I breathed a big sigh of relief yesterday evening, as it became evident that Hurricane Gustav had missed New Orleans by a hair's breadth, landing instead west of the city near Atchafalaya Bay, south of the cities of Morgan City and Houma.

The storm -- which was downgraded from a possible Category 4 to a Category 3, and by the time it came ashore, a Category 2 -- held the promise of being another Katrina, and everybody held their breath for what seemed like years, until it was a clear miss.

Katrina was a Category 3 storm when it hit the Gulf Coast three years ago, obliterating 90,000 square miles and costing billions of dollars in damages.

"Do you know ...

I spent more than half of 2007 in New Orleans, surrounded the whole time by the continual and ongoing effort of people to rebuild their lives, so it pained me to watch those weather reports, dreading the seemingly inevitable: that this wonderful place hovered again on the brink of destruction, even as it struggled to recover from the nightmare of Katrina.

There were those at the time, in 2005, who advocated "giving up" on the city, saying the damage was too large, the cost too great, the city not worth the effort it would take to rebuild.

I disagreed then, and having spent months there, bicycling through the French Quarter on moonlit nights, working in kitchens, spending time in neighborhood bars and hoodoo shops and corner groceries, I disagree now a thousand times over.

While New Orleans shares many disadvantages with other metropolitan areas -- crime, poverty, racial tension, traffic congestion, high cost of living -- the Crescent City is utterly unique in ways you have to experience to truly understand -- and ways which, for me, compensated for its downside.

what it means ...

New Orleans has more character, for lack of a better word, than Chicago, New York and San Francisco combined, and all packed into a smaller area.

There is no other city even remotely like it -- not on this continent, anyway -- and there never will be.

It's more than jazz and boudain, more than oyster bars and Bourbon Street and the New Orleans Saints, though I cheered for them like everybody else working in the kitchen at Elizabeth's restaurant on Chartres Street, where I washed dishes last summer. And I don't even like sports.

It is a mix of all these elements, combined with breathtaking architecture and a true melting pot of humanity.

The federal government seems, at least so far, ready and willing to try to make up for its vastly substandard response to Katrina, in which almost 1,000 people died in New Orleans alone.

The place I knew was a city where people who refused to give up home in the face of disaster continued to rebuild, day after day.

I couldn't ride my bike the two miles from my house to the Quarter without hearing carpenters hammering, saws buzzing, all the signs of life returning to the damaged Upper Ninth Ward.

to miss ...

The complete repair of the levees isn't due to be completed until 2011, which means, even though the city has been spared most of the brunt of Gustav, the rest of this hurricane season and two more remain to be endured before the levees are completely heightened and strengthened.

Nonetheless, we should all thank the stars the city has survived this near-miss, and that the Corps of Engineers continues to shore it up against the next one.

New Orleans?"

If you've ever spent much time there, you probably don't need much convincing. It's the kind of place that stays with you, no matter how far or for how long you go away from it.

Following Katrina, it could be rightfully said New Orleans wasn't the city America forgot, it was the city the Bush Administration forgot.

Following Gustav, let's hope nobody forgets, ever again.

-- Don Lee