If the past is another country, then nostalgia is a region of that country where no one should wander unaccompanied by a map to show the way out. Its dreamy confines may be comforting, but the blurry lines of memory may simply serve to blur the lines of truth, a situation no sound-minded person could bear for long. Facts, as they say, are obdurate things. They have a way of reasserting themselves into the discussion at inopportune moments, like rocks on the roadside harassing the heels of the wayward traveler.