"How they know Mardi Gras is over, they bring in a show from the Lutheran North." -- Garrison Keillor, February 16 at the Saenger Theatre

We have full-blown Lent in New Orleans and the sunniest of days. Trees flower and L. A. Norma's turtles stir, while windows up and down The River are thrown open to wafting aromas of file' gumbo and crawfish pies made from crawfish that speak with Chinese accents. They arrived as spoils from one of Globalization's many fronts. Foreign-born crawfish, available all over Town for two dollars a pound! Louisiana xenophobia not withstanding, crawfish pies march out of ovens putting le coup de grace on local mudbug fishermen. Ah, Lent thy mixed penance.

L. A. Norma went to New York with her waiter friend and missed A Prairie Home Companion at the Saenger Theatre. They had been traveling together in Europe when the World Trade Center collapsed and felt a pilgrimage up East was due, "Soon as Carnival's over." They left from Louis Armstrong Airport on Ash Wednesday - penance, there is thy sting. Traveling first class had been about the extent of Norma's penance. "Until Ash Wednesday." She spoke so heavily into the telephone I could almost smell her cigarette smoke. "You would not have believed the crowds at the airports." They got as far as Atlanta's Hartsfield International before switching to Amtrak. "A train ride," she reckoned, "before Republicans divvy up the rail system and bleed it to death one piece at a time. Not that its pieces fit too snuggly now."

They rolled into New York City the next day and took a cab to Ground Zero, looked at the crowd, sniffed at the air and went back to Grand Central Terminal to board the next train home. It would take two days. "In a sleeper, with room service, and my own waiter," she cackled. "Who cares how long it takes if I'm not in those damn lines."

She had called to ask if I would check on the turtles in her courtyard. "They will have come out for the warmth, and the NEW YORK TIMES is calling for yet another cold snap down there." I fed the turtles ground beef and green tomatoes and left a note for the yardman not to rake up their mulch. A good thing, it turned cold as the banker's heart before their train crossed the Kudzu Curtain.

They were traveling with a portable radio they bought from an Arab woman at Hartsfield International. The woman was afraid airport security might think it was a bomb and sold it for ten dollars. Then they worried that it might indeed be a bomb. Nonetheless, they took it onboard, and sipping Sazeracs in their compartment they listened as Garrison Keillor announced, "From historic Canal Street, where they never built the canal. In The Nation's only French City …"

The broadcast - sponsored by WWNO (89.9 MHz) and the elegant Ritz-Carlton Hotel - spotlighted talents gathered locally and in the frozen north. Their jokes and skits were perfectly tailored round a Crescent City fit. Even "New Orleans," so often garbled by dry landers, was pronounced perfectly by Keillor. He said "New Are-luns," just like he knew of where he spoke. Not once did he say "New Or-leens," (acceptable only in songs like "Do you know what it means to miss . . . ") or the convoluted "New Or-lay-uns," favored by NPR speech therapist Cokie Roberts, blue-haired Uptown ladies, and their politicians.

"You know what they say in the French Quarter?" Someone asked and answered. "A fool and his money are always welcome."

It took French wisdom Keillor said, to invite Northern Lutherans down to explain Mardi Gras was over. Actually, we know Mardi Gras is over. We know Mardi Gras like Minnesotans know tuna casseroles with peas. We even know the weight of the trash it generated, and how full the hotels and guesthouses were.

When the show started the boy on my left swooned at the theme's first note. The couple on my other side asked my favorite skit and expressed their love for "Guy Noir Private Detective." I told them of growing up in an Illinois-German settlement that comes to life every time Keillor talks of Lake Wobegon. Voices in front and behind intoned, "I know… me too… yes…"

Weeks later, sipping coffee at Frenchmen Street's PJ's, Norma asked if I knew the poet Kalamu ya Salaam (brother to PJ's owners Kenneth Ferdinand and his wife Melba) was lecturing on Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, at the Latter Branch Library. We rode Uptown with publisher Joshua Clark on the Saint Charles Street Car. It was again warm and, to the amazement of a tourist family, we let the windows down all the way. The car rocked and the tourists trembled.

One more note: Faubourg Marigny performance artist Jose Torres Tama has been working since February, as an artist-in-residence at McDonogh 15, in the nearby faraway French Quarter. His project is sponsored by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the University of New Orleans. Final note: The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is Wednesday March 20 through Sunday, March 24. In conjunction, this year a Visual Arts Exhibition relevant to Williams's life and work will be on display at the Quarter Scene Restaurant, 900 rue Dumaine, March 20 - April 20.