By now this video has been shared by every smart, sentimental or otherwise nerdy person you know, but I feel the need to pile on one more link because dammit, I’ve watched this thing 20 times already and I still get drawn into its beauty and message.
Briefly, for any kids reading this: The late Carl Sagan was an astronomer and author who was once described by Isaac Asimov as one of only two people he had ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. In other words he made most other people on Earth look like semi-clever dogs. Nonetheless he became famous as a popularizer of all things scientific, most famously in his PBS series “Cosmos.”
“Cosmos” originally ran 13 episodes, one each week in the Fall and Winter of 1980. I was 17 and watched many of them in my friend Frank’s basement while he and I got trashed on screwdrivers. We laughed, we learned, we listened to the Vangelis soundtrack and marveled at the Tron-Era special effects. It was a happy time.
Moving 29 years forward in time without the help of wormholes and I’m sitting in front of my MacBook Pro with both my kids on my lap watching this video remix. My six year-old seemed to start really listening to the words and my toddler just intuitively wanted it “again!”
Me too.
This is what I want to impart to my kids (and everyone else): Beauty, truth and wonder.
“The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars
A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way”
Here it is.
PS- My wife observed, accurately I must admit, that Dr. Sagan sounded like Kermit the Frog.
