November 2009

The amazing thing about this issue featuring the 10 Most Intriguing People in Maine, which we at Portland Magazine nickname the “People” issue, is what happened this year after we sifted through the many recommendations for entries that came in from readers, writers, sidewalk social critics, and even a few disinterested parties. Taken as a whole, and to a degree that is statistically significant, the votes showed that the culture has swung ’round not so much to embrace women who are “of a certain age” (many of whom detest the ambiguities of that phrase) as women who are certain.

All of this just as Time magazine has anointed Senator Olympia Snowe not just the most intriguing person in Maine, but the most intriguing person in the United States. It’s as if the whole country is looking for a grownup to guide us on the right path, and we’ve decided she’s the one.

It used to be, “Business is sexy.” In the case of a whole series of independent Maine politicians, from Margaret Chase Smith to Ed Muskie to Olympia Snowe, considered the linchpin vote in the national health-care debate, “fairness is sexy.” “Reasonableness is sexy.” “Integrity is sexy.” And if you possess this kind of character-driven allure, the world will beat a path to your door.

In our present atmosphere of callow recriminations and celebrity event planning, why else would Peter Orszag, our nation’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, be up here in Portland, “interrupt[ing] his Maine vacation…to have dinner with Snowe and an aide” at Emilitsa, according to Time magazine? To find direction himself? To witness her incorruptibility first-hand? Maybe he wasn’t up here looking for true north so much as true.

Every year, the individuals chosen as the 10 Most Intriguing People can be seen as the collective answer to an unasked question welling deep in our readers’ desires. Considering  who’s been chosen this year, that question is, “Who dares to take untwitterable responsibility for what’s happening out there, consequences be damned?”

Consider the six women interviewed in the pages ahead, each of them a profile in courage. None of them has opted for the easy way out.

As for me, I am in love with a woman of a certain age. The first of her certain ages was 25, when we met and married, with her sense of self only refining itself through opportunities as we’ve both braved the restless uncertainties ahead. In a world slick with spin zones and lies, maybe “truth is beauty” should come before “beauty is truth.” As we tack into 2010, never have we clamored for a place beside these women who dare to be certain–even amid storms of indecision–and therefore deepen their beauty.