I’m sure there will be many tributes to Carl Sagan today, so I offer mine. \u00a0It’s no different than thousands of kids, but it’s mine and that makes it special.<\/p>\n
I was seven or eight when Cosmos came out. \u00a0I think it was eight, but that was the year my mom and dad divorced and I know I watched Cosmos with my dad. \u00a0We watched it on a crummy black and white 8 inch TV. \u00a0Yes, we had tinfoil on the antennae because our local PBS station was in Houston over 100 miles away.<\/p>\n
I don’t remember much of the show and it’s very hard to tell what I remember from the original and what I remember from subsequent views and clips. \u00a0What I remember most is Carl’s smoothness. \u00a0He had an eloquence, even to my young ears. \u00a0He was very different from my own dad and I think that might have been a telling point.<\/p>\n
I was already a dinosaur crazy kid, but then Carl started talking about spaceships of the imagination and other worlds and the amazing things on our world, like how a crab population could eventually come to have the face of a samurai on there backs.<\/p>\n
It was an amazing experience and I can only say that it shaped me in some significant way.<\/p>\n
I had a chance to meet Carl right before his death. \u00a0He was doing a book tour in Houston. \u00a0But my mom didn’t tell me he was there because she had purchased his book for me for Christmas. \u00a0I still haven’t quite forgiven her for that.<\/p>\n
In my own way, I’ve tried to follow in Carl’s footsteps. \u00a0I’ll never have his eloquence or his calmness. But I think his influence is why I love science so much and why I love writing so much. \u00a0It’s frustrating and hard sometimes, but I still feel the need to share what we know about the universe and try to explain it in ways so that even 8-year-old boys can understand.<\/p>\n
Both Carl and I will never know the lives that we have touched, the influence we have had on people. I hope that influence just a few. \u00a0Even that will be worth the efforts I’ve made both here and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
I’m sorry to have never met you Carl… I hope you would be proud.<\/p>\n
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