Carnivals

            Tuesday past was Fat Tuesday. Since I'm in a place where people celebrate Carnival with a lot of enthusiasm, I thought it behooved me to venture out for the final parade.

            The irony of  the first U.S. presidential primary falling on Fat Tuesday didn't  escape me, I admit. With apologies to those of you who take your politics or your religion, or both, seriously, I found the conjunction singularly appropriate this election season. So the New Hampshire voters slogging through the snow to perform their civic duty, weren't far from my mind when I walked to Cozumel's downtown shore drive (known as the malecón) to see the parade.

"Millenium Falcon," new owner!

            This is a pretty funky parade. As near as I can figure, anyone who wants to march in it can. So you have beat-up pick-ups pulling slat-sided flat beds with a bunch of kids in thrown-together costumes mixed up with corporate trailers sporting high-end effects. Star Wars got lots of iterations, from a pretty fancy store-bought looking costume group on a commercial float to a little kid alone in her own Millennium Falcon. There were four or five cross-dressing clown groups chased by faux bulls. More than one brass band exhaled loud notes as they passed the watching throng. Folks in regular jeans and tees  marched, but wearing those wrestling masks that cover the whole head. There was even an ancient Mayan ball team, intricately painted to look like tattooed classic Maya warriors, engaging in an approximation of the pre-contact sacred ball game.

           

            Then, what to my surprise, a jeep came trundling along with a big white piece of poster board stuck to its grill. On the poster board, written in plain old letters--no fancy calligraphy or special lettering here--it said: "Bernie Sanders" and below that: "feel the bern."

            NH wasn't yet done with me. Later, another truck drove by that immediately evoked Donald Trump, though I doubt it was intentional.

When orange is the new orange

            The next morning of course ushered in Ash Wednesday. By the church calendar, Fat Tuesday's thumbed nose at convention gives over to penance and to reflection on the follies and travails of our mortal coil. The same might be true of the electoral calendar: if the primary was a statement repudiating political convention, then NH voters opened the presidential election cycle with a lot for the rest of us to reflect on.

            (I couldn't photograph the Bernie Sanders' jeep; it dissolved into an out-of-focus blur, leaving me in its wake wondering if it was just a Mardi Gras illusion. The Trump-evoking truck, though, came through loud and clear. Do you, dear reader, see why it said "Trump" to me?)