Local customs
- Thread starter Bee
- Start date
Ah, bonfires. In south Louisiana on Christmas Eve, the Cajuns have a custom of building a bonfire to light the way for Papa Noel to find his way to all the little Cajun girls and boys. Sometimes the bonfires are simple wooden pyramids from 15 to 20 feet tall. Sometimes they are more elaborate, almost a sculpture.
- pyramids
- a snapping turtle
http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/SFbonfires.html - an essay and some pictures of various shapes.
http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/SFbonfires.html - an essay and some pictures of various shapes.
Right now we have what we sometimes call "Chamber of Commerce" weather, the kind that causes tourists to walk around or find one of the innumerable festivals.
A friend of mine once told me he had researched Louisiana's festivals. People throw these things obviously to make money but also to give folks a sampling of our joie de vivre. He told me that 50 of the 52 weekends of the year, one could find a festival within one or two hour's drive of New Orleans. These are not all today, just a sampling of the variety of festivals:
We have the Strawberry Festival across the lake in Ponchatoula. We have Crawfish festivals in bayou country. We have an alligator festival near Pearl River... the list goes on. Late April/early May we have the Louisiana Jazz and Heritage Festival with fairly big acts. We host the Essence Festival, which is a black heritage event. We have the Decadence Festival, which is a gay pride event. The only weekends we DON'T have a festival is Christmas weekend and New Year's weekend.
New Orleans has made tourism a big part of its income and industry, so we have a lot of service workers. And the kind of weather we have today is the kind of weather that causes people to go out and sample the flavors of New Orleans.
A friend of mine once told me he had researched Louisiana's festivals. People throw these things obviously to make money but also to give folks a sampling of our joie de vivre. He told me that 50 of the 52 weekends of the year, one could find a festival within one or two hour's drive of New Orleans. These are not all today, just a sampling of the variety of festivals:
We have the Strawberry Festival across the lake in Ponchatoula. We have Crawfish festivals in bayou country. We have an alligator festival near Pearl River... the list goes on. Late April/early May we have the Louisiana Jazz and Heritage Festival with fairly big acts. We host the Essence Festival, which is a black heritage event. We have the Decadence Festival, which is a gay pride event. The only weekends we DON'T have a festival is Christmas weekend and New Year's weekend.
New Orleans has made tourism a big part of its income and industry, so we have a lot of service workers. And the kind of weather we have today is the kind of weather that causes people to go out and sample the flavors of New Orleans.
The picture of the Firework bursting in the sky reminded me of something I noticed when I went to Disneyland Paris years ago with the kids. As we left, we were driving away they had a firework display, and I mean they had a firework display! These were monstrous great explosions in the sky.
I noticed something odd about the Exploding fireworks. It just didn't look right, it was that sort of feeling you get when you look at an optical illusion. It took me awhile to work out what it was. When you look at the Firework exploding, you imagine you are seeing something akin to a balloon expanding, you are looking at the outside edge as it were, the balloon skin expanding outwards. But think about it, that's not actually what you see.
The Firework is nothing like a balloon, it's a single point with shrapnel, glowing embers, radiating out from a central point. Therefore, you can actually see the particles which are moving away from you, the particles on the other side of the sphere... So you are seeing what you expect, the shrapnel moving from the centre outwards, towards you and then starting to fall. But the ones that are moving away from you, the other side of the burst, then your eyes, your mind, is not expecting what it is seeing. The shrapnel isn't coming towards you it is going away from you! It's a very weird but also magical experience. I highly recommend you seek out a really big firework display like this one and watch.
I've never heard anyone else mention this, so I'm in a way looking for confirmation, so if you happen to see a really big firework display I'd be grateful for feedback.
I noticed something odd about the Exploding fireworks. It just didn't look right, it was that sort of feeling you get when you look at an optical illusion. It took me awhile to work out what it was. When you look at the Firework exploding, you imagine you are seeing something akin to a balloon expanding, you are looking at the outside edge as it were, the balloon skin expanding outwards. But think about it, that's not actually what you see.
The Firework is nothing like a balloon, it's a single point with shrapnel, glowing embers, radiating out from a central point. Therefore, you can actually see the particles which are moving away from you, the particles on the other side of the sphere... So you are seeing what you expect, the shrapnel moving from the centre outwards, towards you and then starting to fall. But the ones that are moving away from you, the other side of the burst, then your eyes, your mind, is not expecting what it is seeing. The shrapnel isn't coming towards you it is going away from you! It's a very weird but also magical experience. I highly recommend you seek out a really big firework display like this one and watch.
I've never heard anyone else mention this, so I'm in a way looking for confirmation, so if you happen to see a really big firework display I'd be grateful for feedback.
Well, this IS the Mind Tavern, and Jon says we can sometimes divert from the main thread, so pardon me while I digress....
Uncle, that effect of which you spoke is an effect of the reptilian portion of our brainstem, where it is MOVEMENT that attracts our attention. Many reptilian animals do not see stationary objects unless they are themselves moving, perhaps because they don't have the brainpower to integrate a still image. But the ability to perceive movement of spots (perhaps partly hidden by natural camouflage) and integrate it into a complete image is a survival ability.
The "balloon expansion" image is because your optical cortex is trying to create a complete image where it only has a partial one (the fragments of burning materials) and it suggests a surface when in fact it really IS just a bunch of points. In this case, it is a "virtual" surface. The visual art style called pointillism (an image suggested by a series of dots) is based on that idea. So is the art style of tromp l'oeil (French; "trick of the eye") in which something that is actually 2-dimensional nevertheless appears to have that 3rd dimension.
The visual cortex of the human brain is not one of the smaller structures. However, seeing an aerial pyrotechnic at dusk or nighttime gives you an essentially dark background where there are no competing images. That air burst probably would not have the exact same effect during broad daylight. But where there is no stationary context, that effect you mentioned doesn't have any complex competition. So you can see it.
Motion pictures are another example of brain/image integration. Based on many experiments, anything that produces at least 24 distinct images per second will produce the effect of a continuously moving image even though the individual images are stationary. Early TVs could reach this frame rate reasonably well. With modern digital circuits and higher transmission frequencies, we can get higher frame rates and in fact we know that the brain can see things at a faster level than the integrated scene that we are watching. We can see things hidden behind the higher speeds. So-called subliminal advertising was banned precisely because of that. Some of the most advanced computer games, using dedicated video co-processors, can EASILY reach frame rates of 60/sec and some go higher than that even for complex scenes.
Oddly enough, the human brain also does that kind of "mental integration" with sounds. As an organist approaching my instrument from a technical background, I learned about the physics of musical sounds. Every musical sound we hear is comprised of a mixture of harmonics from a base frequency, the lowest frequency makeable by the thing being played at the moment. All other sounds are harmonics (base frequency times an integer) blended with the 1st harmonic or base frequency. Usually the base frequency is loudest and the other harmonics diminish in proportional loudness. Electronic devices can produce a sound with no extra harmonics, but in the world of instruments, the closest to that pure sound comes from flutes and pan-pipes. Violins and complex percussion instruments are on the other end, with the most harmonics in the mix.
With sufficiently complex keyboards, you can also build a tone that DOESN'T contain the frequency that should be the base harmonic, but if you have nearly equal amounts of 2nd and 3rd harmonic, your mind "hears" the missing harmonic anyway. That is why even a cheap speaker will give you some appreciation of bass notes that the speaker actually cannot produce with any power.
This trick was well known in pre-electronic organs that had pipe-based voicing. Some pedal voices were intentionally "built" from that 2nd/3rd harmonic combination to give the impression of deeper (and therefore longer) pipes than were actually present. In theater and church organs, that kind of voice is often called a "Mixture." Other pipe voices were built using a trick of "open" vs. "closed" pipes that forced a either vibratory node or an anti-node to form at the far end of the pipe from its "throat" (the part where the sound usually is generated). You can still hear that in some electronic organs built for churches or mimicing theater organs because they will have voice names such as "Open Diapason" or "Tibia Clausa" (a closed-pipe flute-like sound). The "closed" sound is often apparently deeper in pitch because of that 2nd/3rd harmonic trick.
Uncle, that effect of which you spoke is an effect of the reptilian portion of our brainstem, where it is MOVEMENT that attracts our attention. Many reptilian animals do not see stationary objects unless they are themselves moving, perhaps because they don't have the brainpower to integrate a still image. But the ability to perceive movement of spots (perhaps partly hidden by natural camouflage) and integrate it into a complete image is a survival ability.
The "balloon expansion" image is because your optical cortex is trying to create a complete image where it only has a partial one (the fragments of burning materials) and it suggests a surface when in fact it really IS just a bunch of points. In this case, it is a "virtual" surface. The visual art style called pointillism (an image suggested by a series of dots) is based on that idea. So is the art style of tromp l'oeil (French; "trick of the eye") in which something that is actually 2-dimensional nevertheless appears to have that 3rd dimension.
The visual cortex of the human brain is not one of the smaller structures. However, seeing an aerial pyrotechnic at dusk or nighttime gives you an essentially dark background where there are no competing images. That air burst probably would not have the exact same effect during broad daylight. But where there is no stationary context, that effect you mentioned doesn't have any complex competition. So you can see it.
Motion pictures are another example of brain/image integration. Based on many experiments, anything that produces at least 24 distinct images per second will produce the effect of a continuously moving image even though the individual images are stationary. Early TVs could reach this frame rate reasonably well. With modern digital circuits and higher transmission frequencies, we can get higher frame rates and in fact we know that the brain can see things at a faster level than the integrated scene that we are watching. We can see things hidden behind the higher speeds. So-called subliminal advertising was banned precisely because of that. Some of the most advanced computer games, using dedicated video co-processors, can EASILY reach frame rates of 60/sec and some go higher than that even for complex scenes.
Oddly enough, the human brain also does that kind of "mental integration" with sounds. As an organist approaching my instrument from a technical background, I learned about the physics of musical sounds. Every musical sound we hear is comprised of a mixture of harmonics from a base frequency, the lowest frequency makeable by the thing being played at the moment. All other sounds are harmonics (base frequency times an integer) blended with the 1st harmonic or base frequency. Usually the base frequency is loudest and the other harmonics diminish in proportional loudness. Electronic devices can produce a sound with no extra harmonics, but in the world of instruments, the closest to that pure sound comes from flutes and pan-pipes. Violins and complex percussion instruments are on the other end, with the most harmonics in the mix.
With sufficiently complex keyboards, you can also build a tone that DOESN'T contain the frequency that should be the base harmonic, but if you have nearly equal amounts of 2nd and 3rd harmonic, your mind "hears" the missing harmonic anyway. That is why even a cheap speaker will give you some appreciation of bass notes that the speaker actually cannot produce with any power.
This trick was well known in pre-electronic organs that had pipe-based voicing. Some pedal voices were intentionally "built" from that 2nd/3rd harmonic combination to give the impression of deeper (and therefore longer) pipes than were actually present. In theater and church organs, that kind of voice is often called a "Mixture." Other pipe voices were built using a trick of "open" vs. "closed" pipes that forced a either vibratory node or an anti-node to form at the far end of the pipe from its "throat" (the part where the sound usually is generated). You can still hear that in some electronic organs built for churches or mimicing theater organs because they will have voice names such as "Open Diapason" or "Tibia Clausa" (a closed-pipe flute-like sound). The "closed" sound is often apparently deeper in pitch because of that 2nd/3rd harmonic trick.
Last night was the largest of the Bonfire events in the County (and the country) - the Lewes Bonfire. I am involved in the organisation and some of my team worked from 06:00 yesterday morning to 23:00 last night. I was at home, on call if needed, for the first time in 6 years - and I really missed the heat of the flames, the beating of the drums, and the tribal, pagan, edgy feel of the evening.
The town is boarded up and cordoned off. Road and rail transport stops at about 4pm. We discourage people from outside from attending, though many walk several miles. There is usually a population of about 16,000 in Lewes, but for Bonfire, that can swell to 60,000. When Bonfire falls on a Monday, it's usually much quieter - with attendances peaking when Bonfire falls on a Saturday.
There are seven bonfire societies who all parade through the small, historical town of Lewes. (The same place where Thomas Paine lived before journeying to America and then France where he wrote The Rights of Man). There are usually 4 effigies burnt on the night at the 4 main bonfire sites. Each one is known as an Enemy of the Bonfire. Last night, there were 2 effigies of Theresa May, one of Boris Johnson beheading Theresa May, and a ghost train, which was a protest against the local rail company who have performed abysmally over the last 12-18 months, with up to 45% of train services cancelled. Lewes (District) voted remain during the Brexit referendum.
Here is a summary of pictures from the night. Those of you in the Southern States might be shocked at the burning crosses. They don't have the same meaning here - and are burnt in memory of the 17 English Martyrs burned at the stake in Lewes as part of the Marian persecutions.
It is dangerous. It is edgy. Every year people get hurt. The police and fire authorities know they cannot stop the event from happening and so do their best to keep the crowds safe. The official motto of Sussex is: "We will not be druv" meaning that the residents will not be cowed or broken by authority and we will go our own way. I like that sense of rebelliousness. It suits my own ethos - and is one of the reasons I would never move away from the area.
The town is boarded up and cordoned off. Road and rail transport stops at about 4pm. We discourage people from outside from attending, though many walk several miles. There is usually a population of about 16,000 in Lewes, but for Bonfire, that can swell to 60,000. When Bonfire falls on a Monday, it's usually much quieter - with attendances peaking when Bonfire falls on a Saturday.
There are seven bonfire societies who all parade through the small, historical town of Lewes. (The same place where Thomas Paine lived before journeying to America and then France where he wrote The Rights of Man). There are usually 4 effigies burnt on the night at the 4 main bonfire sites. Each one is known as an Enemy of the Bonfire. Last night, there were 2 effigies of Theresa May, one of Boris Johnson beheading Theresa May, and a ghost train, which was a protest against the local rail company who have performed abysmally over the last 12-18 months, with up to 45% of train services cancelled. Lewes (District) voted remain during the Brexit referendum.
Here is a summary of pictures from the night. Those of you in the Southern States might be shocked at the burning crosses. They don't have the same meaning here - and are burnt in memory of the 17 English Martyrs burned at the stake in Lewes as part of the Marian persecutions.
It is dangerous. It is edgy. Every year people get hurt. The police and fire authorities know they cannot stop the event from happening and so do their best to keep the crowds safe. The official motto of Sussex is: "We will not be druv" meaning that the residents will not be cowed or broken by authority and we will go our own way. I like that sense of rebelliousness. It suits my own ethos - and is one of the reasons I would never move away from the area.
Why does Lewes have so many bonfire societies? I went there once on bonfire night. I was stuck in an extremely congested crowd for much of it and I was going deaf by the end of the evening. So many people throwing down bangers on the road in front of you! It was chaos, fun and as you say, with an element of danger.
I see a lot of costuming in the pictures, seemingly historical styles that include monastic robes, pirates, 16th or 17th century costumes resembling what the USA would call "pilgrim" outfits, and historical soldier uniforms. Mardi Gras in New Orleans gets that way, though the costuming only occurs one or two days - Lundi Gras and Mardi Gras (Fat Monday and Fat Tuesday). It is not uncommon to see family groups in "theme" costumes, though some will be more fanciful than historical. Looks like an interesting way to blow off some steam.