Carnival Diary, part 9

If you want to be cruel, you can see New Orleans at this Carnival time as a man who's had both legs amputated and then been ordered to dance. But New Orleans is dancing, crippled though it be, of its own, mixed volition, and this afternoon it started looking as though the bet, on revived tourism, was paying off. The crowd was big at the foot of Canal Street, where the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club was holding its annual Lundi Gras festival. And the crowd was bound to disappoint those who were hoping for, or warning against, the bleaching of this town, for it was a true -- to use the phrase that has migrated from the hippie era to the rave era -- gathering of the tribes, of all the colors of the city's palette, and not in token numbers, but in healthy abundance. I go back with Zulu. My first Mardi Gras was spent riding in the Zulu parade on the rainiest Fat Tuesday morning in memory, and my saddest Carnival experience was getting turned away from the Zulu Ball two years ago because a friend who invited me forgot to say the dress code was tuxedos only. Zulu, many of whose members lost everything in the floods, is making a big statement with today's festival and tomorrow's parade, a statement of defiance and resilience. Walking back from the festival stage, I felt that strange feeling people here must be sensing a lot these days: the bemusement at ticking off observations of activity that are so normal -- families throwing footballs on the grass levee of the River -- they normally escape notice, but are welcomed back now as tentative signs, tender as seedlings, that the city may yet grow new legs.