If you read blogs out of New Orleans then you are already aware of the meme "We Are Not Okay." Repetition and echoes of that meme began spreading through the city's blogosphere a little more than a year and six months ago when it became painfully obvious that the American consciousness had begun moving on from the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. The bloggers adopted it as a reminder that Katrina may have dissipated, but the struggle continues in the Gulf Coast – "don't forget about us."

Last week I traveled to New Orleans for the first time since I was two years old. This visit came two years and two months after one of the five deadliest hurricanes in our recorded history and more than a year since Kendra Frank headed to New Orleans from Madison to file a lengthy and gripping report for Dane101 readers. As of October 2007, it is fair to say, they are still not okay. Unlike in the rest of the country, it is difficult to go half an hour while in The Big Easy without thinking about or hearing mention of, as the locals simply call it, “The Storm.”

I mentioned that the last time I was in New Orleans I was two. My Great Aunt lived in the Lower Ninth Ward (FYI, the city no longer goes by the Ward system, but it is the easiest way to identify the area) and one of my earliest memories, hazy as it may be, is of the magnolia tree in her back yard. I had long wanted to return to her home and see if the picture in my mind was accurate; after Katrina I knew that would likely not come to pass. Prior to the storm she was evacuated by her son, and when she eventually had the opportunity to return home she found her home of many decades was gone. When I drove into the Lower Ninth I didn't even bother try to figure out which street was her street, for one, all of the street signs are long gone, and for two, all of the lots pretty much look the same – empty except for a concrete staircase. A very small handful of homes have amazingly been turned around, the owners likely beneficiaries of escaping severe damage and having flood insurance, or as the locals called it “The Flood Lottery.” But in the majority of cases the lots are empty or in some cases where the owners have defied bulldozing a shell of a brick or concrete home still exists.

It is important to point out that the Lower Ninth, before Katrina, was mostly low-income folks, but also had the highest home ownership rate in the city – 62 percent. Many of the people in the Lower Ninth didn't have flood insurance, but did have storm insurance. Storm insurance covers wind damage, but not the flooding. The reasons they didn't carry both vary with the two main reasons being they couldn't afford both or had depended on inaccurate FEMA maps that said they were not in a flood zone.

Former Madison City Council President Austin King is now living in New Orleans working for ACORN (The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ). King told me that the population rate of the area known as the Lower Ninth is currently at four percent of what it was pre-Katrina. He would know, as ACORN has the respectable distinction of being the first to go in after Katrina and protecting many of the remaining homes from being bulldozed while the residents were displaced or unable to enter the area. ACORN has also gutted more than 3,000 homes in New Orleans and the Gulf region – more than any other organization operating in the city.

In the Lower Ninth Ward and the Upper Ninth Ward (now known as the Bywaters) the impact of Katrina is still visible – but every inch of the city is haunted by her ghost. In a bar called Mojo's a one dollar bill hangs that has “First Post-Katrina Dollar” scrawled across it. The Abbey, a bar in the French Quarter that prided itself on being open 24 hours a day 365 days a year, had to discontinue making a shirt that still hangs on their wall boasting “When the Gates of Hell are closed The Abbey will still be open.” They were forced to close during The Storm.

New Orleanians are also feeling the residuals of Katrina in their mouths. Most of us know the entire United States is currently facing a major dental crisis related to our failing healthcare system, but in New Orleans it is especially bad because the Sewerage & Water Board quit adding cavity-fighting fluoride to the drinking water supply after the storm. The couple I stayed with while in New Orleans found out when they went for a regular dental appointment and the dentist informed them they had soft spots. When did the rest of NOLA find out? In July of 2007. Interestingly, this fact led to me finding out that “the producer of most of the nation's fluoride ramped down production because of equipment problems and poor-quality raw material, said Kip Duchon, national water fluoridation engineer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's oral health division. That set off a feeding frenzy. Water utilities around the country rushed to stockpile fluoride, leaving laggards -- or cities, like New Orleans, that were out of the loop -- without any supply at all.”

I was also impressed to learn just how ingrained recycling is in my consciousness. On multiple occasions I found myself standing with a glass or plastic bottle trying to figure out where to chuck it. My requests for the recycling bin were met with laughter, “there's no recycling in New Orleans.” After the storm the two nearby recycling centers were badly damaged and are to date not up and running at full capacity. One of those centers handled the city's now defunct curbside recycling program. According to a freelance reporter acquaintance I had lunch with, the city has pretty much been anemic about bringing back recycling. It just isn't a priority with all of the other problems facing the Nagin administration. If you want it done you need to hire one of the many private contractors popping up.

I bring up the fluoride and the recycling because they are two things we take for granted in most any other U.S. city of more than 200,000. Fluoride is just there and recycling is now second nature (although the level of recycling varies depending on the city). There are plenty of organizations vying to mold the future of the city – both neo-liberals and neo-cons are going head to head and using it as a petri dish for how they would like the rest of the country to be. The winner will be whoever dumps in the most money and fills the voids the government has failed to properly manage or fill. Also, contributing will be whichever side takes the most interest on a national scale, but as it stands our current crop of Presidential candidates are spending very little time talking about it.

Most striking – two years after the storm the city had to scale back the first step to the rebuilding plan (just getting underway now) from original $1.1 billion to $216 million. Much like the healthcare crisis, if just one week's worth of what is spent in Iraq were diverted to New Orleans, it would go a long way to rebuilding this city so it can once again exist as one of the world's most unique and greatest treasures. Mark Twain famously referred to New Orleans as "The City that Care Forgot." But right now, sitting here 1000 miles away in Madison, it simply feels like the City that We Forgot to Care About.