name of scientific progress and human betterment. Never will I sift through sediments or poke at fossils, but I’ll be damned if I ever view a problem through the blinders of specialization again. At some point, we have to grow up as scientists and citizens and want to incorporate other research as well as demand and follow through on change implementation.
More on the need for synthesis:
1) Disasters aren’t things that happen to other people, parts of which you later study for academic purposes. The paper Katrina’s unique splay deposits in a New Orleans neighborhood by Tulane University’s Stephen Nelson et al. documents some fascinating patterns of deposition of canal sediment in the Gentilly neighborhood, which ultimately show WHY the levee there failed as it did (pilings driven into ground all wrong due to poor sampling of and little care for the subsurface).
2) Disasters are normally compounded by other disasters. These things rarely happen in isolation. Landslides and floods triggered by earthquakes (and Atlantic hurricanes) are worsened by deforestation for charcoal in a job-starved and subsequently energy-starved country. The need for aid and housing now is appreciated, but what of the larger problems of disappearing trees and moving coastlines?
3) “If the disasters themselves are not preventable, sometimes the way we handle the aftermath is,” says Adele Barker in Disaster’s Aftermath. Ms. Barker speaks of aid agencies not being prepared in the wake of Haiti and how it reminds her of botched aid following the Southeast Asian tsunami (which in turn puts me in mind of our own New Orleanian disaster after the disaster). Sometimes, the way we handle the scientific aftermath is preventable, too.
There is no room for academic and political ivory towers. We work together or bust.
***
I will admit immense joy in science as an end in itself and a certain freedom in ignoring government and the social contract as petty constructs. Forget you jokers with your grabs, wars and laws; when I’m in my lab, in my world, you cease to exist. Science is a magical thing that way. *ironic chuckle* Moreover, within science itself, too much generalization leads to master-of-none paralysis. You have to be good at something, do something, prove something, in order to move forward. But, there’s no roadblock or harm in being good at something, learning more and sourcing from work outside of your expertise. It makes you better. More human. In the end, isn’t that the point of science?
Still rolling around in indescribable joy because (the promised mask is done and) WOOOOOHOOOOO THE SAINTS WON THE SUPERBOWL! This win signifies so much more than the city team’s prowess at football. It’s about hope, possibility, renewal and an invitation to everyone who wrote off New Orleans to kiss its muddy behind. Pistolette writes:
It can be confusing to some how the win of a football team can somehow be tied to the rebuilding of a devastated city. But if you lived here you’d feel it. Athletes often talk of ‘momentum’, and Nola has definitely been experiencing it since Katrina. There is a drive and energy here that simply defies. For being a culture preoccupied with pleasure, I didn’t realize how passionately the people here would go to war over defending their right to it. I guess we’re more like our French fathers after all.
The following video was taken on the street on which D and I used to live. Each time I watch it, I am so deeply happy for everyone crying, laughing, drinking, jumping and dancing, and want to hug all of them. The Packer Nation, known for the unfettered dedication of its fans in good times and in bad, salutes the WhoDat Nation. You deserve it all.
I cannot begin to tell you how majorly bummed I was at not being at Fahy’s with D and my friends to watch and celebrate victory and history in the making. Kudos to my family, however, for screaming loudly in support of the Saints and agreeing with me that I should have been in New Orleans. Friends who don’t stay up late and rarely party made their way to the French Quarter at 11PM; folks I thought didn’t have my phone number called or texted into the wee hours of the morning. Loki, Alexis and I should have been there. We should also be there today, on Lombardi Gras a.k.a. Dat Tuesday, for the parade about to happen in downtown New Orleans to honor the Saints. Thankfully, my husband is in New Orleans armed with a camera (and a death threat should he fail to get good pictures).
Keep the party hot for me, y’all. I will be there on Friday and you know it’s gonna be a good time.
Sat up in bed early this morning, a Sunday morning, knowing this would happen. Changed into my Ashley shirt at halftime. I knew they’d win, but didn’t know how or by how many points. Three good dead-on Hartley field goals. Then, the Tracy Porter interception and runback. I have never been more certain of victory.
At this moment in time and history, I sit shaking in utter disbelief. But why? I knew all along. Still, like Cade, I took the above picture and am posting it here, so that when I look at this blog tomorrow, I will know it’s not just a dream. Thank you, Drew Brees. We deserve this, New Orleans. You deserve this, lifelong Saints fans. A team that plays with so much heart had to have destiny on their side.
WHO DAT! WHO DAT! WHO DAT SAY DEY GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS? NO ONE.
