Dear Fordham, 

Where I grew up, we take getting ready for Lent very seriously. New Orleans, along with a collection of cities around the world, celebrates Mardi Gras with astonishing creativity. 

There are different Carnival traditions in Brazil and Spain, in Venice and Trinidad, but they share some common themes. We embrace joy before remembering the suffering of the world during Lent. We eat and drink before fasting. Going back centuries, Carnival has been a time of masking, of upending structures of race and gender, a time to mock the power structure with impunity. (In Cologne, women run around with scissors and cut off men’s ties.) 

On behalf of all of us from south Louisiana, Mobile, and the people around the world who celebrate Mardi Gras, for the next few days, we will light the McShane Center purple, green and gold. 

But then promptly at midnight Tuesday, the celebrations in New Orleans will stop as Ash Wednesday begins. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We make Lenten sacrifices because it wakes us up from daily life, and reminds us how rare it is (for most of us) to be hungry. Better yet, we vow to do something special for Lent, to be more generous, more kind, more present. For forty days, we take stock of the kind of person we have become and vow to do better. 

This is a time for us to come together, to celebrate all that we have and all that we are. 

Happy Mardi Gras,

Tania Tetlow
President