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February 2001

New Orleans (Thoth, Bacchus and Orpheus)

David Aaronson
2005-09-25 18:19:36

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Arriving in New Orleans we took a slightly circuitous route in an effort to avoid all the various parade routes criss-crossing the city and its suburbs. In the end we failed, primarily because the parade route of Thoth completely surrounded our hotel. The police advised us to park on the sidewalk and just wait for the parade to end. While we did that, Melanie went to try and catch beads from the last few floats which provided a good opportunity for David to take some picture we wouldn't otherwise have. As a result we have the end of Thoth pretty well documented. In this picture, notice the hooks behind the float members (1). Those are all the GOOD beads. The average everyday beads came from boxes by their feet.

The theme for Thoth this year (trying saying that aloud) was legends of romance. We're not sure what the first picture is supposed to represent, and we're not really sure about this one either (2). Our best guess is that given the involvement of Hades (the skulls), and Hermes (the winged sandals) it involved Orpheus and Eurydice.

We do know for sure that this float represented Romeo and Juliet (3). Notice in this case that the hooks are almost completely empty. This seems to be about standard. Each float has a little bit of a different journey and a different bead density. This was near the end of the 3-hour parade route so floats with a lot of beads became suddenly exceedingly generous, whereas others were pretty minimal. Each Krewe has a special medallion bead as well. Thoth is the Egyptian god of knowledge and their medallion was a representation of Thoth who has the head of a jackal.

We mention this because Melanie caught one strand of beads from her back-of-the-line position and it happened to be a medallion. This float represents the Lady of the Lake from Arthurian legend (4). The nudity associated with Mardi Gras is sort of a myth. It exists and it is rampant but it is really ...

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