The brilliant Chris Rose always manages to say what most of us are thinking — only better, deeper, and with words I could never quite string together myself.

“The brilliant Chris Rose always manages to say what most of us are thinking — only better, deeper, and with words I could never quite string together myself.

Most of us have defining moments that forever split our lives into before and after. For me, there will always be a before Katrina and an after Katrina. Twenty years later, the storm’s shadow still lingers. Not just in memory, but in the city’s bones, its culture, its people. And in mine.

This piece — this love letter, this reckoning, this eulogy wrapped in dark humor — says it all. From someone who lived it, broke under it, told the jokes in the rubble, and still finds a way to love New Orleans like the rest of us who stayed, or who keep coming back.

‘Nobody puts the funk in dysfunction like the Maid of Orleans.’
Damn right.

Please read this. And to those of you who remember…
We’re still here. And we’re still smitten.
— Chris Rose”