Boian Books

February 26, 2008
  We’re seeing the woman tonight who has been in training for this job
since she was a child.
I once interviewed a retired fire chief from Chicago who grew up with
her. He told me when all the neighborhood kids played kick the can on
summer nights, they would lose Hillary. She would be under a
streetlight reading.
Maybe she didn’t play well with others.
Or maybe she simply absorbed what she loved, thought of what she
would do if she were leader, preferred to spend summer nights
fantasizing about how to knit the world instead of how to kick the can.
Hillary’s defining moment was when her heart leaked and her voice caught and her eyes clouded up in New Hampshire. It’s the only time
in the campaign that the essence of who’s running was so clear. A
woman against a man in a man’s world where women are the majority.
It’s a tough hike. Ask the Cherokee, who had a vibrant matriarchal
society until European soldiers born in America changed their
culture. Ask stewardesses who were required to be single and
registered nurses while married pilots asked them for two sugars in
their coffee.
Barack Obama is incredible, smart, smooth, charismatic and capable,
no doubt about it.
Hillary Clinton should be president because she doesn’t have one drip
of testosterone. She is a brilliant, serious, weepy Scorpio who will
look out for our population as only a woman would. As president she
will be metaphorically skinned, gutted and barbecued by the male
dominated media. Her husband will be told to be quiet, but expected
to keep her under his control. Her daughter will be the first
daughter to have both her parents write “President of the United
States” on their resume. Pretty strong medicine for an ordinary
dysfunctional family that has spent most of its life in public
housing. It says powerful things about us, that we recognize their
vitality and sagacity.
Hillary Clinton needs, and deserves, to have the vote of every woman
of every age and every color in this country. Even Republican women,
even fundamentalist women, even women sick of Clintons, even Michelle
Obama and Oprah Winfrey should recognize what a difference they can
make in this world by electing this woman.
I’ve voted for her twice already, once in 1992 and once in 1996.
Bill’s name was on the ballot, but she is the one who understood just
how crucial excellence in the job is, and that excellence will always
inspire others to strive for it, too.
We can either let this election be decided by Drudge, Matthews,
O’Reilly, Olbermann and the Austin American-Statesman or we can
overwhelm the polls on November 4 and support ourselves. This is an
ideal time to shake things up, show our daughters that a woman can be
first in her law school class, a mother, President of the United
States, and still feed the tomcat.
Men break and enter, women shoplift; men are magnets for energy,
women are sources of it. We’re different, and it’s time to make a
difference. Not a change, a difference.

When the Lovely County Citizen was still a glint in our eyes, we laughed about absolutely everything relevant to starting a newspaper. Who would we not allow to advertise? Miscreants! Who would adorn the front page? Citizen of the Week! Back page? Who Reads the Citizen? Buddhist Monks in Bangkok Do!

Who would be written about in this new, irreverent, unleashed town crier? Anyone daring enough to live here and adroit enough to speak. We would bray and hop around in shoulder-shaking mirth at our cleverness. Jay Leno and Aaron Brown and city hall couldn’t get enough of the Lovely County Citizen.

But a curious thing happened. News wasn’t funny. Every edition was filled with heartache, whether from a federal prisoner who wanted out; a health nut who had a heart attack; a basketball team that thought winning was losing by fewer than 30; and a national government that neither warned us nor protected us from our own airplanes and hurricanes.

Our town newspaper became serious, oh so serious. Men beat up women but didn’t want it reported. Rich people shook hands with politicians and suddenly changed the two-lane road leading to town into a freeway. More trucks, more commerce, more traffic, more prosperity!

Where was our real life? Was it reduced to opinion? What happened to reporting who we are in this funny little town crimped into the folds of the Ozarks?

Since September 11, 2001, we’ve lost two tall buildings, a major American city, and their inhabitants. Not because of terrorists or wind shears, but because of ineptitude and cheap levee construction. Because our appointed decider decided it was too scary to make decisions. Oh, we lost a few hundred thousand acres to forest fires, and a few thousand soldiers to miserable deaths – we expect to lose some things. But we shouldn’t have lost them because of laziness and meretricious attitudes. If we must lose cities, soldiers and sod, it should be because we tried to prevent it and lost, not because we never tried to look out for what is ours.

The number of people killed at the World Trade Center is fewer than the number “we” killed on the forced relocation of American Indians called the Trail of Tears, which passed close enough to Eureka Springs that if we had been alive, we could have offered marchers hot tea and warm blankets. Think “we” would have? Or would we just say, “I don’t know what to do.”

Eureka Springs is a town that prays for troops, not just American troops, but all troops. We don’t pray that they win, we just pray for them. We have a lot of fun, a lot of cancer and a lot of practical experience. Our artists dabble in euphoria and our women rely on each other. That’s where our real life is.

  It is curious that we either shrugged or got all serpentine over Don Imus’s “nappy-headed hos” remark on national television, yet turned our backs when W., the myopic, macho neanderthal occupying the White House, strode up behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel and gave her a surprise shoulder rub last July. Her face scrunched as though she had swallowed a shot of cheap tequila. Her eyes closed, her arms flapped. She was stunned, dismayed and photographed, and he still has his job.
  Same for the Rutgers women’s basketball players who, if not the best, then are assuredly the second best team in America. Because they are good, they are the butt of stupid white man remarks? Or should I say, one white man’s stupid remark? Because they are tattooed? No. Because they are black? No. Because they are women? No.
  A commentator of national prominence said something irreverent, cruel even, but that says more about the commentator than about the point guard. Color and gender take a back seat to flamboyance and ratings. Any ol’ girl in any ol’ sport would’ve qualified for Imus’s vitriol. It just happened to be five super basketball players who inspire little girls.
  Imus managed to be sexist and racist, but insisted he made a mistake and he is not a bad person. He apologized with a quivering voice very close to a cry. Why cry? Because of suspension? Is that with or without pay? That would make a difference in the depth and duration of the cry. Is Imus embarrassed because he must spend two weeks in the corporate penalty box?
  Was he tastelessly extemporaneous and is he truly ashamed of his behavior? Now really, if no one had called him on this, he would have talked merrily along, saying whatever outrageous thing he could come up with to top the last one, don’t you think?
  Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Ann Coulter call John Edwards a faggot just a few weeks ago? A few newspapers dropped her column, shudder the thought, but she sure didn’t lose her job or even get suspended.
  What’s the difference? All three incidents were unseemly, weak and boorish. But it’s not like we weren’t forewarned what Bush, Coulter, and Imus are capable of – after all, it is part of their appeal. Their swoops into the public sphere get our minds off our problems.
  What Don Imus said is not about women, black people, or anyone else other than Don Imus. Come on. Let’s get back to talking about this insidious war, the fact that this generation is neither as healthy nor as smart as its parents, and a health care system that generates its money from keeping us sick. There’s lots to talk about besides our opinions on how others look or live.
  And why would I think for one minute that calling Mr. Bush a myopic, macho neanderthal was any more elevated than what Coulter or Imus said?

  We sat outside in the wind watching redbuds blend in with other spring growth – japonica, pear tree, dogwood, forsythia, even spearmint stretched calf high as we watched a season take over a yard in one afternoon. The wind thrust blossoms to the turf and lighters wouldn’t light, so tobacco went unfired. That made her edgy.
  She, the master gardener, master cook and master of homestead chores, did not want to talk about how dry the earth is just an inch below our vision. She had stuck tomato plants in, knowing there could easily be a frost before May 10. No matter, she said, “I’ll just plant more if it freezes. I watered them. Shouldn’t have to water in the spring.” She thumbed her Winston between her fingers like worry beads.
  She doesn’t live in Eureka Springs and neither do I. But it’s our hometown. “It’s flat out wrong that our city council refuses to defy Bush’s Patriot Act,” she said. She always protests when she can’t smoke.
  “The Patriot Act specifically gives g-men the right to check out your library checkouts. It says they can enter your home with no invitation. Read your emails. It’s unthinkable. It’s a power the government simply snatched for itself, without input from us, insisting that unreasonable search and seizure is reasonable.”
  She claimed that the dynamic of war has changed, then questioned whether it has, really. War has no rules, she remembered, just like love.
  “Are we so terror-stricken that we allow our most temporary employee, the president, to continue bullying others? He’ll be out of here in two years, and we’ll be stuck with the consequences of his actions for the rest of our lives. You know and I know there are fanatical scoundrels among us, just as there were in 1775.” She’d forgotten about smoking. “So the government invades citizens’ lives on a whim, trashes personal lives, makes sure we adhere to the rules of those who didn’t have enough sense to acknowledge intelligence from their own agencies before terrorists slammed our jets into our buildings? It took the government 45 days to pass a law easing its ability to invade our heritage, wiping out 230 years of constitutional freedoms!”
  We talked about city council members who resisted designating Eureka Springs a Patriot Act Free Community. One said she had heard our country would have a nuclear event at the hands of terrorists, and that if the government reading emails would prevent that, or at least catch the decoys, it would be okay to surrender privacy. Ludicrous. Everyone knows emails aren’t private. They told us in grade school to never write anything we didn’t want read in court.
  Aldermen, a mayor, and an attorney speculated that the city could lose federal funds to run the trolleys, police and fire departments, and for heaven’s sakes, the Auditorium. Don’t you know the federal government wants that on its books?
  “It’s not partisan,” she said. “It’s patriotism at its essence. It’s defending our land of the free. It’s making good on the promises colonists made when they told the British to keep their money, keep their navy, keep their attitude. We were a nation of 18th-century hippies who insisted on freedom of speech, religion and private ownership, and were willing to fight a long, horrible, bloody war to ensure our children would not have to be unfairly taxed or invaded or spied on by a government that demanded unconditional obedience. Highways. Trolleys. Insecurity. Profiling. Fear. We’ve been hoodwinked.
  “Becoming a Patriot Act Free Community is the only way to teach our young how vital it is for real freedom that Eureka Springs just say no,” she said. The wind stopped and she lit up. “The Patriot Act is alive and well in Eureka Springs.”
  She exhaled much more than recycled smoke.

It was grandma who said when you invite someone to your home, give them the best you’ve got. They are your guests.
After years of not ever, ever throwing parties, yesterday I did. A friend turned 80. She wanted to see her people, celebrate her birthday, be surrounded with good cheer. So I suggested my house, secretly thinking it’s too far away for most people I know to want to drive. Nine miles. That way, I can invite a lot of people and they won’t come. We were in the path of severe thunderstorms.
Three in the afternoon sounded perfect to me because no one would be hungry then, so that took care of the food. I thought it would be wise to start food at three, so that by six there would be a steaming pot of vegetarian chili on the stove, just in case anybody made the drive.
Staying busy tosses social interludes right out the window. Which is perfect. Just keep mincing those garlic cloves and pouring wine to newcomers, keep washing up after yourself, busy, busy, busy, no time to relate to anyone. Perfect.
The day was so pretty people enjoyed their ride to an afternoon in the country. They showed up in carloads.
First thing they said was, “Why didn’t you tell us it was a potluck so we would all bring food?”
No, I thought, there will be food for all before you know it. You are my guests and you don’t have to do a thing.
Prep work took an hour, cooking took another hour or more, and the grilled onions made everybody hungry an hour before it was ready. Timing is everything, but how do you know until it’s off?
Several months ago I decided that since I live alone in a small space, I really don’t need more than four plates, two bowls, and a dozen wine glasses. What was I thinking that I could have more than two guests at once?
The recipe was emailed to me that morning, which made it too late to soak and cook beans, so they were canned. That’s okay, the tomatoes were, too, but canned tomatoes are always more flavorful than greenhouse tomatoes in the winter time.
I decided it was a good idea to double the recipe since I was up to 20 people and the recipe was for six.
Got a little impatient with the speed of the ground cloves coming out of the container. Opened ‘er up. Poured a bottle of Guinness in to cover that mistake, then added a bar of dark chocolate with chili peppers in it.
Thought I’d need straws to draw to see which 12 people got a bowl of chili. But guess what? The people managed themselves. They found a bowl and a spoon and a cloth napkin and they ate. They rinsed their bowls. They never stopped talking and laughing and listening to The Mavericks. The last bowl went to the last guest. He might could of eaten three bowls, and probably wanted some cornbread, but one bowl kept his stomach from fussing and he said it hit the spot.
The party that made me think of grandma also reminded me of the war in Iraq. Everybody here was either a lesbian or a redneck, but it was the prettiest rendition of Happy Birthday I’ve ever heard. People were happy to see each other, happy to talk, happy to be together this once-in-a-great while. Reveling, whatever their view of sex, politics, or party food, at being together on a Thursday afternoon in March.
Yet the talk in the kitchen went to war, the war, that war. And more than killing of civilians, more than desecration of art and culture, more than devastation of the air and water, we talked about the waste of money. The meaninglessness of money. For heaven’s sakes, the Pentagon lost $12 billion in twenties and hundreds. That’s all they admit to, anyway. How could money have any meaning when there’s so much of it that’s lost and no one cares to look for it because there’s plenty more where that came from?
Hmmm. There was a connection between the party story and the war diatribe, but it’s lost. Lost in thought. Oh, it’s just that when we people are left alone, we relax and have fun and get confident because we gravitate toward people who are confident, relaxed and having fun. The shame of the war, this war, trumps national pride. If our country left other countries alone and quit killing them and destroying their environment so we could have cheap oil and hamburgers, we would have something to feel proud about.
Maybe this is about the 80-year-old birthday girl. She is dismayed at how citizens have been slowly transformed into neurotics.