This is the kind of subtle message that organizations such as NAHJ and NABJ struggle with on a regular basis. To be fair, the Society for Professional Journalists denounces things like this as a matter of principle as well.
I don't think it was racist, in the sense of an active desire to send this message. I think it might show bias, and once it's pointed out to the news organizations, the people responsible would probably be embarrassed (if not defensive). But being "defensive" might be the appropriate response, because the "defense" could very easily be a valid one.
I agree with the careful reading provided by snopes: these were two different photographers for two different news services, and I don't have other images to compare them. Did the AP photographer label white people as looters? The the AFP photographer say black people "found" food and supplies? If both those statements are true, then it's not fair to criticize either for inconsistency. The two photos merely provide an anecdotal object lesson.
What brought this to everyone's attention, apparently, is that Yahoo.com posted both pics side by side, with their captions, and didn't realize what they had done. They have since pulled the photos and apologized.
Unless both photographers are liars, the captions accurately describe what each saw, and are not indicative of any sort of bias, except perhaps in the minds of some viewers.
quote:
Jack Stokes, AP's director of media relations, confirmed today that [photographer Dave] Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. "He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods," Stokes said, "and that's why he wrote 'looting' in the caption."
quote:
I wrote the caption about the two people who 'found' the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not 'looted' them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water — we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. it had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow.
This sort of thing reminds me of something that happened in my town several years ago. I live in a small college town in East Texas. Some of the avid football fans used to serve watermelon to the high school and college teams after practices on hot days in August. They did that for several years, until a photographer for our local paper took a picture of two college football players enjoying watermelon. They both happened to be black, as were most of the rest of the team. A black professor saw the picture in the newspaper and raised a big stink about racist images. The result was that the fans stopped serving watermelon to players after practices, something the players had enjoyed and appreciated until an overly sensitive (and racist) professor saw racism where there wasn't any.
Good point. I realized that after reading the snopes entry more closely a second time. I still think the most it does is supply an anecdotal object lesson (an opportunity for discussion without affixing blame or anything like that). Thanks LG.
I look at the news and I'm saddened by the way the media reports information. Some of the news reporters are tremendous actors. What disturbs me is the way they try to divide our country across racial lines. I know that the photos of the people finding food were not racially motivated, but the subtle way in which that was report reminds me that I'm not in a racially blind society.
One of the great joys of my life was being able to go to the Rock of Ages and for one week, feel no racial attitude at all. It was almost like a sugar high. I be up and feeling great until I got home to the real world again.
I would get home and see women clutching their purses as I walked down the street the week after the Rock. They weren't prejudice, but their minds were set to be afraid of a man of my color. They acted prejudice because they pre-judged me.
The reporters that shot those two photos weren't prejudice, but the mere fact is, it fans the racial divide and related aspects of life.
95% of the places I travel in life, I'm in the minority. I have on occasion, taken some of my friends to places where they are the minority, and the look on their faces at first is shocking. Now granted, I live this way everyday, but the short periods of time when someone is suddenly thrust into the role of being a minority is very enlightening. I wish there was some way we could end this tool ( racial differences) of the adversary.
I have to tell you that no matter how much others say it was a justified statement by the press to describe the two photos the way they did, it still stings! Am I offended, YES
I read an article from the War College titled, Why Black Officers Fail. You can find it on the Internet. It pointed out differences among the races such as why Black officers cannot wear jeans if they wish to get ahead. It also pointed out such subtle things as facial hair, dockers and other issues that make a difference in the way people are viewed by their peers or our society.
I know it is hard to think that this was a very poor racial event, even it the two photographers were not trying to accomplish a racial event, it had tremendous racial impact at a time when we need to be joined together in fighting the dangers of this storm.
The fact of the matter is that there WERE more black people than white people left behind who were depending on the government to help them. They were sadly abandoned by the lack of preparation on the part of their elected officials.
The county high school where I grew up was 90% black. It's hard to cry racism when most of the yearbook pictures are of the black students. It's hard to cry racism when most of the students in detention or included in the drop out rate or teen pregnancy numbers are black. OF COURSE THEY ARE! They are the majority of the population in the school. It's the same thing in New Orleans right now, but opportunists are taking advantage of that and trying to stir the racist pot of hatred.
National Geographic wrote an article on this type of disaster last year and everything happened as they said it would because the New Orleans Politicians never made preparations such a priority. I don't have the link handy or I would post it.
Here's an interesting e-mail I received on the racial aspect of this tragedy:
quote:
In case you aren't familiar with how our government is SUPPOSED to work: The chain of responsiblity for the protection of the citizens in New Orleans is:
1. The Mayor
2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security (a political appointee of the Governor who reports to the Governor)
3. The Governor
4. The Head of Homeland Security
5. The President
What did each do?
1. The mayor, with 5 days advance, waited until 2 days before he announced a mandatory evacuation (at the behest of the President). Then he failed to provide transportation for those without transport even though he had hundreds of buses at his disposal.
2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security failed to have any plan for a contingency that has been talked about for 50 years. Then he blames the Feds for not doing what he should have done. (So much for political appointees)
3. The Governor, despite a declaration of disaster by the President 2 DAYS BEFORE the storm hit, failed to take advantage of the offer of Federal troops and aid. Until 2 DAYS AFTER the storm hit.
4. The Director of Homeland Security positioned assets in the area to be ready when the Governor called for them
5. The President urged a mandatory evacuation, and even declared a disaster State of Emergency, freeing up millions of dollars of federal assistance, should the Governor decide to use it.
Oh and by the way, the levees that broke were the responsibility of the local landowners and the local levee board to maintain, NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
The disaster in New Orleans is what you get after decades of corrupt (democrat) government going all the way back to Huey Long
Funds for disaster protection and relief have been flowing into this city for decades, and where has it gone, but into the pockets of the politicians and their friends.
Decades of socialist government in New Orleans has sapped all self reliance from the community, and made them dependent upon government for every little thing.
Political correctness and a lack of will to fight crime have created the single most corrupt police force in the country, and has permitted gang violence to flourish.
The sad thing is that there are many poor folks who have suffered and died needlessly because those that they voted into office failed them.
For those who missed item 5 (where the President's level of accountability is discussed), it is made more clear in a New Orleans Times-Picayune article dated August 28:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin.
Acknowledging that large numbers of people, many of them stranded tourists, would be unable to leave, The city set up 10 places of last resort for people to go, including the Superdome.
The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should. He exempted hotels from the evacuation order because airlines had already cancelled all flights.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding. (emphasis mine)
The ball was placed in Mayor Nagin's court to carry out the evacuation order. With 5-day heads-up, he had the authority to use any and all services to evacuate all residents from the city, as documented in a city emergency preparedness plan. By waiting until the last minute, and failing to make full use of resources available within city limits, Nagin and his administration screwed up.
Mayor Nagin and his emergency sidekick Terry Ebbert have displayed lethal, mind boggling incompetence before, during and after Katrina.
As for Mayor Nagin, he and his profile in pathetic leadership police chief should resign. That city's government is incompetent from one end to the other. The people of New Orleans deserve better than this crowd of clowns is capable of giving them.
If you're keeping track, these boobs let 569 buses that could have carried 33,350 people out of New Orleans-in one trip-get ruined in the floods. Whatever plan these guys had, it was a dud. Or it probably would have been if they'd bothered to follow it.
As for all the race-baiting rhetoric and Bush-bashing coming from prominent blacks on the left, don't expect Ray Nagin to be called out on the carpet for falling short. You want to know why? Here's why:
It's more convenient to blame a white president for what went wrong than to hold a black mayor and his administration accountable for gross negligence and failing to fully carry out an established emergency preparedness plan.
To hold Nagin and his administration accountable for dropping the ball amounts to letting loose the shouts and cries of "Racism!". It's sad, it's wrong, but it's standard operating procedure for the media and left-wing black leadership.
Mark my words: you will not hear a word of criticism from Jesse Jackson Sr., Randall Robinson, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, or Kanye West being directed toward Clarence Ray Nagin Jr. Why? Because he is just another black politician instead of a responsible elected official who happens to be black. In the mindset of more-blacker-than-thou blacks, black politicians who are on their side can do no wrong.
NEW YORK (AP) -- In one of the photos, a man wades through chest-deep waters with a large black bag filled with items from a grocery store. In another, two people wade through equally high waters, carrying bread and soda.
They were just two out of hundreds of stunning images transmitted Tuesday, the day after Katrina ravaged New Orleans. What has drawn attention to these two photos, though, is their captions.
In the first, the young man, who is black, is described as having "looted" the items. In the second, the pair, who are white or light-skinned, are described as "finding" the items.
The photos were by two different photographers working for two different news agencies, The Associated Press and AFP/Getty Images. But they appeared together on Yahoo News, and they sparked a flurry of blog entries, emails and calls contending the captions were unfair to blacks.
"The pictures appear to be identical but one individual is "looting" and the other is "finding" needed items!" one person wrote the AP. "This is irresponsible journalism and fuels the attitude that 'all' African-Americans are looters."
On Thursday, Yahoo withdrew the photo of the light-skinned pair at the request of Agence France Presse, which distributes Getty's U.S-produced photos internationally. In a note, Yahoo wrote it "regrets that these photos and captions, viewed together, may have suggested a racial bias on our part.
AFP said it withdrew the +photo+ because it had been flooded with time-consuming phone calls and emails, while already stretched covering the enormous tragedy.
"It's safe to say that it was just causing us a lot of problems," said Bob Pearson, AFP's director of photography in the United States.
The Associated Press said its policy was clear.
"When we see people go into businesses and come out with goods, we call it looting," said Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography. "When we just see them carrying things down the road, we call it carrying items."
Lyon said the photographer who took Tuesday's photo, Dave Martin, had seen the man go into the store and take out the items.
As for the other photo, Getty said it stood by its caption and its photographer, Chris Graythen, who says the subjects of his photo were simply picking up items floating by in the dank waters.
And Graythen, frustrated by the controversy, wrote an emotional response on a photojournalism Web site, SportsShooter.com.
"These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics," he wrote. "They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow."
Yahoo said it believed the controversy was merely a result of the juxtaposition of the two photos.
"We've explained that this was two separate news organizations, two separate photographers and two separate occasions," said Joanna Stevens, spokeswoman for Yahoo Inc. "Once people understand that, they're no longer angry with us."
I think all of this is a teaching moment, and nothing more.
The fact of the matter is that there WERE more black people than white people left behind who were depending on the government to help them. They were sadly abandoned by the lack of preparation on the part of their elected officials.
I consider this a failure a CLASS issue, not a RACE issue, since it
was more a matter of "the broke people were left to fend for
themselves," not "the black people were left to fend for themselves."
I STILL consider it, at BEST, as incompetence, dereliction of duty,
and approaching criminal negligence.
quote:
National Geographic wrote an article on this type of disaster last year and everything happened as they said it would because the New Orleans Politicians never made preparations such a priority. I don't have the link handy or I would post it.
IIRC, that article was about the environmental issues-how the
erosion of the wetlands destroyed the natural defense and breakwater
against this type of disaster. I'll post the Snopes link to one
article Natl Geographic did. It might be the same one you saw.
I know that a few weeks before the hurricane hit, I was watching
something on tv about the erosion of wetlands in La and how it was
removing protection for New Orleans.
BTW, NEVER trust an e-mail that doesn't have a link you can use to
verify it...
quote:
Here's an interesting e-mail I received on the racial aspect of this tragedy:
==============
In case you aren't familiar with how our government is SUPPOSED to work: The chain of responsiblity for the protection of the citizens in New Orleans is:
1. The Mayor
2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security (a political appointee of the Governor who reports to the Governor)
3. The Governor
4. The Head of Homeland Security
5. The President
What did each do?
1. The mayor, with 5 days advance, waited until 2 days before he announced a mandatory evacuation (at the behest of the President). Then he failed to provide transportation for those without transport even though he had hundreds of buses at his disposal.
[False, and I didn't even need to look far to disprove this.
2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security failed to have any plan for a contingency that has been talked about for 50 years. Then he blames the Feds for not doing what he should have done. (So much for political appointees)
[There WERE plans-they were not followed. If this e-mail is read
to the end, you'll see that it mentions the buses that were
allocated for an emergency evacuation- but were left on low ground
and thus were ruined for evacuation purposes. There WAS a plan, but
incompetency at the EXECUTION phase was the problem.]
3. The Governor, despite a declaration of disaster by the President 2 DAYS BEFORE the storm hit, failed to take advantage of the offer of Federal troops and aid. Until 2 DAYS AFTER the storm hit.
[As Snopes points out, it's a bit premature to think ALL the
facts are in. This item here suggested that the President declared
the state of emergency and the Governor did NOTHING in that regard.
The governor declared a state of emergency August 26 Friday.
August 27, Saturday, the Governor requested the President declare
an emergency for the state. That same day, the President told FEMA
to get to work. ]
4. The Director of Homeland Security positioned assets in the area to be ready when the Governor called for them
5. The President urged a mandatory evacuation, and even declared a disaster State of Emergency, freeing up millions of dollars of federal assistance, should the Governor decide to use it.
Oh and by the way, the levees that broke were the responsibility of the local landowners and the local levee board to maintain, NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
The disaster in New Orleans is what you get after decades of corrupt (democrat) government going all the way back to Huey Long.
[ This failure was a long time coming, and the result of many
incidents of incompetence, some many years before, some months
before, and some at the time, at the federal, state, and local
levels. I don't claim the mayor's office did not exhibit gross
incompetence in this, but I DON'T want to pretend everything was
fine EXCEPT FOR THEM, otherwise there wouldn't have been the
mess-ups once the damage had been done. Recovery efforts were not
hampered by mayoral stupidity, but by federal stupidity. ]
Funds for disaster protection and relief have been flowing into this city for decades, and where has it gone, but into the pockets of the politicians and their friends.
[ That'd PARTLY true, but the Army Corps of Engineers was involved
and that's not a CITY organization. THEIR budget to work on the
levees was slashed at the FEDERAL level in the past YEAR. ]
Decades of socialist government in New Orleans has sapped all self reliance from the community, and made them dependent upon government for every little thing.
[No, over a century of CORRUPTION has made the residents
pessimistic the govt would do ANYTHING. The e-mail's previous
paragraph contradicts this one-was it "socialism" or "cronyism"
that was to blame? A PHILOSOPHICAL problem, or a PRACTICAL one?
Furthermore, all the "rugged individualism" in the world would have
been of limited use to people with no money to move and no place
to move TO. ]
Political correctness and a lack of will to fight crime have created the single most corrupt police force in the country, and has permitted gang violence to flourish.
[ Corruption in government is not a problem of PHILOSOPHY, it's
a problem of CORRUPTION. Arrest the criminals, arrange oversight,
and you'll minimize corruption no matter what the political
affiliations of the officials. This e-mail might as well blame
the Commies for this. ]
The sad thing is that there are many poor folks who have suffered and died needlessly because those that they voted into office failed them.
[ I agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY. ]
(snip)
I'm skipping the rest of the e-mail.
It's based on several things:
1) Some news items, which, as we saw, were of limited accuracy due
to the nature of reporting in the middle of an emergency.
As the dust settles, we've been seeing corrections and accurate
reports come in.
2) It completely ignored flaws in the Presidential response, which
DID exist. The e-mail was biased.
3) It was based on incomplete information available even at the time
of the e-mail. By last Friday morning, I was already aware of some
of the failures at FEMA, and I wasn't digging deep for news. More
than a week has passed, and FEMA's role in this looks progressively
worse and worse. Looks like we had incompetents running FEMA.
In fact, the top 3 officials in FEMA lack ANY experience in handling
EMERGENCIES like this. Does anyone need me to remind them that the
President is the one who appointed all 3 into their offices?
"Brownie, you're doing a great job."
He might have picked up a newspaper before saying that.
I was aware he WASN'T over 24 hours before the President said that.
The e-mail sender really should have checked their facts as well.
FEDBIZOPPS.GOV just posted a web site with links for contractors to sign up in order to receive contracts for Katrina related relief. Florida is one of the links on the web site. We are still working on Florida's events from last year as well as this.
I also learned today that New Orleans did not have an Incident Response Center Trainee needed in order to establish a crisis response center, which is required my the Feds. HUMMM.
FEMA has never been a sterling example of efficiency. Government efficiency, perhaps, but that is an oxymoron.
After H. Hugo in 1989, the senior senator from South Carolina, Fritz Hollings, God bless him, stood up and called FEMA (best I can recall) "The biggest bunch of bumbling bureaucratic jackasses" he had ever seen in his entire life!
Looks like they didn't improve with experience.
I just had a personal experience with governmental procedure today, which has no bearing on Katrina, but I do think people need to prepare themselves for disaster, take care of themselves, and steer as clear of government assistance as they can. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" are the scariest words in the English language.
Thank you for correcting the mistakes in the e-mail, WordWolf. Normally I check those things, but in the high emotions of the situation, I didn't this time. I really appreciate your keeping the facts straight for us. :)-->
Here's a link to a news report from one of my friends who was lucky enough to have her home spared in the disaster and is now home to almost 20 friends and families.
I'm the first one to stand up for and defend the police and fire departments anywhere, but this one is hard to find anything positive to say about. :(-->
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Raf
This is the kind of subtle message that organizations such as NAHJ and NABJ struggle with on a regular basis. To be fair, the Society for Professional Journalists denounces things like this as a matter of principle as well.
I don't think it was racist, in the sense of an active desire to send this message. I think it might show bias, and once it's pointed out to the news organizations, the people responsible would probably be embarrassed (if not defensive). But being "defensive" might be the appropriate response, because the "defense" could very easily be a valid one.
I agree with the careful reading provided by snopes: these were two different photographers for two different news services, and I don't have other images to compare them. Did the AP photographer label white people as looters? The the AFP photographer say black people "found" food and supplies? If both those statements are true, then it's not fair to criticize either for inconsistency. The two photos merely provide an anecdotal object lesson.
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Brother Speed
I agree RAF.
but my hand still hurts from THE thread. (sniff)
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Raf
What brought this to everyone's attention, apparently, is that Yahoo.com posted both pics side by side, with their captions, and didn't realize what they had done. They have since pulled the photos and apologized.
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LG
Unless both photographers are liars, the captions accurately describe what each saw, and are not indicative of any sort of bias, except perhaps in the minds of some viewers.
This sort of thing reminds me of something that happened in my town several years ago. I live in a small college town in East Texas. Some of the avid football fans used to serve watermelon to the high school and college teams after practices on hot days in August. They did that for several years, until a photographer for our local paper took a picture of two college football players enjoying watermelon. They both happened to be black, as were most of the rest of the team. A black professor saw the picture in the newspaper and raised a big stink about racist images. The result was that the fans stopped serving watermelon to players after practices, something the players had enjoyed and appreciated until an overly sensitive (and racist) professor saw racism where there wasn't any.
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Raf
Good point. I realized that after reading the snopes entry more closely a second time. I still think the most it does is supply an anecdotal object lesson (an opportunity for discussion without affixing blame or anything like that). Thanks LG.
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Kit Sober
Raf,
Does AP have definitions of these words? Wouldn't the definition of "looting" and "finding" have to do with objects retrieved?
That is, jewelry stores etc. would be looted, and food and water could rightfully be referred to as "found".
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outofdafog
Food and clothing - yes help yourself for basic survival.
Large appliances, tv's, and 30 pairs of Reeboks - looting. I had to laugh, because where were some of these people going to take the large objects.
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Tumbleweed Kid
I look at the news and I'm saddened by the way the media reports information. Some of the news reporters are tremendous actors. What disturbs me is the way they try to divide our country across racial lines. I know that the photos of the people finding food were not racially motivated, but the subtle way in which that was report reminds me that I'm not in a racially blind society.
One of the great joys of my life was being able to go to the Rock of Ages and for one week, feel no racial attitude at all. It was almost like a sugar high. I be up and feeling great until I got home to the real world again.
I would get home and see women clutching their purses as I walked down the street the week after the Rock. They weren't prejudice, but their minds were set to be afraid of a man of my color. They acted prejudice because they pre-judged me.
The reporters that shot those two photos weren't prejudice, but the mere fact is, it fans the racial divide and related aspects of life.
95% of the places I travel in life, I'm in the minority. I have on occasion, taken some of my friends to places where they are the minority, and the look on their faces at first is shocking. Now granted, I live this way everyday, but the short periods of time when someone is suddenly thrust into the role of being a minority is very enlightening. I wish there was some way we could end this tool ( racial differences) of the adversary.
I have to tell you that no matter how much others say it was a justified statement by the press to describe the two photos the way they did, it still stings! Am I offended, YES
I read an article from the War College titled, Why Black Officers Fail. You can find it on the Internet. It pointed out differences among the races such as why Black officers cannot wear jeans if they wish to get ahead. It also pointed out such subtle things as facial hair, dockers and other issues that make a difference in the way people are viewed by their peers or our society.
I know it is hard to think that this was a very poor racial event, even it the two photographers were not trying to accomplish a racial event, it had tremendous racial impact at a time when we need to be joined together in fighting the dangers of this storm.
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Belle
The fact of the matter is that there WERE more black people than white people left behind who were depending on the government to help them. They were sadly abandoned by the lack of preparation on the part of their elected officials.
The county high school where I grew up was 90% black. It's hard to cry racism when most of the yearbook pictures are of the black students. It's hard to cry racism when most of the students in detention or included in the drop out rate or teen pregnancy numbers are black. OF COURSE THEY ARE! They are the majority of the population in the school. It's the same thing in New Orleans right now, but opportunists are taking advantage of that and trying to stir the racist pot of hatred.
National Geographic wrote an article on this type of disaster last year and everything happened as they said it would because the New Orleans Politicians never made preparations such a priority. I don't have the link handy or I would post it.
Here's an interesting e-mail I received on the racial aspect of this tragedy:
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Raf
I think all of this is a teaching moment, and nothing more.
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WordWolf
I consider this a failure a CLASS issue, not a RACE issue, since it
was more a matter of "the broke people were left to fend for
themselves," not "the black people were left to fend for themselves."
I STILL consider it, at BEST, as incompetence, dereliction of duty,
and approaching criminal negligence.
IIRC, that article was about the environmental issues-how the
erosion of the wetlands destroyed the natural defense and breakwater
against this type of disaster. I'll post the Snopes link to one
article Natl Geographic did. It might be the same one you saw.
I know that a few weeks before the hurricane hit, I was watching
something on tv about the erosion of wetlands in La and how it was
removing protection for New Orleans.
BTW, NEVER trust an e-mail that doesn't have a link you can use to
verify it...
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WordWolf
Oh, I forgot 2 things.
A) The Natl Geographic link.
Snopes linked to it over here...
http://www.snopes.com/politics/katrina/foretold.asp
B) For those of you playing along at home,
it seems the writer of the e-mail had no idea what Kanye
West was talking about, but you guys do because we discussed
it in this thread. Seems he just thought it was a general
comment about racism, and the e-mail writer didnt do all his
homework before speaking-which puts him in the same category
as Kanye West....
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Tumbleweed Kid
FEDBIZOPPS.GOV just posted a web site with links for contractors to sign up in order to receive contracts for Katrina related relief. Florida is one of the links on the web site. We are still working on Florida's events from last year as well as this.
I also learned today that New Orleans did not have an Incident Response Center Trainee needed in order to establish a crisis response center, which is required my the Feds. HUMMM.
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Watered Garden
FEMA has never been a sterling example of efficiency. Government efficiency, perhaps, but that is an oxymoron.
After H. Hugo in 1989, the senior senator from South Carolina, Fritz Hollings, God bless him, stood up and called FEMA (best I can recall) "The biggest bunch of bumbling bureaucratic jackasses" he had ever seen in his entire life!
Looks like they didn't improve with experience.
I just had a personal experience with governmental procedure today, which has no bearing on Katrina, but I do think people need to prepare themselves for disaster, take care of themselves, and steer as clear of government assistance as they can. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" are the scariest words in the English language.
WG
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Belle
Thank you for correcting the mistakes in the e-mail, WordWolf. Normally I check those things, but in the high emotions of the situation, I didn't this time. I really appreciate your keeping the facts straight for us.
:)-->
Here's a link to a news report from one of my friends who was lucky enough to have her home spared in the disaster and is now home to almost 20 friends and families.
http://www.wimp.com/orleans/
I'm the first one to stand up for and defend the police and fire departments anywhere, but this one is hard to find anything positive to say about.
:(-->
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