I don't have slides.
[Laughter] It's just, you're stuck with me
for seven minutes.
I've, my story is not that different from
so much of what you just heard.
It's spiritually the same.
Details are different.
My first encounter with Carl was not, in fact,
derived from a letter that I wrote to him,
as we heard from Jonathan.
In fact, it was a letter that he first wrote
to me.
I was in high school, 17 years old, applying
to colleges.
I knew I was interested in the universe, no
question about it.
That happened from a first visit to my local
planetarium at age nine, the Hayden Planetarium
in New York City.
The lights dimmed, the stars came out.
I first thought it was a hoax.
That's too many stars.
I know how many stars there are, I've seen
all 14 of them from the Bronx, right.
[Laughter] That's where I grew up.
This is not true.
I'll go along with it for the half hour that
we're there, but I know better.
So my interests were deep and established,
so I applied to colleges.
One of the colleges I applied to was Cornell,
and little did I know that the admissions
office had taken my application, forwarded
it to Carl's attention.
He then wrote a letter to me, out of the blue.
This is about space, you could say out of
the dark, right.
Not out of the blue.
This letter shows up in my mailbox.
Carl S, is this the same Carl Sagan?
This can't be the same, no who?
How could this be?
I just saw him on Johnny Carson, he can't
be the same person.
Famous people don't write out of the blue
to strangers, they're too busy.
They've got too much else on their plate.
Opened the letter, it was from Carl Sagan,
inviting me to visit the campus, to help me
decide where I might choose to go to college.
So then I thought, in my denial, he's, this
is just famous people talk.
They don't really mean it.
Like when I first met Seth MacFarlane.
We exchanged emails.
I didn't expect he'd ever call me!
[Laughter] Two years later, hey Neil, this
is Seth!
Seth who?
You know.
Famous people don't call non-famous people.
The invitation was real.
Took the bus up to Ithaca, New York, from
New York City.
It was December, 1975.
He met me in front of the building, he's there!
The campus was mostly empty, I think we had
already entered Christmas holidays, but he
was there.
Invited me up to his office, we talked about
the lab, his work on Voyager.
Here's my favorite part.
He reached behind him.
He didn't even look, just reached behind at
his desk, pulled out a book that he wrote.
I said, that's really cool, you don't even
have to look, and wherever your hand lands,
there's a book that you wrote, right?
[Laughter] So I just thought.
And he signed it to me, the same book, Cosmic
Connection.
Except mine was a paperback, sorry.
He had the hardcover.
"To Neil, future astronomer."
We were done.
He drove me back, in his car, to the bus station.
It begins to snow.
It does that often in Ithaca, New York, [laughter]
at that time of year.
It begins to snow, and it's not obvious if
the bus is gonna come through.
I wasn't thinking about this but he was.
He said, "Here.
Here's my home number.
Call me, spend the night with my family, if
the bus can't make it through."
I was like, whoa, who did I just have an encounter
with?
I don't know what, what is this?
To this day, I model my behavior and my attention
that I give to students, based on that first
encounter with Carl.
I could be on the phone in my office with
the White House, a student shows up.
I say, Barack, I got to call you back.
I got a student.
[Laughter] You know, I 
only met him four times.
We weren't beer drinking buddies or anything.
I, only four times, that was the first.
The second encounter, 17 years later.
It was a meeting held in Virginia, Westfield
Conference Center, to talk about NASA's future.
What are the goals that the then new administration
would have for NASA?
Carl Sagan organized it, brought together
some of the greatest communicators of our
time.
At the time I thought I gave a pretty good
talk.
I thought I communicated pretty good.
And I go there, and I'm in the company of
the greatest communicators I had ever heard,
and I found out I was just average, or a little
below average.
There are people with such, who articulately
conveyed exactly what they thought and exactly
what they meant, and it was interesting and
I wanted to learn more.
We all got together to talk about, what is
NASA's mission?
Is it just to beat the Russians?
Is it to inspire?
What, let's lay this out.
That was my second time that I met him.
Third time was his 60th birthday back in Cornell.
A couple hundred people in attendance.
I was honored to have been invited.
I'd only met the guy twice.
And over dinner, there were these accolades
that just kept coming, from students, and
teachers, and friends, and loved ones, and
students and teachers again, and colleagues,
and it just kept going and going.
And these were, these were praises that normally
you only hear after someone is dead.
There's an old saying, exaggeration is allowed
after someone has died.
You don't have to be completely truthful because
you're trying to reflect on all that was good
about a person.
This was happening in Carl's life.
He had not, it, he, it would be two years
later he would die.
We're hearing testimony as though someone
had just died and everyone is summoning up
only their best thoughts to share.
And I'm thinking, could anyone be worthy of
this much praise in life?
Yes, in death, ten years later, you say great.
But in life?
Is that even possible?
After that dinner, he gave a public talk in
the largest auditorium on the Cornell campus.
We're all there.
He gives a riveting, compelling, scientifically
informed, intellectually accurate, emotionally
honest talk about our place in the universe.
To this day, it was the greatest performance
I had ever seen.
And every minute through that lecture I'm
thank, I'm say, thinking yes, he has deserved
everything I just heard.
This person is real.
We didn't just imagine this up in death.
They're accurate recollections in life.
I was influenced by this man because I said,
if I'm ever a science communicator, I want
to be that compelling.
There was a fourth encounter I had with Carl.
That was at his eulogy.
There were two, West Coast and East Coast.
I presented at his eulogy at the Cathedral of
St John the Divine, New York City, my hometown.
Why was he there?
He was there.
I'm remembering the novel, Rebecca, published
1938, by Daphne du Maurier, two years later
made into a film.
What's interesting about that story?
Rebecca, the title of the movie, describes
the main character of the story, and the main
character never is there.
The main character is dead.
And you assemble what you know of her from
everyone's recollection from the beginning
to the end of that film.
She is more real than anything else because
who are we if not measured by our impact on
others?
That's who we are.
We're not who we say we are.
We're not who we want to be.
We are the sum of the influence and impact
that we've had in our lives on others.
So several of you have asked, "Wherever you
are Carl."
Carl is here right now.
Thank you.
