Dave Eggers at Salon on Zeitoun, his new book about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans and his main character who ended up being arrested and held by mistake:

I think there was a dark age, right in the middle there, from 2003 to 2006 especially, when anything seemed possible and nothing was surprising. Kathy felt so relieved when she found out that Zeitoun was in prison, like, "Well, I know where he's at and he's safe and he's alive." But for his family in Jableh, Syria, and his brother in Spain, that was even more worrying. That their brother, a Muslim from Syria, was in an American prison. It was really brought home when I met his family there and learned that they were gathered around the TV and phone for weeks, worried about what might happen to him in an American prison. I don't think anyone in the Middle East would have normally thought, before 9/11 and before Bush, that that was the worst situation somebody could be in.

Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft, at Powells on American ideas of work:

Thirty years ago, we learned that anything that can be put on a container ship is going to be made wherever labor is cheapest. In the last ten years, we've seen a similar logic applied to many of the products of intellectual labor that can be delivered over a wire. Accountants, editors, radiologists, architects — they're finding that their jobs are sometimes being done in the Philippines or in India, by people who speak very good English and are very well educated.

But the Indians can't fix your car for you, because they're in India. The Chinese can't unclog your toilet or wire your house. The insight here is that any work that has to be done on site is safe from that logic of outsourcing, and this is the case with the manual trades generally.

I've got his book and I'm really looking forward to reading it (especially after all the brouhaha about elitism that has gone in to the Cheap conversation (which is still going on at Ed's - yesterday is when I told them all they were sucking the life out of me... :)

Katherine Dunn on boxing (and her new collection of essays on the subject):

I was born in 1945, and in the late forties and early fifties, boxing was still an extremely important sport in America. It was one of the two big sports—baseball in the summer, boxing in the winter. I grew up with the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports on the radio, and then later on television. And the men in my family, my stepfather and my brothers, were very interested, and my mother intensely disapproved; she thought it was barbaric and vulgar and she didn’t want it in the house. So naturally I was fascinated.

Want to know why I love the First Second blog? Because they happily tout the work of other graphic novel publishers which is how I heard about Asterios Polyp from Pantheon:

Formally as daring and brilliant as Chris Ware, Mazzuchelli’s Asterios Polyp turns art and design idioms into a unique new comics syntaxe. Every single character speaks in a distinct typeface (which could have been a disastrous decision in lesser hands.) In different modes, characters appear more figurative or more abstract, or as architectural schematics. Colors become a code, expressing balances of power and the inner nature of a character. And there’s more, all of which dazzles by its thoughtfulness, its care, and its intelligence.

I am collecting explorers and wanderers I need to research, reading very old issues of National Geographic off cd rom, planning to hit old issues of Life and the Saturday Evening Post at the library when I no longer look like a boxer (not that I'm vain but I'm sure everyone thinks I've been punched) and simultaneously making a list of intrepid lady explorers from the 19th and early 20th century - which is for a whole other deal.

Here's a question - how come Peary is a hero for supposedly making it to the North Pole (even though the jury is way the hell out on that one) and Scott is a tragic failure for actually getting to the South Pole (albeit second but he got there and proved it) and literally dying so he could bring back specimens for scientific study (which have become quite significant)? Peary was all about the race whereas Scott never wanted the race at all. It's odd isn't it? Still working on this and not sure where it will go but it makes me sad, like George Mallory lost on Everest for trying to get there through his own true grit while others pay thousands to be "handled" to the top and celebrate as if they have won a prize.

As if they deserve a prize.

Can you name the Inuit guides who were with Robert Peary on that final push for the Pole? Don't feel bad - no one can. At least we should know they were there though, right? Give Scott credit for making sure his men were always acknowledged and remembered as heroically as possible. He thought of them which, if nothing else, is certainly something for all of us to admire. (Plus I'm just a sucker for Robert Scott - can't help myself.)