Mardi Gras, Anyway

Dan Barry and Adam Nossiter advance a parade:

The first Mardi Gras parade of 2006 will strut and shout up Napoleon Avenue and then along St. Charles on Saturday, trumpeting a plaintive, post-traumatic theme: "May God Bless New Orleans." This parade, and the more than two dozen to follow over the next 11 days, through Mardi Gras on Feb. 28, will wend through a city stripped of all but its pride in the wind and floodwaters.

The people on the floats will toss beads and plastic coins onto the New Orleans they love, but not quite the New Orleans they remember — a city where the famous plea of the Mardi Gras spectator, "Throw me something, mister," takes on a newer, more desperate meaning.