And so they couldn’t have known exactly how despicable a lie it was when the president told the news media later that week that nobody could have predicted the levee breaks.

Today I travel a lot, and when I tell people that I live in New Orleans their expression changes slightly; something in their facial muscles relaxes, something brightens in their eyes, and they smile.

New Orleanians knew how to turn deprivation into an asset; they had the best gallows humor going, they danced at funerals, they insisted on prevailing.

New Orleans music lovers, black, white, young and old, are much more likely to be found in places where they can dance to the music they love, holler encouragement, sing along and, if at all possible, eat and drink at the same time.

At one point, early on, some public figures even asked whether it ‘made sense’ to rebuild New Orleans. Would you let your own mother die because it didn’t make financial sense to spend the money to treat her, or because you were too busy to spend the time to heal her sick spirit?

There was a gulf between those who had had their community smashed and their future thrown completely into question, and those for whom life still moved in an intelligible stream. It was not unlike the line that separated those who had come back from the war and those whose lives had been going on continuously while they had been away.

The question is not racial solidarity or class solidarity but a distinction between people who have a soul left and people who have mortgaged their souls for a short-sighted self-gratification – whether.

I didn’t know it consciously at that point, but I had stepped into one of the most important lessons that New Orleans offers: Go with what is. Use what happens.

And they went off down the street, into the heart of Mardi Gras Day.

Functioning in the face of any injustice disfigures you. If it kills you or drives you crazy, you are disfigured, and if you can contain it and channel it and work around it, you are still disfigured.