“Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists…but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.”

–Lafcadio Hearn, Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn

I like to remind myself that New Orleans has always existed in a dichotomic state.