Horror to Hope

The pumps are working again, belching putrid water out of New Orleans and back into Lake Ponchatrain. There was even a parade on Bourbon Street. But at this writing, America was still falling asleep to nightly images of bloated corpses, starving animals, armed patrols floating on boats through rivers that once were the streets of this country’s most joyous and charmingly decadent town, and the weary, misguided people who wouldn’t leave it.