Now, I’m not one to sing the praises of The Seattle Times. In fact, I’m more likely to tell my journalism students to use it for lining the bottoms of bird cages. But, in the midst of Hurricane Katrina overload, the Seattle Times websitehas a slideshow of photos that somehow capture the surreal horror better than twelve hours of CNN can do. (And believe me, I know, because I just can’t seem to turn it off.) Take a look at the photograph of the old woman’s waterlogged hands, after she survived two days in the fetid water. Or the shaft of sunlight beaming down on the soggy astroturf of the Superdome.
There’s something about a still photograph that makes this all real. And I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around this devastation. Can you believe it? But here it is, in the Seattle Times.
(Now, in the weird, tangential way of finding out information that only the internet can provide, I found these photographs on The Seattle Times, because I was reading Bakerina, a food blog I love of a woman in Manhattan. And in the comments on today’s post, a friend of hers from New Orleans, directed us to a man in Iowa, who is keeping track of the best news sources on the hurricane. This world is small and weird. And part of it is desperately waterlogged.)