I found The Etruscan Chimera - an archeology mystery by Lyn Hamilton in a coffee shop where I regulary leave my magazines and unwanted paperbacks. It was free for the taking.
The following excerpt is from p. 27 - 30 (paperback version)
"What I found interesting was how much, yet how little, we know about the Etruscans, or the people we have come to know as Etruscans. It is unlikely they ever referred to themselves that way. That name came from the Romans, who referred to their neighbors, occasional allies, and in the end, intractable enemies, as Tusci or Etrusci. The Greeks called them Tyrrhenoi, after which the Tyrrhenian Sea is named. The Etruscans called themselves Rasenna or Rasna.
Their language, a rather unusually one that, unlike almost all other European languages, did not have Indo-European roots, has been deciphered to a large extent, but when it comes right down to it, there is very little to read, other than inscriptions on tombs and such. They may have had, indeed must surely have had, a rich body of literature, but it is lost to us, so what we know about them comes from archaeology or the writings of others: Greeks and Romans for example, whose own particular biases are reflected in their accounts. They also must have had a complex ritual and religious life, because we know that long after the Etruscan cities came under the domination of Rome, Roman citizens were still calling upon Etruscan haruspices, diviners, to aid them in important deliberations and decisions. The number and elaborate nature of their tombs indicate that there was a social structure, including a wealthy elite, but that also they believed in an afterlife. What exactly they believed, however, is, to a large extent shrouded in the mists of time.
What we do know is that people who shared a common language, customs and beliefs, dominated a large part of central Italy, what is now Tuscany - the word itself speaks to its Etruscan roots - part of Umbria and northern Lazio near Rome between about 700 B.C.E. until their defeat and assimilation by the Romans in the third century B.C.E. Their territory was essentially bounded by the Tiber River on the south and east, and the Arno to the north. To the west was the Tyrrhenian Sea. They lived in cities and used rich metal deposits along the Tyrrhenian shore to develop extensive trade by land and sea. In time, a loose federation of twelve cities, the Dodecapolis, grew up. The ruling elite of these cities, city states, really met annually at a place called Volsinii, to elect a leader.
During their heyday, before the birth of the Roman republic, there were Etruscan kings of Rome - the Taquins - who, between 616 and 509 B.C.E, were instrumental in building the city that would ultimately defeat them. The last king of Rome was Tarquinus the Proud, who was explected from Rome in 509 B.C.E. From that time on, Rome and the Etruscans were enemies, fighting over every inch of ground.
In the end, the Etruscan federation could not hold against the might of Rome. For whatever, reason the cities did not band together to protect themselves, and one by one, they fell. Their cities were abandoned, or fell into ruin, or were simply replaced by others, until they were reborn, in a different form, as medieval cities, some of the loveliest in Italy: Orvieto, Chiusi, Cortona, Volterra, Arezzo, and Perugia amoung them.
As mysterious as these people may have been, I noticed that many had opinions on them. Indeed, I would say that the Etruscans presented a blank slate, in a way, on which later people found a convenient resting place for their own hopes, beliefs, and desires. Cosimo de Medici was hardly the first to use the people's rather vague notions about the Etrucans for his own purposes. A Dominican friar who when by the name of Annuis of Viterbo, determined, in the fifteenth century, that the Etruscans, a noble and peace-loving people, according to him, had helped repopulate the earth after the Flood. To prove his point, he argued that their language was a version of Aramaic Despite his rather outlandish views, Annius's theories may have helped save some Etruscan antiquities from destruction by the church as pagan symbols. The Etruscans could have used Annius a century later, when something like six tons of Etruscan bronzes were melted down to adorn a church in Rome.
Lawerence, of Lady Chatterley's Lover fame, also thought the Etruscans were his kind of people, in touch with nature and their natural selves. He saw phallic symbols everywhere on his visits to Etruscan sites and wrote glowingly of what he saw to be their refreshingly natural philosophy. On the other hand, the philosopher Nietzsche, who arguably kewn something about angst, called them gloomy - schwermutigen - although what made him think that was not clear. The art critic Berensen dismissed all Etruscan art as being non-Greek and therefore unworthy, even though, if I'd interpreted what I'd read correctly, the Greeks living in Italy had been responsible for some of it, and some of the art prized as Greek and Roman had later been revealed to be Etruscan. By the end of my reading, it was pretty clear to me that views expressed about the Etruscans said more about the holder of those opinions than about the Etruscans themselves."
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Information in Bb - YouTube Poetry
Information
By Daniel Donahoo (2009)
YouTube Poetry by essforgee
She closes the lid.
And unplugs a device no bigger than her thumb from the computer.
"My life's work" she says.
But it isn't her life's work.
You see we store information like an Escher Painting.
It shouldn't all fit in there. But it does.
And every day we manage to fit more and more into smaller and smaller spaces.
"Until one day, she says, "we'll be able to fit all the information that the world has. Everything that everyone knows and believes and dreams into nothing."
It will all be in there;
stored and filed, tagged with any key words you might imagine.
Our hard drives will be thin air.
It will make nanobots look like elephants.
And elephants will be in there too.
Tagged.
Accessible by search terms like
grey, ivory and the largest land dwelling mammal.
We'll process away at nothing and understand everything.
We'll think of of word and the information will slip in,
not through our ears or eyes but straight through out skin.
Information will breathe in and out of us, permeate our skin.
Our knowing will be as deep as it is wide.
You see our work here is to learn so much, to be so full of knowing,
that there is left is to do is unlearn.
Humanity must get to a point where we let go.
We leave the useless ideas and the spent ideologies in recycle bin:
like an adolescent brain shedding neurons,
like a snake slithering from its old skin,
like an old man who's come to understand so well
the point where reality meets the intangible
that he's able to decide which breath will be his last.
And he will enjoy that breath more than any that he has taken in his entire life.
And Her life's work is more than a 4 meg flash drive
"My life's work", she says, "is the impact that this has.
"This is not about what I produce.
It is all about what others receive."
By Daniel Donahoo (2009)
YouTube Poetry by essforgee
She closes the lid.
And unplugs a device no bigger than her thumb from the computer.
"My life's work" she says.
But it isn't her life's work.
You see we store information like an Escher Painting.
It shouldn't all fit in there. But it does.
And every day we manage to fit more and more into smaller and smaller spaces.
"Until one day, she says, "we'll be able to fit all the information that the world has. Everything that everyone knows and believes and dreams into nothing."
It will all be in there;
stored and filed, tagged with any key words you might imagine.
Our hard drives will be thin air.
It will make nanobots look like elephants.
And elephants will be in there too.
Tagged.
Accessible by search terms like
grey, ivory and the largest land dwelling mammal.
We'll process away at nothing and understand everything.
We'll think of of word and the information will slip in,
not through our ears or eyes but straight through out skin.
Information will breathe in and out of us, permeate our skin.
Our knowing will be as deep as it is wide.
You see our work here is to learn so much, to be so full of knowing,
that there is left is to do is unlearn.
Humanity must get to a point where we let go.
We leave the useless ideas and the spent ideologies in recycle bin:
like an adolescent brain shedding neurons,
like a snake slithering from its old skin,
like an old man who's come to understand so well
the point where reality meets the intangible
that he's able to decide which breath will be his last.
And he will enjoy that breath more than any that he has taken in his entire life.
And Her life's work is more than a 4 meg flash drive
"My life's work", she says, "is the impact that this has.
"This is not about what I produce.
It is all about what others receive."
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Saints Joseph, Partick, Big Chief & Spy Boy
New Orleans is such a mash up of cultures that we have
Irish-Italian Parades in 3 parishes (for everyone else in the USA this is the equivalet of 3 counties)
AND
The Indians (Mardi Gras Indians) hold their Super Sunday around the same time, which is intrestingly enough....
The Spring Equinox
Irish-Italian Parades in 3 parishes (for everyone else in the USA this is the equivalet of 3 counties)
AND
The Indians (Mardi Gras Indians) hold their Super Sunday around the same time, which is intrestingly enough....
The Spring Equinox
Friday, March 18, 2011
Biggest Full Moon in Decades
Moon gazers are in for a treat this weekend when the full moon will appear 14 percent bigger.
Article taken from DiscoveryNews
Article taken from DiscoveryNews
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Once Upon a Time - Mardi Gras
Once upon a time: Mardi Gras a look back at the history of it all
Published: Tuesday, February 22, 2011, 11:44 AM
Updated: Wednesday, February 23, 2011, 12:20 PM
By The Times-Picayune
SOURCE: The Times-Picayune's Mardi Gras 2011 Special Section.
It was the first time for the group of Mardi Gras newbies visiting from out of town. They headed down Bourbon Street surrounded by the kaleidoscopic shock-and-awe that is Fat Tuesday in the French Quarter.
One of them was costumed like a recent headline-making serial killer while her friend's elaborate outfit was designed to resemble a disgraced congressman who was caught with his pants down - literally - in an airport bathroom. Slightly more family-friendly attire included the group's small contingent dressed in "Mama Mia!" T-shirts, which broke into song at the drop of a hat.
Somewhere down the street a stereo was blasting "Carnival Time."
Two scantily attired men dressed up like cherubs hung on to a street pole while pretending to shoot "love arrows" in our direction.
And it wasn't even noon yet.
IN THE BEGINNING
The ancient roots of Carnival can be traced to the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6 - aka Kings' Day or Twelfth Night (as in the 12 days of Christmas). In some places around the world Jan. 6 celebrates the arrival of the three wise men at the birthplace of the Christ child.
In New Orleans, Kings' Day simultaneously ends the Christmas season and fires the starting pistol for Carnival. This festival of fun finds its roots in various pagan celebrations of spring, some dating back 5,000 years. But it was Pope Gregory XIII who made it a Christian holiday when, in 1582, he put it on his Gregorian calendar (the 12-month one we still use today). He placed Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday, the final day of the Carnival season) on the day before Ash Wednesday, the first of Lent's 40 days preceding Easter. That way, all the debauchery would be finished when it came time to fast and pray.
Much of the first part of the Carnival season is made up of invitation-only coronation balls and supper dances hosted by private clubs known as krewes. The public portion of Carnival comes to life a couple of weeks before Mardi Gras when the krewes hit the streets, staging more than 60 parades in metropolitan New Orleans.
Mardi Gras arrived in North America with the LeMoyne brothers, Iberville and Bienville, in the late 17th century, when King Louis XIV sent the pair to defend France's claim to the New World territory of Louisiana. The explorers found the mouth of the Mississippi River on March 3, 1699, Mardi Gras of that year. They made camp a few miles upriver, named the spot Point d'Mardi Gras and partook in a spontaneous party. This is often referred to as North America's first Mardi Gras. However, it is just as likely that the weary explorers were simply celebrating the fact that they were still alive.
A couple of decades later, Bienville founded New Orleans and soon Carnival celebrations were an annual event highlighted by lavish balls and masked spectacles. Some were small, private parties touting select guest lists, while others were raucous affairs open to the public. Collectively, they reflected such a propensity for frolic in the local citizenry that historian Robert Tallant wrote in his book "Mardi Gras" that "it has been said that the natives would step over a corpse on the way to a ball or the opera and think nothing of it."
Parades officially became a part of the festivities in 1838. On Ash Wednesday of that year, The Commercial Bulletin read: "The European custom of celebrating the last day of the Carnival by a procession of masqued figures through the streets was introduced here yesterday."
ROWDY EVENT
Over the next 20 years, Carnival became an increasingly rowdy event defined by drunkenness and violence. Eventually, churches and even the press began to call for its demise. In 1857, Mardi Gras found itself on the verge of death (having already been outlawed twice under Spanish and early American rule).
Then along came Comus, a group whose tale actually began 27 years earlier in the wee hours of Jan. 1, 1830 as a group of young men walked home from a New Year's Eve party in Mobile, Ala. They passed a general store featuring an outdoor display of rakes, hoes, shovels and cowbells. Making the kind of decision inebriated young men are apt to, they picked up the supplies and headed to the mayor's house where they caused quite a stir. An obviously patient man, the mayor invited them in, sobered them up and, according to historian Buddy Stall, made the motley krewe's leader an offer.
"Next year," hizzoner suggested, "why not organize yourselves and let everybody have fun?"
Led by Michael Kraft, the group called themselves the Cowbellion de Rakin Society. They paraded the following New Year's Eve and were so successful that the procession became an annual event.
Now, jump ahead to 1857 when New Orleans city leaders were on the verge of canceling Mardi Gras for good. Six Cowbellions now living in the Big Easy proposed forming a new private club to present a parade based on a theme, with floats, costumed riders and flambeaux (torch carriers who lit the way) - an orderly alternative to the chaos that Carnival had become. They chose the name Comus after the Greek god of revelry and coined the term "krewe." City leaders agreed and Comus was credited with saving Mardi Gras.
It wasn't until after the Civil War that the second Carnival krewe made its debut in 1870. The new group chose Jan. 6 to present its parade and ball, giving themselves the name Twelfth Night Revelers. Although they no longer parade, the Revelers ball (along with the Kings' Day streetcar ride of the Phunny Phorty Phellows) marks the official start of the season.
During the Revelers first fete, an innovation was brought to Mardi Gras - a queen. Well, almost. After their tableau was presented, court fools carried out a giant king cake, the traditional pastry of the season, in which had been baked a golden bean. The plan was that pieces of cake would be presented to a group of young ladies and the one who found the bean would be crowned Carnival's first queen.
However, it seems that the fools were quite drunk and instead of presenting the cake, they either dropped it on or threw it at the young women. When the flour cleared, none of the appalled females would admit to having the bean. So, the first Carnival queen - wasn't, until the following year.
By 1872, new troubles were brewing in the city. Postwar carpetbaggery had reached its zenith and rumblings of revolt against the city government could be heard. As Carnival approached, fears of masked reprisals surfaced. Then came the diversion city leaders needed. News arrived that Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff Alexandrovitch, brother of the heir apparent to the throne of Russia, had accepted the city's invitation to Mardi Gras.
A plan was hatched.
A new krewe of prominent citizens from both the government and its opposition would be formed and a King of all Carnival would be chosen. The group would call itself the School of Design and its ruler was to be Rex.
What no one knew was that the duke had accepted because his visit would coincide with the New Orleans opening of singer Lydia Thompson's touring musical, in which she performed a nonsensical ballad called "If Ever I Cease to Love." (Supposedly, she had also sung the number privately for the duke during a Big Apple rendezvous.) When news of Thompson and the duke hit the local grapevine, public interest in the visit grew enormously.
Mardi Gras morning found the duke sitting in the official reviewing stand as Rex, atop a bay charger, led 10,000 maskers in a line more than a mile long. Among them were a number of bands, all of which broke into "If Ever I Cease to Love" as they passed the duke. Alas, the romance was ill-fated, but after 137 years, Rex remains King of Carnival and "If Ever I Cease to Love" is still the official song of the season.
The oldest parading African-American krewe is the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, which first took to the streets in 1909. Not taking themselves as seriously as the staunch white krewes, the group dressed its first king, William Story, in an old sack and a crown fashioned from a lard can. A banana stalk was his scepter. Over the years, Zulu has become a perennial favorite and the krewe's gilded coconuts (painted gold and decorated with glitter) are one of the season's most prized throws.
MODERN MARDI GRAS
By the 1950s, the truck parades, composed of floats built atop flatbed trucks (usually by families), had become well established. The late '60s saw the advent of the "superkrewes" Endymion and Bacchus, which broke with tradition by offering open memberships, larger floats and celebrity kings.
But Carnival faced new foes in the latter half of the 20th century. A 1979 police strike caused parades to be canceled in the city, just to see a number of them pop up in the suburbs. The City Council's anti-discrimination ordinance of 1988 called for krewes to either open their ranks or get off public streets. In response, three of the four oldest krewes - Comus (1857), Momus (1873) and Proteus (1882) - took their floats and went home. Rex remained and the other slots were filled. Proteus returned in 2000 and the following year became the first krewe to parade in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
In 2002, the 9/11 tragedy led to an extension of the NFL season, meaning that the Super Bowl set to be played in New Orleans the week before Carnival began, would now take place in the middle of the festivities.
With some maneuvering, a number of parades were rescheduled to accommodate the game.
Just a few years ago, with the city still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, the Carnival season was somewhat compacted but only a handful of krewes opted out of parading, most of whom returned for 2007.
And in 2010, as the Superbowl Champion Saints added spice to the already joyous season, Mardi Gras seemed more triumphant than the usual celebration of the end of winter.
Krewes shifted days, times and even halted parades so as not to conflict with the events.
Though not an obstacle, the Super Bowl sensation Saints were another layer of Carnival.
So, it seems that in New Orleans, no matter what the obstacle or the celebration, the Greatest Free Show on Earth has always found a way around it.
As Stall writes in "Buddy Stall's New Orleans," "It has been said that the people of New Orleans love Carnival and Mardi Gras parades to such an extreme that if a catastrophe were to occur and only two people survived, at the next Mardi Gras one of them would be in costume marching down the street, beating a drum and holding a banner, while the other would be standing on the side in costume, drinking a Dixie Beer and hollering, "Throw me something, mister!"
SOURCE: The Times-Picayune's Mardi Gras 2011 Special Section.
Published: Tuesday, February 22, 2011, 11:44 AM
Updated: Wednesday, February 23, 2011, 12:20 PM
By The Times-Picayune
SOURCE: The Times-Picayune's Mardi Gras 2011 Special Section.
It was the first time for the group of Mardi Gras newbies visiting from out of town. They headed down Bourbon Street surrounded by the kaleidoscopic shock-and-awe that is Fat Tuesday in the French Quarter.
One of them was costumed like a recent headline-making serial killer while her friend's elaborate outfit was designed to resemble a disgraced congressman who was caught with his pants down - literally - in an airport bathroom. Slightly more family-friendly attire included the group's small contingent dressed in "Mama Mia!" T-shirts, which broke into song at the drop of a hat.
Somewhere down the street a stereo was blasting "Carnival Time."
Two scantily attired men dressed up like cherubs hung on to a street pole while pretending to shoot "love arrows" in our direction.
And it wasn't even noon yet.
IN THE BEGINNING
The ancient roots of Carnival can be traced to the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6 - aka Kings' Day or Twelfth Night (as in the 12 days of Christmas). In some places around the world Jan. 6 celebrates the arrival of the three wise men at the birthplace of the Christ child.
In New Orleans, Kings' Day simultaneously ends the Christmas season and fires the starting pistol for Carnival. This festival of fun finds its roots in various pagan celebrations of spring, some dating back 5,000 years. But it was Pope Gregory XIII who made it a Christian holiday when, in 1582, he put it on his Gregorian calendar (the 12-month one we still use today). He placed Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday, the final day of the Carnival season) on the day before Ash Wednesday, the first of Lent's 40 days preceding Easter. That way, all the debauchery would be finished when it came time to fast and pray.
Much of the first part of the Carnival season is made up of invitation-only coronation balls and supper dances hosted by private clubs known as krewes. The public portion of Carnival comes to life a couple of weeks before Mardi Gras when the krewes hit the streets, staging more than 60 parades in metropolitan New Orleans.
Mardi Gras arrived in North America with the LeMoyne brothers, Iberville and Bienville, in the late 17th century, when King Louis XIV sent the pair to defend France's claim to the New World territory of Louisiana. The explorers found the mouth of the Mississippi River on March 3, 1699, Mardi Gras of that year. They made camp a few miles upriver, named the spot Point d'Mardi Gras and partook in a spontaneous party. This is often referred to as North America's first Mardi Gras. However, it is just as likely that the weary explorers were simply celebrating the fact that they were still alive.
A couple of decades later, Bienville founded New Orleans and soon Carnival celebrations were an annual event highlighted by lavish balls and masked spectacles. Some were small, private parties touting select guest lists, while others were raucous affairs open to the public. Collectively, they reflected such a propensity for frolic in the local citizenry that historian Robert Tallant wrote in his book "Mardi Gras" that "it has been said that the natives would step over a corpse on the way to a ball or the opera and think nothing of it."
Parades officially became a part of the festivities in 1838. On Ash Wednesday of that year, The Commercial Bulletin read: "The European custom of celebrating the last day of the Carnival by a procession of masqued figures through the streets was introduced here yesterday."
ROWDY EVENT
Over the next 20 years, Carnival became an increasingly rowdy event defined by drunkenness and violence. Eventually, churches and even the press began to call for its demise. In 1857, Mardi Gras found itself on the verge of death (having already been outlawed twice under Spanish and early American rule).
Then along came Comus, a group whose tale actually began 27 years earlier in the wee hours of Jan. 1, 1830 as a group of young men walked home from a New Year's Eve party in Mobile, Ala. They passed a general store featuring an outdoor display of rakes, hoes, shovels and cowbells. Making the kind of decision inebriated young men are apt to, they picked up the supplies and headed to the mayor's house where they caused quite a stir. An obviously patient man, the mayor invited them in, sobered them up and, according to historian Buddy Stall, made the motley krewe's leader an offer.
"Next year," hizzoner suggested, "why not organize yourselves and let everybody have fun?"
Led by Michael Kraft, the group called themselves the Cowbellion de Rakin Society. They paraded the following New Year's Eve and were so successful that the procession became an annual event.
Now, jump ahead to 1857 when New Orleans city leaders were on the verge of canceling Mardi Gras for good. Six Cowbellions now living in the Big Easy proposed forming a new private club to present a parade based on a theme, with floats, costumed riders and flambeaux (torch carriers who lit the way) - an orderly alternative to the chaos that Carnival had become. They chose the name Comus after the Greek god of revelry and coined the term "krewe." City leaders agreed and Comus was credited with saving Mardi Gras.
It wasn't until after the Civil War that the second Carnival krewe made its debut in 1870. The new group chose Jan. 6 to present its parade and ball, giving themselves the name Twelfth Night Revelers. Although they no longer parade, the Revelers ball (along with the Kings' Day streetcar ride of the Phunny Phorty Phellows) marks the official start of the season.
During the Revelers first fete, an innovation was brought to Mardi Gras - a queen. Well, almost. After their tableau was presented, court fools carried out a giant king cake, the traditional pastry of the season, in which had been baked a golden bean. The plan was that pieces of cake would be presented to a group of young ladies and the one who found the bean would be crowned Carnival's first queen.
However, it seems that the fools were quite drunk and instead of presenting the cake, they either dropped it on or threw it at the young women. When the flour cleared, none of the appalled females would admit to having the bean. So, the first Carnival queen - wasn't, until the following year.
By 1872, new troubles were brewing in the city. Postwar carpetbaggery had reached its zenith and rumblings of revolt against the city government could be heard. As Carnival approached, fears of masked reprisals surfaced. Then came the diversion city leaders needed. News arrived that Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff Alexandrovitch, brother of the heir apparent to the throne of Russia, had accepted the city's invitation to Mardi Gras.
A plan was hatched.
A new krewe of prominent citizens from both the government and its opposition would be formed and a King of all Carnival would be chosen. The group would call itself the School of Design and its ruler was to be Rex.
What no one knew was that the duke had accepted because his visit would coincide with the New Orleans opening of singer Lydia Thompson's touring musical, in which she performed a nonsensical ballad called "If Ever I Cease to Love." (Supposedly, she had also sung the number privately for the duke during a Big Apple rendezvous.) When news of Thompson and the duke hit the local grapevine, public interest in the visit grew enormously.
Mardi Gras morning found the duke sitting in the official reviewing stand as Rex, atop a bay charger, led 10,000 maskers in a line more than a mile long. Among them were a number of bands, all of which broke into "If Ever I Cease to Love" as they passed the duke. Alas, the romance was ill-fated, but after 137 years, Rex remains King of Carnival and "If Ever I Cease to Love" is still the official song of the season.
The oldest parading African-American krewe is the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, which first took to the streets in 1909. Not taking themselves as seriously as the staunch white krewes, the group dressed its first king, William Story, in an old sack and a crown fashioned from a lard can. A banana stalk was his scepter. Over the years, Zulu has become a perennial favorite and the krewe's gilded coconuts (painted gold and decorated with glitter) are one of the season's most prized throws.
MODERN MARDI GRAS
By the 1950s, the truck parades, composed of floats built atop flatbed trucks (usually by families), had become well established. The late '60s saw the advent of the "superkrewes" Endymion and Bacchus, which broke with tradition by offering open memberships, larger floats and celebrity kings.
But Carnival faced new foes in the latter half of the 20th century. A 1979 police strike caused parades to be canceled in the city, just to see a number of them pop up in the suburbs. The City Council's anti-discrimination ordinance of 1988 called for krewes to either open their ranks or get off public streets. In response, three of the four oldest krewes - Comus (1857), Momus (1873) and Proteus (1882) - took their floats and went home. Rex remained and the other slots were filled. Proteus returned in 2000 and the following year became the first krewe to parade in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
In 2002, the 9/11 tragedy led to an extension of the NFL season, meaning that the Super Bowl set to be played in New Orleans the week before Carnival began, would now take place in the middle of the festivities.
With some maneuvering, a number of parades were rescheduled to accommodate the game.
Just a few years ago, with the city still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, the Carnival season was somewhat compacted but only a handful of krewes opted out of parading, most of whom returned for 2007.
And in 2010, as the Superbowl Champion Saints added spice to the already joyous season, Mardi Gras seemed more triumphant than the usual celebration of the end of winter.
Krewes shifted days, times and even halted parades so as not to conflict with the events.
Though not an obstacle, the Super Bowl sensation Saints were another layer of Carnival.
So, it seems that in New Orleans, no matter what the obstacle or the celebration, the Greatest Free Show on Earth has always found a way around it.
As Stall writes in "Buddy Stall's New Orleans," "It has been said that the people of New Orleans love Carnival and Mardi Gras parades to such an extreme that if a catastrophe were to occur and only two people survived, at the next Mardi Gras one of them would be in costume marching down the street, beating a drum and holding a banner, while the other would be standing on the side in costume, drinking a Dixie Beer and hollering, "Throw me something, mister!"
SOURCE: The Times-Picayune's Mardi Gras 2011 Special Section.
Monday, March 7, 2011
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