Month: February 2021

South Africa has held its annual International Public Arts Festival (IPAF), despite the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing measures. Turnout was low but those attending welcomed the street festival, held Feb. 10-14, as a chance to get out of the house.Scores of people attended the IPAF’s opening in Cape Town this month – even though South Africa has been the country worst hit on the African continent by the coronavirus pandemic.The annual street arts festival strictly followed the government’s COVID-19 rules, including no groups larger than 50 people – said one of the organizers, Alexandre Tilmas.“The best way was to split people. Because we are painting outdoors, and the artists are outdoors, every guest that want[s] to visit us, we put them in tiny little groups and send them [to] visit the neighborhood.”The artists changed the landscape in the Salt River neighborhood, a former industrial area made famous by the colorful murals.The five-year-old festival usually attracts artists from abroad.But this year, because of the pandemic’s travel restrictions, just two showed up to create their murals.Despite the low turnout, festivals like the IPAF should be held to boost South Africa’s struggling tourism sector, said tour guide Analisa Zigana.“You know, you need to sanitize, we need to keep our social distance. If we keep to those regulations, then I think it’s still okay. So, we can continue with the festivals but, just make sure that we keep to the regulations, Zigana said.The World Travel Awards has voted Cape Town Africa’s leading festival and event destination for the last three years.But the tourism sector also is suffering amid the pandemic and Cape Town cancelled all big events again this year.Nonetheless, festival attendees like Laeti Maboang welcomed the break from pandemic lockdown measures aimed at preventing the virus from spreading.“The fact that it’s still happening even [when] the pandemic is still going on. And I feel like we are in need of this, we are in need of being out, interacting with people; even we have the mask,” Maboang said.South Africa a year ago enacted one of the severest lockdowns worldwide, with restrictions on gatherings, movement, and sales of alcohol.The country has registered the highest number of confirmed cases on the continent with nearly 1.5 million infections and more than 48,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. COVID-19 is the illness caused by the coronavirus.This year’s festival displayed more than 100 murals and focused on three points: creativity, sustainability and safety. 
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Artworks owned by the late artist Christo and his wife, Jean-Claude, a duo famed for wrapping landmarks in fabric, sold for $9.6 million at auction on Wednesday.The 28 lots under the hammer at Sotheby’s in Paris included drawings for the couple’s “The Umbrellas (Joint project for Japan and USA),” two spectacular installations by the couple in 1991 consisting of thousands of umbrellas erected simultaneously in Japan and Los Angeles.Less than a year after his death at the age of 84, Christo is evidently more in demand than ever, with more than three quarters of the works on sale selling above estimate.The works, snapped up by buyers in the United States, Asia and Europe, had been expected to sell for between $3 million and $4.5 million collectively.The preparatory drawings for the yellow Californian umbrellas set a new record for a work by the Bulgarian-born U.S. artist at $2 million, while the Japanese version sold for about $1.4 million.A second set of works from the couple’s private collection are due to go on sale Thursday.Christo collaborated with Jeanne-Claude, his wife of 51 years, until her death in 2009 and continued to produce dramatic pieces into his 80s.From Paris’s oldest bridge to Berlin’s Reichstag, they spent decades wrapping landmarks and creating improbable structures around the world.Their large-scale productions would take years of preparation and were costly to erect, but they were mostly ephemeral, coming down after just weeks or months.
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Rush Limbaugh, the talk radio host who ripped into liberals, foretold the rise of Donald Trump and laid waste to political correctness with a merry brand of malice that made him one of the most powerful voices on the American right, died Wednesday. He was 70.  
Limbaugh, an outspoken lover of cigars, had been diagnosed with lung cancer. His death was announced on his website.
President Trump, during a State of the Union speech, awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.  
Unflinchingly conservative, wildly partisan, bombastically self-promoting and larger than life, Limbaugh galvanized listeners for more than 30 years with his talent for vituperation and sarcasm.
He called himself an entertainer, but his rants during his three-hour weekday radio show broadcast on nearly 600 U.S. stations shaped the national political conversation, swaying ordinary Republicans and the direction of their party.
Blessed with a made-for-broadcasting voice, he delivered his opinions with such certainty that his followers, or “Ditto-heads,” as he dubbed them, took his words as sacred truth.
“In my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement,” Limbaugh, with typical immodesty, told author Zev Chafets in the 2010 book “Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One.”
Forbes magazine estimated his 2018 income at $84 million, ranking him behind only Howard Stern among radio personalities.  
Limbaugh took as a badge of honor the title “most dangerous man in America.” He said he was the “truth detector,” the “doctor of democracy,” a “lover of mankind,” a “harmless, lovable little fuzz ball” and an “all-around good guy.” He claimed he had “talent on loan from God.”  
Long before Trump’s rise in politics, Limbaugh was pinning insulting names on his enemies and raging against the mainstream media, accusing it of feeding the public lies. He called Democrats and others on the left communists, wackos, feminazis, liberal extremists, faggots and radicals.
When actor Michael J. Fox, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, appeared in a Democratic campaign commercial, Limbaugh mocked his tremors. When a Washington advocate for the homeless killed himself, he cracked jokes. As the AIDS epidemic raged in the 1980s, he made the dying a punchline. He called 12-year-old Chelsea Clinton a dog.  
He suggested that the Democrats’ stand on reproductive rights would have led to the abortion of Jesus Christ. When a woman accused Duke University lacrosse players of rape, he derided her as a “ho,” and when a Georgetown University law student supported expanded contraceptive coverage, he dismissed her as a “slut.” When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, Limbaugh said: “I hope he fails.”  
He was frequently accused of bigotry and blatant racism for such antics as playing the song “Barack the Magic Negro” on his show. The lyrics, set to the tune of “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” describe Obama as someone who “makes guilty whites feel good” and is “black, but not authentically.”  
Limbaugh often enunciated the Republican platform better and more entertainingly than any party leader, becoming a GOP kingmaker whose endorsement and friendship were sought. Polls consistently found he was regarded as the voice of the party.
His idol, Ronald Reagan, wrote a letter of praise that Limbaugh proudly read on the air in 1992: “You’ve become the number one voice for conservatism.” In 1994, Limbaugh was so widely credited with the first Republican takeover of Congress in 40 years that the GOP made him an honorary member of the new class.
During the 2016 presidential primaries, Limbaugh said he realized early on that Trump would be the nominee, and he likened the candidate’s deep connection with his supporters to his own. In a 2018 interview, he conceded Trump is rude but said that is because he is “fearless and willing to fight against the things that no Republican has been willing to fight against.”  
Trump, for his part, heaped praise on Limbaugh, and they golfed together. (The president’s Mar-a-Lago estate is eight miles down the same Palm Beach boulevard as Limbaugh’s $40 million beachfront expanse.) In honoring Limbaugh at the State of the Union, Trump called his friend “a special man beloved by millions.”  
Limbaugh influenced the likes of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and countless other conservative commentators who pushed the boundaries of what passes as acceptable public discourse.
His brand of blunt, no-gray-area debate spread to cable TV, town hall meetings, political rallies and Congress itself, emerging during the battles over health care and the ascent of the tea party movement.
“What he did was to bring a paranoia and really mean, nasty rhetoric and hyperpartisanship into the mainstream,” said Martin Kaplan, a University of Southern California professor who is an expert on the intersection of politics and entertainment and a frequent critic of Limbaugh. “The kind of antagonism and vituperativeness that characterized him instantly became acceptable everywhere.”
In one breathless segment in 1991, he railed against the homeless, AIDS patients, criticism of Christopher Columbus, aid to the Soviet Union, condoms in schools, animal rights advocates, multiculturalism and the social safety net.
His foes accused him of trafficking in half-truths, bias and outright lies — the very tactics he decried in others. Al Franken, the comedian and one-time senator, came out with a book in 1996 called “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations.”
In 2003, Limbaugh admitted an addiction to painkillers and went into rehab. Authorities opened an investigation into alleged “doctor shopping,” saying he received up to 2,000 pills from four doctors over six months.  
He ultimately reached a deal with prosecutors in which they agreed to drop the charge if he continued with drug treatment and paid $30,000 toward the cost of the investigation.
He lost his hearing around that time. He said it was from an autoimmune disorder, while his critics said hearing loss is a known side effect of painkiller abuse. He received cochlear implants, which restored his hearing and saved his career.  
A portly, round-faced figure, Limbaugh was divorced three times, after marrying Roxy Maxine McNeely in 1977, Michelle Sixta in 1983 and Marta Fitzgerald in 1994. He married his fourth wife, Kathryn Rogers, in a lavish 2010 ceremony featuring Elton John. He had no children.  
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III was born Jan. 12, 1951, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. His mother was the former Mildred Armstrong, and his father, Rush Limbaugh Jr., was a lawyer.
Rusty, as the younger Limbaugh was known, was chubby and shy, with little interest in school but a passion for broadcasting. He would turn down the radio during St. Louis Cardinals baseball games, offering play-by-play, and gave running commentary during the evening news. By high school, he had snagged a radio job.
Limbaugh dropped out of Southeast Missouri State University for a string of DJ gigs, from his hometown, to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh and then Kansas City. Known as Rusty Sharpe and then Jeff Christie on the air, he mostly spun Top 40 hits and sprinkled in glimpses of his wit and conservatism.  
“One of the early reasons radio interested me was that I thought it would make me popular,” he once wrote.
But he didn’t gain the following he craved and gave up on radio for several years, beginning in 1979, becoming promotions director for baseball’s Kansas City Royals. He ultimately returned to broadcasting, again in Kansas City and then Sacramento, California.
It was there in the early 1980s that Limbaugh really garnered an audience, broadcasting shows dripping with sarcasm and bravado. The stage name was gone.  
Limbaugh began broadcasting nationally in 1988 from WABC in New York. While his know-it-all commentary quickly gained traction, he was dismayed by his reception in the big city. He thought he would be welcomed by Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather.
“I came to New York,” he wrote, “and I immediately became a nothing, a zero.”
Ultimately, Limbaugh moved his radio show to Palm Beach and bought his massive estate. Talkers Magazine, which covers the industry, said Limbaugh had the nation’s largest audience in 2019, with 15 million unique listeners each week.  
“When Rush wants to talk to America, all he has to do is grab his microphone. He attracts more listeners with just his voice than the rest of us could ever imagine,” Beck wrote in Time magazine in 2009. “He is simply on another level.”
Limbaugh expounded on his world view in the best-selling books “The Way Things Ought to Be” and “See, I Told You So.”  
He had a late-night TV show in the 1990s that got decent ratings but lackluster advertising because of his divisive message. When he guest-hosted “The Pat Sajak Show” in 1990, audience members called him a Nazi and repeatedly shouted at him.
He was fired from a short-lived job as an NFL commentator on ESPN in 2003 after he said the media had made a star out of Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb because it was “very desirous that a black quarterback do well.” His racial remarks also derailed a 2009 bid to become one of the owners of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams.
“Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and just think to yourself, `I am just full of hot gas?'” David Letterman asked him in 1993 on “The Late Show.”  
“I am a servant of humanity,” Limbaugh replied. “I am in the relentless pursuit of the truth. I actually sit back and think that I’m just so fortunate to have this opportunity to tell people what’s really going on.”
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Yoshiro Mori’s replacement as president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee is expected to be named very quickly. The 83-year-old former prime minister was forced to step down last week after making demeaning remarks about women. Basically, he said they talk too much.There is pressure to name a woman to replace Mori. But don’t bet on it happening with the Olympics opening in just over five months. Mori tried last week to work behind the scenes to appoint 84-year-old Saburo Kawabuchi, the former head of the governing body of Japanese soccer. Public opinion and social media quickly pushed back against the move and Kawabuchi withdrew from consideration. Some news reports in Japan say the front-runner might be 63-year-old Yasuhiro Yamashita, the head of the Japanese Olympic Committee and a judo gold medalist from the 1984 Olympics. Yamashita took over the Japanese Olympic body after his predecessor, Tsunekazu Takeda, was forced to step down in 2019 in a bribery scandal. Yamashita is also a member of the International Olympic Committee by virtue of his position in Japan. A panel to pick Mori’s replacement, set up by the organizing committee, met on Tuesday. It was expected to meet again Wednesday and come up with a list of candidates. It’s unclear when the choice will be announced. The panel is headed by 85-year-old Fujio Mitarai, the chairman of the camera company Canon. Organizers have promised transparency. However, except for Mitarai, the other members have not been announced. It is to be a 50-50 split of men and women with fewer than 10 members. Q: Have qualified women been mentioned for the job? A: Media in Japan have listed almost a dozen women — most in their 50s — that seem to fit the bill. Many are former Olympians and medal winners. Japan ranks 121st out of 153 in terms of gender equality in a report done by the World Economic Forum, and the “old boy network” remains stronger in Japan than in most developed countries. Q: Who are the female possibilities? A: Seiko Hashimoto, the current Olympic minister in the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, has been mentioned frequently. She won a bronze medal in speedskating in 1992. Reports Tuesday said she was reluctant to take the job. There are many other Olympic medal winners, but it’s not clear any will be interested: Yuko Arimori (silver 1992, bronze 1996, marathon); Mikako Kotani (2 bronze 1988, synchronized swimming); Naoko Takahashi (gold 2000, marathon); Yuko Mitsuya (bronze 1984, volleyball); Kaori Yamaguchi (bronze 1988, judo). Also mentioned has been former Olympic minister Tamayo Marukawa and businesswoman Tomoko Namba. In addition to Yamashita, some men have also been mentioned. They include former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Olympic gold-medal swimmer Daichi Suzuki, and Koji Murofushi, who won gold and bronze in the hammer throw. Q: Did Mori’s comments do any real damage to the Olympics? A: In terms of operation, probably not. Mori surely helped work out many of the political deals to push through funding. Official costs are now $15.4 billion, though government audit suggests it might be twice that much. But now the postponed Olympics are in the hands of the pandemic. But the reputation of Japan and the Olympics took a hit. The International Olympic Committee has bragged about the strides in has made in gender equality over the past two decades — on the field and on its boards. Japan, not so much. This has not helped public opinion. Just over 80% in polls in Japan say the Olympics should be canceled or postponed again. “Japan is still governed by a club of old men.” Koichi Nakano, a politicial scientist at Sophia University, wrote in an email. “They continue to pick these old men in order to silence possible dissent and to continue to put women ‘in their place.’ Social norms are changing, though, and a clear majority of the Japanese found Mori’s comments unacceptable.” Q: How is the gender balance in the Tokyo organizing committee? A: Not good. The executive board and council met on Friday to accept Mori’s resignation. Of the 38 members of the executive board, eight are women (21%). None of the vice presidents is a woman. Of the six council members, one is a woman (16.7%). The day-to-day leadership is also almost all male, led by 77-year-old Toshiro Muto, the CEO and former deputy governor of the Bank of Japan. 
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Black Americans attend church more regularly than Americans overall, and pray more often. Most attend churches that are predominantly Black, yet many would like those congregations to become racially diverse. There is broad respect for Black churches’ historical role in seeking racial equality, coupled with a widespread perception they have lost influence in recent decades. Those are among the key findings in a comprehensive report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 8,660 Black adults across the United States about their religious experiences. It is Pew’s first large-scale survey on the topic. Among Black adults who go to religious services, 60% attend churches where the senior clergy and most or all of the congregation are Black, Pew found. It said 25% are part of multiracial congregations, and 13% are part of congregations that are predominantly white or another ethnicity. Pew said patterns of worship are shifting across generations: Younger Black adults, born since 1980, attend church less often than their elders, and those who attend are less likely to do so in a predominantly Black congregation. FILE – Church parishioners sit socially distanced at a prayer vigil for racial justice at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Seattle, July 19, 2020.Among 30 Black pastors and religious leaders interviewed by Pew, some predicted further shrinkage of predominantly Black churches and an increase in multiracial congregations. “I don’t think there should be a Black Church,” said Dr. Clyde Posley Jr. of Antioch Baptist Church in Indianapolis. “There isn’t a Black heaven and a white heaven. … A proper church will one day eschew the label of Black Church and be a universal church.” The survey found that 66% of Black Americans are Protestant, 6% are Catholic and 3% identify with other Christian faiths — mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses. Another 3% belong to Islam or other non-Christian faiths. Some 21% are not affiliated with any religion and instead identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” Black Americans born since 1980 are far more likely to be among the unaffiliated. Survey responses were collected from November 2019 through June 2020, but most respondents completed the survey by Feb. 10, 2020, before the coronavirus outbreak and the racial-injustice protests that spread after the death of George Floyd in May while in the custody of Minneapolis police.  Among the respondents, 77% said predominantly Black churches had played a role in helping Black people move toward racial equality. Yet just one third said historically Black congregations should preserve their traditional character; 61% said these congregations should become more racially diverse. Influence of churchesNearly half of respondents said Black churches are less influential today than 50 years ago. Among the clergy interviewed by Pew, some said too few Black pastors have been on the front lines of recent struggles against racism.  “When you look at Black Lives Matter, this is the first time that there has been any political uprising and the church isn’t spearheading it,” said the Rev. Harvey L. Vaughn III, senior pastor of Bethel AME Church in San Diego.  FILE – Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church, and his wife, Vera McKissic, pray during services in Arlington, Texas, June 7, 2020.”We’re not as bold and courageous as we used to be,” said the Rev. Sandra Reed of St. Mark AME Zion Church in Newtown, Pennsylvania. “I have to say, I’m somewhat ashamed of that, because the AME Zion Church is known as the Freedom Church that was at the forefront of addressing all the ills of America, and we sort of lost that.” The survey indicates that congregants at Black Protestant churches are more likely to hear preaching about race relations and criminal justice reform than those attending multiracial or white churches.  Black Protestants, meanwhile, are less likely than U.S. Protestants overall to hear sermons on abortion. Pew found 68% of Black adults said abortion should be allowed in most or all cases — compared with 59% of all U.S. adults. Pew also posed some survey questions to 4,574 Americans who do not identify as Black, to provide comparisons.  Asked whether religion is very important in their lives, 59% of Black respondents said yes, next to 40% of all U.S. adults. Asked if they prayed daily, 63% of Black respondents said yes, compared with 44% overall.  Women as leadersAccording to a recent national study cited by Pew, women make up only 16% of religious leaders at Black Protestant churches. Pew’s survey found that 85% of respondents favored allowing women to serve as senior leaders of congregations, however.  Pew said the survey’s margin of error, for the full number of respondents, was plus or minus 1.5 percentage points. Black pastors and worshippers in predominantly white or multiracial denominations, face a number of contemporary race-related issues. FILE – Parishioners clap during a worship service at the First Baptist Church, a predominantly African-American congregation, in Macon, Ga., July 10, 2016.Some Black pastors have left the predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention in dismay over decisions by white leaders that they view as downplaying the problem of systemic racism.  In the Episcopal Church and some other mainline Protestant denominations, there are reparations initiatives aimed at making amends for past involvement in slavery and the mistreatment of Black and Indigenous people.  And many Black Catholics have urged leaders of their church to be more forceful in combating racism. Some have asked the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to consider reparations and promote the teaching of Black Catholic history in Catholic schools. “We still don’t have the church taking a necessary stand against systemic racism,” Tia Noelle Pratt, a sociologist who has studied racism in the U.S. Catholic church and an adviser on Pew’s survey, told The Associated Press via email. “This means acknowledging the white supremacy that exists in the church and ways white church leaders and white members of the faithful benefit from it.” The Rev. Mario Powell, a Black priest who heads a Jesuit middle school in Brooklyn, said Catholic clergy need to preach more often against racism and speak out against some of their colleagues “who brazenly post white nationalist ideology online.”  
 
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“Our Big Chief told us he doesn’t want us out there this Mardi Gras because of COVID,” Aaron “Flagboy Giz” Hartley told VOA. “He said it wasn’t safe for our members or for the public watching us.”Until this year, Hartley took part in a festive New Orleans tradition dating back to the 1800s, the Mardi Gras Indian. In a unique intermingling of African American and Native American cultures, scores of Black paradegoers don colorful renditions of some elements of Native American garb.”There’s nothing like it in the world,” said Hartley.February 16 is Fat Tuesday, which literally translates to “Mardi Gras.” For Catholics in many parts of the world, the day represents one final celebration before the more solemn six-week period known as Lent.A festively-dressed dinosaurs greets visitors at this home in New Orleans. (Matt Haines/VOA)Perhaps no place in the world celebrates the day more raucously than New Orleans. In a normal year, you’d find Mardi Gras Indians like Hartley with their elaborate suits made of beads, feathers and sequins. You’d find colorful, thematic floats the size of small buildings rumbling down oak-lined avenues as masked “Krewe” members toss beads, cups, decorative coins (and just about everything else you can or can’t imagine) to hundreds of thousands of screaming, costumed onlookers packed on the street.You’d see and hear dozens of marching bands high stepping behind the floats, and you’d be delighted by a smattering of dance krewes — comprised of members of all ages and skill levels — with playful and often sexually suggestive names. 
 
The COVID-19 pandemic has put all of that on pause, to the sorrow of countless locals. “It’s the dopest [best] part of the richest culture in the culture in the country,” said Hartley. “We gotta do something. You can’t just cancel Mardi Gras.”Parades canceled On November 17, citing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans due to the coronavirus, New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell announced all parades in the city would be canceled. Last year’s Mardi Gras took place days before COVID-19 cases grabbed the public’s attention and those festivities are believed to have made New Orleans an early hotspot for the virus.This year, after several large gatherings on New Orleans’ famed Bourbon Street — fueled to some degree by visitors — the mayor announced she was also closing the city’s bars during one of their busiest times of the year.”I understand the decision,” said Cole Newton, owner of local bar Twelve Mile Limit. “People would have gotten sick and died, and no amount of temporary economic boost would have been worth it.”While New Orleanians acknowledge that holding Mardi Gras as usual could lead to a public health catastrophe, the economic hit is painful for service industry workers like bartender Kristin Boring. “It makes my stomach drop to lose more money,” Boring said. “But I understand it’s for the best. It’s just a tough situation.”A different kind of Mardi Gras “The thing about Mardi Gras is that it’s not put on by a single person or organization,” said New Orleans resident Laura Plante. “It’s organized by individual people. That’s what makes it special.”In the wake of the decision to cancel parades, residents almost immediately began proposing new, safer ways to celebrate.Megan Boudreaux, a 30-year-old insurance adjuster with no Mardi Gras leadership experience, was one of those people. A few days after the mayor announced the cancellation of parades, she tweeted a joke that if revelers weren’t allowed to ride floats and throw beads at stationary onlookers, she would just decorate her home like a float and throw beads at random passersby. What started as a joke has grown into a phenomenon. Approximately 3,000 homes — mostly in the New Orleans area, but with a few as far away as Saudi Arabia and Australia — have been decorated as Mardi Gras parade floats. The movement, called “Krewe of House Floats,” has transformed the city.”It went way beyond anything I imagined it could be months ago,” Boudreaux said, “and every time I think it’s peaked, a new house float pops up and becomes a new favorite.”Octopus tentacles burst through the windows of this New Orleans home. (Photo courtesy of Kristin Boring)Walking through the city’s many neighborhoods, onlookers will find everything from modest houses with Carnival float-themed flowers and beads, to mansions with massive octopus tentacles seemingly busting through the home’s many windows. Other houses in the liberal-leaning city are decorated with less-than-flattering images of former President Donald Trump, while others are focused on more fantastical elements — like swooping dragons or Harry Potter.When asked why so many have rallied behind the unusual idea instead of just waiting for next year’s Mardi Gras, Boudreaux pointed to the difficult year.”This holiday has meant so much to so many people for hundreds of years,” she said. “This year especially we’ve lost so much and so many people. I think folks were desperate for something positive to direct their energies toward. They yearned for some connection and house floats gave them that.” New traditions “New Orleanians take Mardi Gras fun seriously,” explained Chaya Conrad, owner of Bywater Bakery, where she makes some of the city’s most celebrated king cakes — a Mardi Gras confection with a several-thousand year history.”We all have our own role to play in Carnival,” she said, “and I think this year we’re creating new traditions for this unique moment that could be celebrated for years to come.”Some — like Devin De Wulf, founder of the Hire a Mardi Gras Artist initiative — are also working tirelessly to protect old traditions in danger because of the pandemic.”Every Mardi Gras parade you watch is the work of countless float makers, artists, costume designers and musicians,” De Wulf said. “We admire the parades, but we don’t think about who’s behind them. This year those people are out of work.”Through Hire a Mardi Gras Artist, he has raised more than $300,000 to pay 48 New Orleans artists to create 23 house floats. Mardi Gras artist Rene Pierre works on a piece of a house float, in New Orleans. (Photo courtesy of Rene Pierre)Rene Pierre is a Mardi Gras artist, too. He would typically begin working on floats 10 months before the parades and that work is an essential part of his income. But this year, because of the uncertainty around COVID-19, work was scarce.Because of initiatives like Hire a Mardi Gras Artist and Krewe of House Floats, though, Pierre said he has been commissioned to produce 64 house floats since December.”I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Personally, it was my family’s ticket out of a really tough financial situation. And as a city, it restored our morale in a big way.” Coming home Laura Renae Steeg visits a New Orleans home decorated to honor local legend Big Freedia. (Photo courtesy of Laura Renae Steeg)That restoration of morale extends beyond those currently living in New Orleans. Laura Renae Steeg loves the region so much she named her daughter Magnolia after the Louisiana state flower.”I get a daily reminder of this place I love,” Steeg said.Her husband’s job moved the family to Maryland nearly a decade ago, but she has returned to New Orleans every year for Mardi Gras — except the year Magnolia was born.Steeg had planned to skip the trip this year until tragedy struck. Her father unexpectedly passed away in January.”It was a really dark time for me, and then I saw all of these house floats popping up in New Orleans,” she said. “This has been a dark year for a lot of people, and it reminded me that beauty can emerge during terrible times, too. I needed to see it.”Steeg created a travel plan to limit the risk to herself and others and drove 1,800 kilometers from Maryland to Louisiana. She visited a drive-thru parade of some of Mardi Gras’ most famous floats and someone threw beads into her car. The moment, the music and the people overwhelmed her and she broke down crying in her car. “It just struck me that, like this city, we’ve all been through so much. It’s been through hurricanes, pandemics and so much more — but it always perseveres just like it will this time. It just struck me that you can’t beat spirit as strong as Mardi Gras. New Orleanians won’t allow it.” 
 
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“Our Big Chief told us he doesn’t want us out there this Mardi Gras because of COVID,” Aaron “Flagboy Giz” Hartley told VOA. “He said it wasn’t safe for our members or for the public watching us.”Until this year, Hartley took part in a festive New Orleans tradition dating back to the 1800s, the Mardi Gras Indian. In a unique intermingling of African American and Native American cultures, scores of Black paradegoers don colorful renditions of some elements of Native American garb.”There’s nothing like it in the world,” said Hartley.February 16 is Fat Tuesday, which literally translates to “Mardi Gras.” For Catholics in many parts of the world, the day represents one final celebration before the more solemn six-week period known as Lent.A festively-dressed dinosaurs greets visitors at this home in New Orleans. (Matt Haines/VOA)Perhaps no place in the world celebrates the day more raucously than New Orleans. In a normal year, you’d find Mardi Gras Indians like Hartley with their elaborate suits made of beads, feathers and sequins. You’d find colorful, thematic floats the size of small buildings rumbling down oak-lined avenues as masked “Krewe” members toss beads, cups, decorative coins (and just about everything else you can or can’t imagine) to hundreds of thousands of screaming, costumed onlookers packed on the street.You’d see and hear dozens of marching bands high stepping behind the floats, and you’d be delighted by a smattering of dance krewes — comprised of members of all ages and skill levels — with playful and often sexually suggestive names. 
 
The COVID-19 pandemic has put all of that on pause, to the sorrow of countless locals. “It’s the dopest [best] part of the richest culture in the culture in the country,” said Hartley. “We gotta do something. You can’t just cancel Mardi Gras.”Parades canceled On November 17, citing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans due to the coronavirus, New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell announced all parades in the city would be canceled. Last year’s Mardi Gras took place days before COVID-19 cases grabbed the public’s attention and those festivities are believed to have made New Orleans an early hotspot for the virus.This year, after several large gatherings on New Orleans’ famed Bourbon Street — fueled to some degree by visitors — the mayor announced she was also closing the city’s bars during one of their busiest times of the year.”I understand the decision,” said Cole Newton, owner of local bar Twelve Mile Limit. “People would have gotten sick and died, and no amount of temporary economic boost would have been worth it.”While New Orleanians acknowledge that holding Mardi Gras as usual could lead to a public health catastrophe, the economic hit is painful for service industry workers like bartender Kristin Boring. “It makes my stomach drop to lose more money,” Boring said. “But I understand it’s for the best. It’s just a tough situation.”A different kind of Mardi Gras “The thing about Mardi Gras is that it’s not put on by a single person or organization,” said New Orleans resident Laura Plante. “It’s organized by individual people. That’s what makes it special.”In the wake of the decision to cancel parades, residents almost immediately began proposing new, safer ways to celebrate.Megan Boudreaux, a 30-year-old insurance adjuster with no Mardi Gras leadership experience, was one of those people. A few days after the mayor announced the cancellation of parades, she tweeted a joke that if revelers weren’t allowed to ride floats and throw beads at stationary onlookers, she would just decorate her home like a float and throw beads at random passersby. What started as a joke has grown into a phenomenon. Approximately 3,000 homes — mostly in the New Orleans area, but with a few as far away as Saudi Arabia and Australia — have been decorated as Mardi Gras parade floats. The movement, called “Krewe of House Floats,” has transformed the city.”It went way beyond anything I imagined it could be months ago,” Boudreaux said, “and every time I think it’s peaked, a new house float pops up and becomes a new favorite.”Octopus tentacles burst through the windows of this New Orleans home. (Photo courtesy of Kristin Boring)Walking through the city’s many neighborhoods, onlookers will find everything from modest houses with Carnival float-themed flowers and beads, to mansions with massive octopus tentacles seemingly busting through the home’s many windows. Other houses in the liberal-leaning city are decorated with less-than-flattering images of former President Donald Trump, while others are focused on more fantastical elements — like swooping dragons or Harry Potter.When asked why so many have rallied behind the unusual idea instead of just waiting for next year’s Mardi Gras, Boudreaux pointed to the difficult year.”This holiday has meant so much to so many people for hundreds of years,” she said. “This year especially we’ve lost so much and so many people. I think folks were desperate for something positive to direct their energies toward. They yearned for some connection and house floats gave them that.” New traditions “New Orleanians take Mardi Gras fun seriously,” explained Chaya Conrad, owner of Bywater Bakery, where she makes some of the city’s most celebrated king cakes — a Mardi Gras confection with a several-thousand year history.”We all have our own role to play in Carnival,” she said, “and I think this year we’re creating new traditions for this unique moment that could be celebrated for years to come.”Some — like Devin De Wulf, founder of the Hire a Mardi Gras Artist initiative — are also working tirelessly to protect old traditions in danger because of the pandemic.”Every Mardi Gras parade you watch is the work of countless float makers, artists, costume designers and musicians,” De Wulf said. “We admire the parades, but we don’t think about who’s behind them. This year those people are out of work.”Through Hire a Mardi Gras Artist, he has raised more than $300,000 to pay 48 New Orleans artists to create 23 house floats. Mardi Gras artist Rene Pierre works on a piece of a house float, in New Orleans. (Photo courtesy of Rene Pierre)Rene Pierre is a Mardi Gras artist, too. He would typically begin working on floats 10 months before the parades and that work is an essential part of his income. But this year, because of the uncertainty around COVID-19, work was scarce.Because of initiatives like Hire a Mardi Gras Artist and Krewe of House Floats, though, Pierre said he has been commissioned to produce 64 house floats since December.”I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Personally, it was my family’s ticket out of a really tough financial situation. And as a city, it restored our morale in a big way.” Coming home Laura Renae Steeg visits a New Orleans home decorated to honor local legend Big Freedia. (Photo courtesy of Laura Renae Steeg)That restoration of morale extends beyond those currently living in New Orleans. Laura Renae Steeg loves the region so much she named her daughter Magnolia after the Louisiana state flower.”I get a daily reminder of this place I love,” Steeg said.Her husband’s job moved the family to Maryland nearly a decade ago, but she has returned to New Orleans every year for Mardi Gras — except the year Magnolia was born.Steeg had planned to skip the trip this year until tragedy struck. Her father unexpectedly passed away in January.”It was a really dark time for me, and then I saw all of these house floats popping up in New Orleans,” she said. “This has been a dark year for a lot of people, and it reminded me that beauty can emerge during terrible times, too. I needed to see it.”Steeg created a travel plan to limit the risk to herself and others and drove 1,800 kilometers from Maryland to Louisiana. She visited a drive-thru parade of some of Mardi Gras’ most famous floats and someone threw beads into her car. The moment, the music and the people overwhelmed her and she broke down crying in her car. “It just struck me that, like this city, we’ve all been through so much. It’s been through hurricanes, pandemics and so much more — but it always perseveres just like it will this time. It just struck me that you can’t beat spirit as strong as Mardi Gras. New Orleanians won’t allow it.” 
 
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