An Ode to Sue Boyer
Years ago, when my father was cleaning out his parents’ house, he came across his childhood Boy Scouts of America handbook. When I found the book myself, I relished it as an artifact of the days when Scouting meant adventure. My own Girl Scout experiences didn’t look at all like cooking over an open flame, tying slipknots and devising outdoor showers with pails and sticks. Mine looked like Sue and Jean, our homely Scout leaders, cutting ice cream into equal rectangles we could enjoy while the other girls made fun of me in the elementary school cafeteria.
And it is with the same childlike reverence that I recently finished reading Abbie Hoffman’s 1971 classic, Steal This Book. Though the good old days were not as they seemed, the book still possesses a kinetic energy and a presence of irony that seems missing from activism today. In an age when my peers rebel by riding bikes and caucusing, a how-to guide to hitchhiking, crafting Molotov cocktails, and rolling joints is certainly a throwback to something. The political climate Hoffman was confronting was not unlike the climate of today: a stupid incumbent president setting records for low approval ratings, fronting an administration rife with scandal, entrenching the country in a war in we had no business fighting. So why is it that Washington has not been overrun with protests? Where are the troublemakers? Where are the Merry Pranksters?
