Word: mardi
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...inside. The French Quarter and the Garden District lie dark and deserted, a wasteland of downed power lines, cars with flat tires, massive Spanish oaks toppled at their roots and scattered reminders of the city's former self--a cookbook open to a recipe for ham croquettes, strings of Mardi Gras beads. What little life remains in New Orleans is largely devoted to counting the dead, a task so vast and grim that even the city's coroner, Frank Minyard, doesn't hazard a guess at what lies beneath the receding waters. "We don't really know what...
Their music exploded irrepressibly from the forced integration of these castes to sweep the world as the definitive American art form. New Orleans, the Crescent City, the Big Easy--home of Mardi Gras, the second-line parade, the po' boy sandwich, the shotgun house--is so many people's favorite city. But not favorite enough to embrace the integrated superiority of its culture as a national objective. Not favorite enough to digest the gift of supersized soul internationally embodied by the great Louis Armstrong. Over time, New Orleans became known as the national center for frat-party-type decadence...
...known both for its charm and its rot, not just from the termites consuming whole neighborhoods but from a corrupt police force, dissolving tax base, neglected infrastructure, rising poverty and a murder rate that inspired old-timers to pack a gun beneath their tuxes on their way to the Mardi Gras parade, could hardly have been less equipped to cope with a catastrophe that everyone knew was coming. "Half of Louisiana is under water," former lawmaker Billy Tauzin used to say, "and the other half is under indictment." Three of the top state emergency officials were recently indicted for mishandling...
...senior officers in Stuttgart, Germany. Many of the officers had recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan; others were about to be deployed. As always, I was struck by how the core values of the military-service and discipline, both physical and intellectual-are so different from the perpetual American Mardi Gras. More than a few officers told me they were concerned by what was happening back home...
...treasures averaged five hours. In Chicago, 2,000 lined up opening day to marvel at the glittering objects found in the tomb of the boy pharaoh who lived in the 14th century B.C. Now it is New Orleans' turn, and ... some of that old Mardi Gras madness has rubbed off on the Egyptian god-king. For starters, Lelong Drive, leading up to the city's Museum of Art, was painted a kind of Nile blue. The Fairmont Hotel opened a tent restaurant outside the museum with such specialties as Sphinxburger, Queen Nefertiti's Salad and Ramses' Gumbo ... The New Leviathan...