Anticipation after Advent.

A New Year is about to begin. People are trading king cake recipes, not for January 1 but for January 6. That is the holiday that is important in New Orleans. New Year’s Eve? It’s okay, but Carnival begins on the night of the Epiphany.

Also in preparation of Carnival, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club is stocking its storefront. It isn’t open to the public, yet. Get your coconuts here if you want to cheat. There are few rules during Carnival. On Mardi Gras Day, the city is given over to misrule even more than usual.

The lights are still up in City Park. Guess when they will be coming down? Christmas leads to Carnival, the two don’t overlap.

Race season started on Thanksgiving Day. Not really, but that is the day when everybody goes to the track dressed like they should all year round. I would say that. ChatGPT thinks I wear both a monocle and eyeglasses at the same time. It also thinks I look like this:

I have no idea why. It has never seen me in person. I have never worn an ascot. I also don’t wear eyeglasses with a monocle. I also don’t look like that.

Back to the track, where the fillies are in fine fettle, it is fair weather except for mudders.

It’s a good thing we live in New Orleans and not in the Mahoning Valley, wherever that may be.

I will bet you a nickel they won’t know it’s Carnival in the Mahoning Valley. It doesn’t sound like a happy place. I asked a jockey. He told me steers clear of that valley. “Mahoning is not a happy place,” he said.

I will win the New Orleans Noble Prize for Literature if I can keep writing paragraphs like that. The prize was named by a graduate of the New Orleans Public School System. Ours is a city that runs on going with the flow.