The long, strange resurrection of New Orleans

Ruthie Frierson's dining room does not look like the birthplace of a populist rebellion. The room is quiet, insulated from any street noise, with treatments in heavy fabric around the windows.

Asian paintings in elegant frames hang on the walls. The ceiling is gilt - not painted gold, but proper gilt, rectangles of gold leaf so thin that a brick of 100,000 sheets would be less than an inch thick.

Yet it was here, late last year, that Frierson and several women of her acquaintance first planned to attack the powers that be. In this case the powers were the political establishments in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Washington, D.C. - establishments the women believed bore much of the responsibility both for the city's collapse before Katrina last August 29 and for the paralytic pace of rebuilding.

Thin, blond, and blue-eyed, Frierson bears some resemblance, in her blazer and scarf, to a younger Nancy Reagan. For people who don't live in New Orleans, her place in society might be summed up by her reputation as the city's most successful residential real estate broker - the person to see about buying and selling its finest homes. Or one might note that at its annual Mint Julep Party the Junior League anointed Frierson the 2006 "Sustainer of the Year."

from Fortune via CNN