Rosa Parks rides the bus with me these days. Ever since she passed away, on October 25th last year, our local bus systems have immortalized her by dedicating seats (in the front) to her, even silkscreening her image on the window so it looks like she’s sitting there.

The bus systems are doing their best to respect her memory, keep it dignified. Still, it’s a quirky way to be remembered.

I read a book telling the story of Rosa’s heroic act, and it was no accident. She didn’t merely stay seated, a tired black seamstress. She was an activist, and the event that got her arrested and provoked the famous Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott was an opportunity, carefully planned for by the leaders of the civil rights movement.

One of those leaders, of course, was Martin Luther King, whose birthday was celebrated a few weeks ago. News organizations reported some difficulties with the 20-year-old holiday and the memory of Dr. King. One blog was entitled, “Did Anyone Notice Martin Luther King Day?” A New York Times article mentioned a lawsuit between the family and CBS News, saying “the family has long been criticized by scholars for its aggressive profit-making approach to Dr. King’s legacy.” One new book alleges that King had extramarital affairs.

Still, there are no sales on MLK day. Most people know that you’re not supposed to spend money on gifts or cards, and the t-shirts for sale are mostly inspirational images.

“It’s supposed to be a day of service,” said my friend Tina, who works for the University of Washington and had the day off. The UW, which has over 23,000 employees, had gotten the message out, organizing volunteer opportunities and work parties for charities.

Like Rosa Parks’ moment of protest, the “day of service” message about January 16th is also no accident. King’s estate works actively with chambers of commerce and business groups, convincing them not to put on MLK day sales. The Corporation for National Service has a website, www.mlkday.gov, listing service projects and urging Americans to participate.

I think King would be satisfied with the way his holiday is celebrated. His name has not been defamed or belittled, and if the holiday isn’t as big as it should be, that’s because his work is still not done.

At the other extreme, we have January 27th. Today is the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birthday, and Austria is going crazy. It’s a tourism event.

Unlike MLK, Mozart doesn’t have anyone to protect his name. According to one branding expert, “If (his name) was protected and did have an owner, there’s no way that you’d just let someone slap the name on a salami.”

Someone has slapped his name on a salami, and some chocolate, and a milkshake. In the absence of such protection, the commercial side of things has gone crazy. There are the usual Mozart t-shirts and mugs and bags and calendars. There are Mozart golf balls, despite the fact that he was Austrian and golf is a Scottish invention. And my favorite, a bra that plays “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” when you unfasten it.

Based on the confused but party-loving fellow portrayed in the movie “Amadeus,” back in the mid-1980s, I don’t think Mozart would mind terribly. In our day and age, classical music is serious stuff, not to be taken lightly. But there was as much humor in past ages as there is now, and I find a lot of it in Mozart’s music. Like Shakespeare, it’s not all tragedy.

Mozart died penniliess, but his music accounts for 25% of classical music sales. Austria’s national tourist board estimates that the Mozart brand is worth $8.8 billion. If he had a sense of humor, as I think he did, he’d probably find the irony funny.

I wonder if Rosa Parks would mind if I move up to her seat?

Once upon a time, Barry and I threw a party and nobody came. Actually, two people showed up, but we had invited over fifty. It was a crushing blow. For weeks, we ate the leftover food and drank coconut-rum punch and wondered what went wrong.

Part of the problem is that parties have become so casual, with huge blind-copied e-mail invitations, that nobody takes them seriously. Most parties we’re invited to are potlucks or barbecues, with the food served buffet-style. More people? More paper plates and plastic forks. Fewer? Save the plates and forks for the next party.

And then there’s E-vite. It’s sort of nice to be able to see the whole party list — who’s invited, who’s responded. But by the same token, it engenders a kind of rudeness. Instead of taking the invitation at face value, as a gift from the hosts, you analyze the list to see if it’s worth your while to attend. You respond with a “maybe,” then change your mind based on other people’s responses. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I think that’s impolite.

The truth is, even a casual party requires setup and planning. That’s a real nightmare if none of your guests will commit.

Thinking back on memorable parties, the smaller, more intimate ones come to mind. A going-away party for our friend Doug was especially memorable — Michelle cooked a beautiful multi-course meal and served it on matching china to twelve lucky guests, all seated at the same table. Invitations to special parties like that come by telephone or handwritten note, not by e-mail. Such invitations are highly prized, and you wouldn’t think of blowing them off, or failing to RSVP.

When we started entertaining in Seattle, we started small. At our first dinner party, we invited two friends to share some Maine lobsters that we’d ordered. When the lobsters failed to materialize, we made homemade pizza, then rescheduled and had a second party, with lobster, two weeks later. Later, we tried having a generic party, but it was blah. We needed a fun activity to give it some pizzazz.

That’s how the White Elephant parties began, and they ran for many years. Each year, they got crazier and bigger. Barry discovered how easy it was to throw a turkey on the barbecue grill, so that became the central menu item. He’d take it off the grill as the party was getting in full swing and plop it on a platter in the middle of the table, next to a carving fork and knife. Then he’d walk away.

The guests would stand around, looking puzzled. “Who’s going to carve the turkey?” they’d ask. Finally, someone who couldn’t stand to wait any longer would just pick up the knife and start carving away. And Barry and I would give each other a high-five, since we knew how to cook a turkey, but didn’t want to admit that carving it was beyond us.

We don’t have our huge party space any more, but we still love to entertain. That’s where the smaller gatherings come in. Barry’s parents cohosted several gatherings with us at their house, which is the perfect place for parties, with an open living room, dining room, and kitchen. We even hosted a tiny party in our 30-foot trailer. (It works fine, as long as all the guests stay seated and don’t move.) When the weather gets nice, I’m looking forward to hosting a picnic at some pretty park. We even have friends who will let us co-host a party at their Seattle home.

The key, for me, it to make each gathering small and unique. Let people know that they are the special invitees for this party. I won’t ask them to bring anything — I like to cook for my friends. It’s not even a time issue: I once got home from work at 5:30, threw the ingredients for minestrone into the pressure cooker, and served dinner to eight people an hour later.

There are lots of wonderful big parties with huge crowds and groaning tables covered with potluck dishes. I hope my friends continue to invite me to them! But for now, I will return their generosity with invitations to smaller, more intimate gatherings. I hope we all have a good time. And I sincerely hope to never again throw a party where nobody comes.

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For ideas on what to feed your friends, read Tips for Feeding Your Friends, in Meps’ Foodie Gazette.

After my last post on Mardi Gras, one reader e-mailed me with a ton of questions!

> As I’ve never been to Mardi Gras I am curious George..do they consume
> much alcohol and what is the drink of choice?? What do they eat and
> what are the favorite dishes?? How much is a room overlooking the
> parade for a day or a week?? What is going on at 7a.m. in the
> morning?? Do they eat breakfast or do they not and just consume more
> tomato-spice-and celery beverages?? These are all questions that MUST
> be answered somehow!! yours truly…george

And Meps answers…

Yes, there is a heck of a lot of alcohol! Since they do not have open container laws, it’s all out on the streets, legally. Mostly, people are walking around with huge plastic cups full of beer, hurricanes, or daiquiris. They even have daiquiri drive-ins, where you can drive up, get a huge alcoholic drink in a plastic cup, and drive away. It’s sort of like an alcoholic Slurpee (TM). The driver is not *supposed* to be drinking it, but what’s to stop them? Surprisingly, Louisiana’s alcohol-related traffic fatalities are not that much higher than other states.

On Mardi Gras day, we saw evidence of lots of barbecues, so the food is mostly southern fare. The folks in some of the poorer neighborhoods don’t have backyards, so they either put the grill in the front yard, or, if they live on a boulevard, sometimes they even set it up in the median! I suspect those are families where some members live on both sides of the street, so it’s convenient to all that way. Every party also has a king cake — it’s the last chance to eat king cake until the following Epiphany, on January 6th.

Rooms around the French Quarter aren’t that expensive during Mardi Gras, but all the reservations are usually booked over six months in advance. You can get a room at the Parc St. Charles on the parade route for $200 on Monday, February 27th (Lundi Gras) — the same room on Tuesday night is only $100. According to an article just released in Smart Money magazine, right now, the hotels are hit or miss. Those that are housing recovery workers are booked and can charge (the government) whatever rates they want to. The rest are offering substantial discounts to lure tourists back to the city, since tourism accounts for $5 billion per year in business and 81,000 jobs.

At 7:00 in the morning on Mardi Gras day, people are getting out to the parade routes, because the Zulu parade, which has the best costumes of all the parades, starts at the ungodly hour of 8 am. There are restaurants in the French Quarter where you pay $200 to hang out and eat and drink all day. They start with a breakfast buffet, drinks, then lunch buffet and drinks until the end of the day. If the restaurant has a balcony, you take turns standing out there, tossing beads to people who will show you their naughty bits.

At midnight on Mardi Gras day, police on horseback followed by street-sweeping machines literally sweep everyone off the street, and the following day, Ash Wednesday, everyone recuperates. School and work do not resume until Thursday. It is truly a local holiday, with everyone getting at least two days off work.

“On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…twelve drummers drumming…”

Usually, by the time the twelfth day of Christmas, also known as Epiphany, rolls around, we’ve had as much of the holidays as we can stand. We kicked off the holidays with Thanksgiving, and since then, we’ve stuffed ourselves on cookies, fruitcake, and spiced nuts, and we’ve drunk way too much eggnog. We’ve had parties and exchanged presents and had low productivity at work. Now, after New Year’s, it’s time to cut back on everything, put our noses to the grindstone, try to keep our new resolutions. In short, it’s time to practice an ascetic lifestyle.

But imagine, if you can, that today is the kickoff of the holiday season. After today, there will be rounds of parties with too much food and alcohol, live music, dances, and parades with outrageous and exorbitant costumes. For about seven weeks, houses will be decorated with lights and wreaths and colorful banners, and children will look forward to a couple of days off school. And imagine that when it is all over, it will be time to practice an ascetic lifestyle.

I’m describing the Carnival season, as it was and still is, in New Orleans.

Mardi Gras is not a one-day event, it is the culmination of a whole season that begins on the Epiphany, January 6th. Today, in New Orleans, the mayor and heads of the Rex and Zulu krewes officially kicked off the season with statements, live music, and king cakes. I counted over 55 parades on the 12-day schedule, fewer than previous years, but still more parades than any other city in the U.S. has all year. The floats survived (is that why they’re called “floats?”), and the New Orleaneans who man them are still as special and amazing and different as they were in 2004, when I lived there. After what they’ve gone through, they’re even more amazing.

I have a friend who’s raising money for the New Orleans Musician’s Clinic, a unique not-for-profit organization that provides medical care for musicians. The t-shirts he’s selling say it all: “New Orleans: Bent, but not broken.”

I saw two sides to New Orleans in the news today. On one side, the Phuny Phorty Phellows will commandeer a streetcar at 7 pm tonight on Canal Street. They’ll have a big party aboard and share two king cakes, one for the men and one for the women. The man and woman who find the two babies hidden inside the cakes will be the Boss and Queen of the krewe.

On the other side of the news, they they identified the body of Barry Cowsill, a member of the band that inspired the TV show “The Partridge Family.” He was last heard from on September 1st, and he probably died from injuries sustained during or after the hurricane.

I’ve been thinking that the rest of the country needs to learn about Mardi Gras, and how to celebrate Carnival season. It’s not just a New Orleans tradition — the holiday is celebrated throughout Louisiana. One little-known fact is that Mobile, Alabama has an even older Mardi Gras tradition than New Orleans.

As a matter of fact, let’s lobby our elected officials and make Mardi Gras a national holiday. Not only so we could have parades and celebrations in every city, but to give us a chance to remember the thousands who were lost in Hurricane Katrina.

One of the symbols of Mardi Gras is the comedy/tragedy symbol, also used to represent theater: Two masks, one happy and the other sad. For months, in New Orleans, all we saw was the sad face. Now that Carnival is here, I’m starting to see signs of the happy one, too. Let’s all smile as we celebrate Mardi Gras, wherever we are.

I’ve always loved to read good poetry. In college, I read serious stuff, like “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” I mooned over lyrical phrases, like,

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

Later, I saved all the letters from my dear friend, Elizabeth Bolton, because so many of them included her original poetry. Her posthumously published book Lost Farm included a favorite of mine and Barry’s, Fowl Language, with seven hilarious stanzas like this one:

Even a hen doesn’t need much luck
To communicate exactly with a squawk and cluck
Yet if you notice what a hen must endure
You won’t be surprised that her words aren’t pure

And in Dawson City this summer, I reveled in the sing-song poems of Robert Service. In my lifetime, I couldn’t imagine a best-selling author known to everyone in the U.S. writing poetry. Perhaps his success was more akin to today’s country songwriters, with stanzas like,

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,
And a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice
It was called the “Alice May”.
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit,
And I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry,
“Is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Still, my own notebooks are full of scribbled prose, not poetry. Wait, wait, you might cry — what about the limericks?

A form of madness

When my mind is quiet, especially in dark hours when I can’t sleep, a line for a limerick comes into my head. Instead of counting sheep, I start going through the alphabet to find words that rhyme. Like popping corn, the words jump around in my head until a couple of pieces match. Suddenly, it all clicks into place, and I have to turn on the light and write it down before it escapes.

This limerick madness that possesses me happened unexpectedly, and it continues to amaze me. Since February 2003, when my first one bopped me on the head, I have written over 100 limericks. The actual milestone slipped by, unnoticed — at last count, I found 106 originals on my website, plus about a dozen inspirational guest submissions.

What keeps me awake at night these days, though, is anapestic meter. Most folks who write limericks follow the basic rhyming structure: AABBA. But a true limerick has proper meter: “dah-DAH-dah-dah-DAH-dah-dah-DAH-dah.” You know it when you hear it, as in:

There once was a girl from Nantucket.

I’ve found, however, that I am not alone. There are other limerick-writers on the Web, and my favorite site is the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form. Lately, my own site has suffered, as I’ve been sneaking over there to submit my pieces. They actually have editors who will pick apart a limerick with lousy meter. Hence this new preoccupation with anapestic meter.

I sent them last year’s Christmas special that defined agnostic, and it got some good feedback. More recently, I’ve submitted limericks for the words aghast, Andouille, benefice, and black-eyed pea. Just a couple of hours ago, inspiration struck, and I wrote one of my most clever bits yet, a definition of the word anusless. That one’s not visible yet, but I hope it will be soon.

If you’re looking for a good time, be sure to bookmark the OEDILF site. And I promise, when I’m not writing essays, recipes, or food pieces (I started a new feature on mepsnbarry.com, “The Foodie Gazette“), I’ll be writing the old AABBA. In my sleep.

There once was a girl with a pen
Who wrote a few lines now and then
But at night in her bed
She would cower in dread
From that terrible limerick yen.