Native sons and daughters

When I first read Michael Lewis' NYT article "Wading Toward Home," a native Uptowners' account of coming home in the days immediately following Katrina, I admit had a hard time accepting that there might be any humor to be found in this mess. It seemed a little soon for levity -- not for people here, really, some us had been laughing, in some cases hysterically, from the start -- but it was only October 2005, and it seemed important that the rest of the NYT-reading world understand how desperate things continued to be.

But I recently came across Lewis' hilarious account of bringing his daughters to the New Orleans Fairgrounds during Mardi Gras -- part of his "Dad Again: Notes on Fatherhood" series in Slate and was inspired to go back and reread the "Wading Toward Home" piece. I don't know what's better - that piece, which really was pretty brilliant, or the fact that I can finally find humor in things Katrina-related without falling to pieces.

I was also happy to come across former Times-Pic reporter Tara Young's Houston Chronicle blog, Post-K: Life After Hurricane Katrina in Houston. She used to write some pretty hard-hitting reports for the paper here, so it's interesting to hear her more personal stories, and she does a good job of describing both why she's decided to stay in Texas and how heartbroken she is about it.