Carnival

Oh, good.

It's really going to be a parade like Carnival.

Oh, nice.

Okay.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

So Monday was the 59th annual West Indian Day Parade, which for those who aren't familiar is basically the New York incarnation of Carnival held along Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn every Labor Day.

It's a huge event for New York's many Caribbean communities, huge as in over a million people.

Think music, food, dance, elaborate costumes, if you don't already know or don't already go.

We know we can't overturn, but we as the New York City Council will continue to provide free legal services and resources to families.

City Council Member Rita Joseph, Journalist Ralph Thomasson Joseph, Caribbean Communities Correspondent for the news organization Documented.

Thank you both for joining us on this, I guess, less celebratory than usual Carnival and West Indian Day Parade and Gervais Week.

Thank you very much for your presence today.

He loved his Mardi Gras Indians and the Skull and Bones gangs.

He was a member of a Jewish Mardi Gras or carnival organization.

And the theme through it all is he just really cared about people and was really interested in preserving culture, not just his culture, but all cultures in New Orleans and all cultures related to the celebration of Carnival and Mardi Gras.

And the book, which is about the size of a workbook, again, it's called The House of Dance and Feathers, a museum by Ronald Lewis.

It's a great book.

That's optional.

You know what I'm saying? Carnival is...

It's optional.

I don't know.

mandatory.

That's mandatory behavior.

You're getting drafted to go to Carnival.

Well, fuck that.

This time we are taking it through some different doors than before.

We talk a lot about the medieval festival of Carnival, which if you don't know what that is, Carnival was the festive season in the days leading up to Lent.

So it peaked on Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras.

which a lot of us know something about Mardi Gras from New Orleans or images of beads and stuff like that, probably know Mardi Gras as this big outlandish party.

And so it happens, like Carnival happened.

It's this festive season that ended with Ash Wednesday, which began Lent.

And because Lent was a time of such collective fasting and restrictions, the days leading up to it, you were about to go 40 days without meat, without eggs, without much fat, dairy.

But that would all be sort of sealed up and dealt with confession with the season of Lent afterward.

It took

place during Carnival, which is leading up to Mardi Gras before Lent.

It's usually a week-long celebration.

Apparently, Andrea Palma, who is the star of this movie, pretty much launched her career.