My tribe, doing what it does:

My colleagues who are down here are warriors. There are a half-dozen of us living in a small house on a side street Uptown. Everyone else has been cleared out.

We have a generator and water and military C-rations and Doritos and smokes and booze. After deadline, the call goes out: "Anyone for some warm brown liquor?" and we sit on the porch in the very, very still of the night and we try to laugh.

Some of these guys lost their houses -- everything in them. But they're here, telling our city's story.

And they stink. We all stink. We stink together.