Boy, are my arms tired! Adventures of the Owlcat.

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Legitimate Reasons For Prozac Use: New Orleans 2006

The severed roof of a ruined home sits several feet from its foundation in a pool of black mud. Across the street, cryptic graffiti painted on the front of another indicates that it was searched for bodies before being abandoned. On the next block, a family sedan is perched abstractly upon a rusting fence. Great mounds of furniture, photo albums, shoes — the detritus of life — lay rotting in front yards.

Nine months after hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused the levee failures that flooded New Orleans, thousands of moldering remains like these are all that is left of the Lower 9th Ward and many of the city’s other suburbs. Yet, as unsettling as these static images are, they cannot begin to convey the feeling of silent desolation experienced when standing at the center of this panorama of rotting hulks. Because each ruin represents a life interrupted — perhaps destroyed.

Even Scarlett O’Hara, who rebuilt her portion of the beleaguered South with only her wits and the belief that every tomorrow brought a reprieve, would have raised her fist in despair at this stagnant devastation.

Uptown, in “The Sliver by the River” — an area that remained relatively dry — the city still reflects much of its traditional gay tableau. Hotels and shops are open for business. The recognizable smell of beignets and coffee drifts from cafés. Chefs around this city, already known for superlative cooking, are producing meals that are notably better-than-ever. As one local put it, “They’re cooking as if their lives depended on it.”

Yet, upon closer inspection, even this region is not unaffected. Garden District mansions sport roofs covered with government-issued blue tarps; uprooted trees lean threateningly into buildings; and abandoned cars and piles of garbage line the roads. Audubon Park hosts an inexplicable flock of ducks that may have arrived after their migratory pattern was altered by the storms. In the bustling French Quarter, meringue blares from jazz bars in order to attract the new Latino customers who have flocked here to rebuild a city now largely denuded of its domestic working classes.

New Orleans remains a mainstay of national news reports because — though a truncated Mardi Gras was thrown last February, and Jazz Fest will begin this weekend — it is hardly back to normal. More than half of the city’s former residents, many of them poor or African American, are gone and may never return. Those who have come back waited these last nine months for directives on where and when they could begin to rebuild their homes. The levees that failed are not yet rebuilt and will not be reconstructed to withstand another storm of Katrina’s magnitude. Furthermore, only last March was FEMA funding approved to resume looking for the missing dead who still await proper burial.

Amid the chaos, a mayoral election, held April 20, has resulted in a May run-off between the incumbent, C. Ray Nagin — who gained national exposure as the frustrated face of his chocolate city — and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, brother to a Louisiana senator and son of a former mayor. Landrieu may become the city’s first white chief in nearly 30 years. But, while the nation will invest the coming victor of this political contest with temporary omnipotence, the lingering symbols of failure decaying along Lake Pontchartrain attest to the reality that it will take more than a single leader to restore normalcy to this embattled region.

Still, tomorrow is another day.

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King Me!

Few things are as sublime as the cinnamon-flavored, icing drenched, gigantic, oval Danish known as the King Cake. It’s no wonder thousands are consumed every year during Mardi Gras season in New Orleans — which begins on Twelfth Night, January 6 and culminates on Fat Tuesday. Yet, like many traditions, the origins of the King Cake are about as festive as a trip through Donner Pass.

The roots of this Mardi Gras confection go back to pre-Christian Europe. Annually, in tribes across the continent, one man would be chosen as the “sacred king.” By custom, this dubious monarch was selected using a King’s Cake in which a coin or bean had been placed. Whoever found the token in their slice would become “king” for a year. During their year of leisure, this common serf would have his choice of the best food, the finest lodgings and best of all, he’d get to have his way with all of the most appealing villagers — both snails and oysters.

However, all good things must pass. After his year was up, the “king” was slaughtered and his blood tilled into the earth to ensure an abundant harvest. (This practice is mirrored in modern marriage where the woman gets to be Queen for a Day during the course of her nuptials and then spends the next 50 years cleaning the toilet.)

While high school novellas might lead one to believe that the lottery system of choosing a yearly human sacrifice still survives in small-town New England, the ascendancy of Christianity pretty much wiped out the practice in most of the rest of the Western world. In fact, the Catholic Church usurped the bloody King’s Cake tradition and converted it into a celebration of the Magi —that’s the Three Kings, to you. By the twelfth Century, the French were baking ceramic babies into cakes to symbolize the Christ child. Apparently the tiny crucifixes they tried had too many painful edges.

The King Cake, in its current form came to New Orleans with French settlers around 1870. By then, instead of getting murdered for biting into baby Jesus at a party, the lucky gastronomic explorer was symbolically “crowned” for the day. This meant he or she was merely compelled to host the next party of the season — or, at least, to provide the next cake.
Some would say that once they took the killing out of the holiday, the thrill was gone. To them, I reply, you can’t have human sacrifice and Girls Gone Wild, too.

While modern King Cakes might be unhealthy, they are no longer entirely deadly. So, do your part to support Louisiana bakeries by going online and ordering a sweet-and-safe King Cake for your Mardi Gras party today. Hurry, by Ash Wednesday they’ll be gone and you won’t get anything that delicious until Easter. And if you thought the King Cake story was horrific, you don’t even want to hear about Easter.

ORDER NOW:

Randazzo’s Camellia City Bakery

Haydel’s Bakery

Gambino's Bakery .