First, a few bits of housekeeping: if you are new to the Red-State Rhumba, you can retrace our Southern steps in parts one, two and three.
For those of you intrigued by all things Big Easy: here is an interview with Tom Piazza, author of Why New Orleans Matters and a piece I wrote about Richard Zuschlag, a CEO whose ambulance company saved thousands while FEMA kept doing a heckuva job. I would also recommend Rob Walker's, Letters From New Orleans, a great read that served as inspiration for my own small contribution to the gumbo.
And...if you no likey the ready, my wife Kim put together a short film of post-Katrina photography.
High-level academic research has shown that people only care about historical events on the same date that such events took place, so I bought myself some time by waiting until the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to wrap-up the Southern diary. Actually, It’s taken me a few months to write about New Orleans for a couple of reasons. In part, it’s because I was working on a piece for Inc. and wanted to keep my interests from conflicting, but mainly it’s because I don’t know what to say.
So I’ll let Bruce Springsteen do my talking for me.…“I saw things that I never thought I’d see in an American city,”
Amen.
We have another contributor here at the site. 
Katrina hit Mississippi the hardest.
Here's Part Two of the southern sojurn.
I’m guessing that a lot of the revelations we uncovered teeter toward the “duh” side of things, but experiencing it firsthand is a lot more enlightening than say snide hipster wisecracks uttered while milling around outside the Magnolia bakery. (And for the record: sitting under an actual Magnolia tree is a lot more comforting than waiting on line for a friggin’ cupcake).
