Word: mardy
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...half a century, New Orleans' fantastic Mardi Gras balls were strictly for the upper crust. Nobody without money, blue blood, or both gained membership in the secret men's clubs or "krewes"* which staged them. Before 1900 there were only five clubs: Comus, Momus, Twelfth Night, Rex and Proteus. They culled guest lists with pernickety care, asked only the fairest of debutantes to serve as carnival queens. But times changed. The socially ambitious began forming their own krewes...
...Orleans had 16 Mardi Gras balls. In 1946 there were 36. This year, a record-breaking total of 49 are being held. Last week, with Carnival Day (Shrove Tuesday) fast approaching, New Orleans' social whirl had assumed the proportions of a maelstrom...
...Mardi Gras balls all conform to a traditional pattern. They open with a tableau or pageant, followed by a grand march led by a costumed king and queen. Then masked members of the krewe dance with women summoned from the audience. Finally formally clad guests who have been watching from the galleries join in the dancing...
...many a New Orleans citizen there will be little rest even after all this uproar quiets down. It takes a year to plan a Mardi Gras, and 1949 would be along before you could say Comus Momus...
...experiment they chose Rome itself. The action consisted of a taut parade of 30,000 Communist partisans, followed by a general strike-all painstakingly stage-set as a pageant of Communist power. But the action drifted away from the script; toward the end there were touches of Mardi gras and, finally, Italian Communism's worst humiliation...