Gulf Watch: Laissez les bons temps rouler!

It's Mardi Gras time in New Orleans and around the South. On the second Fat Tuesday since Katrina, the folks in New Orleans can forget their worries for a day and celebrate life. This New Orleans Times Picayune editorial says it best:

This community lost so much in Katrina and in the 17 months since the storm that it is sometimes difficult to see the beauty of what we still have.

When you lose your home, your neighbors and your most treasured possessions, the ache stays with you for a long time. But as we work to rebuild what was taken in the storm, it is a comfort to realize that no hurricane, no inept bureaucracy, no self-involved politician can change the wealth of our culture and traditions.

Today, of all days, is the time to express who we are.

Read the whole thing.

In other Mardi Gras related news, here's an inspiring story from the New York Times about how New Orleans high school bands are making a comeback:

When the first Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina took place last year, New Orleanians felt something vital was missing: the strutting steps and triumphal horns of the city’s proud, immensely competitive high school bands marching between the floats.

The reason was obvious: Nearly all the city’s schools were still shut, and most of the students had been evacuated. This year fewer than a third of the public schools in New Orleans have reopened — many more are due this fall — and much of the city’s old population remains dispersed. But some of the top high school bands are back: a rare, heartening sign not only for the parades but also for the long-term vitality of New Orleans culture.

And from the Times Picayune, here's a profile of this year's Rex, King of Carnival:

Moments after he sat down, Josephine, a gray toy poodle named for Napoleon Bonaparte's wife, bounded into French's lap, mussing his master's Rex organization tie, a black four-in-hand tie with purple, green and gold stripes.

French views this year's festivities as part of the continuing areawide recovery from Hurricane Katrina's devastation.

"I feel like this is a chance to tell the world that we have survived, we have come back, we're ready to return to being the greatest host city in the world.

"It's time to thank the world for all the help they've given us and are continuing to give us and to welcome everybody who had been to the city in the past year and will be here, because we're going to need them."

Read the whole thing for more about Dr. Ronald French's background and his impressive resume.

And last but not least, business is looking up:

Merchants, hotel operators and others felt the crowd would exceed the 700,000 the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau said visited the city during the same time period last year.

"It was an excellent weekend," said Michael Valentino, managing partner of three French Quarter hotels. He said, "There is clearly more demand this year. It's feeling more like our normal Mardi Gras pressure."

[..]The first Carnival since Hurricane Katrina was scaled down — 68 daily flights into the city, 42 parades rolled and 600 restaurants open, according to the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. Of the 20,000 hotel rooms habitable last year, only 13,000 were available to visitors. The rest were taken by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, volunteers and contractors.

This year there are 30,000 hotel rooms, 1,648 restaurants open, 110 daily flights and 50 major parades, according to the marketing corporation.