Chris Rose is a columnist for the New Orleans Times Picayune. He was a finalist for a  pulitzer prize for his post-Katrina writings. He was recently voted favorite writer by New Orleans Magazine readers.

His writing has been a critical lifeline for me. The grief and depression that I feel about the fate of New Orleans would be much, much worse without the validation that he offers – validation that this place is really as amazing and heartbreaking as I feel it is.

In addition to his columns, he conducts interviews with local celebrities. He occasionally asks his interviewees the following question, which is the inspiration for this diary:

Without making references to food or music, describe the magic of New Orleans.

This is one of my Katrina stories (and first ever diary). I kept a diary during the weeks that I was in New Orleans last October, and this is it. First, however, some background:

I grew up in New Orleans. I don't live there anymore, but the rest of my family did. Most of them evacuated ahead of Katrina, except for my younger brother J. He is a weather-chaser, reckless type. He has a tattoo of a hurricane from way before the Thing. He stayed in his home in the Lakeview neighborhood with some friends. His cell phone was out of service beginning on Saturday afternoon, and he didn't contact us for four days, so we had no idea how he had fared. If you are familiar with the neighborhoods in nola, you know that Lakeview flooded very heavily. He and his friends slept on the roof on Monday night. They had dragged up a bunch of food and supplies from the kitchen. They made a make-shift stove and cooked sausages and chicken using roof tiles for fuel.