Book Review: Katrinaville Chronicles

Matt Gleason - Tulsa World

Jun 26, 2008

David G. Spielman heard gunshots on St. Charles Avenue and saw thugs scouting for loot as New Orleans' levees failed.

The former Tulsan didn't know about the Superdome filling with displaced citizens of a drowning party town, but he knew trouble was coming for the Poor Clare nuns.

The kindly nuns, who pray so that others might feel God's grace, survived Hurricane Katrina in their shuttered monastery. Prayers can't deflect bullets, though, so it was time for the nuns' exodus to Brenham, Texas.

Before the nuns departed, Spielman, who befriended the nuns some 30 years ago, volunteered to watch over their sacred place.

As one sister prepared to leave, tears welled in Spielman's eyes as the nun fretted she might not ever return home.

Once the nuns were gone, only the professional photographer, his gray kitty, Walker, and the Holy Spirit remained.

The looters could come, but they'd have to get past "Sister Mary David," as the

nuns lovingly called him.

Katrina, for the most part, spared that part of town, which rose long ago on high ground near the river. As for the rest of New Orleans, it was dripping with floodwater and blood.

Spielman's new book, "Katrinaville Chronicles," captures that broken form in stark black-and-white photographs. He pairs those bleak snapshots with compelling e-mails he sent to about 200 friends and loved ones in the days and months following the storm.

The great Southern writer Rick Bragg was among the e-mail recipients who encouraged Spielman to release "Katrinaville," which acclaimed author Pat Conroy praised as "an important, masterful work."

At the time, though, Spielman didn't have a book in mind. Actually, he was just hoping to avoid getting carjacked or shot as he roamed the muddied streets with his two Leica cameras, three lenses and a broken heart.

Here's just some of what he captured on film:

A St. Charles Avenue rug merchant's warning to looters: "Don't Try. I am sleeping inside with a big dog, an ugly woman, two shotguns and a claw hammer."

This is the same shopkeeper who later wrote on the side of his building: "Still here. Woman left Fri. Cooking a pot of dog gumbo."

Out in St. Bernard Parish, Spielman discovered a ghostly shrimp boat docked in the middle of a residential street.

High above a fancy marina, he snapped a picture of big white boats mashed together like so many rotting fish on a shore.

Then there's the True Gospel of Jesus Christ church on North Broad Street. Once the flood waters receded, they left a high-water mark above a sign that read: "We baptize in water, in the name of Jesus Christ "

Looking back on those pictures, Spielman said, "The one thing that the photographs, as good or as bad as they are, can never convey is the heat, the silence and the stink."

The same man who photographed New Orleans as its trash rotted and its people cried grew up in Tulsa and later moved to New Orleans. It was here, at the old Central High School, where a 15-year-old Spielman discovered his purpose the day he looked through an upperclassman's camera.

"At that moment, I knew I was going to be a photographer," the 58-year-old recalled in a recent telephone interview from New Orleans. "I mean, my pulse slowed. Everything became clear."

Running man

Decades after discovering his mission in life, Spielman laced up his running shoes in the dark of a silent monastery. Then he stepped into a strange New Orleans, one where the park he ran in every morning was populated only by birds, squirrels and waterfowl. Spielman is a health nut who's run every day for (as of last Friday) 5,238 straight days. Not even a hurricane could break his streak of more than 14 years on the run.

After running between four and five miles each day, Spielman would return to the monastery, not far from his own darkened home. Inside, he'd drink a cup of coffee and cool down as much as he could without air conditioning. Then he'd eat his usual breakfast of peanut butter on whole-wheat bread. He ate the same thing for lunch and dinner.

After writing in his journal, Spielman would bathe in a nun's tub, dress and then find his way to the monastery's small chapel. Alone, he would light a candle for the Sisters in Texas and pray. Spielman asked for a lot of things in the wake of Katrina, but if God granted only one of those prayers, this is what Spielman would have troubled Him to provide:

"If only He had given the politicians the wisdom to wipe the slate clean," Spielman said. "It had been physically wiped clean, but if they could have put aside their pettiness, and their greediness, and do the right thing and fix some of these catastrophic problems. That's the crime.

"If New Orleans had the same community spirit as, say, Tulsa or Austin, there would be no stopping us," he continued. "I tell people we were founded by pirates and we've got a pirate's mentality -- and that's probably not a good thing."

When Spielman finished praying each morning, he'd step outside the chapel and ring a church bell. It was his way of reminding God to not forget the Poor Clare nuns, who prayed for others in a time when three words scrawled on the wall of a ravaged sandwich shop carried the sentiments of so many:

"Katrina, you b--."

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