One of the cliché trends of book titles these days is “Why (fill in the blank) Matters”. A search on Amazon uncovered numerous books entitled:

Why Gender Matters
Why New Orleans Matters
What Jesus Said and Why it Matters
Why Courage Matters
Why Race Matters
Why Motor Skills Matter
Why Sinatra Matters
Why Love Matters
Why Lasker Matters
Why Geography Matters
Why Unions Matter
Why Sin Matters
Why Orwell Matters
Why Vietnam Still Matters
Why Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) Matters
Why Social Justice Matters

The authors of some of these books include such luminaries as Christopher Hitchens (Orwell) and Senator John McCain (Courage).

Aside from the fact that the banal and the profound, the profane and the sacred, the stupid and the significant are all deemed worthy of mattering, the word matter, as used by authors and book publishers is irritating and full of psycho-babbling pretentiousness.

One definition of matter is “anything that occupies space and has mass”. But it has been transformed into a emotional, needy and self-pitying word as in “Don’t I matter to you?” and “What really matters is honesty” and “It doesn’t matter if you lied”. A strong and precise word, in the hands of therapy, is turned into a doughy, soppy, tortured term.

The book titles, in turn, are using emotional reasoning and sometimes a bit of logic to put forth a case that any subject or matter might really, really matter. But if I didn’t listen to (post 1968) Sinatra, or join a union or watch Buffy would I be missing out?

That’s why I think it’s time to write a book called, “Why Van Nuys Matters”. After all, if geography, social justice, courage, race and Jesus matter than so does this spot in the center of the San Fernando Valley.