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Two years after Katrina: a New Orleans writer reflects on her city
By Magdalene Kellett
For generations, New Orleans has captivated writers, musicians, artists and everyday people all over the world with its rhythm, its beat, the music floating out of every barroom door. Or maybe it’s the smell of hibiscus and night blooming Jasmine in the early mornings on Barracks Street, the romance of a history drenched in pirates, kings and blood. It’s the sexy laissez faire attitude. It’s the coffee. It’s the way people pass you on the street and say “alright” or the way you get called “baby.” It is everything that strikes a note in the heart of people when they visit The City that Care Forgot.
This will not be an article about crime. It will not point fingers at the different powers that be and their mistakes nor will it heavily linger on how ghastly the Katrina experience was for some. Everyone has read this. The world knows this. It has been two years and it is time to move on and show the world what New Orleans is really made of.
The tribes who stayed behind
Just as parades are a way of life in NOLA, so is hurricane season, taking up half a year’s time starting on June 1 and ending November 30. If you live in New Orleans or along the Gulf Coast it is not a matter of if a hurricane hits, the question is when.
On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, claimed over 1,700 lives and left the Crescent City in what many would consider to be irreparable ruins. Yet, many people stayed because New Orleans was all they had. Others stayed behind to care for family members and some stayed because they believed New Orleans would once again be spared.
Theresa Bennett, a former resident of the Gentilly area of New Orleans, remembers watching the news and wondering if Katrina was going to be “the one.”
“After Katrina had made landfall my family and I watched the news with an air of relief because the networks said they believed New Orleans had dodged the bullet again,” she said.
As it turned out, Gentilly was devastated and Theresa lost everything save a piece of furniture she was able to refurbish and a few old photos. Everything else is a memory.
But New Orleans has a sense of humor about the false securities that are given and retracted again and again around hurricane season. A mass email entitled “Hurricane Season” was circulating the Web recently and pointed out all the crazy comical details surrounding New Orleans’ hurricane season. The first one read, “Any day now, you’re going to turn on the TV and see a weatherman pointing to some radar blob out in the Gulf of Mexico and making two basic meteorological points: 1. There is no need to panic 2. We could all be killed.” As funny as this is, it is also very true for New Orleans residents. The information given is just enough to create confusion and panic.
Two years have passed since Katrina, panic has subsided and the slow return that started shortly after the hurricane continues as more New Orleans natives come home.
Chris Rose, author of 1 Dead in Attic and writer for The [New Orleans] Times Picayune, often refers to the different neighborhoods in the city as “tribes.” Uptown, The Ninth Ward, Bywater, Algiers and many more are tight-knit communities that care about their neighborhoods. The message that New Orleans is here to stay is the thread that ties these tribe-like communities together and many of the locals’ attitudes seem to be reflected through a lower Ninth Ward resident who gave her name only as Gwen.
“It is up to the individual,” she says. “If the individual wants to make it, then they will.”
And many wrongs can be righted when a group of like-minded individuals get together toward a common goal.
On August 7, a “Night Out Against Crime” was organized for New Orleans. Each neighborhood was given a different place to meet, a total of 155 different gatherings. There the locals enjoyed food, music, libations and good conversation with their neighbors. Happening at night, when you’re supposed to be off the streets and safely inside, hundreds of people all over New Orleans chose to be out and make the statement that they aren’t afraid to walk their streets, that they refuse to sit and be scared by the stories of crime any longer and are taking their city back.
Gwen from the Ninth Ward says her life is better after the storm and says she doesn’t wish for things to go back to the way they were. An example for all people in New Orleans, Gwen is one of only three people who returned to her block. Slowly working to rebuild her home while sleeping in a FEMA trailer, she filed for Road Home assistance almost a year ago but has not yet heard back. Until she gets a response, all expenses for repairs are coming out of her own pocket. But she doesn’t complain.
“Things are better,” she says. “It is a slow process but things are getting better, the trash is being picked up and the streets are being repaired.” And after waiting almost two years, the electricity is finally being turned on in her house.
Gwen is an example of those who have kept New Orleans afloat, those who refuse to sink into despair or to let the negatives take over. They know New Orleans will get better and they can envision the future. So, they push for it.
Chris Rose describes New Orleans as the “sexiest, most dangerous and creative” place to be and echoing those words results in a resounding “yes indeed” from the locals.
“The longer I stay in New Orleans the more unfit I become to live anywhere else,” he says.
After Katrina hit, Rose took his family up to Maryland and made trips back and forth to see, help and be with the city that had captured his soul as a college student. He proudly admits that when he goes other places he doesn’t feel comfortable in his own skin. During these trips to New Orleans he kept a diary of all his experiences, which later became his book, 1 Dead in Attic, named after the cryptic messages scrawled across the searched homes of victims of Katrina. To many, Rose has single handedly become the voice of the people.
Amzie Adams is another person who “doesn’t feel comfortable in his own skin” when he is visiting other places. An extremely talented painter and musician living in the Marigny, a pie shaped area outside the Quarter, he explains what it is like for him in other towns or cities.
“I have lived in towns where I have been the only artist and people looked at me like, ‘Where did you park the spaceship’?”
Amzie planned to stay through Katrina. He had stayed through all the other hurricanes, so why not this one? But in the end, he had to leave. And had it not been for the gallery owner that showcases his art, who knows where Amzie would be right now? He is very aware that he could have died had he not left. One of his friends—similar in age and stubbornness—stayed and was found washed up in the Mississippi. The hurricane changed Amzie’s life and has inspired him artistically and spiritually. He now paints anywhere from 6-12 paintings a week.
“It’s a positive thing you’re putting out there in the universe,” he says of his artwork. “You do not know where the pebble will land and where the ripples go out to. Maybe the hand that pushes me at my back will be felt through my paintings and push someone else.”
Musically Katrina spoke to Amzie as well. He formed a band with some friends called Spirit Walker. Their album “Apocalypse New Orleans” focuses mainly on Katrina and New Orleans.
To look at Amzie’s life, one could hardly consider it unlived, though he says he feels he was given a second chance to really live life. Why does he stay? He laughs and says he stays in New Orleans because of “masochistic tendencies” and then goes on to describe the food, the music and the art. But more than those, he speaks of the quality of life and says, “In New Orleans I can live more in one day than I can live in a lifetime somewhere else. That’s 365 lives a year, that’s livin’!”
New life for New Orleans art
New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund (NOMRF), an organization that was formed the Monday after Katrina hit, has been helping musicians and their families rebuild their lives. Founders Jeff Beninato and Karen Dalton started the fund by simply handing out flyers. From there they drove and played on morning radio stations such as Chicago’s WGN. As the fund grew, more people gave and other items were donated to victims including furniture and refurbished instruments. NOMRF has also helped supply high school marching bands with instruments. Anybody who has spent anytime in New Orleans knows the amazing talent these kids have. What a loss to Mardi Gras it would be not to have them in the parades. And with the generosity of Southwest airlines and everyday people NOMRF was able to distribute toys not only to musicians’ families but to many other families in New Orleans, as well.
R.E.M and other big-name bands are backing NOMRF and in a recent issue of Rolling Stone the organization was given a very positive four-star review. The money raised from the generosity of others and from music downloads and merchandise on their Web site has been put to good use and will hopefully help thousands of other musicians to get on their feet.
For other artists in New Orleans Amzie says it is 50/50 as far as morale goes. “Some of us are moving forward but some have totally wigged out or committed suicide,” he says. There seems to be a silent understanding and camaraderie between the artists and musicians over this, though, and everyone looks out for each other.
A Continuation of Spirit
New Orleanians have also continued to raise a ruckus together, one parade at a time. Mardi Gras was celebrated only six months after Katrina’s flood waters receded. Though the crowds of tourists were not present, loads of volunteers and locals flooded the streets and praised the parades as they rolled by. Making light of their situation by creating FEMA-themed costumes and floats, they laughed off the stress and the months of worry that plagued them. It’s obvious that New Orleans does not need a big reason to celebrate; the continuation of life is a good enough.
“I need to focus on, celebrate, the positive small improvements, small signs of progress, made,” Marigny resident, Terry Rousey, explains. “I get excited when someone plants trees and flowers, when the neutral ground gets mowed, when a street light gets fixed or a restaurant opened.”
And a restaurant being opened is something to celebrate indeed. Food is New Orleans. Chef Lazone of Brennan’s Restaurant talks about his kitchen as if it were home to him. “In fact” he says “it is like home.”
After 42 years at Brennan’s preparing beautiful and delicious dishes, Lazone is elated to be back and serving up food in what he hopes will be a “home like” experience. In New Orleans a person’s home is a come and go buffet with friends pulling food out of the cupboards and wine being poured just because you stopped by.
“We don’t eat to live, we live to eat!” says Rousey. The influences of German, French, Spanish and Haitian create a unique food that cannot be recreated anywhere else. Lazone believes this along with the spices and the different types of meat and fish are what set apart New Orleans cuisine. Gumbo, Crawfish Etouffee, Jambalaya and Boudin have all been around since New Orleans was young. Food plays a big role in New Orleans heritage, celebrations, and daily life so it makes sense that food, being such an integral part of the city, plays its own role in healing. The food is comfort, a little seed planted in the head that assures us New Orleans will return to its former glory just as it signature dishes have.
From the beginning New Orleanians have been doing things their way. They dance at funerals, suck crawfish heads and drink Mimosa’s for breakfast. They aren’t afraid to pass a good time no matter where they are or who’s watching. Every race, creed, shape, size and type of individual is represented in the bowl-shaped city of New Orleans. From the street performers who play their banjos and washboards on Royal St. to the captivating trees in Audubon Park whose majestic arms touch the ground, to the Mardi Gras warehouse on Algiers Point, New Orleans offers music, beautiful scenery and a culture that beckons people to live free and easy, away from social requirements and the mundane.
Somebody recently said that New Orleans is broken, as if the city was an old pocket watch whose gears are rusted and no longer work. I believe the contrary is true, proven in the lives of locals like Amzie and Gwen. New Orleans is loved for many reasons but maybe the best reason is simply because to so many people it is home. New Orleans is loved for what she is. She is dirty and beautiful and this is illuminated by her musicians, painters, writers, chefs and just regular people who live and breathe her essence.
No matter where you live, you are in danger of something, be it tornadoes, hurricanes or car wrecks. Are we here to preserve our life to the point of predictability and boredom or are we to fully embrace the tide and live it? The people of New Orleans have made their choice and they are living it beautifully and the city will surely thrive because of that culture. She’s not broken; the Crescent City is rising.
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