Louisiana’s frustrating Road Home program continues to give the shaft to people who’ve worked all their lives and owned their homes, to lose them in New Orleans’ flooding and during Katrina and Rita. They’re being treated as common criminals complete with mug shots and fingerprinting when all they want is to rebuild their homes.

And New Orleans’ depleted health care system has been dealt another blow from BushCo-supported disaster capitalism.

So these stories need to get national attention, because they’re about things that could strangle the comeback of a beautiful, historic city.  

I understand per a cable news report I heard New Year’s Day that you have been completed renovating several homes for the poor in ….North Philadelphia. Which suggests to me that the need for affordable housing is a cause near and dear to your heart.

This is not to take away from the need there, but right now there’s another American city, struggling for her survival, where people are suffering, which needs your help….

After Katrina” is a haunting, evocative chronicle by Chris Rose, through his Times-Picayune columns, of his own life and that of a New Orleans not only struggling to recover but to survive. Not in chronological order but arranged by theme, the columns start with Sept. 1, 2005 and end with Dec. 31, 2006.

As he often speaks for a Louisiana in pain, Rose eloquently describes not only the surrealness of her post-Katrina landscape but also some intriguing, often eccentric characters he meets in his beloved city and his own descent into the private hell of depression–and that of those around him. “1 Dead In Attic” should be required reading for anyone who wants to know what life in New Orleans after what Rose often calls “the Thing” was, and still is, like from the inside.

Overcovered in a shameless play to the cheap seats for at least the past three days has been the fatal attack Christmas Day on 17-year-old Carlos Susa and two others who were injured by Tatiana, a Siberian tiger at the San Francisco zoo.

Not to discount Carlos’ family’s tragedy, just pointing out how this has gotten to be a real media circus with media whores coming out of the woodwork to use it as a way to get their Warholian 15 minutes of fame.

because of a situation that has been weighing heavliy on my mind. Bear with me for not feeling up to posting an upbeat post-Christmas diary.

For I am heartsick over the news of what happened in New Orleans a week ago, Thursday. I won’t extensively go into what happened because this has already been excellently done in  NOLA: Stun Guns Used As Bulldozers Stand Ready and This Is A National Issue.

However, I will go into several other aspects of what happened, which are deeper, more complex, and more personal than what the mainstream media did in their brief reports and soundbites.

Heartbreaking is the story of Nataline Sarkysian, the 17-year-old for whom CIGNA denied payment for a liver transplant, then reversed its decision when it was too late. My intent here is not to focus on this, because it already has been well-diaried, but to bring up a stunning parallel between this human tragedy and what has been happening to New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana.