New Orleans isn’t called The Big Easy for nothing. Everything from the cooking to the talking runs at a snail’s pace. This may be why the effects of Hurricane Katrina are still being seen citywide. But that’s no excuse.

It’s been seven months, and it’s still hard to find a grocery store open past 8 p.m. The city streets have even more potholes than before the storm. Traffic lights are still non-existent throughout the city. Electricity still hasn’t been restored entirely. Many schools, hospitals and churches are closed, some indefinitely.

The city isn’t just physically broken, but its culture is also struggling, with some of our most treasured musicians scattered across the country and the old Coliseum Theater reduced to a pile of rubble. God only knows if Camellia Grill is ever going to reopen.

And let’s not forget to mention the perpetual levee debate.

Meanwhile, it seems as if the floodwaters that once engulfed the city have been replaced by red tape. Lawsuits are smothering the city’s progress. People are fighting to halt crucial city elections and are attempting to stall both the evacuation of the FEMA-funded hotel rooms and the razing of storm-ravaged homes, which pose a public safety threat.

Shouldn’t we be pushing toward rebirth instead of fighting to remain stagnant?

At first glance, it seems as if the only people working to move forward are the wonderful people on the Katrina cleanup teams and Mayor Nagin’s ever-busy public relations representative. Thankfully, many more people are doing their part to rebuild.

But, there is one in every group – the person who would rather backpedal and place blame, rather than unite, look forward and get ready for the next hurricane season. Have we forgotten how stunned we were when Katrina hit? How unprepared?

Forward-thinkers like Mark Schleifstein and John McQuaid were criticized for their apocalyptic five-part series in The Times-Picayune in June 2002. Now, they are hailed as prophets. Can we learn nothing from them?

Katrina came 40 years after Hurricane Betsy, 37 years after Hurricane Camille, eight months after the Asian tsunami and seven months before Cyclone Larry in Australia, the world’s latest major natural disaster. It was not the first, and it will not be the last.

I am not a meteorologist, a hurricane analyst or a scientist, but I know that we are gambling with Mother Nature and that the house always wins. Betsy and Camille hit within three years of each other. How long can we roll the dice until the next Katrina? Let’s unite and rebuild, people, before we really know what it means to miss New Orleans.