40. Interview with poet Mona Lisa Saloy, Part 1.

40.  Part 1 of our interview with Mona Lisa Saloy, Author & Folklorist, Educator, and Scholar.  An award-winning author of contemporary Creole culture in poems about Black New Orleans before and after Katrina, as a Folklorist, Saloy documents sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games to discuss the importance of play.  As a poet, her first book, Red Beans & Ricely Yours,  won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award and tied for a third. She's written on the significance of the Black Beat poets, on the African American Toasting Tradition, on Black & Creole talk, on conditions  and keeping Creole after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and her new book, Second Line Home,  is a refreshing collection of poems that captures the day-to-day New Orleans speech, contemplates family dynamics, celebrates New Orleans, and all in a way everyday people can enjoy.

1. This week in Louisiana history. Feb 22-23, 1895.  Largest snowfall recorded in Lake Charles - 22 inches.
2. This week in Louisiana. 
   Cajun Country Mardi Gras
   Downtown Eunice, 300 S. Second St.
   Eunice, LA 70535
   337-457-7389 | Fax: 337-457-2565
   Five day celebration beginning the Friday before Mardi Gras Day. Jam sessions, street dances, cooking demos, Mardi Gras Exhibits and special Liberty Theatre show. Les Jeunes and Lil' Mardi Gras runs for children on the Saturday and Sunday. Old time boucherie on the Sunday. Mardi Gras Day activities include traditional Courir de Mardi Gras and downtown daylong celebration - live Cajun, Creole and Zydeco music and dancing,ff food, children's walking parade and return of revelers.

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