It's 3 pm August 28th, the last day of the third year since Katrina, and it's hotter than blazes in the Crescent City. The Saints play another of their preseason games in the Dome tonight and Barack Obama is set to address the crowd at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, but there is only one story being told in this town.

Gustav is coming to town. We hope he stays away, but the National Weather Service is giving the chances of a visit too high a probability to be ignored. He ended up skirtin just west of town, exacting a toll on Houma and Thibodeaux on the second.

If that wasn't enough, Hanna formed in the Atlantic and tracked north of the Bahamas along Florida then up the east coast. Ike trailed Hanna by a couple of days, exacting a toll on Galveston and knocking out power across east Texas.

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This concludes thirty six months of post Katrina observations. The net, net, net observation is that even an event as big as Katrina has little effect on the overall systems within which people lead their lives. Given an opportunity to make big changes, the people of New Orleans opted to stay the same and resisted every effort to change, much more effectively than any levee ever opposed flooding. The city has returned to a sense of normalcy that in time will heal the remaining scars. Whether the city has time, depends on man and nature. Continuing to sink at an average rate of one-half inch per year, the entire region will ultimately revert to open water unless it is restored. The River contains the answer if only we have the sense to use it.