My friend sits out on his back deck, where he would normally be grilling the hamburgers. The tiny pool is ready for our kids. The fence is propped up with two-by-fours. The house is clean, the toys are on the shelves, ready for an onslaught of little hands. But our kids aren't there. Not only our kids -- any kids. Usually, his street is filled with them.

Fifty thousand households aren't coming back to New Orleans, according to a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll. That number includes a lot of children. The reasons: jobs, schools, homes, the environment.... Read more

New Orleans, La. -- The waiter pours an inch of Blackstone Napa Merlot into a plastic cup and offers it to me. I swish it around. "Very good."

We've landed here at Vincent's, an old-line Italian restaurant where Dean Martin plays on the jukebox. The doors open to the rumble of the St. Charles Avenue streetcar, when it's up and running. Tonight, the avenue is dark in sections and the sidewalks are lined with duct-tape-wrapped refrigerators. Vincent's is the only Uptown restaurant open for business. It's an hour before the 8 p.m. curfew, but there's still a long wait for a table.... Read more

I love New Orleans. But after anchoring myself there for half my life, I still don't understand it all that well. If this city has a soul, I think I've only caught fleeting glimpses of it.

One of these glimpses occurred in 1993, when I had the chance to interview musician Danny Barker. He was 84. I was 30 and on assignment for a local magazine. I knew that Barker had played with Cab Calloway and wrote songs like "Don't You Feel My Leg," for his wife, Blue Lu Barker, to sing.... Read more

"Why is this our problem?"

I say this to Cindy. My family and I have been in her home in Carencro, La., about 150 miles west of New Orleans, for a month now.... Read more

LAFAYETTE, LA. -- She just stares at me, the Iowan volunteer. Silver and green Mardi Gras beads drape around her neck. She pushes a blank form across the table.
"It's been a long day," she says.

Sitting next to her, another volunteer quickly smiles. "Welcome," she says. "You came to the right place."

I tell them both it's OK, that I'm from New Orleans. I want to spend the night here at the Cajundome, one of a westward line of stadiums from Baton Rouge into Texas that have become homes for thousands of evacuees. Some of these shelters have been given their own zip codes.... Read more

"I can't go back there," says my wife, Tami, talking on the cell phone. We're driving from Carencro into Lafayette to find an insurance office and check out the food stamp line.

She listens to the caller, a friend of mine from high school.

"That would be great," Tami says. They're talking about Minneapolis. Every day now, Tami keeps going to pediatrician job Web sites, calling out the names of cities that have work. Champaign-Urbana. Somewhere in central Wisconsin. How about the West? Now, Minneapolis.... Read more

"Some people got lost in the flood, some people got away alright."
-- Randy Newman, "Louisiana 1927"

New Orleans is gone.

I left it behind me on Saturday, with my two kids in the backseat, the soundtrack to Shrek on the CD player. My wife, a pediatrician, was on call for the weekend and stayed behind.

She joined us in a town just outside Lafayette, La., Sunday evening after a harrowing odyssey along the southern route of Highway 90, driving without her glasses or a cell phone, our three cats roaming in the back of a shaky Volvo.... Read more