The Great Eclipse of 1979

The Great Solar Eclipse of February 26, 1979 was going to be spectacularly visible in Bozeman, Montana, so the university there decided on a great celebratory event that would bring together scholars, artists, physicist, poets, writers, musicians … This was organized by Michael and Lynda Sexton, in English and Philosophy respectively — I was going to know them well afterward, because they involved me in their fabulous magazine Corona.

My friend Clark Glamour was an alumnus of that university. I feel sure that it was due to him that I was invited, together with him, to represent philosophy of science for the occasion.

At that time I was teaching spring semesters at USC in Los Angeles. So I flew to Salt Lake City, where I was to catch a second plane, to Bozeman. But SLC seemed to be as far as I was going to get: due to high wind or some other such atmospheric disturbance all flights were canceled.

I called my contact at the university, and was told that yes, they knew; there were four of us in the same predicament. They were sending a plane to collect us, our names would be called in the airport, but it might be a while.

So I went to the bar, which was as good as empty, except that Clark Glymour was already there. He told me that there was something puzzling going on, he’d asked for a bourbon, and the waitress had just brought him some water and ice. At this point someone else wandered in, looking lost. I said to Clark, you know there are four of us …. Clark waved at him, and after a slight hesitation he came over. “Ted Flicker”, he said, “are you the others going up to Montana?”

So there we were three and Flicker knew just what to do to get a drink in Mormon territory. The waitress would bring you the mix, which cost as much as a drink in any airport. Then you had to go a window next door and buy a very cheap, small, one-drink size, bottle of alcohol. If you were a Mormon you would skip that part.

Ted told us that he was a movie and TV director, in fact the director of Barney. Said in a way that invited instant recognition. It had been almost ten years since I had watched TV, I thought that perhaps it was about a dog? I didn’t say that, just in case, looked at Clark who was also non-plussed, then back at Ted. Barney Miller, he said, you must know it, smash-hit … He gave us rather an odd look.

“You must be the other three.” A tall man, slight Teutonic accent, looking quizzically at us. “Hi, I’m Frithof Capra.” Well, his name I knew. The Tao of Physics was a best seller among the Los Angeles students, and I think by that time probably already a best-seller world-wide. “Do you all know why we are stuck here, why they need to send a plane for us?” Clark — my God, did he realize who this was?? — just said dryly “The commercial airlines won’t fly in this weather.” I hadn’t actually read the book, any more than I had watched Barney Miller. But the students might be right about him after all, a Renaissance man, a physicist-mystic, adept of oriental mysteries and high energy physics …

We had some hours in the bar, and some less comfortable hours in the small plane, so we started telling each other our stories. What were we going to do in Bozeman? I was going to give a talk on eclipses in Aristotle’s theory of science. Clark was going to regret that what everybody think they know about eclipses is just what they are in Copernicus’ model, while things are so much more interesting in General Relativity and its cosmology.

These pedestrian topics paled in comparison to our friends’. Ted Flicker’s talk would be “Hollywood as the Black Hole of the Universe”. He told us hair raising stories about the life of an actor-director-producer. One day you are the king, all the scripts are landing on your desk, your agent has you in a million dollar house in Beverley Hills. The next morning he is telling you sell or mortgage it all, the assets have gone into a sink hole together with your reputation — you were living on credit and credit is no more. In the long run though he was going to win big.

(And in fact I think he did, I looked him up later, and realized I should have been more impressed.)

Frithof was at first not as forthcoming, but I was sitting next to him on the plane, and he started talking. I gave myself one year to write a best-seller, he said. All those physics gigs had been little more than lab assistant work, the credit and the plaudits all went to whose lab it was. Before that I had the idea that a gambling scheme, based on a physics-level statistical model would get me out of it. It would work. But even in a simulation it would take years to win enough, always supposing that you’d be able t cover occasional big losses. So, I chose the two things that were most fascinating to lots of people I knew, physics and mysticism, and put them together. It worked.

Looking back to this now, I’m certainly not saying this was true. Possibly, and perhaps even likely, Frithof was taking the mickey (as they say), Someone as naive as I must have looked to him, well, it would be easy to have a little fun at my expense. He gave a great talk the next day, about alternative science, acupuncture and shiatsu, the healing power of spirituality, to a standing ovation at the end. This was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius!

But even that talk, I wonder whether it is remembered by the people who were there.

For what followed was more magical than what could be in any words. When the eclipse was going to happen huge numbers of people came to the university campus to watch it together. It was cloudy, it was getting cloudier, and darker, We all had our dark lenses or smoke-darkened glass, but our mood was darkening too. It was going to pass us by …

Then a Cheyenne native American preacher took the podium and began to chant a prayer. The clouds thinned.

The sun appeared as a black disk surrounded by glory, a rim of light.

(From local newspaper, which I saved)