In the “stuff happens” category, via Eric Zorn .

Chris Rose, the former New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist whose essays about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina made him a national celebrity and bestselling author, writes in The Baffler about how fame and alcoholism ultimately laid him low.

Now, “In the spring and summer, I live at a state park in the mountains of western Maryland; autumn and winter in the piney woods of a national forest in southern Mississippi. You could say I’m homeless, but I don’t call it that. I trade labor for land.”