NOLA returnee and crafty badass Cree McCree launches our SMITH Diaries column with a dispatch from New Orleans, where the bawdy Krewe Du Vieux parade “kicks off every Mardi Gras season by giving the high and mighty a raucous kick in the ass.” Over the next few months, Cree, whose own home was bent but not broken during Katrina, will be offering her words and images about what her life is like back home in New Orleans after the flood. She’s a raw, real writer who pulls no punches—and has a way of finding truth and beauty in everything she sees, and sound she hears.