After I left high school, I spent a year at Northwestern University. Going to St. Paul’s was one of the five best choices I’ve ever made, and going to Northwestern was certainly one of the five worst. Utter misery. I fled after a year. By this point, I had been away from home for five years, and I felt completely out of sync with other 18-year-olds. Dislocated, rootless. So I moved back to Tampa and lived with my mom and enrolled in the theatre department of the University of South Florida.
There are a million stories from those years. This one is about Cosmos.
Cosmos was a television show about science and the universe, presented by Carl Sagan. We loved it. We’d cook dinner and sit on the floor at the coffee table in front of the TV, eating tuna casserole or spaghetti, absolutely enraptured. And then we’d talk and talk about what we had learned.
Sagan was astonishingly good at making science personal. He was luminous with love of the universe, and passionate about stewardship of the earth. He was clear-eyed about the fact that our planet and we ourselves are both cosmically insignificant, and that we are also amazing, astonishing, capable of extraordinary things. He told us that everything here, including us, was made of star stuff. He made me remember that I did have roots — on this little blue planet on the fringes of the Milky Way, itself only one of a hundred billion galaxies each with a hundred billion stars. He single-handedly restored my sense of wonder in a universe of which, it turned out, I was not the center. Good lessons in so many ways.
I can highly recommend his nonfiction works, of which there are many (The Dragons of Eden, Broca’s Brain, and Pale Blue Dot, the list goes on). He also wrote the science fiction novel Contact, which was made into a movie starring Jodie Foster.
Every single time I saw or heard or read him, it was so clear that he was stone in love with life, the universe and everything. It was all just amazing to him, and he wanted the rest of us to understand how precious it is.
OMG! I love Cosmos. I got the collection on DVD for my birthday five years ago, then it was stolen and I just had to have it again this summer for another birthday.
When I was in elementary school, I was sort of glad I went down with mumps so I could stay home and watch Carl Sagan on TV. One of my favorite phrases of his is, “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” It gives me hope and fills me with a sense of wonder. It also makes me sad sometimes, that we aren’t really living up to it, especially when I look around and realize we spend more time trying to produce more junk to buy and trash than we do getting to know ourselves, fellow planet inhabitants and everything beyond.
Thanks for sharing this clip. It brings good memories.
I remember that phrase! Thanks for the reminder. Just one of many beautiful things he said.
That’s awesome. Never seen it before. It’s like therapy. Thanks.
Glad you like it. The DVDs of the Cosmos series are well worth the trouble to find, if you’ve not seen it. You get something extraordinary like this about every 10 minutes or so…
I’ve never seen Cosmos, except for a few clips like the one above, partly because by the time it aired I’d stopped watching TV almost entirely. I have the companion book, but have not read much of it, though I have read Broca’s Brain, The Dragons of Eden, and The Demon-Haunted World. Since I read a lot of science writing, Sagan had little that was new to tell me, and from the clips I’ve seen I’m immune to his charisma, but on the whole I respect him.
There was one memorable time I happened to see him on TV, though — he was on the panel of experts who discussed the TV movie “The Day After” after it aired in 1983. For those who don’t remember it, “The Day After” depicted the effects of nuclear war in a small city in Kansas. It was very controversial, denounced by right-wingers because showing how such a war would affect *us* would sap our will to fight the Evil Empire. Or something. So the network (ABC?) had to provide balance, which it did by airing a clip of Secretary of State George Schulz denouncing the movie from the White House, but looking rather green around the gills. On the panel, besides Sagan there were, I believe, General Brent Scowcroft, William F. Buckley, and I *think* Henry Kissinger. What impressed me was that Sagan was the only participant who wasn’t green around the gills and sweating nervously. He cheerfully and effectively rebutted the politicos. Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After confirms that Buckley and Sagan faced off but doesn’t mention anyone else, and I’m sure there were others. But it was 25 years ago. Anyway, Sagan thoroughly impressed me that night.
I love that man. As a science teacher, I can only hope to be a tenth as poetic and inspiring as he was.
He was a truly gifted truth-teller, able to put things into perspective without making us feel bad and instead inspiring us to act as positive change-agents in the world.
“Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those general and emperors, so that in glory and triumph they could be the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.”
Wow.
Northwestern?! That Party School On The North Side? Small wonder you were miserable!
hmf
–P.
@ Duncan — In the times I saw him in those kinds of situations (squaring off with people who were being silly about science), I was always struck by his grace under pressure and his relentless deep expertise. He just knew what he knew. I’ve always admired that in people when I see it.
@ Janine — that’s a nice way to put it, making people inspired instead of fearful. Because of course fear paralyzes most people.
@ Phoenix — That’s the one (grin). Being there was basically like being hit on the head with a hammer every minute for nine months.