I couldn't agree more with Al's entry about discovery journalism. It's probably the main reason I've found this week to be so rewarding.  But I would like to add one anecdote to help illustrate his point.

I've spent a good part of my week traveling ahead of the team trying to get a general feel for the themes we should try to focus on in the next day's story.  On Wednesday I left the team in Forked Island, La. and started heading east. Al had told us there were a lot of oyster fishermen who lived in the area and Carl agreed it might be a good opportunity to focus on the storm's effects on the seafood industry. Other than that my marching orders were fairly vague and I set out to see what I could find.

But it's a long drive to Terrebonne Parish, and by the time I made it to Houma I was pretty hungry.  I had, after all, been thinking about oysters for two hours and thought I'd try to find a place to get a real Louisiana po' boy sandwich. And just when I thought I had found one, the nice woman behind the counter at The Lunch Basket restaurant told me they hadn't had oysters since the storm. Now I'm not sure if it was my inner reporter or the fact it was 2 p.m. and I'd missed breakfast, but all of a sudden I started firing questions at her like she was Scott McClellan: Which storm? Rita? Katrina? You mean you haven't had any oysters at all for more than a month? You can't get them from anywhere? Clearly not the press secretary type, she seemed a bit frazzled when she finally did reply.

"I don't want to tell you something that's not right, but the guy who we buy our oysters from just placed an order for lunch," she said.  "He should be here to pick it up in about five minutes.  I can introduce you if you want."

"That would be great," I said.  "And I'll have the shrimp po' boy."

The "guy" she was talking about was Kevin Voisin, the younger brother of Steve Voisin.  It was Steve who later offered to take Carl out in his speedboat to see the damaged oyster beds and meet some oyster fishermen. Steve also told me he had sold The Lunch Bucket oysters since the hurricanes.

"They were probably just out of them and didn't want to tell you," he said.

The funny thing is that if she had just told me they were out of oysters, I might not have started grilling her like I did, I might not have met Steve, and Thursday's story would have turned out very different. But luckily everything turned out. And the shrimp was delicious.

While the rest of our team spent most of their day in Vermilion Parish on Wednesday, I spent a good portion of mine in Terrebonne Parish.  I was working my way down Highway 315 talking to the oyster, shrimp and crab fisherman who live along the bayou in preparation for Thursday's story.

I came upon a couple - a retired fisherman and his wife - who were cleaning their front yard.  We chatted for a few minutes.  It was a fairly normal conversation, at least as normal as any conversation between a Midwestern kid from the suburbs and two Cajuns whose home sits on stilts can possibly be. They hadn't lost much, but then the woman informed me that their daughter…

"…she lost everything."

And there those three words were again.  I've heard them so many times since Katrina, but they still hit me square in the gut. I suppose everything means different things to different people.  But it's still a nearly impossible concept to get your arms around.  Everything.

I'll never get over the routine way in which so many people break this news to you: "Oh my neighbor, he lost everything" or "We did OK, but my boss, she lost everything." It's not routine in a cold or heartless way.  There's just a disconnect between the emotion behind the statement and the statement itself. It's almost like listening to a friend tell a funny story you know they've told a thousand times before. You know it's funny, but you also know that your friend just doesn't have the heart to give it the delivery it deserves.

At least hearing it hasn't become routine.  Hopefully it never will.

Both times I've returned home to Chicago from New Orleans since Katrina I've told people that the devastation is so much worse than it looks on television. When I return home after this trip, I'll surely be telling people that there is SO MUCH MORE devastation than you ever see on television.  It's mind boggling to think that after three days we still haven't even seen any damage caused by Katrina, only Rita.

As you drive across the Gulf Coast one thing that's striking is how much work is being done, yet how little progress seems to have been made. I don't mean that as a slight to the thousands of workers I've seen from all over the country - they're away from their families, working 18 hour days, living in motel rooms if they're lucky, RVs or tents if they're not. It's just that the job is so massive, it's almost like trying to move a boulder by dripping water on it.

But there are small signs of a divot in that boulder.Yesterday I left Cameron Parish to scout ahead for today's story.  Driving through the heart of Cajun Country I saw literally thousands of brand new power line poles - the wood so fresh it was still green - dotting the wreckage of small towns along Highway 82.  In many places these poles were the only thing standing.