How to Make Plated Armor for a Horse's Ass

All For a Mardi Gras Day Part 2: How to Make Plated Armor for a Horse’s Ass

            The plan was to rebuild the horse.  In its first year it had been a steampunk Trojan Horse. Its revelers were not hidden, and they had no plans to sack in the city, but the surprise of intention remained the same.  To surprise, to cast wonder, to turn adults into children, engaging their curiosity and love of novelty and imagination, without disallowing them the privileges of being adult, such as drinking and partying in the streets of your city.  This was Mardi Gras.
           This year, the Krewe of Ragnarock hopes to engage that same wondrous spirit, to abstract the experience of a party with the surprise cross-imagery of life-death celebrations, mocking the idea of definitive endings. The horse will be the Pale Horse from Revelations, the forerunner of the End of Days, but with a fun Dia de los Muertos twist. The horse was intended to intimidate, to scare the religiously weak, and then delight everyone with sugary skull-colors and a festive spirit.  Naturally, it would require colorful armor.  

            I showed up to my first krewe-build day hungover.   I had too much wine and daiquiri the night before and struggled to perform basic tasks that morning like locking my bike or opening doors.  I wanted to make a good impression on my peers who were worked in engineering, construction, and design.  But New Orleans' nights sometimes have their way with you and reduce you to a fumbling vessel.    I showed up early to confess my diminished state to Porter, the head constructioneer, a builder of things, with oak branches for arms.  He wielded powertools like they were dinnerware (but more safely) and exhibited a casual comfort around dangerous tools exhibited by people who spend a lot of time around dangerous tools.   On my bike ride over I imagined him asking me to use torches and buzz saws and esoteric cutting machines I had never heard of before.  I imagined splaying my hand into five pieces. Or maybe just my slicing off my smallest fingers. 

            The horse's head loomed over the top of the gate while I struggled to lock my bike up again.  I confessed to Porter, “My mental and physical faculties are compromised, so if you have something easy, you know, maybe I could do that and warm up to something more.”

            “Ok,” he said, putting down a propane torch.  “Have you used a grinder before?”
            "No."
            "You want to cut some metal?"

            He put a plastic face shield and plugged in the grinder, a tool with a circular face like a sander but with sharper edges and more torque.  A garbage bag in a corner revealed a few dozen empty espresso bean cans, each the size of a waste paper basket.  He pulled one out then stabilized it with his foot and began to cut the top off with edge of the disc.  Hundreds of sparks volleyed against his face and legs.  Hot metal on metal screams.  It is no birdsong.  He cut the first can and then took off the mask and handed me the grinder.  
        "How about it?" he asked.  
         This was my nightmare.  But I still had some control over my body, I told myself, and finished my third liter of water that morning.  I was raised to respect power tools’ ability to sever digits, but not to fear them because, well, they’re useful.  If I wasn't willing to risk a finger, then what use would I be in building a war horse? How could I proerly mock death on Mardi Gras day and ride the horse with any sense of pride??  What would the trojan soldiers have said?  They would call me a coward, or some part of genitalia.  I hoisted my wool socks to cover my own legs and cut the tops and bottoms of fifteen cans.  I maintained all my extremeties. But when asked to bevel the tips of a bundle of PVC pipe, I gave the grinder to someone else.  Instead, I took the propane torch, ready for another task.

Porter and Megan.  Mama and Papa Horse.

           

How to make armor plates

1: Use a grinder to cut the top and bottom of thin aluminum cans. 

2: Use garden shears to cut the cylinders and lay them flat as a sheet of metal.

3: Cut cardboard into desired shape and then trace it with a marker onto sheet of metal.  In our case, the shape was something like a large tear drop.

4: Use garden shears again to cut out shapes.

5: Paint armor plates desired color.  We painted ours turquoise blue, red, and then left the other third silver.  We painted a black border trim around each plate.

6: Layer the plates on the skin (canvas cloth) of the horse’s ass like roofing tiles. 

7: Power drill them into the canvas and corrugated plastic material underneath.   

Next post: How to make Foot long chain links with PVC pipe and a torch

All For A Mardi Gras Day Part 1

Mardi Gras is a phenomenon.  It is challenging to relate its details, imagery, and feeling to anyone foreign to the experience.  Last year, I spent several days after the festival scribbling in notebooks and thwacking at my computer’s keyboard in some foggy attempt to explain what I saw and felt, but all of it was unintelligible.  I could have stayed sober, took notes, asked questions, and stood to the side, but Mardi Gras demands participation, and to abstain from it is to misunderstand it altogether, and what fun would that be.

            This year I'd like to creep up on it from a different angle in an effort to explain it.  To write about Mardi Gras in anticipation, to describe the days before it arrives and take part in its preparation by joining a krewe.  There is a favorite song by Dr. John, “All on a Mardi Gras Day,” about the day itself, but it is easy to forget that such revelry requires commitment, spirit, and sweat in preparation for it.  The following posts, turning that phrase, shall be dedicated to that idea, the active anticipation of my new favorite day of the year, “All for a Mardi Gras Day.”  The first post is introductory and explains why I joined a krewe: 

                If you search the internet for the origins of Mardi Gras you’ll get a myriad of possibilities.  The holiday dates back as early three hundred years ago or as late as four thousands years ago.  Some historians link the holiday to Lupercalia, a Roman festival of fertility and spring cleansing that honored the she-wolf Lupa and the forest God Pan.   In my first Mardi Gras, I superficially drew my mythological inspiration from Bacchus, who I always associated with the wild rites of spring and my own desire to drink and be merry and let loose.  But Pan, perhaps, was much wilder.  He was half-man and half-goat. He had a large penis.  He once seduced the moon.  He was audacious enough to challenge Apollo to a musical competition, and according to poor Midas, Pan won.  Apollo gave Midas donkeys ears in retribution.  Later, Pan died, the only God that ever superceded his own limits of immortality.  To celebrate him, Roman men ran the streets naked and slap women’s backsides in stride. 

            Others say that the Catholic Church invented Mardi Gras by creating Carnival season as a persuasive tool to convince Pagans to give up their savage rituals and prepare for Christian lent.  A day of all-you-can-sin merriment before 40 days of piousness.  Carnival’s latin roots are in the word Carneleveman, meaning Farewell to Flesh.   Mardi Gras, as we recognize it today, began on the bank of the Mississippi, sixty miles south of New Orleans, and more than three hundred years ago.  The French explorer, Iberville, landed on the bank, and recognizing that France was celebrating Fat Tuesday, founded the first Mardi Gras in the region, naming the bend of land Point du Mari Gras.   The festival grew over the centuries.  Walking parades featured masked men and mules--instead of tractor engines--pulled the floats.  Even then, the people were wild, and violence almost halted the festivities.  Officials tried to stop the holiday but the people simply liked it too much.  The parades got bigger. The floats got bigger.  Women and black men created their own krewes, fomenting the notion that Mardi Gras stardom is accessible to everyone, not just wealthy white business men from the Garden District.  And now, Mardi Gras, today brings in more than a billion dollars of revenue to the city, cementing its necessity to the people and the government.  All in all, that is long history of partying. 

          My first Mardi Gras was a blur.  It is hard to describe the toll six days of city-wide partying and loss of inhibition takes on the mind and body.  It took days to get my life back in order, and what I was left with was some hodge-podge of incongruous images as memories. Jesus and a female bunny-human standing on top of a hippie van.  An army of revelers with boxes of wine feeding pedestrians on St. Charles Avenue being led by a guerilla marching band and a faun.  A student telling a story about running away from gun shots on Claiborne Avenue while eating a snowball, "I kept running, fast, but I never let go of it.  It was good," he said and rubbed his belly.  A Jew for Jesus rabbi playing guitar on the levee, singing folk songs in the key of G about our sins, "She has super-gonorrhea 3," he sang, and "Is his penis circumsized?/I don't really know"   And a 25 foot long steampunk Trojan horse on Mardi Gras morning. 

        The warhorse was an emblem of the experience.  A singular image that made sense only at Mardi Gras.  Confirmation that all of it was real and unreal.  Two dozen warriors from the Krewe of Ragnarock pushed it through the Marigny and into the French Quarter. It blared rock music and had a cannon that fired confetti and purple smoke.  I tried to board it but a warrior blocked  me with his plastic sword.  "I don't think so," he said. "You'll have to sign a waiver."  I was in no state to sign waivers. 

         But a year later I found a different way to board the horse.  To pay my dues and join the Krewe of Ragnarock, the revelers responsible for its construction, and for planning its reincarnation in this year's St. Ann's Parade.  It will be a different experience.  I will not be directionless, sporting the go-where-you-wanna spirit, sniffing out trails of fun (a fundog?).  Instead I will have an anchor.  The horse.  Its corrugated plastic head my compass.  But a warhorse is not born but made.  There are 48 days until Fat Tuesday.  And a lot of work to do in preparation for the party.

Check out the Krewe of Ragnarock online for some amazing photographs and background.  http://www.kreweofragnarok.com/

Primary (School) Election Coverage

Note: I rarely write about my job and students because there are instances of teachers who do so exploitatively, and I am sensitive to that.  Nevertheless, elementary school students provide such amazing contexts and perspectives on certain issues because of three of their most common and admirable characteristics:  they are honest, they know what they like and don't like, and they're not afraid to tell you.  Because of this, I really enjoyed experiencing election season with them; their political attitudes are refreshingly antithetical to media pundits.  I hope you enjoy this snapshot of that attitude...   All student names are changed. 

            

 A student's coloring:

           Most of my students were 2 or 3 years old when Obama was first elected.  The significance of electing our first African-American president doesn’t dawn on them in a historical sense, but they are quick to recognize that Obama looks like them—that he is not only black, but he is powerful and black.  He’s a star.  He evokes more ambition than any black musician, athlete, or historical hero has ever presented to them, especially in this early stage of life, when they remain little and dreamy and every opportunity still feels like a growth spurt away. 

            Their teachers were excited too.  We also have our hopes and dreams.  How different is leading a classroom than leading a nation?  To channel this excitement our 2^nd grade team ran a “teacher for president” election   Ms. B ran under the platform that she baked cookies and wanted all the kids to go to college.  Ms. T said she saved puppies and believed in peace.  Ms. W shamelessly advertised that she voted for Obama in 2008.  I ran under the platform that we should have Saturday school, extra homework, less recess, and eat chicken foot soup for lunch every day.  I was not interested in moderate politics, in centrist facades, and soft issues; I wanted the children to understand there were real differences in the candidates and that it was their obligation to vote based on issues instead of who they liked more.

            More than 100 scholars showed up to the polls in their classrooms.  I received 7 votes.  I failed to appeal to my base.  Ms. W won by a slim margin.  There was no recount. 

            The Monday before Election Day I held a more relevant election between Romney and Obama.  I thought back to the 2008 election when  I was working in a South Boston classroom and we had run a similar mock election.  There were two white kids in the class that came from traditional Irish Southie families just outside the Old Colony and Broadway Projects.   They were the only two children to vote for McCain.  Their reasons were clear: “Obama is a terrorist from Kenya.”  “Obama will blow up our country.” 

            The black and Hispanic kids started to pressure me.  “You’re voting for McCain because you’re white.”  I had vowed never to reveal my leanings, but went back on my word to disband their developing theory that people vote for the candidates that most closely reflect their skin color.  I wondered if I would have to play the same role again four years later.

            In my class in New Orleans I told the kids that before they vote they should know more about both candidates and to keep an open mind.  “You might learn something about Romney that you might really like.”  Chance, a bright but squirmy challenge to my daily patience, looked me in the eye, and said “Hmmm…maybe I’ll vote for Romney.”  Then he flopped onto his back on the carpet and pencil-rolled into the girl next to him.  I made him go back to his seat.

            Together we read a profile list from Time For Kids comparing the candidates. 

            “Obama’s wife's name is Michelle.  Romney’s wife is Anne.”  The room was quiet to start but it got louder as went down the list.

            “Obama’s favorite sport is basketball.”  Mild cheers.   “Romney’s is baseball.”  Soft boos.

            “Obama loves pizza and chili.”  Wild claps, Nate, another bright but mobile child, gets out of his seat and pumps his fist.

            “Romney loves meatloaf.”  A loud, collective groan.  A child blurts out, “oooh, disgusting!”  I don’t mention that we all ate meatloaf two days ago for lunch and it was delicious.

            The room grew louder, a piston of cheers and heckling with each item on the list until we got to the bottom.

            “Obama’s hero is Martin Luther King Jr.”  Nate leaps from his seat and into the air and starts to scream.  Kids bang on their desks and holler in approval.  Chance does a half-twist in his chair and swings at the air in excitement.

              I motioned for them to calm-down.

            “Romney’s hero is….Ronald Reagan.”  The room erupted.  Kids banged their desks in disapproval.  They booed and jeered. “No, Reagan, No!” a girl shouted, mimicking a book called No, David, No about a wild and mischievous boy who breaks all the rules.  It took us two minutes to settle down.  I made them put their heads down on their desks for a few seconds before they colored in their electoral maps. 

            Obama won 23-1 in our class.  Romney’s only vote came from one of the sweeter girls in the class, who can’t yet read, but liked the way Romney looked on our pictorial ballot.

          

           The next day our school was closed because it was a main polling place of the French Quarter.  It was a special school and indirectly has had its hand in politics and history before, having educated Truman Capote, Richard Simmons, and more importantly, Lee Harvey Oswald. 

            I voted at the Holy Rosary School on the Bayou.   I entered through a small stairwell room adorned with extra desks and a small fenced-in statue of the Virgin Mary.  After I voted I noticed a picture of the Pope on the wall. 

            I went to another school to observe other 2^nd grade teachers and take notes.  In one classroom the teacher asked the kids to write about the election.  It was clear they had written about the subject before and some looked tired of it. One girl, though, sat at her desk and thought for several minutes before writing.  Her pencil never left the paper once she started.  “I think Rockobana will win.  The white man will lose.”  Her handwriting was perfect.