During Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, Louisiana State University Medical Center’s Charity and University Hospitals suffered fewer casualties than any of the other hospitals in the area.

The first mayoral debate took place on Tuesday night, beginning what promises to be a very ironically entertaining election period.

Lately people have been working so hard just to keep up morale that to have a stranger come down and party for a week, then predict that we will be washed away again but won’t care is insulting and injurious.

While local sources say that there is no reason to be particularly concerned about asthma, residents offer empirical evidence otherwise as they leave the town they love because New Orleans is suffocating them.

When I first moved back to New Orleans four years ago, I thought the spectacle of a bunch of grown-ups screaming and hollering for plastic junk was ridiculous.

I take the local bus into Mid-City and I get off at at Tulane and Carrolton. One man holds the door for me and another helps me with my suitcase. Then they give the tourists from the bus directions downtown.

It looks as though the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may be putting lives on the line again as they reconstruct the levees out of what is reportedly inferior soil.

Maybe you express yourself verbally, telling a stranger your life story while sitting at the bar or waiting in line for groceries. It’s so nice to know people.

Many locals are ready to have a good time and revel in the chaos that will ensue for the next few weeks. Others are asking how much this merriment will cost the city long term and who is really benefitting.

I reckon that not since the Civil War has there been such a strong sense of resentment toward those northern "carpetbaggers."

Home for the holidays in December, riding my bicycle through the French Quarter, I passed a man standing on the corner of Royal and Ursuline. Palette in hand, beret on head, he was painting a post-Katrina picture, a Creole cottage with its roof covered by a bright blue tarp.