John A. Wheeler passed this week. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s the physicist who coined the word “black hole”, along with “worm hole”. Rumored to have invented the liver loaf on whole wheat, topped with quantum foam. Actually, that part I made up (although he is associated with the foam part).

Part of this peripatetic life we live is trying to keep up with the passings. Our lives are so full of the lives of so many others. They come and go each day—to our great good fortune, filling our lives, making us wholer-than-before; unfortunately, many of them never return, leaving voids which, though not quite black holes, can still suck some of the life from us.

Because our world is so vast and because there are so many passings, trying to make note of which passing is noteworthy—and why—can be a full time activity. I don’t know if you have the time, but I generally don’t. Fueling my ever-accreting sense of insensitivity and sensory overload. Thus (I guess) in the case of Wheeler, I will invest a few seconds—registered in these sentences. I can begin (and nearly end) with the obit, as physics is not my field. According to the text, Wheeler was among the major players of his age. Tabbed as physics’ “most imaginative adman. He was also science’s Zelig, seeming to be present at every important event or discovery.” Consorting, did he, with Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and Albert Einstein.

Pretty heady stuff (pun intended?) if you think about it.

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—tjmHolden

Where can a dead man go The question with an answer only dead men know . . . Nickel Creek, When in Rome

“Don’t expect any favors out of life, but . . . enjoy the hell out of ‘em if they ever happen to come your way . . . sometimes that is the thing that reminds you what makes life worth living.”

There’s a motto in there, somewhere. A philosophy. A means of surviving—if not thriving. At the very least, a peripatetique‘s creed in the making.

At this point, though, all of you form-freaks out there are busy scratching your heads wondering how that aphorism-in-gestation has anything to do with this entry’s title . . . come on, admit it, you are. Also puzzling through how favors and expectations have anything to do with the shots of the heavens or the lyrics from a Nickel Creek ditty. Well, brace up: it gets even less scrutable than that . . .

‘Cause flying Business Class gratis from LAX to Narita figures in. As does Serena Williams.

Care to find out how? Whether you do or don’t, here’s how it all goes . . .

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—tjmHolden

In San Francisco. Walking along Van Ness toward the wharf. Came across this nightclub exterior ‘round ‘bout the corner of Broadway . . . give or take a block or so.

It got me to thinking—a propos of nothing more than the title, I guess—about the U.S. presidential election.

“What? What would possibly make you make that connection?” you say . . .  (I know, I know. My mind is a simple thing.)

But . . . sad as it is to say, in this country, for an African American to win a presidential election might actually require a magic spell. At least some might aver. That particular, pessimistic, author calls it the “The Coon Affect” (sic). Well, whatever name it goes by, the fact is that the United States has only had five African Americans campaign for president in its two hundred and thirty-two years—Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, Jesse Jackson (twice), and Al Sharpton—all five trying their hand in the past thirty-six years, and none of them managing to steer their campaign caravans out of the parking lot.

Despite the grave doubt that Americans are ready for an African American president, a recent poll suggests that this particular ride might actually make it all the way down the road and end up parking in that big driveway on Pennsylvania Avenue. Although both democratic candidates currently fare better than John McCain in head-to-head matchups, it is Barack Obama who holds the current edge.

A magical possibility in the offing? Check back in eight months.

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—tjmHolden

According to G.K. Chesterton:

a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend.

Taking a trip up the California coast, one can gather what the early twentieth century’s “prince of paradox” was getting at. Sure, you can sit in a library and collect four books which might tell you something about life. Its origins, its rhythms, its meanings, its possibilities. But then, . . .

. . . well—now, there’s a thing . . . what four books would you choose? I mean, if you were trying to read the four that would teach you about the point and purpose and girdth and gristle of it all?

Would you go with the boxed set of The Origin of the Species, Frankenstein, Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, and The Catcher in the Rye? Or would you string together: A Tale of Two Cities, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Macbeth, and Das Capital? Of course, you might could go with: The Odyssey, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Les Miserables . . . or perhaps do as all sane mortals might: simply throw your hands up in intellectual resignation, stack everything silently back on the shelf, and concede that four books really wouldn’t get you as far as carrying one of those tomes out the door, climbing into your car, sitting with a friend conversing, as you both take in the grand view passing along your shoulder.

(As for the battle: that I’ve already been through, and let me tell you: two things are certainly true about that: (1) what Nietzche said about “that which doesn’t kill you . . . (etcetera and so forth)” is certainly so; and (2) the little mouthed truism “better to have warred and won than never to have warred at all,” makes most sense—but only if “better to have warred if losing was the only alternative” was, in fact, the only alternative).

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—tjmHolden

According to this piece by Sarah Boxer, in The New York Review, I don’t know how to blog.

As if:

whatever you think you’ve been doing for the last 3 years, dude . . . you’ve been doing it all wrong.

My reaction? Kind of like the guy on his death bed said, after encountering the winning numbers printed on his lottery stub: “better late than never.”

According to Boxer, what distinguishes my work from true blogging is that I don’t:

• thrive on fragmented attention (one-liners, song samples, summarized news);

(I mean, if you discount these bullets I’m just beginning to work through).

I also fail as a blogger, because I:

• fail! To: punctuate?
• eschew the use of punctuation and acronyms to express my feelings—a la :-) or ;-)

LOL

And, I fail as a blogger because:

• I tend not to adopt the mien of an impresario, curator, or editor—picking and choosing the snippets and headlines found on-line;

PRESIDENT’S DAY NEWS FLASH: Elder Bush Backs McCain

Looks to get back in the picture as his new VP

Okay, so I’m having a little fun here, at someone’s expense. Yours, McCain’s, G.H.’s. Mine. (But really, doesn’t that creepy sneer on senior and the semi-dazed, semi-satisfied look on McCain’s face make you suspect that something unsuspected is happening off-camera?)

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—tjmHolden

The crawl out of Los Angeles includes a pass through Agoura Hills, a city dubbed “The Gateway to the Santa Monica Mountain National Recreation Area”. The city, first settled by the Chumash Indians, and later by Spanish Franciscan missionaries in the 1500s, once served as a staging area for Paramount flicks in the 1920s—providing it, temporarily, with the name “Picture City”. No kidding. It says so right there on Wikipedia. It also says that the city adopted the name of one of its prominent residents, a local Basque-French immigrant-turned rancher, Pierre Agoure, Most likely (one infers) after the one-two of depression and war put a kabosh on Paramount’s use of the hills as cinematic backdrop.

Lore abounds on 101, but since it’s pitch black beyond the windshield and since we’ve finally managed to shake the bump-bumper-grill-grind, it really isn’t the time to be lingering over “what wases”. No, now that we can actually stretch out and move at some sort of decent speed, it is definitely time to open it up and gooooooooooooo! So: goodbye, Agoura Hills. Hospitable home to a slew of 80s-rehash acts such as Peter Frampton, REO Speedwagon, Boys II Men, and Alan Parsons, Fixing that past in our rearview, we push on—through Ventura County and on up to the next gateway.

That would be Buellton, the so-called “Gateway to the Santa Ynez Valley”.

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—tjmHolden