More on the personal side...

Now that I've heard from family and all, it's starting to hit me that one of my childhood homes is almost certainly destroyed. For about 4 years in the early 80s, my family lived on the mIssissippi Gulf coast, in a little town called Gautier, near Pascagoula. We moved away 20 years ago this summer, right around the end of July, if I recall correctly. The first home I memorized the address for is likely destroyed. The library where I learned to use microfiche readers, where I raced worms and won prizes for cookies. My first elementary school. The school where I learned BASIC.

Now, I've only been back once in the 20 years we've been gone. And most, if not all, the people I knew have left the area in that time. This is nothing compared to the losses suffered by those who lived there currently, who had family there, who lived nearby...

But it's really odd to think of all those places being gone.

(no subject)

About half way down the page (search for "I wrote the caption") if a post from the photgrapher who took the "finding" picture, with explanation of why he chose the language he did, and also background on how Katrina has affected his life so far. Specifically, he says the people were in an area where many items were floating, having already been washed out of the store. He did not see them enter a building and remove items.

This Snopes article quotes a Salon article indicating the the photographer of the "looting" picture saw the subject go into the store and take the goods. Whether that's "looting" or "foraging" or something else is a matter worth discussing.

But the difference in wording between the two captions? Not in my opion, certainly not to the extent I've seen it shouted about.