{"id":4147,"date":"2015-03-13T07:00:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4147"},"modified":"2015-03-13T07:00:13","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T11:00:13","slug":"1-dead-in-attic-after-katrina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4147","title":{"rendered":"**** 1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The New Orleans “bathtub ring” (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Chris Rose <\/a>\u2013 This collection of newspaper columns from the New Orleans Times-Picayune<\/em> in the days and months following Hurricane Katrina is, as the cover says, \u201ca roller-coaster ride of observation, commentary, emotion, tragedy, and even humor\u201d\u2014whose shaky pilings are sunk into the physical, economic, and emotional debris of a devastated city.<\/p>\n

Rose reports unflinchingly about the horrors and about the small personal triumphs the city\u2019s residents experienced as they tried, not always successfully, to scrabble back to some kind of normalcy. Collectively, his writings probably better than anything else I\u2019ve read answer the question people asked at the time, \u201cIs New Orleans worth it?\u201d His love of the city\u2014its music, food, culture, and traditions, but mostly its people\u2014soaks every page like floodwater.<\/p>\n

The ongoing calamity didn\u2019t stop when the wind and rain ceased, but went on and on in the form of poor government decision-making, ill-conceived emergency and reconstruction plans, rapacious utility companies and developers, loophole-seeking insurance schemes, lost possessions and people. To report on it, Rose got out and about, bicycling through the devastated areas, recording the citizenry\u2019s stories. And some stories they were!<\/p>\n

Rose\u2019s close attention to these trials was not without its costs. A little more than two months after the disaster, he began one of his essays by quoting the people who said to him, \u201cEveryone here is mentally ill now.\u201d It took a while for him to recognize it\u2014almost seven months\u2014though his wife, his editor, his friends, and his readers tried to convince him much earlier, but he, too, was breaking under the strain. \u201cI feel as if I have become the New Orleans poster boy for posttraumatic stress, chronicling my descent into madness for everyone to read,\u201d he wrote in late March 2006. A few months later, he wrote about his yearlong battle with depression and what he was, finally, doing about it.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d been the city\u2019s cheerleader, encouraging people to be strong and stand tall and celebrate what they still had, and his admission of needing serious help loosed a response from thousands. \u201cIt boggles the mind to think of how many among us are holding on by frayed threads, just barely, and trying to hide it as I was for so many months.\u201d Even acknowledging that, he ended an essay about his depression with words of encouragement and purpose: \u201cFind some way to shine a light. Together, maybe we\u2019ll find our way out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

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House destroyed, chandelier intact (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)<\/p><\/div>\n

This collection of essays is one of those compilations where the whole is so much more than the sum of the parts. Yes, there\u2019s repetition among them; yes, his messages are often the same. But the reader cannot help but think that if only the people\u2019s situation were improving faster, he wouldn\u2019t have had to hammer his message home so hard and so often. I pictured him in many ways like the John Goodman character in the first season of Treme<\/em>\u2014outraged and caring and providing his testimony. The difference is that the real Chris Rose stuck it out.
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