The Journey's the Thing…

I was speaking with a Bosnian Croat today who had graduated from University with a history degree. We discussed the ability to write about history from an impartial standpoint. After a while the subject turned to the most recent badness around here and he became very pointed. Be watchful of English journalists, and there isn’t much that is impartial. After a while I realized that I was speaking to a Bosnian Croat and that he was indeed speaking in that function. So here inside the Balkan bubble, there is no such thing as impartiality, only nationalistic opinion.

Then I spent a great 5 hours talking to the owner of my flat, an Irishman who has lived here for four years. We both agreed that the locals were a bunch of nutters who had no sense of history or possibilities of a future. This is the logic: If you offered a local 10 dollars a day to work for you he would. Then say, ‘I am paying you 1000 dollars at the end of the month instead of 10 a day’, he would take the daily wage first. Nutters.

More work tomorrow, then, I hope, more work all week before I go back to Sarajevo this weekend for the Run Against Drugs being sponsored by the US Consulate. More to come…

Johnnyboy

Today’s New York Times had Eliot’s obituary in it. This is sad news in Mudville indeed. He was a wonderful man, with a kind and grumpy heart, a real curmudgeon. He was a writer of some fame, having worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter in the 40s and 50s and then being blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He made a great comeback, though, with his seminal work ‘Eight Men Out’, which was made into a film. He was a good man, an excellent neighbor, and a fixture in the Somewheresville scene. He wrangled with the best minds in the town over coffee and breakfast at first the Cinnamon Twist and then The Farmer’s Wife. His mushroom hunting skills garnered shopping bags of morels and chanterelles, and he was known for his baked chicken with walnuts. The little town I live in has grown considerable smaller in the 24 hours since his departure from this plane of existence. As a writer he leaves behind a prolific testimony: 12 novels, countless screenplays, teleplays, and numerous cameo appearances in John Sayles’ (with whom he shared a deep friendship) films.

Farewell Eliot…Be well, do good work, and take the rest of the day off…

Johnnyboy