My parents were fairly old when I was born – Mom 46, and Dad 51 (although that’s becoming more common these days with new fertilization techniques). Thus, I never knew or saw my parents as young(ish) people – Dad was always bald, and Mom always gray, both with dentures and various medical conditions as far as I can remember.
Mom, while never having had the opportunity to attend college, was very intellectually curious and educated herself on many subjects later in her life, including art history, botany, archeology and anthropology. She taught herself how to paint with oils in her sixties, and a couple of her paintings of Irish scenes hang in my home today. She was also somewhat of a pop culture junkie (I guess that’s where I got it from), and we would stay up late at night watching Monty Python or Fawlty Towers on public TV, or Dick Cavett, Tom Snyder and Johnny Carson.
One of Mom’s favorite self-taught subjects was astronomy, and she was a huge fan of Carl Sagan. Running across these videos by the Symphony of Science musical project recently reminded me of her admiration of Sagan’s work and the universe in general. She would've loved these.
Carl Sagan - and Stephen Hawking! - "sing" in this video (thanks to AutoTune) - A Glorious Dawn
And more recently, We Are All Connected, which mixes Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Richard Feynman....
Beautiful.
P.S. 10 neat facts about Carl Sagan
via neatorama
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