By Guest Host Sheilah Kast:

Five weeks after Katrina blew it apart and then filled it with water, New Orleans is struggling to recover. Some residents are coming back, at least to see what’s left of their homes. Some business are taking stock of whether they can start again. The city’s government is sorting out what it can afford to do.

This hour, On Point is stocking, too of what has survived of New Orleans SPIRIT. We’ll hear the insights of three members of New Orleans family — a musician who has lived and breathed New Orleans’ jazz tradition, a writer attuned to New Orleans’ special way of honoring its dead, and an historian who took part in post-Katrina rescues.

Tune in to hear what they are seeing now and what their hopes and fears are for the city’s next chapter.

Guests:

Nic Ricardi, reporter for the Los Angeles Times

Michael White, professor of humanities at Xavier University, one of New Orleans most renowned musicians, head of the Original Liberty Jazz Band

Jason Berry, writer and jazz scholar. He is author of “Louisiana Faces: Images from a Renaissance” and “Up From the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music Since World War II.”

Douglas Brinkley, distinguished professor of history and director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization at Tulane University.