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If you enter New Orleans in a Google search you’ll get words and images that echo the city’s unofficial motto: laissez les bon temps rouler, let the good times roll.

Americans love to visit this place because, as noted TV producer David Simon has said, New Orleanians will always find a way to celebrate, even when they get bad news.

But there’s some bad news coming to bayou country that no one will be dancing to.

New Orleans police are investigating what triggered a shooting that injured 19 people at a Mother’s Day parade. Two children are among the wounded.

New Orleans restaurant culture is abuzz with different flavors, new fashions and even a new lexicon these days. Some places set the pace and others struggle to keep up. But then there are those that ignore them altogether, and in some cases stand apart, by essentially standing still. Leni's Café is one example.

Hear that? The birds chirping, the construction on Esplanade, yep — New Orleans is back to normal. Jazz Fest came and went, and now it’s up to us to keep having fun. Shouldn’t be that hard:

Rising sea levels threaten communities on every American coastline, but none more so than Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, where every hour a football field’s worth of marsh disappears.

Few piano players are as tall, glam and terrific as Marcia Ball. Born in Texas, raised in Louisiana and schooled in the dance halls and roadhouses of the Gulf South, Ball can't help but make you boogie woogie. That is, unless you wanna two-step. Or boogaloo. She does that too.

"If you can make 'em dance, money becomes a space problem."

Ball's songs are postcards of small town life in this region and the dilemmas that drive people to the choices they make.

Sixty eight years ago this week — May 8, 1945 to be exact — the Second World War ended in Europe with the signing of the official documents in Berlin. But, for one group of British military women, it would be more than 30 years before they were allowed to talk about their secret role in that devastating conflict.

Sharon Litwin had the chance to speak with one of them for this week's Notes from New Orleans; she filed this report from the back patio of a charming, soft-spoken resident of Covington, Louisiana.