Running with Bulls #2: San Fermin Festival in New Orleans

The San Fermin Festival - celebrated for centuries in Pamplona, Spain, by running through the streets with real live bulls in the morning and holding bullfights in the evening - has now come to New Orleans in a much tamer version, which I observed in the French Quarter on Saturday, July 10.

This is the second of two posts that describe and reflect on the events in Pamplona and in New Orleans. My previous post provides information about the San Fermin Festival and the running of the bulls in Pamplona and reflects on why people might choose to run with real live bulls. In this post, I will describe and reflect on the running of the bulls in New Orleans.

More information about San Fermin Nueva Orleans can be found at the website below:

http://www.nolabulls.com

SAN FERMIN FESTIVAL IN NEW ORLEANS

While the celebration of the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona dates back to the twelfth century, it dates back only to 2007 in New Orleans. Thus, 2010 is the fourth year of the New Orleans event.

The exact origin of the Pamplona event is obscured by time, while the New Orleans event has a clear founder: Mickey Hanning, who conceived the idea for San Fermin Nueva Orleans after actually running with the bulls himself in Pamplona.

The San Fermin Festival in New Orleans is shorter than the one in Pamplona. In Pamplona, the festival runs from noon on July 6 to midnight on July 14, with a bull run every morning starting on July 7. In New Orleans, the festival occupies the weekend that falls within the above dates, with a bull run occurring only once on the Saturday of that weekend. In 2010, the San Fermin Festival in New Orleans occurred from Friday, July 9, through Sunday, July 11, with the bull run on Saturday, July 10, at 8 a.m.

The San Fermin Festival in New Orleans has these components:

• Pre-Party on Friday evening, with tapas plates, a paella competition, Spanish wines, and flamenco dancers.
• Bull Run on Saturday morning.
• Pants Party on Saturday evening, with a concert of Spanish music and tapas plates. (I have no idea why this is called a pants party.)
• Poor Me on Sunday at midday, with a spontaneous Hemingway skit contest, tapas brunch plates, and a screening of the World Cup Final Match. (Poor Me, or Pobre de Mi, is a sad song that marks the end of the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona.)

THE NEW ORLEANS BULLS

This is the most important difference between the Pamplona and the New Orleans bull runs. In Pamplona, real live dangerous bulls are used. In New Orleans, the bulls are the Big Easy Roller Derby Girls!

The Big Easy Roller Derby Girls are dressed in red, crowned with a horned helmet, mounted on roller skates, and armed with a plastic bat. They skate among the runners, hitting them with their bats.

Runners identify themselves, as they do in Pamplona, by wearing a white shirt and pants and a red kerchief and waistband.

In Pamplona, once runners enter the running corridor, there is no way to exit until the bull run is over because the corridor is flanked by barricades. I believe, though, that in cases of severe and immanent danger from the bulls, runners have somehow managed to jump the barricades. From what I observed in New Orleans, it seems obvious that runners can easily exit by scooting to the sidewalk. The New Orleans bull run takes place in the street, not on the sidewalk, which is for spectators. Anyone on the sidewalk will not be pursued by the New Orleans bulls.

NEW ORLEANS BULL RUN 2010

Here is my experience of observing the New Orleans bull run on Saturday, July 10, 2010.

I woke up early and rode my bicycle to the French Quarter so that I could find a good place on the sidewalk, ready to watch, well before the 8 a.m. starting time. The assembly place for runners was the corner of Conti Street and Burgundy Street. People dressed in the white and red runner's garb were converging on this corner from all directions, arriving on foot, by bicycle, and in taxis. Runners were men and women of all ages, teenagers, and children. The rules stated that you had to be at least ten years old to participate, and some of the child runners looked barely ten. There was no registration to run - simply show up dressed as a runner!

At 8 a.m., the run began! Runners moved slowly at first up Burgundy Street to Bienville Street, where the bulls - the Big Easy Roller Derby Girls with their skates and bats - were waiting. As the runners turned the corner onto Bienville, they began to run and scream. The bulls were released into the crowd of runners at intervals, five or six bulls at a time, to skate after the runners and hit them with their plastic bats. Unfortunately, there were way more runners than bulls - the final group of bulls was released long before the line of runners had rounded the corner.

The chase continued to the 600 block of South Peters Street, where everyone could relax and cool down with drinks and music.

After the bull run, I decided to ride my bicycle around the French Quarter and the two neighborhoods behind it, the Marigny and the Bywater. Nearly everywhere I looked, I saw post-run runners, easily recognizable in their white and red outfits, as they walked along the street or sat in restaurants or coffeehouses.

I finally wound up at Cafe Rose Nicaud on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, where I decided to hang out for a while. At Cafe Rose Nicaud, I spoke briefly with a man from Lafayette, Louisiana, who had participated in the bull run. I asked him if he had gotten hit with the plastic bats and if it had hurt, and he answered yes and yes. He said that it didn't hurt a lot, but it did sting, and you wouldn't want someone hitting you over and over. I wonder if the bulls hit the ten-year-old runners with their bats. On the one hand, you wouldn't want to hurt a child, but on the other hand, the children would want to feel that they were full participants and that the bulls were including them.

After a nice morning in the French Quarter, the Marigny, and the Bywater, I rode my bicycle home. I was so hot when I got home, that I decided it was time for a haircut, as my hair had gotten a bit longer than I like and was making me all the hotter. As a result of that hot bike ride and the anticipation of cool short hair, my self-administered haircut came out extremely short!

WHY?

In the New Orleans running of the bulls, we have female bulls - quite a concept - in the person of the Big Easy Roller Derby Girls with their roller skates and plastic bats. I can definitely see why people want to participate in this.

You have an exciting role reversal, with women acting as the pursuing bulls, the aggressors, while the runners, many of whom are men, become the pursued. To skate through the streets hitting people is a great way to release aggression. To run through the streets screaming with the bulls in hot pursuit also is a great way to release tension. The plastic bats sting enough to make it real, and yet no one is seriously hurt - and if you feel that you need to exit, it's very easy to simply scoot onto the sidewalk with the spectators where you won't be pursued.

The San Fermin Nueva Orleans running of the bulls is a relatively safe way to enjoy releasing strong feelings.

Running with Bulls #1: San Fermin Festival in Pamplona

The San Fermin Festival - celebrated for centuries in Pamplona, Spain, by running through the streets with real live bulls in the morning and holding bullfights in the evening - has now come to New Orleans in a much tamer version, which I observed in the French Quarter on Saturday, July 10.

This is the first of two posts that describe and reflect on the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona and in New Orleans. In this post, I will provide information about the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona and reflect on why people might choose to run with real live bulls there.

SAN FERMIN HIMSELF

We may as well start with some information about the saint for whom the festival is named. San Fermin was a Christian martyr. His life story is related to and sometimes confused with that of San Sernin (or Saint Saturninus), so let me begin with San Sernin.

San Sernin was the first bishop of Toulouse, France. San Sernin was martyred in Toulouse in 257. He was tied to a bull and dragged through the streets to his death, so we have a connection with a bull.

Two churches in Toulouse are related to San Sernin:

• San Sernin, which houses San Sernin's relics.
• Our Lady of the Bull (Notre Dame du Taur), which is said to be built upon the spot where the bull dragging San Sernin came to a stop. Our Lady of the Bull - I just love it!

San Fermin was born in Pamplona to a Roman Senator who had converted to Christianity. San Fermin is said to have been baptized by San Sernin. Later, San Fermin was ordained a priest in Toulouse and eventually became the first bishop of Pamplona. While preaching the gospel in France, San Fermin was beheaded at Amiens in 303.

Sometimes people confuse San Fermin with San Sernin and think that San Fermin was dragged to death by a bull in Pamplona, when really San SERNIN was dragged to death by a bull in Toulouse in 257, and San FERMIN was beheaded in Amiens in 303.

San Fermin is the patron saint of Pamplona.

SAN FERMIN FESTIVAL IN PAMPLONA

The San Fermin Festival in Pamplona occurs every year, from noon on July 6 to midnight on July 14. The festival dates back to the twelfth century, but was originally held in October. Like so many festivals, it combines religious and secular elements. On the religious side, we have the Feast of San Fermin from Christianity and possibly some connection with the Sacred Bull from Paganism. On the secular side, we have the entertainment of the bull runs and the bullfights as well as various commercial promotions.

Below are some of the components of the festival.

• Opening Ceremonies. Fireworks open the festival at noon on July 6 and a rousing party is held that night.
• Bull Run. Every morning, from July 7 through July 14, people and bulls run through the streets of Pamplona.
• Bullfight. Every evening, from July 7 through July 14, a bull fight is held.
• Giants and Big Heads. These figures are paraded through the streets of Pamplona every day during the San Fermin Festival. The Giants are large figures of kings and queens - a pair each from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas - made of papier mache heads and long flowing costumes. The Big Heads are smaller figures with big heads, forming the entourage of the Giants. On July 7, the Giants and Big Heads are joined by the statue of San Fermin in the most elaborate procession of the festival.
• Poor Me. This song, called Pobre de Mi in Spanish, is sung by candle light at midnight on July 14 to close the festival. The words mourn the festival's end, and the sense is something like "Poor me, the festival is over."

RUNNING WITH THE BULLS IN PAMPLONA

A bull run occurs daily at 8 a.m. during the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona. The bulls who will fight that evening, along with additional bulls, are let loose along a corridor of streets that will move the bulls from their corral to the bullring. This is a distance of a half mile, and the bulls take about three minutes to run from start to finish - so the event goes very quickly.

The progress of the bulls is signaled by fire-rockets. Rocket #1 signals that the corral has been opened, Rocket #2 that the bulls have left the corral for the street, Rocket #3 that the bulls have arrived in the bullring, and Rocket #4 that the bulls are in their pens and the bull run is over.

Humans may run through the streets of Pamplona with the bulls. Runners wear a white shirt and pants and a red kerchief and waistband.

Running with the bulls is a dangerous activity, and every year people are injured in the bull runs. Over the last century, sixteen or so people have been killed by the bulls. The last death occurred in 2009, and the one before that in 1995. The large number of participants, the presence of inexperienced runners, and drunkenness add to the danger.

Ernest Hemingway is connected with the running of the bulls in Pamplona through his novel The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926. This novel gave wide publicity to the Pamplona bull runs.

WHY?

Why do people put their lives in danger by running with real live bulls in Pamplona? Well, some people thrive on dangerous activities. People race cars. People climb Mount Everest. People sky dive. People run with real live bulls. I think that some people simply enjoy the thrill of the adrenaline rush.

Also, in the case of real live bulls, we're talking about awesome and powerful animals. To be so near that unleashed awesomeness and power - to be right next to the bulls with nothing between you and them - must be awe-inspiring, terrifying, wild, and primal. Some people love this feeling.

My next post will describe and reflect on the running of the bulls in New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina: Being Back in New Orleans

Being back in New Orleans, my home city, is incredibly wonderful. These are some of the things I'm enjoying about life in New Orleans.

A PLACE WHERE YOU LIVE: This may sound odd, but I had an interesting impression the first time I returned to New Orleans after moving to North Carolina. I left New Orleans at the end of April 2006, and I drove back in October 2008 for my high school reunion. As I drove into Mississippi, I began to feel more and more at home, largely because the land is flat and there are lots of pine trees, which are familiar to me as a plentiful type of tree in Louisiana and Mississippi, north of New Orleans. Then, when I drove into New Orleans itself, I had an overwhelming sense of familiarity. Everything was familiar--the architecture, the streets, the vegetation, the speech patterns, the people. And this was my thought: New Orleans is a place where you live. North Carolina is a place where you go. I'm trying to live in a place where you go. This is completely subjective, of course, and I imagine that North Carolinians would have the reverse impression. Nonetheless, I feel very blessed now to be in what, for me, is a place where you live!

MY APARTMENT: I have a great apartment on the second floor of a two-story double, with a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The bedroom and living room are quite spacious. I have two beds in my bedroom and I bought several room dividers so that I can accommodate a house guest by sharing the bedroom and yet give us each some privacy. The living room is large enough for nice parties. I have off-street parking and many windows that let in lots of light. A friend of our family, Rae, lives across the street.

I'm just a block from the Mississippi River, and I can look out my windows and see the Mississippi River bridge, boats sailing past, and bikers riding on the levee. Besides the river, I'm also right near a set of train tracks and the streetcar line. I can hear boat horns, train whistles, and streetcar jangles.

BIKE TRAIL: The Mississippi River levee is just a block from my house, and it has a paved bike trail atop it. This makes a wonderful bike ride of an evening. I like to ride as far as the Huey P. Long Bridge and back--about forty-five to fifty minutes. It's also nice to ride to River Shack Tavern in Jefferson LA--Monday evenings are the red beans & rice special with live blues music by Amanda Walker.

The paved portion of the levee trail is quite long, extending from Audubon Park, through Orleans Parish, Jefferson Parish, and into St. Charles Parish as far as Destrehan LA. Beyond Destrehan, the bike trail continues but is no longer paved. It shouldn't be hard to ride on, though, as it is well-packed dirt. I rode as far as Destrehan and back on Labor Day--it took me four and a half hours.

BIKING: It's wonderful to be back in a place where I can ride my bike. I can bike to work and to many other places. I can go for a week or more without needing to use my car, especially in summer when we have daylight well into the evening. In North Carolina, beautiful as it was, I had to use my car to get anywhere. This was a concern because if I ever had car trouble I wouldn't be able to get to work. (Actually, this never did happen.) Here in New Orleans, I'm so close to work that I can walk if I need or want to.

FRIENDS: I have my family and long-time friends in New Orleans. My brother Danny is in New Orleans, and the families of my two married sisters are a forty-five-minute drive across Lake Pontchartrain in Mandeville LA. I sometimes drive over for family dinner at my sister Janet's on Thursdays.

The Party Pals are a group of friends who like to have each other over for parties. These include Barbara & Dick, Ellen & Paul, Toni & Ken, and me. We are the core members. Other people sometimes attend our parties, too. These are some parties we've had.

• Black & White Party. Everyone wore all black, all white, or a combination of black and white, and I served black and white foods--black beans and white rice, black olives and white cauliflower, pumpernickel bread and white bread, blackberries and vanilla ice cream.
• Paul Revere's Midnight Ride Party. I showed the scene of Paul Revere's midnight ride from the film Johnny Tremain, we read Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride," I displayed pictures of Paul Revere's silversmith work, and we discussed the concept of connectors from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, since Malcolm Gladwell uses Paul Revere as an example of a connector.
• Santa Lucia Breakfast. This is a Swedish custom. I served coffee, coffee cake, and spinach-cheese-egg casserole, I told the story of Saint Lucy, and we all sang the Santa Lucia song.
• New Year Party. I've had several of these shortly after the New Year, but I especially remember one that featured the singing of "Good King Wenceslas" as an eight-part round. (If you have enough people, you can sing it as a sixteen-part round--I've been in a group where this was done.)
• Saint Nicholas Party. We had an appearance by Saint Nicholas himself in the person of my friend David.
• Name Bugs. This party featured drawing name bugs. You fold a piece of paper in half lengthwise, open it and write your name along the crease, fold the paper and rub so that you get a mirror image of your name on the other side of the crease, open the paper and use the double version of your name as a base to draw an interesting bug.
• Snowflakes. This party featured making paper snowflakes.
• Story Circle. Each person told a story from his or her life.
• Talent Show. Each person shared a talent, very broadly defined.

My class from the Academy of the Sacred Heart has been meeting for monthly lunches ever since our fortieth class reunion in October 2008. The Academy of the Sacred Heart is a Catholic girls' school in New Orleans that goes from Pre-Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade, so many of us in my class were together for fourteen years. Our classmate Ninette has been wonderful in organizing these lunches.

EATING: I'm in walking or biking distance of great eating places! These are just a few.

• La Madeleine Country French Cafe--wonderful French onion soup
• Bangkok Thai Restaurant
• Pupuseria La Macarena
• Franky & Johnny's--neighborhood seafood restaurant
• Oak Street Cafe--boudin fresh from Opelousas LA
• Rue de la Course coffeehouse
• Cafe Luna
• Casamento's Restaurant--oysters beyond compare
• Bee Sweet Cupcakes
• Blue Frog Chocolates

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY NEW ORLEANS: It's wonderful to be back at Loyola. I'm enjoying teaching the international students and reconnecting with colleagues old and new. I also like the spirituality at Loyola. The Jesuit priests are far removed from the oppressive version of Catholicism that I grew up with. I feel very much at home at Loyola. It's right in my neighborhood, and Audubon Park is just across the street.

PRYTANIA MOVIE THEATER: The one-screen neighborhood Prytania Movie Theater is close by. The Prytania is doing a classic movies series several days a week. The eighty-eight-year-old father of the Prytania's owner, Mr. Rene Brunet, introduces the classic movie of the day and stays around to chat over coffee and cookies in the lobby afterwards. Some of the classic movies recently shown or to be shown include The Sound of Music, Singin' in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Vertigo, The King and I, To Kill a Mockingbird.

CULTURAL HOME: It's extremely nice to be in a place where I know the history and understand the cultural references.

Hurricane Katrina: Moving Back to New Orleans

I moved back to New Orleans on May 25, 2009, after living in western North Carolina for three years following Hurricane Katrina. Here is how my return to New Orleans came about.

My return home was precipitated by the economic crisis and its effect on Western Carolina University (WCU), where I was teaching. WCU is a part of the University of North Carolina state system, and thus subject to state-mandated budget cuts. The state mandated an eight or so percent budget cut for 2009-2010, with seventy or so percent to come from reduction in personnel. This hit faculty in positions like mine especially hard. I had a year-by-year renewable teaching contract at WCU. WCU decided to eliminate most faculty with this type of contract--easy to do by simply not renewing the contract for the following academic year.

As an aside, these faculty cuts have been especially hard on the English Department, where I taught. Many of the first-year writing sections were taught by yearly-contract faculty and had a maximum student enrollment of twenty students. With most yearly-contract faculty gone, the tenured and tenure-track faculty must now teach one or more sections of first-year writing, and each section now has a maximum student enrollment of twenty-five. Some faculty members are teaching four writing classes this year with twenty-five students enrolled in each--this means one hundred writing students. I had eighty writing students at a time (four sections of twenty students each). I can't imagine what it must be like to teach one hundred students!

Well, back to my story. Fortunately, WCU has an admirable Provost--Provost Kyle Carter. He sent a strong message to all WCU Deans and Department Chairs that went something like this: The budget cuts mean that we will need to eliminate faculty members next year. These faculty members are persons with meaningful lives here in western North Carolina. Losing their teaching positions will cause great difficulty for them. We need to be aware of this and help in any way we can. At the very least, we need to make decisions now about who will remain and who will go, and communicate these decisions to the faculty. That way, those who will not be here next year will know early enough to make other plans. Please make these decisions by the end of January and let your faculty members know.

As a result of Provost Kyle Carter's compassionate directive, I learned before the end of January that I would not be at WCU the following year. I am very grateful for this. Also, the English Department at WCU was very supportive. Many faculty members kept us informed of postings for teaching positions that they became aware of and offered to write letters of recommendation.

This was all very helpful but didn't prevent me from slipping into a funk, from which I finally emerged with the support of my friend Merry. Merry insisted that I come to New Orleans over spring break (the first week of March) and that I stay with her and look into teaching in the ESL (English as a Second Language) Department of Delgado Community College. Delgado has a large array of ESL classes, but had to limit the number of classes offered in 2008-2009 for want of enough teachers. I did this (I was in such a funk that Merry had to lovingly insist) and I had a great time staying with Merry and re-connecting with my colleagues at Delgado--Betty, Mary Ann, Linda, Yadira, and Cindy.

As it happened, though, I wound up with my old teaching position in the Loyola Intensive English Program (LIEP) of Loyola University New Orleans. When I emailed Debbie at Loyola to let her know that I was applying to Delgado and that she might be contacted as a reference, Debbie told me that Loyola was ready to re-open LIEP, where I had taught for thirteen years (1992-2006) and which Loyola had closed after the initial post-Hurricane Katrina semester of Spring 2006. I felt incredibly fortunate (and actually somewhat guilty) to have two work possibilities (Delgado and Loyola) at a time when so many people are struggling to find work. I chose Loyola.

I moved on May 25 with wonderful support from family and friends. Marsha, my landlady and friend, was incredibly helpful with finding packing supplies and other helpful moving information. My friend Ken actually flew from New Orleans to North Carolina to help me drive back to New Orleans with a small U-Haul truck (Ken driving the truck and me driving my Toyota). My brother Danny helped me unload the U-Haul at a storage facility. Ellen and Paul housed me for my first two nights back in New Orleans. Merry then housed me until I located an apartment. Once I had moved into my new place, Noel hung bamboo shades on the windows, extra clothes hooks in the bathroom, a full-length mirror in the bedroom, and a mailbox on the front porch. I felt incredibly blessed and supported.

My next post will tell what it's like to be back in New Orleans.