Dear Katrina

Dear Katrina and your evil cousin, Lethal, the lazy levee:

Thanks witches. And I truly mean it, in a good way, with all 70 percent of the water in my 6-foot body. After all, you have given me so much and were the catalyst for even more.

Before the summer of 2005, it had been too long since I spent quality time with my family. You allowed them, five in all, to find shelter in my humble one bedroom apartment. And compared to some, my accommodations were top notch; the living room floor was my sleeping quarters.

I admit, your prescription for disaster had negative side effects, such as slumbering in class during my first semester of graduate school and turning papers in slower than the government responded to you two characters. My work was as unfocused and disorganized as FEMA.

You two didn't fight fair, punching and kicking me while I was down on the mat, as I, in bewilderment, looked around the boxing ring for the referee. But I'm kin to Stallone in all 100-odd Rocky movies, and I get up! You underestimated my lineage. I come from a people with unimaginable intestinal fortitude.

Perhaps you forgot that I'm from a city that once had Native Americans, then French and Spanish occupation; I'm from a city that thrived on the pulsating rhythms from the Africans in Congo Square and the beauty and craftsmanship of the Haitians to form a marmalade of cultures. You must have forgotten.

I ain't forgetting August, I've come too far. I received a lot. Dr. D. Michael Cheers, a veteran photojournalist, put a camera in my hand and basically forced me to go to New Orleans in October 2005. With your siren song of defeat playing in my ears, I had impulsively sworn to never return to a place that I loved so dearly.

But I was not only one who vowed never to come back or was slow to return. My high school classmate, Michael Smith, a journalist with The Boston Globe and ESPN, lives in the New England area and didn't return to New Orleans until September 2006.

"There was a part of me that was afraid," Smith said. "The way I describe it is like a funeral, do you want to just not go [and view the body] or do you want to go up there and look in that casket and see what's laying there, that's how I felt about coming back to the city."

On that first trip home 45 days after the tragedy, New Orleans looked and smelled dead. I felt like a war reporter. My city, despite the political, criminal and educational shortcomings that plague many other places, it was once beautiful. Now it looked like a battleground.

The images were so powerful and inspirational that I could still find attraction in your sinful soul. Your wrath became my muse and garnered my first photography exhibition. This time it was Southside Gallery in Oxford, perhaps in the future it will be New York. Regardless, I could not have done it without you.

You stole my Christmas 2005 in New Orleans, so I spent my winter break in South Africa. While there I was placed under the tutelage of Curtis Wilkie, a man I admire as if he saved my life. Even as we traveled on the bus to different areas in the country, I absorbed years of Wilkie's journalism experience; he wrote for The Boston Globe for 26 years. Thanks. You two made me stronger.

I have also learned that you two are not faithful. The inspiration didn't end with me. You urged reclamation of the Louisiana Superdome, and when the New Orleans Saints opened the 2006 season at home, energy ran high. You caused 70,000-plus fans to scream at the top of their lungs. The cheers vibrated in my chest while I took pictures from the sidelines. Spirits ran high all season and the Saints marched all over you, and most of their NFL opponents. We appreciate the kindness.

Your infidelity didn't stop there. A slew of book, films, art and music from Spike Lee to Douglass Brinkley, from Wynton Marsalis to Elvis Costello have helped to chronicle history.

Your motivation went beyond individuals.

Numerous students at many schools across the nation, including the University of Mississippi, rallied together. They raised funds for your victims and continue to make trips to the Gulf Coast in relief efforts.

Yes, Mississippi has burned, but you didn't know that Mississippi could rise too! Because the Magnolia State's sons and daughters-some famous, some not-have returned to nurse the state back to health. Thanks; they could not have done it without you.

Katrina and Lethal, don't mistake my calm tone as me trivializing the horrible and deadly disaster that occurred. I'm not.

I just need to show my gratitude to you all for giving me a reason to live, after so much around me died.

Truly,

L. Kasimu Harris