NOLA

Dan Baum, reporting for the New York Times, has a story about New Orleans and the New Orleans approach to life and living. From the article:

While the rest of us Americans scurry about with a Blackberry in one hand and a to-go cup of coffee in the other in a feverish attempt to pack more achievement into every minute, it’s the New Orleans way to build one’s days around friends, family, music, cooking, processions, and art. For more than two centuries New Orleanians have been guardians of tradition and masters of living in the moment — a lost art. Their preference for having more time than money was at the heart of what made that city so much fun to visit and so hard to leave. So when outsiders talked of making New Orleans “bigger and better,” the people of the city recoiled. “Bigger and better” struck many New Orleanian ears as code for whiter. But even more, I suspect, they heard it as a recipe for a city driven — like the rest of America — by the dollar and the clock. Who needs that?

Check it out here.

Photo by Lori Waselchuk for The New York Times