'Katrina Patina' and Other Neologisms

There is a man living in my driveway now and I don't find that at all unusual. He makes his bed in the back of his small SUV and sleeps there with his little dog. Many afternoons he can be found sitting behind the wheel, reading the paper, his Shitz Su nestled on his lap. He calls his car "home." It's part of the new vocabulary that is emerging on the Gulf Coast since Katrina.

From a dispatch filed by Sierra Club volunteer and founder of the Coastal Community Watch, Ellis Anderson, who wrote to us from her home in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. It's the latest of our many Notes from the Gulf Coast.

For more about Ellis and her struggle to preserve the character of her town, see this report from MSNBC.