Reviews

Ash Wednesday With My Grandmother; Mardi Gras on Clear-Channel Radio

3/5/2019

It took a lovely post by a friend to remind me that Mardi Gras is about to morph into Ash Wednesday.

Bill Lucey, a writer and editor in Cleveland, puts out a thoughtful website about (a) baseball, (b) journalism, and (c) life itself. His post today is about how he should observe Lent this year. His examination of his faith should be read on its own, not in my paraphrasing:
https://www.dailynewsgems.com/2019/03/the-meaning-of-giving-up-for-lent.html

Lucey's article prompted me to recall Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday from my own perspective, having been raised (and raised well) as a Roman Catholic. I know my two sisters and their families will be observing Lent. (We took two close relatives to our beloved Mama’s in Corona a few years back –during Lent -- and they had to pass up some of the glories of deli and pastry. Oy. That is faith.)

Today’s post by my colleague prompted two memories:

1. As the oldest of five, I was fortunate to walk to church on some weekdays with my Irish-born grandmother, always in black. Sometimes she would take me to a luncheonette on Jamaica Ave., for breakfast after church – but maybe not during Lent. I don’t remember.
(Kids, ask questions of your grandparents…and your parents. Get their views, their histories.)

2. My most vivid memory of Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday is from 1971, when I was a news reporter for the NYT, based in Louisville. I had just covered my first coal-mine disaster, in Hyden, Ky., and was still reporting on it.
On Feb. 23, however, I was in central Tennessee, covering a story on an army base. I had no clue about Mardi Gras until I had to wake up before dawn to drive across to a hearing in Eastern Kentucky.

Barreling due east on the interstate, I messed with the radio dial (much more fun in the pre-digital age) and found a lively station – WWL, New Orleans, 50,000-watts.
This post began as a memory of Lent, a spiritual journey, but somehow it is turning into a tribute to the great clear-channel stations of North America – the ones that would keep you going on cross-country drives. (Grand Ole Opry on Long Island on Saturday nights; one Phillies-Cardinals thriller all the way out to Chicago.)
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?617480-50-000-Watt-Stations-on-North-American-Clear-Channel-Frequencies

This time, pre-dawn on Feb. 24, 1971, I listened to the overnight DJ on WWL raving about Mardi Gras, which was slowly winding down on the littered and sodden streets of New Orleans. He talked about the beads, the drinks, the costumes, the food, the pretty women, the people leaning off their elegant balconies in the French Quarter, shouting and personifying the slogan: “Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler!”

And there I was, in the dark, on I-40, heading to a hearing about poverty and neglect in Appalachia, taking in reports of the last bursts of sensuality in New Orleans. Mardi Gras turning into Ash Wednesday, mile by mile.

That was Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday, 1971. Now, stirred by Bill Lucey in Cleveland, I have to figure some way to honor Lent. Thanks, man.

Ash Wednesday already, out East

Randolph

3/5/2019 10:48:50 am

George,
I really like this post. Good job my friend. The article by your friend Bill is quite interesting also.
You brought back lots of memories. I remember traveling to mass for Ash Wednesday many years ago. My mom had jammed her five children into the backseat of the car. The front seat was reserved for mom and Mrs. Oliver, the little Italian woman who didn’t drive and who we transported to and from mass for many years.

When we got to church, my mom was very upset. She had forgotten her hat and of course her head needed to be covered. She took out a few tissues and bobby pinned them to the top of her head. As I look back , It was my favorite church hat of all time.

This afternoon I will fire up the stereo with the Neville Brothers, Dr. John and Professor Longhair. My wife and I will play cards with our good friends, John and Linda. John still honors Lent and on this Fat Tuesday it will be the last day he drinks an IPA at my house until we play cards on Easter. (Note: I truly enjoy cards during Lent. Since John abstains, my beer seems to taste better.)

The best to Ms. Whipple.

Randy

George Vecsey

3/6/2019 09:02:27 am

Randy: I remember the occasional pin-and-handkerchief look.
Hope the Mardi Gras card game went well.
If you were around the corner, I'd lend you the vinyl Sweet Emma and the Preservation Hall Band album I bought on my first trip to NOLA during Super Bowl IV. It was so cold, I had to stay indoors.
Of course, indoors meant Preservation Hall. Used to have beads from various visits to NOLA -- but never during Mardi Gras.
best, GV

Alan Rubin link

3/5/2019 04:21:19 pm

You need not be Catholic to appreciate and enjoy both George and Bill’s comments.

My first exposure to Lent was 1948 when my family moved from a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Washington Heights to being one of the first Jewish families in Teaneck, NJ. I get telling my classmates tha their foreheads we’re dirty until someone clued me in.

Being introspective at times like Lent and the Jewish high holidays is a very sole searching time, but it more meaningful when this is the norm throughout the year.

A few years back we were in Granada Spain with our children and grandchildren during Holy Week. We made it a point to get back from our day trips by 3 PM to catch the hours of religious processions.

I still look at my photos of emotions on people’s faces. My favorite is the hooded woman who had tears in her eyes.

Country music and clear channel radio broadcasts is truly a wonder. I would often be up studying past midnight while at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. All the local stations were off the air and WCKY from Wheeling, WV came in loud and clear. Also, on very cold winter nights the Grand Old Oprey signal would skip in from Nashville.

On a different note, grandchildren should follow George’s advice and get as much family history as possible from the older generations. The have amazing stories about their life experiences. Ever better if they can be taped. This is best done frequently and is short bursts.

So many time I still want to talk to someone is gone. I’m always kidded by my family for telling many stories over and over again. I can sympathize with them, but I also remind them that one day I will not be able to tell them.

George

3/6/2019 09:14:14 am

Alan, you, like so many New Yorkers, got an early feel for other religions and cultures. I must have gone to a dozen bar mitzvahs in Queens (never a bot mitzvah in those days) and of course learned to sing Jewish hymns with our school chorus. I remember a girl describing the spiritual feeling of fasting at Yom Kippur -- she was so respectful and serious about it. New York becomes ever more mixed -- a group of Mennonites from Brooklyn/Queens came to a memorial for a Jewish friend recently, The other night my wife and I met a Muslim bartender from India in our favorite place Diwan -- he has never touched a drop in his life, but had just mixed 100 margueritas at a private party.
Noo Yawk!!!

Janet Vecsey

3/5/2019 05:15:06 pm

Tomorrow Liz and I will be attending mass together and getting our ashes. Love the part about Nana. Thanks, big brother. Love you!

George

3/6/2019 09:18:13 am

Jane, my love to you and Liz and families.
You were Nana's pet...she loved having you around. As the oldest, I got to do things with her. Once in a while she would take me to the movies after school, at the old Hollis Theater on Jamaica Ave. I remember walking home (uphill) in the miserable cold and dark of winter, with her talking about that pretty young actress, Lucille Ball, in a serious role, as I recall.
Wish I remembered more. Never asked her about Ireland....G

Mendel link

3/6/2019 12:09:44 pm

"Kids, ask questions of your grandparents…and your parents. Get their views, their histories."

Amen, George. Not a bad idea to ask retired columnists, too.

Joshua Rubin

3/6/2019 09:34:39 pm

Nice post.

I just wanted to add to my dad's comments about Holy Week in Grenada. On Thursday of that week, Jen and I and our better halves went back into town late at night for some tapas and to see more of the processions. As it was getting close to Good Friday, the processions grew even more somber. One we saw around midnight just had a lonely bass drum baning a slow rhythm while marchers carried a nine foot wooden statue of Jesus being carried on the cross. A very moving experience.

Also, for anyone traveling to New Orleans, I highly recommend a visit to the House of Dance and Feathers, a backyard museum run by Ronald Lewis in the Lower 9th Ward. He has preserved tons of mardi gras costumes and other beautiful items. For many years he made costumes for a krewe. And he is an honorary member of the Krewe de Jieux, a Jewish Mardi Gras Krewe. A really deep dive into New Orleans Mardi Gras culture. Around the corner from Fats Domino's house, too.

Hansen Alexander

3/7/2019 10:29:36 am

George,
One of your powers as a writer has always been to interest me in rifts I don't have a particular interest in, and this one on Madi Gras, is an example. Madi Gras has never had the allure for me that it does for many people, and going to one would be at the bottom of my bucket list. Actually, it would not be on it at all, LOL.

And yet you had me captivated with this, as usual. Your amazing ability to summarize the feel and experience of an event, Madi Gras, while speeding in a car to move on and cover something else, is so impressive and delightful.

As always,
Hansen

bruce

3/7/2019 11:19:07 am

george,

good piece.

as you know, i have an irish connection too.

my paternal grandfather's father emigrated to canada, ottawa, in the mid 1880s as a teen.

i have the shillelagh he brought with him hanging above my entrance to the living room.

i lost religion before i entered high school tho my favourite man made place is chartres cathedral.

loved israel during my two visits. the history and what it meant to western culture are overwhelming.

my shrove tuesday memories are always of going to christ church (anglican) in greensville for pancakes for the first time 60 years ago.

i started going again a few years ago; went tuesday and the memories flooded back. i used to play floor hockey in the parish hall, go to teentown and AYPA dances, performed in the church choir, went to cubs, my first marrage....

i taped my paternal grandfather (1896-1983) for a story i did that appeared in several newspapers.

he was at vimy ridge, probably the most famous battle for canadians. also at passchendale which became a password for the horror of ww1.

i also used to ask him about xmas when he was a kid in ottawa at the turn of the 20th century. his big memory was getting an orange in the winter.

my maternal grandmother (1898-2006) in nova scotia was far away so i didn't see her often, but she was great to talk to. had her wits about her until the last 2-3 days of her life.

we've discussed listening to the radio.

i recall being in bed in the early 60s and fiddling with my radio dial.

occasionally i'd get wcfl in chicago with dick biondi and wabc (i think) with cousin brucie in nyc.

at the same time i could occasionally hear trains steaming above dundas along the niagara escarpment and sound of the whistle.

there's something romantic about trains......

haven't been to new orleans, but my daughter has been twice including a few months ago. booked again in the near future.

bruce

ps--noticed a bunch cnn talent with their foreheads bearing the cross last night. i'd never seen it before during their broadcasts.

George Vecsey

3/7/2019 05:46:08 pm

Josh: thanks for the memories of Spain. Those processions become quite realistic. House of Dance and Feathers sounds great...next time(!) Hansen, I appreciate your note. Good friend of mine (reporter) hated NOLA -- referred to it as a sewer. I caught the charm, loved taking the St. Charles trolley to the end, just to stare at the Garden District. Ron Swoboda - Ballamer boy -- has taken to NOLA. And Bruce, thanks, my wife interviewed her grandfather about their roots in England -- and much of what he said holds up now that she has Ancestry.com. Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif) was on MSNBC last night with ashes. GV

bruce

3/7/2019 06:09:55 pm

george,

forgot that I interviewed my grandfather twice.

a very long interview for a paper I did at university,

my son, who was about 10 at the time, taped over it. my grandfather had died by that time.

my 'second cousin' did very intensive work on the family tree and went back to the 17th century on my father's side.

a cousin on my mother's side went back to the 16th.

my family name, according to a little research i did, is--perhaps--a corruption of the French picon.

lieu is on cnn all the time. didn't see him last night. just the other four.

bruce

Jason Berry link

3/7/2019 07:55:34 pm

George I enjoyed your post on Mardi Gras. I recently published a book you might appreciate "City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300" (UNC Press). Best always Jason

Gene Palumbo

3/8/2019 10:30:58 am

bruce,

Just in case you haven't already read it: Henry Adams wrote a fine book called Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. Gene

bruce

3/8/2019 11:02:04 am

gene,

oops.

after i sent the response to your adams' recommendation, i had a flash that i had the book.

just checked and i have the 1980 edition.

been so long i'd completely forgotten.

chartres is an awesome experience.

thanks again.

bruce

bruce

3/8/2019 10:44:51 am

gene,

thanks.

i'm aware of the book, but haven't read it.

i've been to chartres around 20 times.

I wrote a story that was published in six papers about an Englishman named Malcolm miller who has been giving tours there since the late 1950s.

into his 80s now. slowed down, but still working.

I should've mentioned in an earlier post that I did a piece on my grandfather's ww1 experience that appeared in several papers up here in the great white north.

kept on running thru my mind when I went to see 'they shall not grow old' last week.

i've never been to mont saint michel….not sure why, but more people i've talked to were disappointed for reasons that i've forgotten.

staying at an Airbnb in paris in october. never used them before. great price and in the middle of the 7th arr near the Ecole militaire metro which is like home to me there.

always good to hear from you.

bruce

Gene Palumbo

3/8/2019 08:32:23 pm

For many years the reputation of Camus remained under a cloud in France, even though his novels were widely read, because of his attack on Marxism in his Combat articles and then in his major philosophical work, L'Homme révolté, or The Rebel. The latter was greeted with scorn, especially in Sartre's journal Les temps modernes, and Camus was ridiculed for his "Red Cross mentality," and as merely a "philosopher for classes terminales" [the basic philosophy course taught in the last years of the French lycée]. But the collapse of Marxism, Maoism, and other leftist ideologies, which exercised such a strong grip in France for so many years, has led to a new and much more positive evaluation of Camus's point of view.

A recent issue of Le Magazine Littéraire devoted to Camus contains a dialogue between two important members of the older generation, Olivier Todd and Alain Finkielkraut, in which both acknowledge having changed their minds about Camus. Todd is particularly important in this context, because he was very close to Sartre (he called himself Sartre's "rebellious son"), and also because he is the author of a major biography of Camus that has not been bettered. Having spent five years of his life writing the biography, he now says that "I have altered many of my attitudes regarding Camus. Today, his personality pleases me very much. He was not only a genuinely sincere man but one who was truly virtuous--and courageous."

Finkielkraut, who admits to not having liked Camus "for political as well as philosophical reasons," now praises his courage in having attacked "icons of radicality" in The Rebel at a time when to do so was to invite the venomous repudiation that Camus in fact received. Also, he rejects Sartre's withering denigration of Camus as failing to attain the caliber of "a thinker" in that book. "He threw a huge brick into the Parisian swamp," writes Finkielkraut. "I see only George Orwell and Arthur Koestler as having done as much to open people's eyes."

Edwin W Martin

3/8/2019 01:40:11 pm

"Thanks for the memories...". Growing up in Rockville Centre, I was in and out of Catholic and Jewish friends homes, maybe even Protestant, but who knew! So, Ash Wednesday and kids with ashes, bar mitzvah, communions were part of everyday. On Facebook I always pass those tests that proclaim, " If you know 10 of these words you are Jewish, or Italian, etc."

We lived in Tuscaloosa, Ala.in the "Dark Ages." and, happily,the dawn of better times WWL had our loved Jazz after midnight, "Moonglow with Martin" from the Roosevelt Hotel. WHO from Des Moines, kept up on Girls basketball from Ottumwa! Who knew. Cincinnati, forget call letter, oc casionallly clear enough to hear some Red's games and same for the Pirates from KDKA. But! On the weekend NBC had it's first magazine format,"Monitor" with "Bob and Ray!" Which we listened to most of the way from People nsylvania to Bama.

George Vecsey

3/8/2019 08:25:33 pm

Ed: WLW in Cincinnati. Kept me listening to Reds games 70-72 with a young guy named Al Michaels. And a great DJ named Jim LaBarbara.
WSM for the Opry out of Nashville, but they were on a network, also, I believe. I could get them on Long Island. I recall a late-night station in Marshalltown Iowa but the big ones seem to be Des Moines and Waterloo. Plus -- some great station in the Bahamas in the late 60s, with a late-night talker you could hear in Florida, bemoaning the US and "the moneybags press." That brother was great.

George Vecsey

3/8/2019 08:27:27 pm

Ed: WLW. Young singer named Doris Kappelhof, I believe she went to Hollywood and changed her name. GV

bruce

3/8/2019 08:32:42 pm

george,

I know she's been reclusive in carmel for years, but still looks good..all things considered.

she must rank up there for being in the public eye--for accomplishing something--longer than almost anybody at this stage.

bruce

Gene Palumbo

3/8/2019 03:50:52 pm

bruce,
I read it more than 50 years ago in my "apartment" in Paris - that is, a garret that measured about 5' by 10'. A bit cramped, but what can you expect for $1/day! Honest, $1/day, on the outskirts of Paris. For students there were weekend bus excursions to, among other places, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. We'd leave on Saturday mornings and come back Sunday afternoon. Bargain basement prices and accommodations, but who cared!

Here's something from Amazon's page about Henry Adams and the book:

"... a prolific writer, the editor of the prestigious North American Review, and a professor of medieval, european, and American history at Harvard), Adams was one of the few men of his era who attempted to understand art, thought, culture, and history as one complex force field of interacting energies. His two masterworks in this dazzling effort are Mont Saint Michel and Chartres and The Education of Henry Adams, published one after the other in 1904 and 1907. Taken together they may be read as Adams' spiritual autobiography ..."

bruce

3/8/2019 05:05:59 pm

gene,

one buck a day, eh....that's why they're called the good old days.

being young can be a wonderful thing.

I can remember Europe on $5 a day, but....

have you ever read willian shirer's memoirs?

love reading about his time in paris in the 20s and the story how it came about.

something comforting about reading adams writing about those pillars of western culture more than a century ago.

how long were you in paris/france and have you been back often?

bruce

Gene Palumbo

3/8/2019 07:16:18 pm

bruce,
I'd never want to exaggerate. True, it was only a buck a day for food, but one also had to eat, for that I probably spent at least another buck a day. I had the good fortune of living a block away from a market; fresh produce and cheese were trucked in every day; and once I got the timing down right, I could arrive at a nearby bakery just went the baguettes were coming out of the oven, piping hot.

I was only there for a summer (and have never returned), on my way back to the U.S. to begin graduate school after teaching and coaching a basketball team at a high school in -- believe it or not -- Baghdad. I was going to need French for grad school and, while in Baghdad, I had heard about a super-cheap intensive summer course in French at the Sorbonne. Before returning to my garret at night, I would prowl the Paris streets, walking by the places where, I was told, Sartre, DeBeauvoir etc. hung out; back in the garret, would read DeBeauvoir's Memories of a Dutiful Daughter. Among the French, the two who had meant the most to me were Simone Weil and Albert Camus; by that time, both were dead. This was after the rupture between Camus and Sartre, and Sartre was getting the better of it. That later changed - a change which made me happy. (see Joseph Frank's fine review of Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947)

bruce

3/8/2019 10:17:46 pm

gene,

read the frank piece.

enjoyed it.

all he went thru to die in a bloody car crash.

bruce

bruce

3/8/2019 08:17:13 pm

gene,

sounds like you had some interesting times.

have you written about that part of your life?

i'm surprised you've managed to avoid paris for decades.

i'm guessing you coached a basketball team in baghdad because they didn't have a hockey team.

my french is crap and my japanese is worse so i've only read 'no exit' en anglais.

i've read deirdre bair's bio of de beauvoir.

been to les deux magots once, but passed it many times.

know weil and camus but haven't read either.

i'll google frank.

thanks.

bruce

George Vecsey

3/8/2019 08:31:49 pm

My wife and I lived on Europe on $5 a Day for a week in Paris in 1966. People would shake their heads and chastise us for Vietnam. Like, didn't we learn? But the city was grand....I think we paid 50 centimes extra for a bath. Can still taste the coffee and croissants. April in Paris., Nice to be young.

Ed Martin

3/9/2019 01:42:01 pm

I can’t resist! Paris in the late 60’s, Peggy and my first visit, but not the last by any means. Woman in window opening to street making delicious crepes with s cigarette dangling from her lips; concierge at tiny hotel Lord Byron, (French writer?) calling out “Neuf” at me, telling me how to pronounce “nine” as in room Nuef; the overwhelming Impressionists at Jue de Paume; Sarge Shriver, the US Ambassador to France admiring Peggy in au courant “mini-skirt,”—“That’s a nifty dress! , Art Buchwald at HT., c’est La vie.

bruce

3/8/2019 08:37:50 pm

gene,

I knew camus was controversial and fell out of favour, but hadn't read enough to know anything more than that.

bruce