Happy St. Pats!

This is my favorite of the city’s many parades. Held the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day, it begins with a Mass. New Orleans is so frequently painted as a den of sin and depravity that some people forget it’s still a VERY Catholic place.



Leading the parade are the marching clubs—hundreds and hundreds of men in tuxedos (and the occasional kilt), drinking beer and dancing in the street and handing out flowers and beads to the ladies in exchange for kisses.



After that come the floats with riders throwing—in addition to the ubiquitous beads—all the makings for Irish stew: cabbages, carrots, onions, and potatoes. Did I mention the cabbages? You haven’t lived until you’ve been hit in the head by a flying cabbage.



I fell in love with Ireland and the Irish when I first visited that magical land over twenty-five years ago. I even have a smidgen of Irish in me, thanks to a rebel named John Nolan, banished forever from the Emerald Isle by the Evil English. Okay, I admit it; I have way more English/Scots in me than Irish. But still...



On St. Patrick’s Day, the whole world gets to be Irish. Erin Go Bragh!