For lovers of New Orleans

Here are three recent items from the Times-Picayune about why New Orleans is special:

1. Jarvis DeBerry explores a few idiosyncracies of the New Orleans dialect.
2. Michael Sartisky explains why New Orleans is "the only authentic indigenous urban culture on the continent, the defining soul of a nation sorely in need of one."
3. C. Ward Bond¹ quotes Lafcadio Hearn, writing in 1870, explaining New Orleans to a friend in Cincinnati. Hearn's words fit today's reality:

Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes, than to own the whole state of Ohio.

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¹ No idea whether he's related to this guy.