Hurricane Katrina

With echoes of last years Hurricane Katrina, the Naval Academy Masqueraders bring to the stage a steamy, often soggy, highly atmospheric rendition of A Streetcar Named Desire. Pre-eminent 20th-century American playwright Tennessee Williams created iconic characters in his 1947 play that for many of us were defined four years later in the movie by Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh. In the Masqueraders' production, Stanley Kowalski, Blanche DuBois and Stella, his wife and her sister, are redefined in a contemporary New Orleans created at Mahan Hall at the Naval Academy.

It used to be that young women visiting New Orleans' notorious French Quarter had no use for T-shirts whatsoever. But when Christine Mallinson and a couple of her friends from graduate school toured the tourist traps of Bourbon and Decatur streets last March, the Hurricane Katrina T-shirts hanging in windows or on street kiosks grabbed their attention. The shirts, the women felt, ridiculed storm victims: I survived Katrina and All I Have Left is this Lousy T-Shirt (Seriously ... this is it ... )

FALCONS (2-0) at Saints (2-0) Time, TV -- 8:30, ESPN Line -- Falcons by 4. Last meeting -- Falcons won, 36-17, at Atlanta on Dec. 12, 2005. Key stat -- The Falcons won both meetings in 2005 by combined 70-48. The buzz -- Emotion is a big factor in some games, and this will be one. Fan support in the Saints' return to the Superdome barely a year after Hurricane Katrina will make it tough on the Falcons.

Some wag once described newspaper reporters as "ink-stained wretches," furtive characters whose working tools consisted solely of pens, notebooks and chutzpah. Nowadays, though, they're just as likely to be carrying digital video cameras. Many newspapers are requiring their reporters not only to feed news to their papers' Web sites, but to create video stories to feed the Internet's seemingly insatiable demand for moving images. In an illustration of how well some newspapers have made that transition, five of the seven nominees in a new Emmy Awards category -- emerging media -- were for video stories by print reporters on the Web sites of old-media stalwarts The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Falcons (2-0) @ Saints (2-0) -- New Orleans gets its first home game since before Hurricane Katrina. Better still is the fact that it'll be for first place in the NFC South. Bengals (2-0) @ Steelers (1-0) -- The Bengals have as many weapons as anyone in the NFL. The Steelers' defense is not like the two soft touches Cincinnati has faced so far.

Editor's note: Marking the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Workers column offers the second of three firsthand accounts from Maryland-based employees who volunteered to respond to the Gulf Coast. John Trottman, 34, of Westminster has worked as a firefighter at Fort Meade for six years. In March 2001, the Military District of Washington, Fort Meade's command, launched an effort to train firefighters on its military bases in crisis counseling. Trottman was selected for the program and volunteered for the first time in 2004 after hurricanes Francis and Jeanne hit Florida.

WASHINGTON -- The long list of federal government failings in the face of Hurricane Katrina is well-documented. Now the nation's top auditor is praising a few agencies that he says were up to the challenge. In addition to the Coast Guard, which has been widely lauded for its daring helicopter rescues of more than 12,000 flood victims in New Orleans, Comptroller General David Walker commended other federal agencies whose efforts weren't the stuff of Hollywood action films, but filled critical needs nonetheless.

Ryan Adams was among the lucky ones. Lucky compared with what some classmates and teammates dealt with after Hurricane Katrina. Lucky he and his family had a house to return to, even though it had no air conditioning, no electricity for weeks. Lucky he could complete his senior year at his elite high school, even though it took five months before he could re-enroll. Lucky he could play baseball again last spring, even though his season was cut short because of a leg injury that simply wouldn't go away.

Hurricane Katrina is back. Well, the talk about Hurricane Katrina is back. Americans observed the one-year anniversary of the disaster this week. Once again, there was talk about poor black folks in New Orleans. But mercifully, a new voice has been added to the discussion this year. Enter Juan Williams, a senior correspondent for National Public Radio and a political analyst for Fox News. Williams is also an author whose works include Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 and Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary.

Bush tries to rewrite history on Katrina Instead of focusing on the facts about Hurricane Katrina one year later (dead bodies still in abandoned houses, much of New Orleans still without electricity, uncollected garbage and debris in the streets along with countless homeless people, among other horrors), the Bush regime has embarked on a public relations campaign intended to do what it does best - rewrite history ("Reflecting on Katrina," Aug. 30). The reality is that the federal government's botched response to Hurricane Katrina exposed the fact that four years after 9/11, the Bush team was unable to keep us safe.