Green Ghosts

I just wanted to share a couple of videos that are snaking their way through the cables that connect us to one another these days. Both of them (even though one is a jeans commercial) inspire you to get out of your own head for a moment, and consider the world around you.

The first is A Glorious Dawn, which features Carl Sagan (oh so hopeful for the potential of science to make us better!), Auto-tune, and some awesome music. It was recently featured on NPR's All Tech Considered, and I'm proud to say it was created by John David Boswell, who I used to BABY-SIT. Which means a) that I am old, but also b) that John David is super-talented.



The second is that Levi's commerical I mentioned. It's only luck that I saw it, because I rarely see commercials. I usually fast-forward through them, but I got distracted and all of a sudden I heard this amazing voice reciting poetry ... during a commercial break. I'm just glad Levi's decided to go pretentious with this ad campaign, because it was a great pause in the day, to just listen to Walt Whitman's wonderful words.



I'm not saying it's anything it's not; it is, after all, trying to make us buy jeans. It was just nice to hear.

Both of these voices out of the past -- Carl Sagan and Walt Whitman -- urged us to be the best versions of ourselves. Deeply concerned with nature, humanity, and the world around us, they are ghostly reminders that our frantic, frenetic culture has within it the potential to expand in ways that don't destroy us, but enlighten us.