I remember the lead-in on PBS. There was going to be a show. A special series. The 30 second spot had music that was eerie and beautiful. I was, like so many others at the time, ten years old.
The music was haunting, and the imagery brilliant. The evolution chalk-board style drawings. The spaceship imagination. Starfields, and of course the synonymous head-on imagery of galaxies, quasars and clusters slowly passing by - all hallmarks of a voyage I was about to take with Carl.
I was easily distracted, I didn’t care much for school. I played a lot at home, by myself, with modeling clay and the omnipresent Legos. I raked Legos all over the floor from a trunk I would dump out whenever I was home. It made a noise like a parakeet. We had a parakeet that would yell in response to my raking. See what I mean by easily distracted?
Yet somehow, I never missed an episode. When I discovered that they were re-airing at some ridiculous hour early in the morning, I would schlep into the room with our little tv at 4 am and watch it with the sound off, listening first to the music. I would turn it up at the beginning and the end, also to hear Carl sign-off on the episode with his wonderful summaries and haunting visions.
When I met the woman that would one day be my wife, I took her on a “college priced” date one night, between projects and finals and the like. I asked “have you ever seen these?” She had not. We ate pizza and watched as many cassettes as we could before passing out. She was intrigued. We eventually watched the entire series. I knew she was the one.
I cannot remember where I first heard it, if it was an episode of Cosmos or not. It might even be a paraphrase, but it remains one of my favorite quotes attributed to Dr. Sagan.
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
We are always on a precipice, perched just above the dark, reaching up toward the stars. The nature of learning will always put humanity in this position. Now more than ever we need Carl Sagan, and in all of our futures that observation will forever ring true. We will always need him. Carl will always be remembered and a part of our journey.
