Nerieds and Mardi Gras has been a part of my entire life. My mother was a member of Nerieds from almost the beginning (the second year) and stayed in for over 20 years. I was lucky enough to be a Paige for Queen Doris in 1973. It fills my heart to see that Nerieds is carrying on your CAPTAIN would be very proud!

The Mardi Gras spirit has always been family oriented. If you see anyone baring body parts, urinating in the street or acting obnoxious during a parade, odds are 9 in 10 that it's a tourist.

I realize this is an article on the Mississippi gulf coast Mardi Gras celebration...but I am still saying to everyone on the Gulf Coast regardless of State..."Laissez Le Bon Temp Rouler"..(let the good time roll)and High Fives for celebrating during this time!! For those of you who are willing and able to celebrate at this time, I salute you as well. It has been indeed tragic times but we must move on and if Mardi Gras helps...so be it. Lori

Vicky in Texas: ROTFLMAO!!! Yeah...we'll jes' tell them ole "talkin' heads" in D.C. we want action now. That'll get 'em goin'...uhhh...huhh!

Play the video, really HEAR what is being said, look closely at the pictures! And while you are at it check out the link animalrescuefront.net. People and animals are both suffering.

I know Mardi Gras has been a traditional celebration thats known throughout the world. But I think the celebration in New Orleans today is in poor poor taste. New Orleans evacuees are scattered all over these United States. The tasks to get them home and get the city of New orleans up & running should be the first priority. It would be great if all the tourist from out of town would use their money to help just one family get back to New Orleans or give to an organization that will truly help the evacuees. The problems are not going to go away after the partying stops. I was born in New Orleans and lived in Baton Rouge until twenty years ago. So I'm fully aware of the traditional partying. But please don't ignore the people who are suffering.

Laissez les bon temps rouler! New Orleans needs the respite of a couple of days to laugh and enjoy. Even those who did not lose homes, family and jobs suffer at the loss of others and even feel guilt that they still have homes, cars and jobs. Many residents are suffering from a Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome type of response. Ash Wednesday will come soon enough and complete reality will set in again. I miss and love and pray for the entire gulf coast.

I read this passage with tears falling on my desk - knowing that my family and friends along the coast are trying to get some semblance of normalcy back in their lives. Yes, Mardi Gras along the coast of MISSISSIPPI is a family affair. Then I read through the comments and have now lost my cool with the stupidity of other regions of the country. Yes, please, get out a map and learn geography. And please do not belittle our family traditions. Belitle the drunk tourists who invade New Orleans, LOUISIANA.

Carol. Have you ever logged on to NOLA Cams. It shows all the drunk, flashing, urinating lowlifes. This is what people see of the mardi gras. Most are right, how many of you norleans know what it is about. The city spent over $2.7 million on this get drunk and screw the law party. Where would you put this $2.7 million??? If you can give a honest answer I might change my mind. But think of what that money could do to help the people that need it, think hard. $2.7 million divided by maybe $100,000, thats quite a few people who could really use it to rebuild not PARTY!
Hey if you have to cancel mardi gras for a year is it worth it? You tell me. Personaly I hate the french. It's their holiday, look it up.

The money that was donated to private entities (Red Cross, various foundations etc) gets spent in a variety of ways: the Red Cross funded shelters and provided meals for months- until the grocery stores were open and able to actually serve the population. Many of the private foundations give money in the form of grants to small businesses or individuals. This money is to be used to rebuild their homes and livilihoods. Most of this money has been spent or disbursed. However, Contractors are in extremely short supply and as a result work is scheduled but not yet completed.

The millions spent by the Federal Government has at this point gone to debris removal and to repairing vital roads. Not only was, and is still, an unbelievable amount of debris that has to be removed from streets, beaches, oceans and rivers, and private property.

Many of the communities on the MS coast had 50% of their homes destroyed. These houses either had to be completely gutted and most often, completely torn down, slab and all. The Army Corp of engineers is in charge of right-of-entry projects (gutting and tearing down houses). A small house is estimated to cost just over $10,000 to tear down and clear away. This quickly adds up to a large sum. Not to mention all of the bridges and roadways that have to replaced or repaired.

While there have been and will continue to be stories accounting for mismanagment of money and of individuals taking advantage of programs designed to help individual at their worst, nearly all of the money has been spent legitimatley.

D from CO wrote: "Hey if you have to cancel Mardi Gras for a year is it wiorth it? You tell me." No, it is not worth it! The people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast need a respite from all the devastation that Katrina wrought, more so since they have to fight recalictrant insurance companies and slow, red-tape ridden federal bureaucracies in order to get *anything* done beyond the most rudimentary clean-up of Katrina debris. They are still living in a place that I call "Post-war-Iraq-plus-water" and they need SOMETHING to keep themselves from going completely off the deep end. People NEED to keep their traditions, especially now that everything else has been turned upside-down for them. And BTW I had the good fortune to live in New Orleans before Katrina, and I know by personal experience that Mardi Gras THEN, outside and away from upper Bourbon Street was a similar family-oriented celebration that you have seen reported from Uptown N.O. and Waveland and elsewhere after Katrina, NOT Spring-Break-in-the-Vieux-Carre for drunken college age-tourists and other immature people! In fact, even the gay Mardi Gras celebrations on lower Bourbon Street were more restrrinaed and more tame than the above-mentioned "Spring-Break!"

To Roger S. from Mrs. D.,
I am not one of your "little people". I also had my times as maids in balls and a queen of one. It was then I realied how much my parents had spent on the entire "show" to promote what? I agree that business people are suffering but if you have no one at home to purchase your wares or outlets to serve them, where are you? Your priorities should be checked. There are many ways that the city could have celebrated Mardi Gras without the "throwing of money away" on trinkets made in sweat shops in foreign lands. Did you watch the documentary on these sweat shops which appropriately followed Mardi Gras on none of the local channels. Try looking at where the trinkets were made. Did these trinkets make money for New Orleans workers? NO! They did not this year or any other year. Does the words "Made in Taiwan", "Made in Japan" etc. sound familiar to you? If Mardi Gras is "so New Orleans" then let this wonderful city get all the credit and the profit. Doesn't that sound like a wonderful business opportunity, Mr. Roger S. business man?

D,CO: Actually it's a Catholic holiday that has been adapted over the years to accomodate locale and cultures. But even that is beside the point:
It is like living in a National Geographic article about Somalia...or Rwanda...or Afghanistan - we have tent cities for God's sake, there is trash everywhere we look, some trees are still "decorated" as if for some bizarre, macabre demonic festival. There are splinters of homes - entire homes rent to SPLINTERS. There are people who did all the right things and carefully listened and followed all the right advice who now stand in Salvation Army lines to EAT. Every other face has the same look - "What happened? Where is my house? Where is my mother's hutch? Why did I pay insurance premiums for twenty years and I won't get back even a tenth of what I've paid them for what I was payin' 'em for in the first place! What happened?". Until you have spent even one month in this environment - much less six months - you cannot say that a few measly parades and some cheap plastic beads are a waste. I am watching my beloved Biloxi and her souls are being slowly squeezed and twisted and I'm very afraid for us. I am not afraid of mold, or cholera, or accidents from rubble or insufficient traffic controls. No, I KNOW that what will take us down is depression. And without that few days of silliness, laughter, watching kids who can't sleep for the nightmares laughing when they catch some silly ole beads, well, my dear, you really can't judge us so harshly. I apologize for my first response to you - it was a knee-jerk gut response in defense of my family, my friends, my neighbors and my fellow Southerners here pluggin' through each day like alcoholics on a twelve step program. Mardi Gras IS a cultural event that tourists have discovered and claimed it as an excuse to be immoral barbarians. Check any large festival in this country and you'll find that the non-natives are the worst offenders and the least respectful of the event they will leave behind them - to tell or rather not to tell when they get back home. As for the funds - that's a joke here - we Mississippians are doin' without federal monies for the most part, and are dependent and d**n grateful for our fellow Americans who have responded like family when there's trouble. Yes, we have some folks who have been blessed and fortunate in the great FEMA Katrina Lottery, but there are far too many that have not that are just as deserving and if not for individuals - either in groups or acting on their consciences - we'd be more like the Ninth Ward than I care to think about. Cams? Sin and Sex sells - it's practically a maxim of our various media outlets and nothin's gonna change that. LIke Steve, I also hope that you can come down here, not just to New Orleans, but to sweet, quaint Pass Christian and artistic communities like Bay St. Louis and Ocean Springs, and, of course, Biloxi - the second oldest city in this nation. Many landmarks may be gone to the visible eye - but get yourself the right guide when you come to town and you'll see and appreciate them, too. You'll also know first-hand why we are called the Hospitality State.

D'CO - Has it occured to you that what you see on TV is Bourbon Street , which by the way, is in New Orleans, NOT MISSISSIPPI... Our crowd is full of kids, our Krewe is made up of local women - teachers, nurses, housewives, and lots of other professions, NONE OF WHICH are in any way the unsavory type YOU refer to. I am a Krewe member, and I rode stone cold sober, spent not a red cent, and was assaulted with thanks for helping bring a few minutes of fun and a glimpse of our pre-Katrina life to our community. I would do it again just for that, if I had to spend thousands - it made EVERYONE'S day so much better. If that makes me a dredge of society, then tell me where to join that krewe...

Bless all of those people in New Orleans and other areas devasted by Katrina. Bless the great city of New Orleans, which will like the other cities rise from the ruins. May all these people again find health and happiness as they rebuild their lives and look forward to the future.

Hey, D,Co, I guess you are one of those who still order "freedom fries." I've been to France and I can tell you now that everyone we met from Normandy to Paris and beyond were very nice to us, and we were nice to them. Actually, Mardi Gras is really southern European, not just French. Think Venice, etc. We loved it when we went to Venice and Florence. The Italians were the most wonderful people. The Germans were nice, too. The Swiss were kind of "uppity." If you ever get cabin fever or go stir crazy this winter in land-locked Colorado, you can get out an atlas and see that Bay St. Louis and Waveland are in MISSISSIPPI, not in Louisiana. We have nothing to do with what goes on in New Orleans, which is in LOUISIANA. Our Mardi Gras is not the one you see on television or read about, even though it came before the New Orleans' Mardi Gras. And why shouldn't people have fun for just a few days? Are you of German descent? I shouldn't say that, because we had a ball at Munich during Octoberfest. We danced with the Germans on the tables of the beer tents. And they don't even have Mardi Gras! How can you hate a whole group of people? Whether it be French or maybe Mississippians? If you are nice to people, nine times out of ten they'll be nice to you. I have a little German, as well as a lot of Irish, French, English, Scottish, and Creek Indian blood flowing through my veins, and I am proud of all of it. It makes me what I am - a pretty good person who works very hard, who tries not to sweat the small stuff, who likes to have fun when all the work's done, and who thanks God every day for what we still Do have - each other. And by the way, YOU are part of that, whether you like it or not. We are all citizens of God's world, and we should try to remember that.

D. from CO writes:

Carol. Have you ever logged on to NOLA Cams. It shows all the drunk, flashing, urinating lowlifes. This is what people see of the mardi gras. Most are right, how many of you norleans know what it is about. The city spent over $2.7 million on this get drunk and screw the law party. Where would you put this $2.7 million??? If you can give a honest answer I might change my mind. But think of what that money could do to help the people that need it, think hard. $2.7 million divided by maybe $100,000, thats quite a few people who could really use it to rebuild not PARTY!
Hey if you have to cancel mardi gras for a year is it worth it? You tell me. Personaly I hate the french. It's their holiday, look it up.

Once again, this is NOT NOT NOT about New Orleans.
This is about Southern Mississippi, where the only
nudity you'd see is if a dog were in the parade.

No one in South Mississippi is using government
dollars for Mardi Gras parades!!!

Please.

Ahh, D of CO...It's not all about the money. For the last week or so, people whose homes are fallin' down 'round their ears didn't give a dang about proper, lawful appropriations and accounting reports of monies from whatever source. They were glad to see old friends and happy for those that are making visible progress back to normal. And to all of you Mississippians out there past the Mason-Dixon line - somebody's missin' you: they miss seein' you water your grass in the late summer afternoons, they miss seein' you wash and wax your new muscle car for Cruisin' the Coast, they miss complainin' to everybody else 'bout that ole hound dog that howls every full moon, they miss watchin' your kids grow from energetic elementary school to awkward junior high and all-too-fast into high school. Someone is missin' your wife's famous Mississippi Mud Cake at a Lion's Club or VFW crawfish boil, and someone is missin' your energetic spirit at your ole high school football games, and someone is missin' how solid and warm you felt next to them on the church pew. To all of our l'il orphans out there - please come home when you can - we're missin' ya.

ya'll go sunherald or wlox websites....you will find out...not anything is evil!!...about Mississippi parades....and yes M,a naked dog might be in the bunch....and the dog .......might urinate....but i'll bet the dog ain't drunk....whydo some of these people speak of something they ....they know nothing about?...our parades ain't in N.O. dangitt...they are for the whole family

Just got back late last night (2/28/06) and would like to say to all of you who know the real meaning of Mardi Gra, I wouldn't concern myself with those who don't. I live in Indianapolis and go to the coast every year for the Mardi Gra parades, festivities and comaraderie; people that have never been there have no clue what it's like or even what it's all about. People who judge these gala events without experiencing what it's like to be involved...you need to hold your tongues and go to a parade on the coast before you shame and bash others. I love the Mississippi Gulf Coast and wouldn't miss your Mari Gra celebration for Katrina or anyone or anything else. I love "Fat Tuesday" and wish each and every one of you a Happy Mardi Gra...see you next year in 2007...FOR SURE!!

I too just returned from where I called home for 3 years. I cannot believe the narrow minded and short sighted views of some of you people leaving such negative comments. Granted, I have not experienced the Mississippi MG, but the New Orleans was absolutely full of family. I couldn't begin to count the families that I saw camping out for parades in the wee hours of each morning. I think having MG this year was the best thing to happen to the town in recent months. The 6 people that I had with me, now living out of town, put a lot of money into the town this week with gifts, dinners, and art. Expecting to find a town completely devistated, I found a city with more life, pride, and drive than I have found in many around the country. I took my house off the market and decided to keep it, knowing full-well this town is going to be back better than ever.
I can only imagine the Same for the entire Gulf coast that was hit. I'm looking forward to introducing many more friends to my old/new home and I hope you people with all this negativity and narrow sight of what New Orleans and MG is all about truly is also have an opportunity to one day take in a make-shift bar-b-que on St Charles while waiting for a parade, stroll down Royal and check out the art galleries and antique shops and burn your tongue on some mild cajun cookin.

Dave,it is obvious that you have no idea what Mardi Gras is about. First and foremost the majority of the money incurred on mardi gras comes from the KREWE"S. The riders pay for the floats, the beads, their own costumes, and any other throws. The city pays for the law enforcement during Mardi Gras. They do this so outsiders (people like you) can come to our city and have a good time. Hopefully, they spend a lot of money and will come back again, that is what is known as "tourism".
This year we did not have as many tourist so therfore we enjoyed this amazing party ourseleves.
We need to keep our economy going and Mardi Gras is a New Orleans trademark. The people of New Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and St. Tammany Parish are willing to put up their own money in order to keep their cities viable who are you to judge. By the way how active are you in your community?

Good for you N.O. and all the areas down there celebrating MG. Glad y'all could enjoy the day. Breaking out of the negativity of "post'katrina" is the way to rebuild - hearts and lives and homes. Good luck to all!

Some of the attitudes concerning New Orleans were formed after hearing Mayor Nagin make his now "infamous" speach about the "chocolate city". Too bad it had such a bad influence on the rest of the country. With money being sent to help in the rebuilding of a city that will probably get hit by another hurricane again, then get your hand slapped by someone making such a statement is a little overboard.

What these people who are writing from around the country berating us for having Mardi Gras and having some fun for one day out of our lives, after we have lost absolutely everything we have ever had, including our entire towns is this fact: "We don't give a damn what you think!" we didn't care what people thought of us down here BEFORE the storm, so you know we certainly don't care now!! I only went to one Mardi Gras event and had an awesome time - first night in the past six months of my life that I went for more than 5 hours without thinking one time about the storm - these people saying, "spend the money on recovery" - we did: on our "mental" and "emotional" recovery!
D in CO - you don't even have the guts to post your name - how can we possibly care what you think?? Your comments are so shallow and ignorant, it sounds like your only experience with Mardi Gras is on a webcam and TV - all those "lowlife drunks are tourists!! and most are from CO! - Please - stay in CO! and by the way, we don't care if you change your mind or not!