"If New Orleans is to be pumped out, its soffits re-replastered, its live oaks replanted before I'm gone, I'll be happily surprised," writes 62-year-old former NYT executive editor Howell Raines. "For now, we wait and ponder this question: If it's gone or permanently altered, what memorial would be fitting? Surely it would not be some monument of stone, but perhaps a political memorial to the city of Huey P. Long and his fictional iteration Willie Stark, or a spiritual remembrance of the City That Care Forgot."