2.14 New Orleans

The Adventures of Memento Mori

As a culture, America does not live well with death. By the very nature of our colonial Protestant roots, this country has an inherent denial of death ingrained in our collective psyche. Throw in the social and psychological effects of the country's expansive size. Mix that with our compulsion to minimize, sanitize, romanticize, homogenize and capitalize – oh, yes – we don’t live well with death. There is, of course, an exception - New Orleans, Louisiana.