Ebb and Flow

by John Hitch

The Louisiana sun has reached its apex in a cloudless blue sky on this late February day.

Mardi Gras, the merry solstice of New Orleans, is also shining on the Mississippi Delta. Since January, the pre-Lenten celebration has been building along the Gulf of Mexico — from Florida to Texas — but nowhere is it bigger or more desperately needed than here.

A glimmering hailstorm of plastic beads, doubloons and cups, called “throws,” fly out from the caravan of colorful floats rolling down

Canal Street. Each float’s cache of throws seems bottomless, as does the enthusiasm of the harlequin-masked Krewes — locals who pay membership dues for the privilege to run the floats and chuck party favors into the wild crowd.

Serious parade-goers bring homemade ladder chairs, setting them up near the median curb to control the high ground and catch more loot.

The median is broken into little kingdoms of pop-up marquees and giant grills. Every five feet, another grill is searing burger meat or charbroiling ribs. Barely visible through the thick plume of mesquite smoke, towers of empty beer cans stand as monuments to the freedom of public consumption. Everyone is happy.

It’s called The Big Easy, after all.

 Six months from now, a different, darker period will be at its peak: hurricane season. About 97 percent of Atlantic hurricanes occur between June 1 and Nov. 30, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Most of those happen in and around September, like hurricanes Katrina (landfall Aug. 29, 2005) and Rita (landfall Sept. 24, 2005).

The repercussions are almost incomprehensible. Katrina was directly responsible for the deaths of at least 1,464 people, the displacement of one million more, and a $31.3 billion bill for the nation’s taxpayers.

Three-and-a-half-years later, the Gulf Coast is still years from recovery. And that’s if another mega-hurricane doesn’t strike in the meantime. Thousands still call Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers home, and many more have left the region. New Orleans, the elegant soul of the South, has lost nearly half its population, withering to 225,000.

But for today, none of that matters.