How things are doing down here

Chris Rose, a local columnist for the Times-Picayune, has a good article written with the mindset after a trip to Seattle. He saw a post-Katrina play, got to talk with some folks, and got asked the famous question: So, how's New Orleans these days? I usually answer non-natives with an optimistic "Could be better, could be worse; in some places, it's like the storm never happened. In others, it's like it happened yesterday." For me, yesterday I walked back from lunch and I passed a house that looked like it needed to be gutted. The National Guard's still-visible searching glyph had a zero in the bottom of the X: no corpses found. But spray-painted over that zero was a two.

If you want some numbers on how many people are back, the Picayune can help you again. The best numbers evidently come from households receiving mail, itself an interesting data collection point. Short answer? Around 80%, give or take.