John Scott, Artist: You have to be a strange kind of being to live in a place this dangerous by nature. I mean we live in a bowl, surrounded by water, on a flood plain. You can't bury people below ground, because in the heavy rain caskets will pop up. We've lived with yellow fever mosquitoes, and we keep going. Survival by improvisation.
Krewe Member 1: The original Mardi Gras beads were all made out of glass.
Krewe Member 2: So we have here a destroyed house, and we're going to have, this is Rita and that's Katrina, in bed together. It's been an interesting project because myself, and of course many other people in fact do live in flooded houses. And when we first came up with the idea I wasn't too keen on it. Interestingly as the month's gone on and we've kind of made jokes about destroyed houses and everything, it's actually had a healing process for many of us.
Krewe Member 3: The concept is that since we're having so much trouble getting the federal government to take care of responsibilities of building things back, maybe the French will do better. So by ... we're asking the French within the Louisiana Purchase to buy back Louisiana.
Krewe Member 4: Our theme this year is "there's no place like home." So we're going to drop a house on some really bad politicians.
Krewe Member 5: I know there was controversy about whether we should have Mardi Gras or not, when we have to do this sort of stuff, you know, to reenergize ourselves.
Krewe Member 6: Well, everybody's been making fun of the whole thing, because that's the only way you keep your sanity. We can't give this up, this is what we're made of.
Ari Kelman, Historian: There's something to be said for the fact that when New Orleans faces adversity, when it's dealing with tragedy, when it's down on its luck, New Orleans' answer always is to pop the corks and have a good meal and then go dancing.
Tom Piazza, Writer: One of the main things that you learn from New Orleans is how to participate in life as it unfolds. You learn to embrace the fact that you can't control everything in advance. We have just a little while to stay here, and if we are lucky enough to make it to the table again for one more meal, then that fact needs to be celebrated and fully experienced and lived to the hilt.