New Orleans is a city of retired transients. A home for those with a someplace else, but no desire to return.

We are tired socialites who abandoned the minty repose of Georgia afternoons. We are carpenters with gnarled knuckles who now spend our days building plaster replicas of the furnishings from a kingdom that lost its king. We are privileged Tri-State youth who got caught up in the lifestyle and forgot to graduate.

We are home-grown bayou boys who can shuck an oyster better than we can tie our shoes. We are West Coast hipsters who grew weary of the pressure, but never the party. We are janitors, chefs, enterprising developers, intellectuals, and unrecovered alcoholics. We are princes among men and men lost in the skirts of royalty.

We are combat boots and tea-length skirts. Faded jerseys and aviator glasses. Short pants and patent leather shoes.

We have an anthem, and it is played by a single trumpet and a snare. It mourns and rejoices in echoes along battered walls, as do we.

We are the real Ellis Island of this fractured country. We take the poor and troubled, the damaged and injured, the misunderstood and broken. We embrace them and take them in. We make them family and cook for them.

But we do not take the dispassionate or entitled. We will lift you up, but you must pull your own weight. There is no room for cowardice in our world, so find your inner warrior or move along. We hear there are some great deals on pre-fab houses in Houston these days.