[Terra Nola documents the long-distance love affair between a New Yorker and New Orleans.]

There's an interesting piece in the New York Times this Sunday from an editor whose home town is New Orleans, and who very clearly remembers Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the flooding when the levees broke. But he's not writing to talk about what happened two years ago. Rather, he has something to say about today, and the future.

Quite bluntly, from his perspective New Orleans is not recovering from the hurricane. I think since Nola isn't the focus of the media any longer (although she will enjoy a brief spell of notoriety when all the memories of the nightmare that was the weeks after Katrina at the Superdome are dredged up) everyone outside of the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, and a few concerned individuals in Texas thinks things are plugging along hunky dory.

And while the good citizens of Nola do just that--plod along, trying to regain some semblance of normalcy, rebuilding their lives one piece of moldy flotsam at a time, the more I read the less I like what I'm reading. And the more dismal my outlook on the fate and future of New Orleans becomes.

From this editor's point of view we should take heed of how the city was before the hurricane--not in great shape as you might well know, although still better off than we are now--during the catastrophe and afterwards. The government, as we know, handled things poorly, from the locals to the feds.

None of that is news to anyone except those who choose to remain ignorant enough to believe the hurricane caused the flooding (rather than the breaching of the levees). What this man is saying, more to the point, is that we should consider the outcome of Katrina's wake as a cautionary tale if we don't already. Why? Because it could happen to us, any of us.

And, of course, more than likely it will happen again. My guess is it's going to happen to the Gulf Coast again. Lightning does, in fact, strike twice, against popular belief.

This man provides a running list of things he can see from his office. He refers to the area where folks are living--if you can call it that--as a "wasteland." He refers to local neighborhoods as "lawless." He uses words like "empty" and "abandoned" to describe what message boards on travel websites would have you believe is the opposite.

Trust me, I troll the message boards and the overall consensus is to come back to New Orleans to party. The folks on those message boards, while well-meaning, have totally missed the point. They're talking about a relatively small square-footage of the area--the French Quarter. They're talking about the Garden District and the area around Tulane.

They're talking about places that had it well off to begin with, and who emerged relatively unscathed from the madness.

Part of me is beginning to finally understand why some thought it a bad idea, or at least in poor taste, to carry on with Mardi Gras and even Jazz Fest so soon after the tragedy. Two messages were sent out by all that hoopla:

1. We shall overcome. It's a great sentiment and clearly defines all that is good in the citizens of the city. It's that unnameable thing that people love about the Crescent City.

2. Things are--or are going to be a-ok.

See, when folks see parties and liveliness and happy faces they think everything is great. They see the French Quarter and they think the city is back to its old tricks. They think, wow, it's not as bad down there as I thought it was.

Well, it is. I mean, I read the blogs of my colleagues, who are doing their darnedest to present both sides of the coin down in Nola--the good, the bad...and well, yes, if a coin can have a third side--the ugly. Yet, reading about the day to day I forget about what is really happening down there: NOTHING.

While some of us are able to get back up on our feet, most are not. A large portion of the population has left and will never return. Why should they want to? It's been made crystal clear they're not wanted back, and that nothing is there for them if they do.

Money that was promised is harder to find than a treasure at the end of a rainbow, and about as mythic. There are no jobs. There is nowhere to live. It's simply NOT safe.

I used to tell people, oh, hey--it's ok to go back. The crime is isolated, and not as bad as you think it is. Well, I was wrong. DEAD wrong. It IS bad down there--really, really, REALLY bad. And little is being done about it. We're about a step away from a group of vigilantes forming a gang and meting out justice of their own. And who could really say that they're wrong to do so?

The thought that the city is slowly being allowed to return to the swamp from whence it came is becoming more and more transfixed in my mind. It's right up there with what would happen if disaster struck of the same magnitude anywhere else in the nation.

Would we care as little? Would we brush it off as easily? Would we allow ourselves to be convinced, those of us on the outside, that things were just fine in that city because it would be the easy thing to do?

The answer is yes. Yep, we would. We'd turn a cold shoulder and a blind eye toward that city just as we have New Orleans. We'd get on with our daily what have you while the city languishes, just as New Orleans has and will until someone takes notice.

Sadly, I'm not here with answers. I think no one has the answers and that's why two years later New Orleans has taken two steps back rather than even an inch forward. And I'm sorry, but throwing a Mardi Gras doesn't count as progress in my book.

There are still way too many people struggling to eat and sleep in peace. Too many people afraid for their lives. Too many people who know rather than feel they've been totally abandoned.

Not to bring Brad Pitt back into this, but something he said in his interview really stuck with me. He used the word "dignity." He was referring to what he was trying to restore to the lucky families who'd get to move into one of his green houses when the projects are completed.

Dignity is the final thing that has been stripped of the good, God-fearing people of New Orleans. It's the one thing that we're born with that isn't supposed to be able to be taken away from us. And yet it has. Somehow, the government and anyone else you want to blame--because all you have to do is throw a rock around here and you'll hit someone who contributed to the nightmare--has managed to take even that from the people who had so little else to begin with.

Dignity is the first thing we have to strive to give back to the good people of New Orleans if there is any hope at all that the city can be saved. Without it, we're all doomed.