Editor’s note: The Press-Register holds exclusive global rights to reportage of the Masked Observer, a mysterious denizen of the leisure class who covers the Mobile-area Mardi Gras scene.

Anniversaries tend to remind us where we’ve been, in the hopes of injecting a wee bit more reverence and energy into where we’ve going. But with reflection and appreciation comes caution, for as the parable goes, everyone who lives in the past dies a little bit each day. And what is Carnival in the Mother of the Mystics but the ultimate cultural license to live?

So to two hallmark organization on either end of the society spectrum — the Order of Inca celebrating its 150th anniversary and (Joe) Cain’s Merry Widows wailing about their 50th — the entire Crewe d’Observer says congratulations and “don’t get bad.”