For a city whose personality depends on its glorious mixture of cultures, New Orleans's first Mardi Gras carnival after the Katrina hurricane has been a bitter-sweet event. A watching world must salute the determination to revive its fortunes on display over the last few days, while noting also the huge difficulties facing its citizens as they endeavour to do so.
Less than half its 500,000 residents have returned, most are far from home and out of work, many parts are still flooded or abandoned, insurance claims and federal aid are slow to come - and the next hurricane season starts in 100 days' time.
The city's fate has deeply affected the Bush administration. Its bungled handling of the disaster, attitude towards climate change and the diversion of resources from reconstruction to war-making in Iraq which many New Orleanians now blame for their problems have made the Katrina hurricane an emblem of political incompetence and insouciance. It is easy enough to paint such a harsh picture, but rebuilding the levees on which the city's safety depends has now been agreed. This is a colossal and expensive task and the city itself must display confidence and trust in its own future if its fortunes are to revive.
New Orleans was deeply divided by race and class before the hurricane and seems likely to be even more so after it. Black people suffered quite disproportionately and are finding it most difficult to return, find work and homes. If most of them don't come back the city's personality will change profoundly, no matter how much effort is put into the outward display of festivity.
Whether the wider lessons have been learned it is as yet too soon to say. Economic activity in the whole coastal region hit by Katrina is reviving, based on its central role as one of the main US entrepots. This will stimulate recovery in other spheres over the next five or 10 years. But lessons about the connections between climate change and the incidence and intensity of hurricanes have also to be learned. Katrina has heightened awareness of them among the US voting public, but with what precise electoral effect is not yet clear.
The same political uncertainty hangs over how the Iraq war has diverted attention and federal spending away from New Orleans's recovery programme. This year's congressional elections provide an opportunity to test public attitudes on these issues. But there is no unambiguous shift towards the Democrats as a result, in Louisiana or elsewhere, reflecting that party's own uncertainty about how to handle these issues.