Our house is primarily mint green. I knew that, but I didn't know that it had drop-lap siding and a full complement of Eastlake details, such as turned columns, an elaborate frieze and decorative millwork of all varieties.

I learned this from the property section of the local paper, where one of the journalists (who calls herself Streetwalker), has the enviable job of wandering around town looking at houses and writing about them. Last Saturday, she chose the 600 block of Spain Street, which is where we live.

I know I'm biased, but it is a beautiful house. The landlord has won an award for his sensitive restoration, with details picked out in many different shades of green, and if we're not sitting outside, the tour buses slow down to let people take pictures.

And I know our good friend Jay next door will be flattered to hear himself described as the muscled man taking out the garbage. He often walks around with no shirt, ostensibly because the weather is hot, but really because he knows that every straight woman and gay guy on the block would love to get their hands on his sixpack.

Every so often Louisiana makes international headlines, and it's always for the wrong reasons. That's partly because even in 2009, more than fifty years after the end of Jim Crow segregation, this state has way more than its fair share of redneck racists.

Two years ago, the world's press beat a path to the little town of Jena, where a handful of nooses hanging from a tree proved that the racial fault lines of the Deep South still lay close to the surface.

More recently, the state's lukewarm electoral support for Barack Obama had undoubted racial roots; Jimmy Carter was right to point out that many people hate him for the colour of his skin. Only 14 percent of whites voted for him in Louisiana. Many of those were in New Orleans, a haven of relative tolerance, and he received a rapturous reception when he visited on Thursday.

This week, a justice of the peace in the town of Hammond took his place in the international spotlight after refusing to grant a mixed-race couple a marriage licence, on the grounds that their union was doomed to failure. Keith Bardwell began his justification with the words "I'm not a racist". Nine times out of ten, this is followed by a "but", and so he continued: "I just don't believe in mixing the races that way. I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom."

As I said in my previous post, this is a wonderful place in which to live. But I still despair of it on a regular basis.

Excuse the long absence (I hope you're all using RSS feeds so you don't keep clicking on the site and finding nothing new). We've been away, first to Disney for Pam's birthday and then to the UK.

Back here, I'm pleased but not surprised to find that the Marigny, the district in which we live, has been named by the American Planning Association as one of America's top ten great neighbourhoods.

I've never lived anywhere with such a fierce and justified sense of pride in itself, and such a strong sense of community and tolerance. It's also beautiful, particularly when the evening sun lights up the paintbox of pink, orange and sky-blue Caribbean-style houses, though the sun hasn't been very much in evidence lately.