Little Is Left but Stillness

Lower Plaquemines Parish, the long marshy finger of Louisiana sticking into the Gulf of Mexico, has become a silent, melancholy monument to Hurricane Katrina, like one of the smattering of European villages preserved for memory's sake since World War II.

The people — shrimpers, oystermen, workers for offshore oil fields — are resilient. But resiliency has its limits in a place that reverted late last summer to its diluvian origins. Here, where the hurricane first struck the American mainland, the 120-mile-an-hour winds pushed the Breton Sound back over the earth.

from the NY Times