Issues with Boards

Alright, I'll admit it. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing, and that's very disconcerting.
Usually I can mimic other people and at least pretend that I fit in while sorting out the theory as I watch. That strategy doesn't seem to be working for being on a board. I get the theory of how it's Supposed to work, but I can't figure out how the pieces fit together. I get the formalities, I get what a board is for both public and practical reasons. I get what the roles are supposed to be. I get all these individual pieces, but I can't fit them to the board I'm actually on. And I've been having a really hard time explaining what exactly I'm not getting.
I think some clarity came yesterday though when I got annoyed enough that I actually called the remainder of who'd shown up for the Special Session back to the actual purpose of the meeting. We were supposed to meet from 10am until 3pm. Six people showed up relatively on time, but that's one short of a quorum, so they couldn't make board decisions. I admit that I was the one they had to come and get. My alarm hadn't gone off.
But what about the rest of the board? There are 13 people on the board, all of them were invited to this meeting, and we expected at least a fair number of them to show up.
We had an agenda to talk about organizational and staffing issues. I don't know what we talked about (and I can't find minutes) for the first half of the meeting, but it wasn't staffing issues. When we went to lunch we were talking about what the organization will offer and at what price. There's talk of an overhead percentage for projects that make us their home. I have nothing to contribute to that discussion, because I can't understand how my own financials are working, let alone an institution's. Is it high or low? I Don't Know!
As far as I remember and understood, that's all they talked through lunch, where someone had to leave, and continuing until I called attention to the fact that we hadn't addressed organizational or staffing issues at all until 4pm, after the meeting should have been done an hour ago.
Now, for me to take initiative directly, for me to speak up in a meeting, I usually have to be bored or feel strongly about and have something to add to the discussion at hand. For me, Bored -> Stressed -> Pissy. I generally have to get to the pissy stage before I speak up in a meeting that I'm out of my depth in.
By the time I did speak up, there were only four of us left, and they're still bickering over the Stupid percentage that no one really seems to have a good idea about or a good way to approach the problem. They're going in circles. It's the same arguments repeated. What's the point of that?
So I call for order, and for about 15 minutes, we talk about staffing issues, remembering that, actually, we don't have a lot of money, and that we'll mostly have to be volunteer based. Someone there offers to be the volunteer coordinator until we can find a good person to take over the position. We also talked about how we really needed someone who would keep us on track, someone who would keep us making real decisions instead of talking about things that none of us really have any idea about. Here Here!
Then three more members of the board come in around 4:30, and everyone is back talking about the goddamned percentage. So I left. There was no point in staying.

What's wrong with this picture? I can't tell. It obviously not a very good picture, but I haven't studied enough good pictures to tell what's wrong with this one.
Generally, at least half of my understanding about anything comes from listening to people talk about it. Not explain it, just talk about it. When I sit down with someone, even if I've never met them before, often they just start talking. About anything. About what's going on in their lives. What's important to them. I let them talk. It's more useful to me than anyone seems to realize. I can guide the discussion with little flits of interest in the parts I really am interested in, without asking a whole lot of questions, and without trying to relate it to my own life.
This works very well. I generally get a sense of things in a haphazard way, but that doesn't matter. Most of the information and intuition I get isn't immediately useful, but will be later.
There aren't enough people who just Talk to me about boards. I used to go to the occasional meeting with my mother when I was little, but no body wants to talk about what happened at a board meeting after they don't have to. I'm completely in the dark about how a board Really works, and about the issues associated with boards, and about almost everything else.
Whatever. They drove me to pissyness once, they're likely to do so again, and then I'll make things more interesting. If something's not working, change it. Me being bored is the part that I can see needs changing, so I'll change it. And I'll find someone who will talk to me about boards.