Traditions hold for Mardi Gras despite Katrina

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Even amid the typical debauchery — including early morning drinking, flashes of bare breasts and skimpy costumes in the French Quarter — there was no escaping reminders of the storm.

Zulu, the 97-year-old Mardi Gras club, or krewe, that lost 10 members to Katrina, paraded amid homes that still bear dirty brown water marks from the floodwaters that covered 80 percent of the city. Another krewe, Rex, King of Carnival, paraded past a boarded-up store bearing a spray-painted warning that looters would be shot.

Kevin and Marie Barre, a husband and wife from New Orleans, wore white plastic coveralls bearing the all-too-familiar spray-painted "X" that denotes a home that has been checked for bodies. "It's a reminder. A lot of people who are coming down here don't understand what we've been through," Kevin Barre said.

Members of another club called the Krewe of MRE covered themselves with brown labels from the Meals Ready to Eat that were served to thousands who huddled in the Superdome after the storm. Others dressed as giant maggots, recalling the days when city streets were lined with abandoned refrigerators full of rotting food.

Mayor Ray Nagin, wearing a black beret and camouflage uniform, portrayed cigar-chomping Gen. Russell Honore, the military man who led the first big relief convoy into the city.

Click here for the rest.

I wish I was there--couldn't make it this year because I was working on a paper until very late last night; maybe next year. I get the feeling that Baton Rouge's Mardi Gras celebration is but a shadow of what happens in New Orleans, Katrina or not. You know, being here in Louisiana, getting a taste of what the state is all about, sharing in its fear and anger about Katrina and all its fallout, I'm coming to realize that the hurricane and its aftermath is a defining event in my life. It all happened at just the right moment for its fullest effect. I had been living in Louisiana for a little over a year when the storm hit. I had only come to know and love New Orleans within the last six or seven years, only truly appreciated the city's old school jazz sound for about as long. Only within the last seven or eight years have I understood the depraved depths to which the Republicans have fallen, mad in their orgy of power and America-dismantling. Only within the last decade or so have I come to understand fully how the rich exploit the poor, how anti-black racism continues to be one of this nation's worst problems. How capitalists always have their way. It all comes together with Katrina. The still-devastated city symbolizes everything to me. Everything. Everything I love and hate all wrapped up in mold and storm debris. I know that no American alive right now will ever forget what happened to New Orleans, but I can honestly say that it's become a part of who I am forevermore. Not only will I never forget, I'll never stop thinking about it.



UPDATE From Real Art comments:

Hey Ron,

Let's credit the photog on that end photo....my bud Alex Brandon/AP... a great guy who stayed through the 'cane and spent days dropping cameras to help with rescues while boating with NOPD SWAT... I wish you bloggers would give more of us mainstream news folks our well-deserved props...

toledodave

So I said:

You're right, Dave. I've been trying to do that more, actually, but, for me, laziness often gets in the way. I should especially try harder on this if only because you're watching...and know where I live.

Ron

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