Personal Voyage from Lubbock, Texas into The Endless

1. Some images and notes on the expansion of my awareness
of vastness, intricacy, friendship, beauty and love

2. When I think of my limted experience of wonder in those growing-up years in
Lubbock, I’m reminded of Gary Larsen’s humorous depiction of Carl Sagan as a kid:

3. “The observable Universe contains an estimated 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000stars.” — Wikipedia
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = One Septillion Stars
Now, decades later living in San Francisco, California

4. Growing up in Lubbock, Texas, from elementary school through up to my senior year in high school,
the world I knew was bounded by boring textbooks, a seemingly endless, flat terrain punctuated by
duststorms and tumbleweeds.

5. The only social excitement came from driving around and around the Hi-D-Ho
drive-in, where we would meet and greet other car prowlers, shoot the breeze, eat
greasy cheeseburgers and drink cherry cokes and vanilla 7-ups:
My customized 1955 ChevyMy first car: 1951 Chevy

6. One escape from this confinement was science-fiction stories and EC comic books

7. The Expanding World of Ideas:
Friends
In my senior year at Monterey High School and time at Texas Tech, I finally met some
kindred spirits who were smart, intellectually engaged with ideas and notions of beauty,
and some of whom would become lifelong best friends.
Dan Tarpley, David Grady. Hunter Heath, George Griffin

8. Man and His Gods was my first glimpse beyond the 100 stars. The wide world of religious
beliefs and institutions and their developments over the centuries provided me with the
glimmerings of an insight into the vastness of ideas and their role in human society.

9. Dr. Alan Lang Strout, my Texas Tech guide into the world of poetry
Lord Byron John Keats

10. Reflection on Progress of Life, published in Texas Tech’s The Harbinger, 1962
When My Days Were Blue
When my days were blue
And the heavens burned to warm
My small and boneless body,
It was warm and bright and big.
When my days were green
And the sun illumined my world
And tanned my new, ripe body,
It was hot and white and strong.
When my days were orange
And the sun, as always, shined
And spilled over the companion planets,
It was dull and cool and misty.
When my days were gray
And the heavens dully glowed
To spread light to anyone at all,
My days
were
gone.

11. The early history (Chaucer), mythic scope (Tennyson) and moral depth (Saamuel
Johnson) of great English literature opened up to me in my year at Harvard

12. The University of Illinois:
Jeanie, love of my life

13. Family Expansion

14. Mentors and Colleagues at San Francisco State, 1968-2010
S.I. Hayakawa Alvin Fine
Matt Evans Holloway Historians

15. Collaborations with
The Fine Fellows
of
San Francisco State
Rodger Birt — Arthur Chandler — Marvin Nathan

16. www.arthurchandler.com