Carl Sagan was one of the greatest science communicators of the last century. A planetary scientist and astrophysicist, he had a gift for explaining complex scientific concepts to the general public. He was also acutely aware of humanity’s place in the universe. It was Sagan who suggested to NASA that the Voyager 1 space probe should turn its camera around to snap one last photo of Earth before it sped away into interstellar space, from a distance of 3.7 billion miles away. The resulting photo, which shows the Earth as a tiny speck against the vastness of space, is known as the “Pale Blue Dot.” The image had little scientific value, but its significance was profound: It gave humans a perspective of our world out there in the vast emptiness — and us, as Sagan put it, as “momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.” 

Helen Keller, born in 1880, was only 19 months old when she lost both her sight and her hearing. She likened her early years to being “at sea in a dense fog,” but everything changed on March 5, 1887, when Anne Sullivan arrived at her door. Sullivan, who was herself partially blind, was 20 years old when she was hired to teach Keller language, including reading and writing. The two women became lifelong friends and companions. With Sullivan at her side, Keller went on to write 14 books and hundreds of essays. She toured the world and became an acclaimed speaker, advocating for disability rights and many other causes throughout her life.

Leave it to a poet to employ a word like “anneals.” It’s a scientific term, used to describe the joining of two complementary strands of nucleic acid through hydrogen bonds. An obscure word, yes, but also perfectly chosen for this metaphor. In Ann Lauterbach’s prose, art becomes the hydrogen bond through which well-matched individuals are connected. This lovely quote appears in Lauterbach’s 2008 book “The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience,” in which she explores the myriad ways in which art and poetry are integral to the human experience.