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under_control
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» For Carl I've just watched Contact again. This is the third time I've seen the movie and the second time in the last month or so. I had rented it to show my parents when I was home visiting them last weekend. We didn't get to it. On the phone today my father told me they had watched it and he said he thought it was good. I had to go out and rent it again, watching it as if I had been there with them. Wondering what they had thought of each part. Hoping they had picked up on the ideas and felt whatever it is about that movie that brings me to the verge of tears. "For Carl" Those are the closing words of the film, just before the credits begin. Carl Sagan was the first and only person I remember admiring as a boy. When asked who we admired, most kids would blurt out the name of some athlete or the ubiquitous "my Dad." I would always think for a minute or two and come back to Carl Sagan; tweed jacket, turtle neck and all. I don't know why my family gathered together to watch "Cosmos" on PBS. Maybe my sister's college prep science classes assigned it. My family was certainly not the demographic for Cosmos, let alone PBS. But I sat there each week in complete awe, absolutely entranced by Mr. Sagan and the things he showed me. I began college majoring in Physics and Astronomy. My weak study skills and full time relationship soon had me fleeing to the schools of Liberal Arts, where aside from the odd paper, very little actual work was required of me. In my final year of collage, with my liberal arts degree nearly confered on me, I discovered that Carl Sagan would be speaking at our university. I was too late to secure tickets, but by some stroke of luck seats had been saved for students, not far from his podium in the massive Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City. I can not, honestly, tell you exactly what he talked about that night. But I was there, watching the man who had shaped my dreams as he spoke to us. Even as I write this I am crying. Carl Sagan died in 1996. He was not a great orator. He was not a hero. He was identifiable only by the comic repetion of his trademark, "Millions and millions" phrase. But he quietly searched for something for himself and on behalf of others, whether they wished it or not. He sought to know who we are and what we are doing here; where Here is and were we will be. He wondered if we are all alone, adrift in an endless sea. The same questions that we all ask at one time or another. But unlike most of us, he championed those questions and brought them to our group consciousness. He said, "These are the important questions of our species. Not how cheaply we can produce oil or entertainment. Not whether or not we are popular with our peers or more powerful than our enemies." Carl Sagan tried to wake the world to what he thought was a bright morning of reason. And watching Contact, I believe he learned that what is bright and beautiful to one is glaring and horrible to another. And he tried to teach us that as well. Thank you for lighting the fire of imagination in so many of us. Thank you Carl, for explaining what you knew.
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diaryland |