Sept. 2, 2005 | HOUSTON -- As they drove into Houston on Interstate 10 Thursday morning, evacuees from the New Orleans Superdome saw a "Welcome" sign. Local residents had hung bedsheets over the edge of overpasses and erected signs on trucks with messages like, "Welcome New Orleans, Our House Is Your House."

"They were playing Lil' Wayne [a popular New Orleans hip-hop artist] on the radio when we drove into town," says Augustus Warren Williams, 45. "They are treating us better than our own people." (from Salon)

In the past couple of days I've been reading about the response from Houston--CG Auntie's comment about the new student in her class, Quotidian Grace's account of the response from the faith community, and e-mails to that effect from the church R and I belonged to in Houston.

Restaurants are giving discounts, Astroworld is offering free admission for the refugees, a bicycle shop in the Third Ward (not exactly a chichi area of town) has donated bikes to the kids at the Astrodome, and Second Baptist Church (the Bapto-dome, whose pastor has his own helicopter which shuttles him between church campuses on Sunday morning) is working on a meals program alongside Hindus, Buddhists, and Baha'i.

Houston's hot.
Its humidity rivals that of Calcutta.
It's flat.
It's polluted, with laughably anemic public transit.
Its clogged highways are lined with huge, garish billboards advertising vasectomy reversals and "Who's the Father?" genetic testing.
It's not just conservative, it's "awl-bidness" conservative.
It's a crazy quilt of a place, with no zoning to speak of.
And I haven't lived there for years.

Still, tonight, I want to go home.