Jabberwock...

...is celebrating a year in blogville. Here's to many more Jai!

We think we need a neologism for that kinda event. "Bloggiversary" sounds way too corny, even to me, and I push "CollaBlogs" down people's throats without a blush. Suggestions?

Finding / Looting

Snopes has a page up on the now-infamous looting v/s finding pictures that have got people riled all over the planet.

Snopes quotes a Salon article[*]

[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."

and also quotes Chris Graythen, who took the "finding" picture.

[Note: Yahoo has removed the "finding" picture at AFP's request. But there are enough of them floating around, so we won't bother to reproduce them here.]

We just went through the sportshooter site linked to above, and here'e the rest of Graythen's message to that board

->> Jeasus, I don't belive how much crap I'm getting from this. First of all, I hope you excuse me, but I'm completely at the end of my rope. You have no Idea how stressful this whole disaster is, espically since I have not seen my wife in 5 days, and my parents and grand parents HAVE LOST THIER HOMES. As of right now, we have almost NOTHING.

Please stop emailing me on this one.

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. I wouldn't have taken in, because I wouldn't eat anything that's been in that water. But I'm not homeless. (well, technically I am right now.)


I'm not trying to be politically correct. I'm don't care if you are white or black. I spent 4 hours on a boat in my parent's neighborhood shooting, and rescuing people, both black and white, dog and cat. I am a journalist, and a human being - and I see all as such. If you don't belive me, you can look on Getty today and see the images I shot of real looting today, and you will see white and black people, and they were DEFINATELY looting. And I put that in the caption.

Please, please don't argue symantics over this one. This is EXTREMELY serious, and I can't even begin to convey to those not here what it is like. Please, please, be more concerned on how this affects all of us (watch gas prices) and please, please help out if you can.

This is my home, I will hopefully always be here. I know that my friends in this business across the gulf south are going through the exact same thing - and I am with them, and will do whatever I can to help. But please, please don't email me any more about this caption issue.

And please, don't yell at me about spelling and grammar. Im eating my first real meal (a sandwich) right now in 3 days.

When this calms down, I will be more than willing to answer any questions, just ask.


Thank you all -
-Chris Graythen

Dear Mr Bush

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

Go read the rest of Michael Moore's letter to his C-in-C

In case you can't get through to the KatrinaHelp wiki...

It may be because the site has just moved servers, a step the team had to take because of the huge amount of traffic. It takes a while for the domain name to propagate.
Meanwhile, use this URL please: http://192.122.183.218/.

Bloggers wanted

If you'd like to help with the Katrina Help blog, get in touch with any of the current team you happen to know: Constantin, Bala, Megha, Dina, Neha, Maitri, Strav, VictoriaB, Harini. Or you could mail me. Anybody on the ground in the affected areas would, of course, be invaluable.

A story about your childhood can help these children enjoy theirs.

Ammani of Filthy, funny, flawed, gorgeous would like to interest you in a flash fiction contest she has dreamed up.

It's really quite simple. You mail me a short story of maximum 200 words, send your entry fee of just Rs.100 (or its equivalent) to Projectwhy and you could win £10 gift voucher from Amazon! If you're in the UK, you could win a £10 voucher from M&S.

The theme for the competition is 'childhood' and the last date for submission is 30th of September 2005. I'll put up the 3 short-listed stories on this blog and you get to decide the winner. You can send however many entries you want. If you cannot pay the entry fee, then any small sum will do.

This is your chance to become world famous. Okay, okay, famous among a handful of people. So get cracking and send your stories to ammania@gmail.com

Ammani, by the way, is a prolific flash fiction writer herself. She's up to number 63, from her archives.

And Project Why is a Delhi NGO that works with children. Its founder, Anuradha Bakshi, blogs at http://projectwhy.blogspot.com/.

[Link via Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan's Selective Amnesia]

KatrinaHelp deep links

Some links from the Katrina Help Wiki, to help ease the strain on the front page. Please feel free to copy to your blog or website.

(Did I remember to mention that there's also a blog? See http://katrinahelp.blogspot.com/. Or subscribe to the Feedburner or Atom feeds.

KatrinaHelp Wiki

KatrinaHelp Wiki Mirror site

Post a request on the blog
Make a suggestion to the KatrinaHelp team

Inside KatrinaHelp Wiki
Helpline Numbers
Recovery Relocation Advice
Health and Safety Info
Missing and Found
Help Needed
Help Offered
Aid Agencies

News Resources
Interactive Maps
Image Galleries
List of Blogs

Other Wikis
Wikipedia's Katrina page
Wikimedia Commons Katrina page

Blog Aggregators

Katrina Help 1
Katrina Help 2
Katrina Help 3
Truth Laid Bear

KatrinaHelp update

The KatrinaHelp group has also set up a blog: http://katrinahelp.blogspot.com/, which has stepped into the breach when the wiki crashed because of the huge amount of traffic (over a million visitors in a few hours). Hopefully, Google (who helped enormously during the tsunamihelp days by linking to us and providing unlimited bandwidth) will ensure that the blog doesn't crash too.

The wiki is also mirrored at http://katrinahelp.info.nyud.net:8090/wiki/index.php/Main_Page, so go there if the main page doesn't load.

The group is also in need of some financial help to keep the wiki up and running. Go here for details, but in short, they need US$ 5000.

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To save you scroll time, here's my earlier post on the subject.

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And http://www.katrinahelp.info is the URL for a wiki started by some members of the SEA-EAT team.

The group has also put together a page that aggregates several blog feeds, and a set of links to individual blogs.

Please email Rob, Rudi, Constantin, Angelo, Bala, Nancy and the others at katrinahelp.info@gmail.com or helpkatrina@gmail.com to volunteer to help with the wiki and news aggregation.

They are also on Google Talk, so you could add katrinahelp.info@gmail.com to your buddy list. And they are running a wiki conference room on yahoo; to join the discussions live, please send your yahoo id to katrinahelp@yahoo.ca.

Steal This Link

According to an Amazon user who signs himself bobfrancis, these are Top 10 Books Most often Filched from the Local Library

1. Steal This Book: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Facsimile Edition, by Abbie Hoffman, et al

2. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (Official Edition) by Joseph Smith (Translator)

3. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (20 Volume Set), by J. A. Simpson (Editor), Edmund S. Weiner

4. Kleptomania: The Compulsion to Steal - What Can Be Done, by Marcus J., Md. Goldman

5. Children's Book of Virtues, by William J. Bennett, Michael Hague

6. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

7. Conspiranoia!: The Mother of All Conspiracy Theories, by Devon Jackson

8. Edward Weston : Forms of Passion, by Gilles Moraut

9. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

10. The Art of Sensual Massage, by Gordon Inkeles, Robert Foothorap

To our anonymous Bloglines subscribers

We see that 32 individuals have done us the honour of subscribing to our humble feed. However, only seven of them have done so publicly. We're wondering now, is it our breath? Are we an unfashionable URL to admit to reading? Do tell. You could mail and satisfy our curiosity. Or hit the comments section on this post.