Dixie is undergoing the greatest Reconstruction since the American Civil War. Katrina will be remembered as nature's answer to Sherman's march to the sea. Other storms now threaten - Rita among those. The cities these disasters touch are changed, sometimes forever.

Cities are unique. Many have a distinct character all their own - even small towns. To illustrate, a few from among the famous American ones: New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and a list of many more well known cities and lesser known ones. The list is legion.

Three college towns come to mind - Boston, Massachusetts; Saratoga Springs, New York; and Shepherdstown, West Virginia. At one time or another, I lived and worked in each.

Certainly other things were going on in a place that is town-and-gown, but a significant student population creates a unique business infrastructure.

Boston is the most famous of the three towns I mentioned and I will focus on it.

Rhetorical question: what if Boston's college population could not come back next term because all the universities and student housing was knocked out; we lose Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Northeastern, BU, BC, and a host of others. No students and no faculty.

A famous business executive once observed, "I'll make a deal with you. I'll give you the plants and equipment, production lines and inventory, and the blueprints - and I'll take the people - and in six months I'll put you out of business." Hyperbole, perhaps, but I got the point. People are not interchangeable commodities.

Town-and-gown. Take all the professors and students from Boston's institutions of higher learning and replace them with different people. Would those be the same cities?

During the Professional Football League (NFL) players strike some years back, the Owners tried to replace the players with "scabs" and play the games. Was it the NFL? Few fans thought so.

People say New Orleans will be rebuilt. Perhaps the geographic location might and the city might be called New Orleans, but it will not be the same place.

A city's population is an organic part of the city. Fearing that I sound like Chance Gardner, I will say: a city's buildings and physical aspects are merely a trellis. The people are its blossoms and the living structure.

I did not do much playing when I traveled to New Orleans. It was usually on business related to health care. I had friends in whose real life homes I stayed - not just the glamor of Bourbon and Royal Streets or tours through the Garden District.

The sense I got was I was in an ethnic city - predominantly black - but as Joe Cahn says of New Orleans, "we're only geographically south. We don't speak 'Southern.' Most of us sound like we're from Chicago." Not entirely true, but Joe was making a point. The city is unique.

America has lost something and we don't even know it. We talk about $200 Billion as if money could solve it.

Money alone will never buy back what once was and if the continuing Disneyfication projects and talk of trailer towns for the disenfranchised turns into reality, New Orleans will cease to exist, except as a shadow if itself and our nation will be the poorer for it.

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