Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is wrapping up in New Orleans. Police on horseback will push crowds out of the French Quarter promptly at midnight. What can we say about Mardi Gras? Lewdness is the norm. Success will be measured by the amount of garbage collected (in tons).

The morality issue aside, this year was a newsworthy carnival because of the recent Katrina plight. An article in USAToday notes:

Crowds were smaller than in other years but still substantial, considering more than half the city's residents have not returned home since Katrina....

Revelers wore costumes poking fun at some of the hardships endured since Katrina left New Orleans sitting in floodwaters for weeks. People wore hats resembling storm-damaged, blue-tarped roofs; they drew dirty flood lines on their pants like those on the sides of thousands of homes, and one man wore a T-shirt that read, "The city where a day at the lake comes to you," referring to the levee breaches along Lake Pontchartrain.

Others celebrated a city on the mend: a member of the Zulu parade wore a T-shirt that read, "Katrina didn't wash away our spirit." There was a profusion of costumes from The Wizard of Oz; because of Dorothy's mantra, "There's no place like home."

Home or not, truly, there is no place like New Orleans.

Various pictures of Mardi Gras revelry; Source: USAToday and CBS News