Scarlett Letters

Links and notes about stuff I've been thinking about:

Last night, The New York Times reported that housing may no longer be a key to one's personal financial future. (The Seattle Times reports that home sales have plunged to their lowest in 15 years.) My condo has never been under water, but the prospect seems to be that it won't increase in value over the long haul in our new economy. I've been involved in a discussion about housing values lately. Maybe that little house I've always wanted won't be within reach after all. (If the housing market isn't favorable to sales, it won't make a difference how low prices are; if I can't sell my condo, I can't afford a new place.) I can't tell you how sad this makes me because, honestly, nice as it may be, I don't want to live in a condo forever.

On this morning's Future Tense, the NPR look at technology (among other things), a story ran about EA's latest release of "Medal of Honor." The story discussed the question of why some people think such realistic depictions of war are inappropriate for video games. The EA representative discussing the issue asked why video games aren't appropriate media for addressing themes relevant to current events, and referred to games featuring dragons, "elfs," and orcs as being the products of "juvenile imagination." I'm sure this was a knock at World of Warcraft and its ilk. One cannot expect companies not to dis their competitors, but I am always discontent with knocks at fantasy fiction.

On a lighter note, NPR is running a series about weirdly specific museums. They've run one about the National Mustard Museum and, this morning, a story about the National Museum of Dentistry. Fun fact for a Tuesday: George Washington's dentures weren't made of wood; they were made of hippopotamus ivory!

Ancient dating
dianora2 posted it first, but I saw it today on the news and knew I wanted to mention it here: scholars think they have determined the date when King Odysseus returned from the Trojan War. Now that's some mighty fine sleuthin'. This is one of the reasons I love living when we're living; we figure out cool stuff like this.

This American Lie
In less awesome, sort of headscratching news, a New Republic writer decided to fact-check humorist David Sedaris' book Naked and discovered--shock!, dismay!--that his creative nonfiction isn't always 100% completely, totally true! Even though it says so, right there in the book! (Sedaris, for those of you who don't know, is a humorist and essayist who often appears on the wonderful Chicago Public Radio show, "This American Life," hence the title of this section of tonight's entry.) I gotta say that my first reaction upon hearing about this story (via coverage on KUOW-FM) was to think, "Ah, yes, another sign of the dumbing down of America." And after hours and hours of thinking about it, I still feel that way. This writer picks apart all of Sedaris' books seeking the truth and trying to draw the line between fiction and nonfiction.

Except, last time I looked, essays of this sort aren't written to cast a clear eye on the hard, cold facts. They're not intended to be reportage. Essays like this are based in truth, embellished and embroidered for dramatic or comic effect, to shed light on less tangible but more essential truths. And they're called creative nonfiction because while they have a certain narrative structure, they're written to present an argument, even a subtle one, with insight and often--especially in Sedaris' case--humor.

Spare me the literalists. This sort of thing makes me crazy ... and in today's climate, sadly, doesn't surprise me in the least.

ETA: webcowgirl pointed me to this New York Times article about what she calls the "foo fraw." Good stuff.

I know this feeling
The Web site I work on recently ran an article about online addiction. Wanted to share the article 'cuz it's so good and, well, it rang a little too familiar....

Haven't been around much; trying to get my life in order. This means that I'm woefully behind on my flist reading. If I've missed anything important, do let me know.

The news of the morning is that I finished my essay for submission to NPR's This, I Believe and will be submitting it before I leave for work: 500 words on how the brevity of my father's life and the fact that he died at the office has given me perspective on my own situation and what it all means. It's called "Working to Live."

Changes are coming, and my concentration has been focused on those. I'll get back to regular posting at some point, but it may not be for a little while. Stay safe and keep it light.

As I was driving to work today, I heard a story on NPR that a new poem by Robert Frost has been discovered, called "War Thoughts at Home". The article at the link to NPR above includes an excerpt from the poem, full of bird and weather imagery that's quite striking. This kind of rich economy of language just knocks me flat: two sentences that create a whole world.

Apparently the poem was found inside a book that was donated to the University of Virginia as part of a collection. The Virginia Quarterly Review holds the exclusive publication rights to the whole poem, so unless someone lifts the poem from the magazine and posts it on the Internet, the VQR is the only place the poem will be available in whole for quite some time yet.

Can I just say: this is so cool. And I may yet shell out money for a subscription just so i can read the whole poem.