O Babe of the Bayou, Big Easy on the Big River, Cousin of Cajun, Creator of Creole, Mother of Mardi Gras, Queen of Voodoo, Purveyor of Gumbo, I bow to thee! For indeed thou art the hope, succor, and ultimate recourse to the depressed and debauched, serious and quirky, prosaic and bizarre. All my doubts about why New Orleans is called the Crescent City vanished as our flight descended. The mighty Mississippi (mighty indeed at this point) made a sharp U turn and formed a perfect crescent of a delta. We are told ad nauseam that New Orleans is built on layers and layers of alluvial soil that the river has been depositing on the delta for centuries. Which means that the city has no rock bed foundation. It is built on mud, which makes everything sink--buildings, roads, anything that depends on terra firma. On the other hand, buried things come floating up during storm flooding, like coffins. Which is why, as most of you might already know, the good people of New Orleans decided to bui