Gurinder Osan, AP photographer, is a great artist

The photo that appeared on the front page of the New York Times yesterday is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. Both Janet and I first mistook it for a painting. The caption is "A family in northern India had a makeshift tent yesterday, but with wintry weather near a crisis is at hand." The image is a classic composition of mother and child, surrounded by a white billowing tent and what looks like smoke or fog. Looking for it today, I did a Google image search for Gurinder Osan and was just amazed at what I saw: pictures of natural beauty, human beauty, political unrest, natural disaster and sports, every one of them striking in composition and beauty. I'm guessing that he works for AP, since they share most photo credits with him. I'd love to know more.

Levees breached on Monday, Aug. 29

The Post reports this morning ("Aide says FEMA ignored warnings") that the New Orleans levees were breached on the morning of Monday, Aug. 29, as Katrina passed by. This news has come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee investigation. I remember very well that the news on Monday evening reported that the levees had held. Only on Tuesday did we learn otherwise, and the story ever since has been that the levees failed on Tuesday. I 'm surprised that the news media didn't know about the failure of the levees; they had reporters on the ground. I am truly amazed that, if he is to be believed, Michael Chertoff didn't know about the failure of the levees. This story is truly outrageous and suggests that Brown had no understanding whatsoever of what he needed to be paying attention to. The incompetence of FEMA strains credibility.