New Orleans gathers the moxie to party on

Driving across the wetlands from the westward approach to New Orleans drains some of an unwary visitor's eager anticipation of visiting the "crazy Crescent City," so called for its development along a major bend in the Mississippi River.

It used to be the city that care forgot, in the old slogan, but that's no longer the case.

Jagged lines of trees broken in the fierce gales of Hurricane Katrina rise in their woundedness along marsh edges beyond the highway. Near the Interstate 10 exit to Chalmette, more than a year after the hurricane's landfall, the evidence of destruction lingers in the decaying piles of debris yet to be removed and in the occasional corpse of a swamped boat.

NEW YORK. The Giants are a lousy home team this season, losing more games than they win before an increasingly impatient and gloomy audience. If the NFL were an equitable association, that wouldn't be a problem on Sunday, because they would be playing at the Louisiana Superdome.

This game against the Saints, a big one for both teams, belongs in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, payback for last season's famous "road opener" for the Giants at the Meadowlands. But for some reason, this issue was never discussed by the league, despite the positive economic impact it might have had on the star-crossed Southern city.