from Houston:

It is very difficult to live in the middle of a catastrophe even if you have survived relatively unharmed. The grief feels palpable, though that sense may be due to the fact that you know too many people who are suffering. The television is full of images of very stressed people who are helping out on a volunteer basis. The elderly, the very young, pregnant women are trying to escape circumstances that they might well not be able to survive without help. And the animals. Not so much cats, I worry, but dogs of all sizes are being carted around, carried down ladders, sheltered in the GRB Convention center and help tightly. None of them is finding it fun.

There are some sweet reminders that we are, after all, in Texas. Thus down the street of some adjacent area 50 cows are herded to higher ground by lots…