Le Show; 2009-04-26

from deep inside your radio. Swan there's a high popper into short left field. Susmith running in. Shielding his eyes and makes the catch. Two out Dodgers still have runners on first and second and that'll bring up many Ramirez Ramirez batting three thirty three and four is right here. Cleans his cleats and sets to get into the batter's box coming into our booth is the former vice president of the United States Dick Cheney. Mr. Vice President welcome to Dodger baseball. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with you to talk to the fans and to you about things that are happening into our country that frankly disturbed me a little bit. Well as Delarosa goes into the stretch Ramirez sets in the box Delarosa wines delivers on the

outside corner strike one call Mr. Vice President. Yes sir. You're disturbed about the release of them so called torture memos. What's this really Torchie? Well then as you know the administration has chosen the memos to release and no sure we just feel you know me. I feel everything should be out in the open. That's just the kind of guy. Delarosa scans the runners comes back at Ramirez fastball just missed the inside corner one and one to many Ramirez. Well so Mr. Vice President you feel that the administration has memos still unreleased that would make your practices look good by comparison not by comparison and we were trying to keep the country safe as if Dodger dogs were under attack. Somebody was trying to poison America by tainting the Dodger dogs.

Anything you do fastball right down the middle got Ramirez swinging at it took a monster cut missed everything one and two to many Ramirez. Two out two Dodgers on base no one and two to many Ramirez. Mr. Vice President fastball swung on popped up into shallow left field drifting foul and goes into the stands then still one and two to many Ramirez. So you feel that there are memos are tapes not to be released that no not tapes have been those have been destroyed in pursuit of national security and there's no no reason to go looking for more of those sure there are memos that. Oh fastball just misses the outside corner still one and two to many Ramirez. Delarosa's fastball clocks in it ninety seven miles an hour. Mr. Vice President that's pretty fast.

Yes it is been but what I think is faster is the Ramirez swings at a curve ball and it goes deep into right center. You know speaking about curve balls I think that's what the Obama administration has been feeding the country. It's not the school balls. We are not as safe as we were when I was in office and not talking to people in the media and certainly to rather be not talking to the media and be safer than be talking to the media and be less safe. I don't know about you. Well I don't know about me but Ramirez flies out and strands two Dodgers on base who better. As we get to the end of the top of the second no score in the ball and Mr. Vice President I know you'd love to stick around but we got baseball to take care of so thanks so much for coming by. I'm best of luck to you. Thank you. At the end of one and a half innings no scoring. I would like to. This is Lesho and news from

outside the bubble. Most of the stories about the torture program this week didn't mention this little fact and those that did had it in a footnote but it really does seem to be the answer to the one question that most of us may have been asking this week. From the McClatchy news papers why we tortured? The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime according to a former senior US intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist such information would have provided a foundation for one of President Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime. The use of abusive interrogation widely considered torture as part of Bush's quest for a rational to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major

report tracing the origin of the abuses. A former US intelligence official senior US intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of Al Qaeda and Iraq collaboration. There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent and why extreme methods were used. The former senior intelligence official Saddam condition of anonymity. The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack after 9-11. But for most of 2002 and 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld especially were also demanding proof of the links between Al Qaeda and Iraq that former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi had and others had told them were there. It was during this period that CIA interrogators water-borted two alleged top al-Qaeda detainees. Repeatedly, Abu Zabeda 83 times in August, 2002 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in March 2003. There was constant pressure on

the intelligence agencies and interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees he continued. They were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder when they kept coming up empty. Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly by CIA and by others that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies. Senior administration officials however, quote, blew that off and kept insisting we'd overlook something that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough that there had to be something more we could do to get that information unquote. A former U.S. Army psychiatrist Major Charles Bernie told Army investigators in 2006 that Gitmo interrogators were under pressure, his word, to produce evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq. While we were there, a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing that link. He said, the more frustrated people got and not being able to establish that link, there was more and more

pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results. News from outside the bubble ladies and gentlemen, a copyrighted feature in this broadcast. This is Lesho and New Orleans haters can tune out now because this is a show for and about New Orleans lovers and a relatively new addition to the list, I think, is with me via the magic of radio in Boulder, Colorado, the author of a relatively new book, Nine Lives, Death and Life in New Orleans, partnered with his wife Margaret Knox. Dan Baum, Dan Welcome. Thank you very much. First of all, I love the book. It's remarkable in any way that I can understand books to be remarkable. But I have to ask you, why did you decide to put death in front of life in the subtitle? I didn't. That was the decision of my editor. I was arguing for no subtitle. It turns out all nonfiction book

writers say no subtitle. They say midnight in the garden of good and evil didn't have a subtitle. But it turns out in cold blood did have a subtitle. Which was? They say, well, you can't apologize to me. A murder, a small town murderer and it's aftermath. Well, that would have been good for this book. You can't copy right a subtitle. Can't copy right a subtitle? That's right. No, they came up with that, and I thought it's pretty good. It's counterintuitive. It makes you stop. I've seen those words in that order before. There's plenty about death in the book so yeah but much more about life there is much more about life in the book that's true but life in death in New Orleans it would have sounded like I don't know a reality show yeah I don't know just it that would have been dull okay well I just want to stipulate that there's much more about life in this book you came to New Orleans in probably the most dire of circumstances for coming to love the town describe a little bit about yeah I had never I had never really seen

New Orleans until it was full of water I had been there a couple of times before maybe for one night fly and interview somebody and fly out what happened was I have a friend here in Boulder from Baton Rouge and on August 28th 2005 she I ran into her and she said do you hear they're evacuating New Orleans so I immediately called my editor at the New Yorker and said my god they're evacuating New Orleans I ought to get down there and he called David Remnick who's the editor of the New Yorker and the word came back that oh they always evacuate the city and nothing ever happens and you know relax for God's sake and then of course Monday it was you know after the levees broke it was you know you got to get there as fast as you can so I couldn't get there until Wednesday which was two days after the levees well you got there that's four days faster than the feds got there that's true you might want to explain how you got there it was well I food of Baton Rouge and rented the last car went to Walmart in the middle of the night and loaded up with you know food and first aid and water and Jerry cans for gasoline and and saw an enormous

knife fight in in the Walmart and Baton Rouge at about two o'clock in the morning Baton Rouge was full of people totally freaked out as you can imagine I mean the and people a lot of people didn't have a place to stay this so they were just kind of circulating around town in their cars and I went into this Walmart and it was jammed with people buying stuff and these two enormous guys got into a knife fight I mean there was blood everywhere there was blood splattered all over the the products on the on the shelves and it was horrific and and then I I at dawn started down and it was hard getting into the city because the roadblocks were there and I had this cheesy little press card that I had made myself and laminated with the little you know luggage tag raminators tried to make it look as official as possible and it took me two or three roadblocks to find one that would let me through and and I just kind of fell in with a bunch of emergency vehicles and kept my flashers going and tried to make myself look like you know the federal response

um except that you were there yeah exactly the difference being that I was there yeah and I'm I'm I'm kind of a pus as a reporter I mean there are my my wife Margaret she loves war reporting and but I don't I'm kind of a pus and I was scared to death I got to tell you the truth and I and I came over the the Mississippi River Bridge into the city and the streets are just full of totally wigged out people very scary looking people and I realized somebody's going to hijack me for my car so they can get out of the city so I just drove it all the way uptown um I kind of instinctively went uptown through where all the nice big houses were and just hid the hid the car it was a van behind a house kind of put some branch fallen branches over it make it look like it was trashed and then walked back downtown and and started using a bicycle to get around town um because I don't know I was just I was just afraid to be driving around with this nice big van as a free people would take it um and and as you say you know it was it was another

four days or three days until anybody showed up and it in it was so it was so spooky that there was no response that I can the middle of the second day or maybe the third day I called my editor because my cell phone still worked it wasn't a 504 cell phone so it worked and I said did something else happen and I thought maybe you know yeah maybe like an atomic bomb had gone off and in San Francisco I mean it was you couldn't understand where was everybody where was everybody it was just spooky and then you know they showed up and I got to tell you Harry I've been a reporter for 25 26 years I got the single stupidest answer to a question that I've ever gotten wow in New Orleans and and it was really kind of a high moment for me as a reporter um I went out to the to the um the FEMA operation which was operating out of the Saints training facility right outside of the city and they could land all their helicopters on the on the grid iron and um at that point this was maybe I don't know a week into the into the the crisis

that the big problem in the city was that a lot of people weren't leaving you know there's a lot of people as you know there's a lot of people in New Orleans you've never been out of the city they've never met anybody from outside of the city they have no idea what's outside of the city and nobody was telling them where they would be taken um what would happen to them how long they would be gone um and so people were just frozen in panic and it was becoming a real public health and safety problem I mean the really the right thing to do is to get everybody out of the city that was the right thing and they were trying to do that but people weren't going and so they're having to go house to house and take people out of their house at gunpoint and handcuffs it was really ugly and so I went out to the to the the FEMA place and I asked the guy why don't you send somebody to kinkos and make up some leaflets and leaflet the city drop a bunch of leaflets and say look here's where you go here's where you're likely to go here's what you should bring

here's why you've got to go there's no electricity it's not going to be drinkable water in the city here's how long it'll be before you get to come back exactly um which was the question a lot of people is mine right how long will this will this take and just you know tell people what's going on and the guy said oh man you know have you seen the city we wouldn't want to add to the litter and I put my hand out and I said shake my hand sir I've been a reporter a long time that's the stupidest thing anybody's ever said to me you really did well you're not that I did you're big six foot three inch tall post is what you are so you get something you know he was you know this poor guy he'd been brought in from god knows where you know and the truth is you know they wouldn't have known what to put on the leaflets because they didn't know where people were going to go and they didn't know how long they'd be gone and they didn't know what people should take yeah um and they didn't know what kinkos was and they and they probably didn't know what kinkos was it was it was an amazing um though we do have to say let's let's just take a moment here and give credit

to the coast guard oh my god yeah coast guard had eight little helicopters over the city as soon as the winds got below 50 miles an hour and so they were there from the very first um doing a fabulous job so it would be we I don't want to tar the the whole federal government with the same broad brush everybody but the coast guard was stupid yeah well the coast guard was amazing because they didn't they didn't wait for anybody to tell them what to do they just did what they saw well that's that is the nature of the coast guard yeah that's how the how's how the coast guard works but so you you got to you got to know the city in in its uh uh moment uh as disney would put it new Orleans underwater adventure and for some reason you decided there was there was more here that needed to be told so how did this book get them you know probably my first inkling that um was on the my very first day i um was all the way uptown kind of hiding from the from what you know we had been hearing there was all this terrible violence in terms of

that there really wasn't that was all kind of a calamity um spread by it spread in part by the mayor and the police chief exactly exactly um um but i was all the way uptown i think i had just dropped off the car and i met this family this this man with two little girls um dipping water out of the Mississippi River so he could flush his toilet and this is up you know way uptown and kind of a funky part of uptown and he started going on about how they had blown the levees and you know now that they got all these poor black people out of the city they're not going to let him back and this whole thing that you know became the refrain for the for the following year and beyond and i remember thinking man this poor guy you know he doesn't have anything to eat and have any drinking water he's got these two little girls he has no way to get out of the city he has more important things to think about right now than spinning some kind of racial conspiracy theory about this thing but it turned out that that what he was talking about set the tone for the whole you know year and a half to two years that followed and really uh prevented a lot of good

things from happening um probably prevented a lot of bad things from happening you know and that was my first inkling that there was going to be more to write about here than just you know water and levees and you're basic disaster thing i've covered disasters before you know and there's a template that you go through um but you know that this was my first inkling that oh you know there's going to be some really interesting stuff happening here and then um then there was another moment that i remember you know Joe Braun of the jazz vipers the saxophone player yeah this was maybe two weeks into the thing and i ran into him i was introduced to him and ran into him and i had just heard that day that all of the city's real estate records had been in a basement and flooded and were destroyed and i not being from New Orleans interpreted that as bad news oh my god you know and how are people going to prove who you know what they own and how they're going to get aid and

how they're going to make insurance claims and all that and i ran into Joe and i told him that and he said oh thank god and what he meant was thank god now nothing can change you know nobody nobody can sell their house no big real estate interests can come in and buy up the lower ninth ward and turn it into an industrial park yeah yeah you know nothing can change so that's why the trump building hasn't gone up yet that may be one of the reasons yeah but you know that's a very new Orleans thing you know just this intense desire that absolutely nothing should change yeah um so you know you cover this disaster and as i and as i've said you know when you cover something like this there's this template that you go through and you got to get this and you got to get this and then there was in the reconstruction um you know there was this commission that commission the governor this the mayor that theme of this the national guard that you know all this stuff that i had to write about for the for the new yorker about the recovery

and i kept getting the sense that i couldn't get to the stuff i really wanted to write about which was how freaking weird new Orleans is you know how different from any place else i've ever been um you know it's certainly not like the rest of the united states it's kind of more like mexico where i used to live um it's just weird and different and that's what i wanted to write about but by the time i would fill up all my inches with this commission that commission the mayor this the governor that there was no room left for the good stuff and i kept begging for more inches in the magazine you know let me do one more story come on coach put me in let me do one more story about the really cool stuff that there is to say about this amazing city and by that time the the magazine's appetite for new Orleans was satiated um i was told Katrina is over um so you can tell your friends new Orleans harry that um where it is word from the top Katrina is over okay if the new yorker says that it's got to be true yeah that's that's right um and you know and so i never

got to write about the good stuff in the magazine and that's why this is a long very long answer to your question why do we want to write this book that's why we wanted to write this book well you you're saving me you know the effort of thinking up so many more questions so you you and i have shared one really remarkable advantage it seems to me in getting to know new Orleans uh in Jewish guys yeah right uh in our privilege position as sort of uh outsiders with access we've been able to cross a lot of lines that New Orleans uh might not so it's it's clear from the the variety uh of people and and the variety of backgrounds that they represent uh that you've depicted in the book that you've been able to cross all these racial and economic lines and have access to the plenitude of New Orleans society uh you have uh it goes all the way from uh the king of Rex which is the the the premier marty grub rating organization uh in New Orleans to uh Anthony who i i guess

is kind of serially homeless uh right right and serially incarcerated he said serially incarcerated when he has a home i mean it did it it seemed to you like you had this privilege of kind of going across lines that other people might not ever go across you know i'm not sure well it maybe that they don't i'm not sure that they can't right they don't though right i mean Billy would Billy would never have encountered Anthony in any exactly which is why we did the book this way you know and i and i should say for the listeners who who don't know the book this is the intertwined life stories of these nine people and um they are very different from each other as you say and they don't some of them intersect physically they they run into each other but some most of them don't um which is kind of a weird way to structure a book i mean most people want to write one story um you know the beginning middle and an end and a set of characters that you follow all the way through um and they have to do with one another and we looked for a long time market knife for one story that would kind of wrap a

rope around the city the way we wanted to and we realized there really isn't one i mean you know people who expect all nine of these people to end up on the same flooded rooftop will be disappointed because that you know as you say Billy Grace who is this Confederate gentry wealthy white guy up on St Charles Avenue his life is not going to intersect that of Ronald Lewis um in the lower ninth board or Anthony Wells and the goose um so we decided we just have to do it this way um as for access you know New Orleans makes it really easy um people there you know look the great the the really the best thing about New Orleans better than the music better than the food better than the architecture is that nothing is none of your business uh you can ask a total stranger the most intimate questions and you know far from getting socked on the jaw you'll get a beer bought for you and a long-winded answer um uh you know one of one of the people in my book

begins the book is John Gaitos ends the book is Joanne Gaitos um the the story of her 50-year transformation from a man to a woman is you know told in in detail so intimate as to border on the icky um and you know until I met her during the crisis she didn't know me from Adam and here I am saying here's what I want to do I want to I want to take an enormous amount of your time over the next few months to interview you and and just take up hours and hours and hours of your time and then I'm going to write down your whole story an intimate detail and put it in front of the entire world to read and there is nothing in it for you and the amazing thing about New Orleans is the all nine of these people said okay sure yeah sounds like a good deal to me sounds like a good deal to me and um and maybe that would happen in St. Louis or Dallas or Detroit um I don't know I mean I you know I'll get myself some credit I'm a good interviewer I you know but um really I

think it's testament to the to the um culture of New Orleans where nothing is none of your business I mean you've had this happen Harry you you're walking down the street and some person comes up to you you've never seen her before and she goes hey babe I love them shoes my auntie had shoes like those and you know the next thing you know you're hearing about her auntie's dog and the time they all went to Lafayette and you know that's just how people there are yeah yeah you know the city has always struck me as um kind of one big cocktail party you know people get up in the morning and really what their day is about is just kind of lurching around the city trying to find a more entertaining encounter than the last one they had um and uh that that I just love it you know I just and for somebody in my unseemly profession it's just you know fabulous one of the things that that comes through in this book is uh sort of an uncontrollable love of the city and uh of its of its nature uh that is never expressed but is as I say just pours through every pour of

the writing but another is you you did get really close to these people or you or they got to tell you great intimate gobs about themselves and it's at one time at one at the same time it's a I think a a resolutely unsanimental book and a profoundly moving uh book I mean they're were you trying well it's I mean were you trying to get uh to shape it so that there was like uh a puddle up moment at the end of almost every one of these chapters because you sure succeeded oh well good good good good no I don't know about a puddle up moment at the end of every chapter there we did have two principles that going in one of them was no bad guys um when we started writing this new ruins have been beaten up plenty there was already a backlash happening all those people down there why should we send them so much money they're just gonna you know they're corrupt they're gonna squander it you know the the cities at below sea level it's just

gonna flood again so there was this kind of resentment backlash happening against the city so we want to know bad guys so you know George Bush is not in this book and Ray Nagan's not in this book brownie's not in the book brownie's not in the book not about that um uh so we want to know bad guys and we wanted all happy endings and that was a conceit that's an artifice I mean I could have ended any one of these nine stories at a down moment the Lord knows there are plenty of them mm-hmm but we decided to end every one of these at a at an up moment um because we feel good about the city we love it um city's been beaten up a lot and we just thought that's how we want people to finish reading this book is feeling upbeat about it so those were the only two kind of artificial principles that we had in telling the story uh as for puddle up moments I mean there's just I mean there's there's there's a lot of those in in in life in New Orleans even well before the storm well I mean there's this fabulous story about Wilbert Rollins uh band director yes yes

he's it he's at he's at O Perry Walker High School over across the river in Algiers yeah yeah and and the story of him and his uh uh meeting his wife and separating from his wife and reuniting with his wife it's it's uh it it would be you know in a in a more conventional telling probably the the spine of a of a novel or of a of a book but uh it's it's just full of puddle up moments and yet yeah it's cool how the storm repairs that marriage yeah um yeah destroys everything else and repairs that marriage yeah it's amazing yeah I love that this is the show we're talking with Dan Baum author of the relatively new book Nine Lives Death in Life in New Orleans there's one moment and uh I only bring it up because I think it's fairly implanted in in New Orleans lore one of the characters in or two of the characters in the book our Joyce and Tutti Montana um she is the wife he is the legendary marty gris indian chief universally recognized in New Orleans as the

savior of the marty gris indian tradition and the inventor of the modern the of the modern suit yes and yes and and there was uh an incident that's that's famous in New Orleans where the police came in and and cracked down on a marty gris indian celebration and there was a meeting in the city council chambers that Tutti Montana attended he being one of the representatives of marty gris indians and it is in the lore of the city uh I believe it certainly was I heard it from a uh a dozen different people at the time that at that meeting uh he said words the effect of this has got to stop meaning the police not understanding the neighborhood traditions and drop dead after having said that that isn't in the book so that didn't happen it didn't happen wow and anybody who watched television knows that didn't happen he um because I watched the tape of course

meeting was covered and and he drops dead right on camera um and he never says this has got to stop he he gives a little impassioned speech about about how the police need to leave the the indians alone but but this idea that he said this has got to stop um but only because I had that tape could I verify that but we but you know how many people believe that that really happened right yeah and you've raised a very good point Harry um you know uh about New Orleans and what's true and what is not um when I was writing about New Orleans for the New Yorker and then you know I wrote this daily blog which was four and a half months fabulous and people no thank you people can still access it right at New Yorker yes yes or at dandbound.com oh cool um uh you get the hits yes I was the only fact-checked blogger in the history of the internet um and I was being fact-checked by the New Yorker fact-checkers uh and so I was on the phone with them five or six times a day because I was writing every day um and you know as I as I would tell them over and over again

New Orleans is not a fact-rich environment um it you know so I would get these calls from 24-year-old Barnard graduates on the fact-checking desk you know and they'd say now how do we know on here on page six how do we know that this Leroy is a bad ass you know um you know and I'd have to say well you know everybody knows that um you know what is what is folklore and what is received fact in New Orleans there really isn't the difference doesn't matter very much and I'll tell you there was one really interesting moment when I was working on this book and it's it's mentioned in the introduction Frank Minneard who is the parish coroner was uh raised poor and uh became a very wealthy gynecologist in the 60s and in 1967 had this one night had this crisis um and decided he's got to pretty much renounce his wealth and serve the poor of New Orleans

and runs for parish coroner now this crisis he told me he's absolutely sure it happened in 1967 because he knows it was right after he sold the race horse or the sailboat or something he knows it was 1967 and he also knows that what set it off was listening to Peggy Lee saying is that all there is which was not released until 1968 so I called Frank back and said we have a little bit of a problem you know you you say it's 1967 Peggy Lee couldn't be right because the song wasn't out yet and he said what can I tell you Dan I know it was 1967 crazy this of this of this of this and I know it was Peggy Lee and in fact he he stood up behind his desk and sang it for me I first I thought well this is a problem and then I thought no this is an opportunity and I'm going to write it the way Frank told me right so the way it is in the book it happens in 1967 and it's Peggy Lee couldn't have happened that way but this is the way that Frank explains his

life to himself and so I left it that way and I say this in the introduction and you know these stories in this book are as true as I could tell them um these nine people told me their stories I would go and do everything I could to verify it with other people who were there with newspaper clippings um but at a certain point when you're working in New Orleans you've got to say look the important thing here is not necessarily what actually happened but how people say it happened because this is what builds that culture yeah because it's a city of stories it's a city of stories and so when people talk about Tutti Montana saying this has got to stop and then dropping dead that's important that people tell it that way now if you know if I hadn't had the videotape I probably would have told it that way um in this case I could you know actually check facts well you say that you had this conceit of no bad guys but there's something else that that

really struck me reading the book as you say there there's been a fairly now a drum beat of backlash against New Orleans for quite a while and a fairly stereotypical depiction of New Orleans as you know waiting for a federal handout and lasing and yet high and low black and white in but you know everything in between all the characters in the book have moments and they're not at the end they're all the way through there there are moments that you cannot help but describe as heroic you know Ronald going to save his museum in the in the height of the flooding you know is is just a unconsciously heroic moment you know this is a guy who who's been collecting the artifacts of the of the black marty grog experience and because his wife wants room the bedroom it's shoved into his garage and it it becomes a museum and it just it's it's full of unspectacular unconscious heroic moments whether they're successful or not Joanne defending her bar when

when the cops come and take and and basically steal all her weapons which was a a a moment you know talk about New Orleans lore among especially conservatives in New Orleans and their plenty the confiscation of guns was a major major issue in the first two years after the disaster yes and there was a lawsuit yeah and there's been there have been books about it it you know that's that's uh you know I'm I am both a gun owner and a hunter and also a ardent believer in very strict gun control so I kind of see both sides of this that's that's it there's there is something creepy about the police going around in the middle of a very dangerous crisis when the police are manifestly unable to protect people and taken away people's guns you know that that's an interesting moment you can you can you can debate that moment um but I know it's always glad to be able to like show it yeah and and I mean there are there are plenty of the

controversies that have roiled New Orleans in in the years since the disaster that are uh have a a shaft of illumination on them in this book the decision to close charity hospital and to shut down the basic mode of of health care for the poor and the indigent and the working poor uh which is still a raging controversy in the city yeah there's still no no replacement for no and um the issue of housing and you know you know all but it's not an issue book it's a it's a it's a it's a book about these people and the I'm not a big novel reader but I had at the end of this book the experience that I have when I finished a novel that I really love is oh dang I don't get to hang out with these people anymore you know it's been kind of gratifying I um kind of obsessively track what bloggers are saying about the book and and a good quarter of them call it a novel and that that's fine with me well it's beautifully written among other things that

but that must be Margaret's work right that's entirely my guess that's right that's right I am a married man here I don't answer that question one married man answered and a married man answers it now you've had great reviews and um good reception but it seems to me and it's of and it's a it's a fabulous book it seems to me that in a in a way the book has has been the victim of its subject in that it's it's just out a few weeks but it's already sort of been relegated to the New Orleans memory hole in a way is that just me thinking that or uh well Jesus god I'm I hope you're not right about that I'm not either that's why we're talking about it it's it's in a second printing okay good good you know um I say that only because I've told people about it and I seem to the people I've told have seemed to have heard about it first for me which is embarrassing for me uh yeah on the front of any literary trend you know um well I hope you're

not right uh yeah uh you know there's a I I happen to think there is there is a there is a New Orleans memory hole but there is also out there a tremendous reservoir of good will toward New Orleans and um you know I think but the book is going to have to fight against is the misconception that it is a quote unquote Katrina book um and very little about the book uh and it it was surprised me knowing knowing you while you were working on it but never having read it until it came out that well over two thirds of the book takes place before the flood right right uh it's yeah three quarters of the book yeah I well you know Katrina is not the most interesting thing about New Orleans and that's that's the point of the book and and we and we tried to write it one of the things we tried to do was to make it so that by the time Katrina shows up on about two tampage two ten the we were hoping that the reader will have forgotten it was coming and we kind of wanted the reader to experience it as a horrifying surprise the way we all did

so that by the time the hurricane is starting to show up we wanted readers to say oh my god no not now not while Wilburts got this going on and Ronald's got this going on and Joyce is doing this and Joanna's doing that you know oh I forgot we got that coming you know we wanted people so engrossed in these people's stories that they didn't need the hurricane to to drag them along you know whether we were successful at that I don't know oh you worked for me that's the but that that was the um that was the intent you know I also have to give some credit here to my editor at a guy named Christopher Jackson at Spiegel and Graham I'll tell you why um this book contains a lot of um fictionalizing I guess is the word um and it's kind of a dirty word in in nonfiction circles because um people get criticized all the time for fictionalizing nonfiction you know when I'm recreating scenes this is all done in scene and when I'm recreating a scene that happened in 1972

right I wasn't there um how do I know what they were wearing how do I know what the weather was like how do I know what you know when he said you know I'm going to go get me a new car and put his beer on the bar do I know he put his beer on the bar at that moment of course not so we had to do a lot of you know it's very cinematic and it's it's it's all in scene now when you do that kind of thing you open yourself up to criticism that he couldn't have known this you know how he's putting thoughts in people's heads he's he's making up details he couldn't know well that's true um but I would do it in fairness you you didn't put any words in the uh mind of a dying head of the CIA so no that's true I'm ahead of Bob Woodward on that but you know I would and I would be as careful as I could you know I would you know my main source and then I would try to talk to as many people who was there as I could and then I you know I know I can know what was on the radio then I can you know I know what the city smells like I know what the city looks like I would go to

the place where these things happen and I would take pictures of it so I could look at them later while I was writing I would try to make it as accurate as I could but there is a certain amount of fictionalizing that you do and my editor Chris Jackson knew right where the line was like how far you could take that and and not get in trouble and I some day I'll show you the first draft of this book which we fictionalized wild and you know it was great right but it was it was too much over the line Chris Chris understood you know you're not going to get away with that you know one of the problems is the people who review nonfiction books tend to be nonfiction book writers and all of us want to do this right and if you do it too much the person who's reviewing you gets jealous and says you know I don't get I don't get away with that I don't get away with that so I'm not going to let this guy get away so and and kind of the miracle is and I really attribute

this a lot to Chris Jackson not a single reviewer dinged us for fictionalizing not one and it was the thing that we worried about the most of course yeah you know that that that that was what they were going to nail us on and not one did and so I really owe him a debt of thanks he was really good I think it's also because there's there's you write one of the characters in the voice of the character Anthony Wells the rest you're writing third person but you're a very close third person you're a third person who's almost inside the skull of the person being described and so there's there's both an intimacy and and a perceived authenticity that is pretty consistent throughout the book it was it was a very cool thing the way I do my interviews is a little laptop open on my in my hands and I can type as fast as anybody can talk so what I end up with is these

transcripts of our interviews pretty much word-for-word transcripts of our interviews and I often wouldn't see until later because in the interview I would just be interviewing and typing and I wouldn't see until later that people say things differently in different parts of town for example you know downtown people tend to say we're going to meet there for eight o'clock whereas Billy Grace up 10 he would say we're going to meet there at eight o'clock more the way you or I would probably but that for eight o'clock and I didn't even notice that until I was reading my notes and I realized wow look at this Wilbert does that Ronald Lewis does that and people who seem to live below Canal Street that you know use the preposition that way so I would use the preposition that way when I was telling the story from Wilberts you know Wilberts story or Ronald that's just one example you know sometimes I think that my that my most useful skill as a writer is just that I can type wicked fast see the only thing I learned in high school and it helps

yeah it helps you you've come to know the city pretty damn well I would say can you distinguish I mean New Orleans is I think unique among American cities although it's similar to London in that almost every neighborhood has its own dialect can you can you distinguish a sixth-ward accent from a seventh-ward accent I don't think I can I can go that fine I can kind of tell uptown from downtown you can kind of tell the way the way people describe the the the name of the city I mean you say New Orleans that's a that's an uptown pronunciation yes yes and that's a kind of an uptown pronunciation yeah New Orleans is the real uptown you know yeah all right that's how Koki Roberts says if you ever hear Koki Roberts you know she like makes it like eight syllables and four of them are diphthongs it's beautiful really so I can I can hear you know little little things like that but I I don't think I can go sixth-ward seventh-ward I wish I could yeah the perception of New Orleans around the country and and this is possibly political and possibly

takes you out of your comfort zone and talking about the book but now two successive American presidents have made promises to New Orleans that are in progress of being not kept what's your feeling about why a disaster this profound happening to a city this special has fallen so quickly and so apparently irretrievably through the cracks well don't they all and you know are you city are you saying city still has a big hole in you know you're talking like Ray Nagan now well yeah in a way you got that big hole in the ground you haven't put that building in there yet right and that you know that's a good point you know Ray Nagan has its faults but that's a 17 square block area in the middle of the richest city in the world and they haven't gotten that going yet yeah whereas New Orleans is looks pretty good I think compared to what it looked like oh god when it was full of water yeah or right after um you know we have we have short memories in the

United States we we focus on the future we don't think about the past I mean that's kind of our national strength and our national weakness and and um histories and insult yeah I mean nobody thinks about the um you know the Yellowstone fires or the earthquake in San Francisco in 89 we we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and go forward um New Orleans got forgotten got beat up and left for dead it was terrible but in another sense you know this is a complicated thing um New Orleans as we've said is not like any place else in the United States and it has always held itself differently I actually wrote a blog about this uh long north rampart just on the edge of the French Quarter there are these land posts mm-hmm and they're old they're very old and they have medallions on each side and each medallion represents a different era of the city and the first one says um French domination and it's got

the dates and then the next one says Spanish domination it's got the dates the next one says Confederate domination with the dates and the last one says American domination as though saying y'all you're just visiting right that we're gonna be here and so New Orleans has always felt itself different from the United States and it may be that after Katrina the nation returned the favor yeah it may be that that on a certain level people thought you know that's really not that's not us right not the United States not us anyway yeah that may be it um you know there's also it was not in the Bush's administration to rebuild the big blue dot on an otherwise red state map um you know no no point in doing that um that was a pretty rotten administration in a lot of ways incompetent and venal and vicious um and New Orleans certainly bore the brunt of that interestingly you know public opinion turned against the Iraq war after Katrina yeah

you know and also there were there were right after the flood um a lot of big plans to make the city quote bigger and better urban land institute came down and there was all these commissions and we're gonna we're gonna make this into an Afro Caribbean Paris and we're gonna have mixed income neighborhoods and light rail and you know we're gonna do all these wonderful things and really it was the people of New Orleans who said no to all that yeah um and just flat out rejected it um some people heard that as code for a city that is wider I think they also heard that as code for a city run by the dollar in the clock the way the rest of the United States is and said now we don't want it you know it ran up ran up against that New Orleans desire that nothing should ever change really we just want to put the city back the way it was it had faults but we loved it and we just want to put it back and that's pretty much the way it's growing back now so um well yeah the good news is that New Orleans is coming back as New Orleans right not as Disneyland not remember we always thought it was gonna come back as Disneyland and it did

not yeah and that's a victory yeah there's a wonderful story in one of your blogs that I have repeated to uh two thousand people who asked me what's lifelike in New Orleans and maybe you could tell it even though it's not in the book and it's nothing to do with the book but I love the story it's uh when you went to the Brooks Brothers store in the canal place yeah yeah um I went down there Brooks Brothers you know came back pretty quickly it's right on Canal Street um and when we were there and I guess this is in 07 I needed a shirt and I remember this this man was helping this old maybe probably 60 maybe a little older than I am and he just kind of had this you know the way EOR talked you know just kind of you know he was he was polite but just kind of dragging it out of him and he just seemed kind of down and and I remember I was looking at two shirts and asking him what you like better and suddenly he said yeah I'm on some pretty good anti-depressants now and I turn around and he just goes into this long um discourse kind of lacrimos discourse about how his house and lake view had been completely annihilated when the

levy broke and his family was scattered and all this things were gone and you know and this was a guy who had insurance and some means and he was going to recover financially that wasn't the issue but he said you know my family's been in New Orleans since my great grandfather and um and you know it was what was striking was not so much that he had a terrible Katrina story to tell because everybody did but just that in the middle of Brooks brothers he just felt like he had to unload it on the customer he happened and I the customer he happened to be helping at that moment and you know if it had been somebody different the other the other person would have gotten it yeah but that that just was coming out of him at that moment and he had to tell it and if you recall the city was full of that oh yeah you know and well city the city the city that loves to tell its stories and the best of times had the most remarkable set of stories ever to tell and

right right and I think I think I benefited from that doing this book I think there was a certain sense in these people that I better tell my life story now because who knows if I'm going to be here after the next hurricane season you've had the opportunity I think you took the opportunity at a book signing appearance in New Orleans to see at least some of the people that you've profiled in this book what was that like and who showed up and who didn't um Ronald showed up Ronald Lewis showed up he's the lower ninth ward street car track appointment with the museum in his backyard Wilburton Bolinda showed up Wilburts the band teacher Bolinda is the lower ninth ward woman who had this kind of up and out ethical whole life and Tim Bruno uh New Orleans police officer now living in Texas drove all the way from Texas to be there he's the guy who carries the body around the car the entire day of the flood um I saw I've seen Joanne I've seen Joyce I've spoken to Billy I have not heard from Frank Minyard yeah the corner and I can't find Anthony

and that really saddens me um I went up to the goose you know the goose is this probably really the worst part of New Orleans and makes the lower ninth ward look like Zurich um it's just a really rough beat up part of town flooded terribly and um and I went up there looking for Anthony and I found his cousin and his cousin drove me over to Anthony's brother's house and we drive up and there these this house is you know barely put back together since the flood and still got mud all over the side of it this is you know three years later and these women are sitting out there and I think I counted nine Canadian club bottles in the mud in what would be the front lawn and the brother comes to the door like the cousin Donald goes over and he says Greg drunk and the women say yeah he's drunk in there and Donald gets out of the car and he and he goes over and he kicks

the side of the house three or four times and Greg come out here with good money and and um Greg comes to the door I see him behind the screen and he's kind of blanking in and and Donald yells where's Anthony at and it's like the words hit Greg in the middle of his forehead and just knocked him straight back it was like on the Lucy show when somebody just pivots on their heels and just and we hear him hit the floor but boom wow you know and Greg goes ah damn it and get back in the car and drive away and who knows I don't know where Anthony is and it's and it's all I'd like to put out an APB if anybody knows where Anthony Wells is give me a call because I haven't even sent him a book wow and but as for the other people everybody's everybody had quibbles yeah everybody had quibbles but mostly they're okay with it it must be a remarkable experience to have been one of those people and and to see yourself profiled so uh it's a funky thing it happened

to me once a friend of mine years ago wrote a book and he had a chapter in there about me and he made me have to be a total hero it was all very complimentary but I didn't like it when I read it because I'm thinking I don't dress like that and I don't walk like that I don't talk like that and well it turns out I do you know and nobody ever sees themself yeah I see them yeah you know and then I had to realize well it's his book it's his telling of story and and what's amazing is that so far I haven't had any of these nine really I mean they have had quibbles I won't say they haven't and we're gonna and we're gonna make little changes in the paperback minor changes but I haven't had anybody get really irate certain I haven't anybody sue me and I have heard from the from the forcithia lobby I make a reference in the book to their being forcithia and I've heard

from many many people that there is no forcithia in New Orleans so you can be sure we're gonna make that change thank god thank god yes we were all on pins and needles about that well forcithia notwithstanding it's a remarkable book and for anybody who wants to get a feeling of what New Orleans was and is really like beneath all the political blather and all the stereotyping I can't think of a better way than than to read the nine lives by Dan Baume Dan congratulations it's I've been looking forward to it for a long time since I first started reading you and then got to meet you it exceeded every one of my expectations well you are really kind Harry thank you so much it's the truth and it's a wonderful nine lives by Dan Baume and thanks for sharing some time with us today thank you that's going to conclude this week's edition of the Shutter program returns next week at the same time

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