Mardi Gras Archives -

A Child’s Fear

By Simone Lipscomb | March 2, 2014

The floats were slowly moving past with beads and moon pies and other Mardi Gras bounty being thrown from their decks. Music filled the air along with a general happy vibe. Then a loud shot rang out and the little boy in front if me dropped to the street and covered his ears. It was only the pirate float’s mini-cannon firing blanks but to the little boy it was gun fire.

Photographing Mardi Gras is great fun. Capturing different faces and costumes is quite a diversion from the nature photography that is my focus. But on this day my attention kept being drawn to the little boy who repeatedly dropped to his knees and flinched whenever there was the sound of a gun during the parade. Admittedly, I was unnerved a bit at first because the crowd was quite large and we all know anything can happen. But once I knew the source of the blasts it was simply an annoyance. For the child, it was anything but that.

Until reaching ten to twelve years of age, a child is in a concrete stage of learning without the ability to conceptualize and gain understanding of what is real and what is not real. So for the little boy yesterday, the shotgun blanks in the cannons were real gun fire. He couldn’t see over the crowd so could not locate the source of the blasts.

Fear was evident in his eyes and face, in his body movements. I finally knelt down and said, “Those sounds are scary aren’t they?” He nodded and his face relaxed. He went back to waving to floats and gathering beads and moon pies.

I can’t stop thinking about him…and all children who live in fear because of an increasingly violent society. What have we done to create a more gentle world? How have our actions or perhaps our non-actions contributed to the anxiety and fear of our children? How can we help make our communities kinder, more nurturing for our youth?

A quote from A Course in Miracles comes to mind: “What is not love is fear.” Lately I have asked some tough questions and with every hard question I ask the answer always points to love.

So…may we collectively find that which keeps us from loving fully and clear it from our hearts and minds. May love continue to grow and blanket our precious young ones. May the example we set teach our children of love instead of hate, of love instead of fear.

Happy Memories of Home–Mardi Gras

By Simone Lipscomb | February 27, 2014

As I was driving through Bankhead Tunnel the line of vehicles came to a stop. It was a short delay while traffic was routed around a maintenance crew. Just long enough for me to take a quick photograph. I thought, lucky this wasn’t one of those trips through the tunnel when Lance and I were kids. Way back then we would try to hold our breath through to the other side. Before the Wallace Tunnel…that four-laned wonder with the suicide sharp turn…was constructed. Good memories of Mobile, Alabama from decades past.

Mardi Gras beads were draped like Spanish moss on the ancient branches of live oaks that line Government Street. Metal barricades stood just off the pavement, awaiting their next parade. Purple, gold and green decorations hung from doors, columns, signs, windows…it felt like Mardi Gras.

I associate Mobile and Mardi Gras with childhood and the Deep South…with home. Lights, music and parades…horses. Beads!! Candy!! Childhood memories float upward through many years of experiences and I find tidbits and snapshots in my mind of my dad, mom, brother and me. Maybe we didn’t go that much but from my memories, it was a happy, joyous and exciting time to be a kid on the Gulf Coast.

Today I visited Toomey’s… supplier of all things Mardi Gras in our area. A huge room filled with rows and rows of beads and moon pies gives those of us shopping for throws many choices. But so does the other monstrous room filled with speciality beads and plush toys, frisbees, hats, lighted gadgets…oh my gosh! I enjoy this once-a-year trip!! Every time I enter the store I feel myself light up. I want to visit every corner to take it all in.

It’s still fun to attend parades and catch beads and moon pies but admittedly I find a kid or two nearby and give away most of what I catch. And now, my second year riding, I find even more joy at sharing the much-desired beads…and delicious moon pies and trinkets. It’s a highlight of the year for me. And the proverbial icing on the cake is that the float I ride supports our Alabama sea turtles. No fancy costumes but good Gulf Shores Mardi Gras fun!

Mardi Gras is one of the experiences of my life that is deeply interwoven with the sense of place I have here on the Gulf Coast. It’s not drunken partying that delights me but rather the reliving of happy memories and creating new ones. It’s a time of plenty, of giving and receiving, of celebrating life with everyone. Of music, culture, food, colors, people….home.

Fat Tuesday

By Simone Lipscomb | February 14, 2013

I was standing at Lulu’s Homeport in Gulf Shores, Alabama, listening to a band play a traditional Mardi Gras tune and felt a subtle, inner shift. A small glimmer of something started to awaken within me and it made me smile.

When embarking on a course of action it’s not necessarily easy because you (finally) found your path–your direction. When I answered an inner call to document the Gulf Oil Spill in my home state, I never imagined the emotional wreckage that would occur within me. I remember days before the oil began washing up on the Alabama beaches fervently trying to photograph as much of the Gulf beaches and marshes as possibly and while doing so sobbing, sometimes uncontrollably. Then when it began coming ashore and coating animals, beaches and filling the air with toxic fumes I was in a state of near exhaustion from anger, sadness, grief and the physical challenge of exposure to the toxic soup in the water and air.

It changed me. I remember going back to my mountain home for a few weeks each month and finding it very difficult to connect with anything pleasurable. I was numb from what I was seeing. Traumatized. And in some sort of cosmic disbelief that humans could destroy our planet…not just by an oil spill…but by endless sins committed against this beautiful planet and its inhabitants. Nothing touched me. Beauty was painful to see. Yet I couldn’t look away from the environmental destruction because finally I felt I was doing my legacy work.

Sometimes the cost of that commitment is high.

There was healing during the many weeks spent along the coast. Realizations, moments of inspiration but it was a week spent with Joanna Macy, in a Work That Reconnects workshop that truly helped me understand and process what I had been going through. And healing continues since my move back to the Gulf Coast.

Yes, I enjoy SUP boarding and walking the beaches and diving in the Caribbean. I’m not walking around in a constant state of gloom and doom. Yet finding a space for personal pleasure….just the inkling of fun for no particular reason…has continued to be challenging for me. The burden of our planet’s plight is heavy.

But yesterday, while riding my sea turtle volunteer team’s float in the Gulf Shores Mardi Gras parade and hanging out at Lulu’s with my friend and her family provided a little spark of fun for the sake of fun….with the intention of fun. Imagine that.

Gratitude for a day of fun runs deep within me. It helps to balance the deep grief that fuels my work to share the beauty of our planet…in the hope that people will realize the beauty of Earth and will do everything they can to help heal it. And heal the human relationship to it…and each other.