Sam Harrelson

Today is the 10th Anniversary of the death of my hero, Carl Sagan.

I credit Carl Sagan with saving my life and my intellect in many ways. As a young boy growing up in rural South Carolina I first became aware of Dr. Sagan’s work because of the publication of “A Pale Blue Dot” which I picked up at a local book store during a trip to the “big city” of Florence, SC one afternoon. I was instantly hooked and I can’t think of the moment that I first cracked the spine of that book and began reading witout crying. In fact I’m crying now.

Both years that I taught 8th grade Physical Science at Hammond School in Columbia, SC I relied upon the trusted insights and the controversial debates which Carl Sagan gave rise to for the backbone of my course.  I thank the faculty and administration of Hammond (Bob and Rick) for that priviledge of intellectual honesty and freedom.  Nonetheless, Sagan is, without a doubt, the one person I’d love to have dinner with. In fact, I feel like I do have dinner with him on many nights as I still ponder the shapes and mystery of the universe and those billions and billions of stars that make up the beautiful night sky of Asheville, NC.

Please read the following passage from Cosmos, which I have read to every class I’ve ever taught, whether science or religion bound…

“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest conemplations of the Cosmos stir us - there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet ourspecies is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millenia we hav emad the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

Those explorations required skepticism and imagination both. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never where. But without it, we go nowhere. Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations. The Cosmos is rich beyond measure - in elegant facts, in exquisite interrelationships, in the subtle machinery of awe.

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be.”

I could go on typing and crying and thanking Carl Sagan for the insights he’s given me into the workings of this universe. Please ponder the infinite and the finite today…. the 10th anniversary of the death of Dr. Sagan. Think of this pale blue dot, and what you, yourself, can do to contribute a verse.

Thank you so much, Carl Sagan. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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