[This is a continuation of the author's series on New Orleans lessons, to commemorate both the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina as well as her 10th anniversary of living in New Orleans .]

I dare say that all Americans have some experience with parades, from big-city St. Paddy's Day extravaganzas down to small-town kiddies riding their streamer-festooned bikes on country roads to celebrate America's independence. Myself, I'd thought that my participation in a ticker-tape parade celebrating the troops home from Iraq back in '92, in a marching band on the streets of downtown Chicago, was the pinnacle of my parading life.

Oh, how wrong I was. I moved to New Orleans, where parades roll at night. And it makes a difference to see a parade after the sun's gone down, when the floats rise up out of the evening shadows and the flambeaux carriers' faces shine under the light of their torches. We spend a full year crafting our floats by hand, and then light them up with thousands of tiny bulbs. When they finally appear on the streets, against a backdrop of screaming crowds and marching band music, it's no wonder that people fight over beads - they want to bring a tiny bit of this magic home with them.

And if you get sick of the big parades, Fat Tuesday spawns hundreds of tiny ones, troupes of friends where the locals become the floats, painting and feathering themselves into the most amazing creations this side of Rio.

It's your choice, darlin': you can come to New Orleans to watch the parades, or you can come down to be the parade.