[This is a continuation of the author's series on New Orleans lessons, to commemorate both her 10th anniversary of living in New Orleans , as well as the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.]

U is for Under

When considering the letter "U," this preposition popped into mind first, although after yesterday's weather, I could have easily gone with "umbrella." Yet I feel like "under" says pretty much all you need to know about New Orleans, America's underdog, the steamy underbelly of our Puritan Union. It's also one of the few places - outside of San Francisco - where you can go out wearing your underwear and people don't even blink. Although I prefer a robe.

V is for Vampire

Although tourists flock to New Orleans to tour vampire author Anne Rice's house, hoping to come across a vampire in the evening shadows, they'd find more bloodsuckers out at our construction sites. Ask anyone who's had work done on their home - including our own Kelly Leahy - and you'll get an earful about dishonest contractors who either bled them dry or sucked the life out of them with postponements and switchbacks until the homeowner finally ended up in the fetal position. Now I know there are some good, honest contractors out there - and really, the three of you should form a club.

On the subject of vampires, I could go into detail about some of the gentlemen who have taught me valuable lessons during my time in New Orleans, but this isn't that kind of blog. Besides, you boys know who you are.

[This is a continuation of the author's series on New Orleans lessons, to commemorate both the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina as well as her 10th anniversary of living in New Orleans .]

I dare say that all Americans have some experience with parades, from big-city St. Paddy's Day extravaganzas down to small-town kiddies riding their streamer-festooned bikes on country roads to celebrate America's independence. Myself, I'd thought that my participation in a ticker-tape parade celebrating the troops home from Iraq back in '92, in a marching band on the streets of downtown Chicago, was the pinnacle of my parading life.

Oh, how wrong I was. I moved to New Orleans, where parades roll at night. And it makes a difference to see a parade after the sun's gone down, when the floats rise up out of the evening shadows and the flambeaux carriers' faces shine under the light of their torches. We spend a full year crafting our floats by hand, and then light them up with thousands of tiny bulbs. When they finally appear on the streets, against a backdrop of screaming crowds and marching band music, it's no wonder that people fight over beads - they want to bring a tiny bit of this magic home with them.

And if you get sick of the big parades, Fat Tuesday spawns hundreds of tiny ones, troupes of friends where the locals become the floats, painting and feathering themselves into the most amazing creations this side of Rio.

It's your choice, darlin': you can come to New Orleans to watch the parades, or you can come down to be the parade.

[This is a continuation of the author's series on New Orleans lessons, to commemorate both the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina as well as her 10th anniversary of living in New Orleans .]

N is for Neutral Ground

Wouldn't it be great if there was a world's neutral ground? People from all nations could go there to catch beads at Mardi Gras parades, have Sunday afternoon cookouts, and park their cars when the rain falls a little too hard. While the world's powers continue their endless warring, us regular folks could gather on the streetcar tracks and make fair-trade deals: one can of High Life for a Popeye's chicken breast. No glass allowed, friends, it's safety first out here.

How great would it be to see kids from all cultures fighting over a plush football tossed from a float? To sing drinking songs in every language? To hang out in a place where traffic's permanently stopped so that people can sit in their lawnchairs and shoot the shit?

This is my dream, dear readers, and it may never come true. Fortunately for us here in New Orleans, there's always a neutral ground, no matter how many battles life throws our way.

O is for Okra

I'd never given much thought to this hardly little vegetable until my neighbors planted it in spades this past spring. From its lowly spot on the table - rarely seen in its pure state, but hidden in gumbo or fried beyond recognition - I never would have imagined that it came from a plant that towers above my head and blooms such exquisite flowers.

If you only knew okra from its restaurant incarnations, you'd never guess that it grows so fast that if you don't pick daily, those stinkers will end up as long as your forearm. Sadly, they're too tough to eat at that length, but their long, tapered shape remind me of witch's fingers. And voila: another Halloween costume is born. This year, keep on the lookout for the lady wearing a dried-okra skirt!

Browsing through some photos on my computer for a few parting shots for NOLApics, I came across this one from Mardi Gras 2007. The character in the quilted suit is a bit too creepy for me, but the dude with the painted eyes seemed to think it was pretty funny. The child seemed to have some freaked-out fascination with him...or her...or it...

[This is a continuation of the author's series on New Orleans lessons, to commemorate both her 10th anniversary of living in New Orleans as well as the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.]

K is for Krewe

Before I moved to New Orleans, I thought of a crew simply as a bunch of people who work together, or perhaps an adjective to describe a square haircut. As I went through my first Mardi Gras, I then thought of a Krewe as an exclusive group of people who spend gobs of money to have a parade. Each Krewe has numerous royalty and dozens of members, all able to put up the cash to buy enough beads to shower upon the masses.

The more I learned about Mardi Gras, the more my definition of Krewe expanded. There are krewes for anyone, and most krewes don't care who you are, barring the Krewe of Comus, who opted to stop parading instead of opening admission to blacks. This means that a WASP like me can join the Krewe du Jieux, white folks can become Zulus, and cats can join the dogs' Krewe of Barkus (although few do.)

The Krewe du Vieux parade gathers numerous smaller krewes with names such as Krewe of CHAOS, Krewe of Underwear, and Krewe of Space-Age Love into one parade to kick off the season with satire. And on Fat Tuesday, these smaller krewes, along with other impromtu krewes made up of fun-loving locals take to the streets - the krewe du poux, the krewe of kosmic debris, krewe du st. anne, and on and on. In the end, all you need for a krewe is a group of friends in costume that want to parade around the city with flasks in hand, dancing to portable instruments of tambourine and kazoo.

I was inspired by my colleague Amanda Anderson's recent post, which also reminded me of something fun. Amanda recently celebrated her ten year anniversary of living in New Orleans (god love her) and was going through the alphabet, reflecting on what each letter brought to mind about our beloved (and beleaguered) Crescent City.

She reminded me of a game I used to force my husband to play with me. This was before we had the baby and he became such a big help that I felt bad trying to engage him with it. It's a stupid game with essentially no rules and no winner, that I cleverly call "A to Z." Spectacular, no?

Basically the point of the game is to pick a topic and go through all the letters of the alphabet (the English one) and come up with, well, you know, things that describe said topic or fit into it. And naturally I've forced him to, on at least one occasion, go through the alphabet with regard to Nola.

We came up with gems like B for booze and beads and boobs. We amused ourselves with C for Cajun and Creole Cooking. And the Columns Hotel. And the broken Concrete I fell on when we were running down St. Charles (another C!). Z naturally went to Zydeco (and the Zydeco Cha Chas, another C!).

As Amanda seems to be slowly engaging in just that very thing, I was delighted to read her sections for 'A, B, and C.' Clearly I have a sister in this silly but fun way of organizing my experiences and thoughts on New Orleans.

[Terra Nola documents the long-distance love affair between a New Yorker and New Orleans.]

As you may or may not (and most likely it's the latter) have noticed I have been out of touch lately and posted little on our dear city. Unlike Chris Rose, whom we hunted down enthusiastically when he took a brief hiatus not so long ago, I am sure that my absence went under the radar screen.

I sort of feel like Nola in general is gliding under that radar screen with me lately. I remember when the Big K hit and how all the major newspapers and online sites like New York Times and Yahoo, to name a few, had gobs and gobs and GOBS of stories about the city. most of them were negative, of course, centering around the brutal, violent and deadly aftermath of the hurricane when the levees broke. Then I watched as the information, and sensationalizing, dwindled until there was nary a drop of info on Nola to be found anywhere, save the usual suspects like nola.com and the New Orleans section of Craigslist.

The lack of interest was noted on bloggingneworleans as well. We'd receive fewer and fewer hits and comments on our blogs and features until our numbers made me wonder why we were bothering to blog in the first place. When major annual events like Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras hit we of course received record visits to the site and innumerable comments. After those events, though, the visits would return to a trickle.

[Terra Nola documents the long-distance love affair between a New Yorker and New Orleans.]

For more than a year now I've been documenting my love for New Orleans, generally one week at a time. It's been a long year in some ways as we all slowly continue to try to move out from under the shadow of Hurricane Katrina and back into the pale moonlight--perhaps the kind Nola's old pal Anne Rice would've imagined. Despite Katrina and the unfortunate calamities of late, I love the city of New Orleans perhaps more than ever.

The question of 'why?' is one I'll probably never be able to answer fully; the question of 'why now?' I certainly won't be able to answer, and I shouldn't have to. Not at this point, not after all we've been through together.

My courtship with New Orleans has always been a rocky one. Our geographic distance has certainly contributed to the emotional one between us. An excellent case in point is in the days after Katrina. I was nowhere to be found, grieving from afar, watching the atrocities unfold and, sadly, I admit, glad I wasn't there.

Always in search of culture on a Sunday afternoon, I met some friends yesterday for the Super Sunday parade uptown. The weather was perfect, hundreds of people lined the streets, and second-lined through the streets, with the Mardi Gras Indians.

The masked Indians must have been feeling the heat, but they didn't let it show. My friends and I all got a little sunburned, but after seeing tv footage of New York, where snow apparently still covers the ground, I was grateful for the sunshine.

It goes without saying that the costumes were spectacular, colorful and elaborate. Even a few dozen kids had their own outfits, little versions of the adult tribes.

Spectators brought out their shiniest rides, too, from fat-tired crotch-rocket motorcycles to polished custom sedans, with huge rims and vertical doors that probably cost as much as the car itself to install. One guy parked on the neutral ground on ML King Blvd. had a sleek Mercedes with an impressive sound system and three creepy dolls in what looked like a custom rumble seat (see photo). It was like an open-air car show for people who spend A LOT of money on their cars.

I don't know much about the history of the Mardi Gras Indians, but I like what I've been told: as I understand it, the tradition relates to blacks and native Americans coming together as a reaction to the white supremacy that kept both groups on the bottom of the social hierarchy. The fact that their resistance has taken on a life of its own, and survives despite all obstacles, is pretty reassuring. It's a link in a human chain connecting past and present, and although it may have started as an act of resistance, it carries on because it is joyous and vibrant. I got a huge kick out of it, sunburn and all.

One of my jobs is working for the Louisiana State Museum on a special digitization project. They were given a two-year grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to put many of their archives into digital format and make them publicly accessible online via the LOUISiana Digital Library.

The LOUIS library is a really great resource. The first thing we did when I started working on the project was to scan photos of various jazz musicians, starting in the early 20th century and going through present day. There were plenty of well known musicians, like Louis Armstrong, but we were also documenting lesser known, local musicians as well. We've also digitized many old recordings and radio broadcasts which include a variety of New Orleans style jazz. You can find the jazz archives here.

That's not all we've done though. I've also helped to scan tons of historic maps and paintings, fashion plates from our costumes and textiles collection, and now I'm finishing up scanning Mardi Gras parade bulletins, which in many cases are the only records left of what the early Mardi Gras parades and floats looked like. (The bulletins used to be printed in the newspapers and usually included illustrations of all the floats in the parade.) There's a lot of really interesting information here for anyone interested in local history or culture.

You saw my Mardi Gras Haul last week and I promised to give you some ideas on how to shrink your pile of beads after carnival. In this post I will show you how to create the ultra small (not safe for small children) craft and kid favorite for alleviating boredom while waiting for parades, the bead dog. These interesting little crafts can be made with most beads, but are best made from those cheap non-pearls that are kind of see-through and come in all sorts of colors. The best bead dogs have a special nose made from the end of these plastic necklaces. Of course the long nose is not a requirement and a normal string of beads can usually make four or more of these doggies. All you need to make one is a string of beads and a pair of scissors or (if you're a purist, like me) just a string of beads and your fingers. Also be sure to clean and dry each string of beads before using. No one likes a sticky beer smelling bead dog.

Step 1: The perfect necklace

First you need to find that perfect cheapo bead necklace from your haul. Sure you can use almost any string of beads, but no one really want to waste some pearls on a bead dog and the clear plastic beads that have a special plastic clasp are the easiest to use. Plus the size means you finished bead dog can double as a jack when made as part of a set of ten and added to one of those super balls you caught.

The rest of the instructions after the jump.

Every Saturday we pick the best images added to the Blogging New Orleans flickr group and post a resized version with a link to the original here. Be sure to check back here every week for another NOLApic.

Today's NOLApic was taken while wandering through the French Quarter on Mardi Gras Day. I walked from the Esplanade end down Royal to Canal and then over to Bourbon St and back up. And that's where I snapped this shot. It shows exactly what Mardi Gras in the French Quarter is like (minus the partially clad).

Mardi Gras Day on Bourbon St, originally uploaded by me, schleifnet. You can have your pics posted here too, just join the Blogging New Orleans flickr group and post your best NOLApics.

[Recovery Pen sings the song of New Orleans, in as many keys as its author can reach.]

If I could be God for one day, it would be Fat Tuesday. Not that I would mind being omnipresent during the other 364 days of the year -- I've long been an eavesdropper and nonchalant spy -- but who would pass up the chance to be everywhere on Mardi Gras morning? To hand out Zulu coconuts, and dress up like a St. Anne's queen, and dance with the Mardi Gras Indians, and toast Rex from the stands, and snap photos of the Bourbon Street Costume Awards, and sample fresh gumbo from Mamou and ride in a truck parade, and march with Jieux-Lu, and march with Kosmic Debris, and march with Krewe du Mort, and march with the Royal Revelers, all at one time? To be inside every costume, viewing life as a pharoah, and a buzzard, as a wood nymph and as a slice of king cake -- only omnipresence could make Mardi Gras day sweeter than it already is.

I bring up this physical impossibility because it defines my biggest Mardi Gras frustration. I don't know about you, but every year I toss and turn over the season's biggest question: do I go to the Zulu parade or second-line with St. Anne? At different ends of the city, both take place on Mardi Gras morning. Since they start at slightly different times, Zulu at 8 a.m., and St. Anne around 10:30, I fool myself into thinking I can somehow go to both. Every year I think I can do this somehow, but I've never been able to amass the amount of speed I would need to accomplish this trick. Even this past year, driving home Lundi Gras night, I reasoned that if I could bike to the start of Zulu's route at Jackson and Claiborne, I could then get down to St. Anne in time. This would involve my getting in my costume and on my bike by 7:30 in the morning, another physical impossibility. I'm too old to stay up all night, and too young to heed my alarm clock.

My back-up plan, traditionally formulated as I speed downtown to get to the St. Anne's party, is to catch Zulu at its end, at Orleans and Claiborne. Since no one can predict what time Zulu will rolling by this point, I still have a chance of seeing it. They might even have a coconut or two left.

It was obvious to anyone watching parades or merely trying to get around town last weekend that there were more revelers this year than last. This is due to more people moving back into the region as well as an influx of out-of-state tourists. The fact that Presidents Day made carnival celebrations fall over a long weekend probably helped considerably. Hotels reported a 90-95% occupancy rate during the festivities and an estimated 800,000 people were celebrating in the streets.

Although our numbers were up from last year, we still haven't reached pre-storm levels of one million. The news footage of Bourbon Street showed people moving freely in the Quarter and it didn't look as packed as it had in years past. Although some bar and shop owners might complain about the lower numbers, hopefully they have been pushed back into the black. All in all it sounds like a successful year and I keep my fingers crossed that next year will bring a bigger and better carnival season.

[Terra Nola documents the long-distance love affair between a New Yorker and New Orleans.]

Well, while the rest of my bloggingneworleans colleagues were out partying your booties off having a good time both in New Orleans and elsewhere, lonesome little me stayed home. I should say, lonesome pregnant giant me.

First I checked out and attempted to respond to the fabulous comments from those who share my agony and ecstasy over Mardi Gras and New Orleans in general. Most folks had very nice things to say and, while some of us do remember the headaches caused by Mardi Gras madness, most of us miss New Orleans if we're not there to enjoy it.

Actually, before that I watched Rachel Ray of Food Network fame make a muffuletta salad and some rather tasty looking fried shrimp poboys. Then I considered eating the tiny piece of king cake I commandeered from my colleagues earlier today for my husband, who quite simply ruined all my Mardi Gras plans by having statistics class Tuesday night. Do the people at Baruch not get that you can't have class on Tuesday nights because it interferes with Mardi Gras? Whatever.