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02/28/2006:

"New Orleans Puts On Mask for Mardi Gras"

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 27 -- Mardi Gras revelers along St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street Monday night and over the weekend whooped for the marching bands, hollered for celebrities such as Dan Aykroyd, applauded the lavish floats and cried out for the trappings and trinkets tossed by costumed riders as they had for decades, but behind all the merriment and the masks something was missing.

New Orleanians are tired. They are distracted. On the face of it, they seem normal and as lighthearted as ever. But they are not. And so it is with Mardi Gras -- the two-week pre-Lenten celebration that ends Tuesday, "Fat Tuesday." It is exuberant on the outside, strange and different and diminished by loss on the inside.

"What is there to celebrate?" asked Elphamous Malbrue, a 29-year veteran of the New Orleans police as he watched the Krewe of Hermes parade. "The spirit is just not here."
washingtonpost.com