He finished with "Home on the Range." And his version of that cowboy song included this excursus, which I've reproduced here as faithfully as I can because it brought me joy, and I wanted others to feel that as well.
“How often at night when the heavens are bright,
With the light from the glittering stars,
Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed
With the light from the glittering stars,
Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed
“Here the author of ‘Home on the
Range’ makes a grave error. There are inconceivably many stars. And if even a
billionth of those stars contain life, the lives they are living there must be
so different we could not even imagine them. Maybe their ways of tolerating and
living with one another are so far beyond ours that our most radical forms of
openness and kindness would seem cruel and draconian to them. (Probably we
would make war on them for that.)
“And he
asks a question of the stars: if their glory exceeds that of ours.
“I think
we can answer this in the affirmative.
“They are stars. We are flesh and
bone. We could not even approach a star. We could not even approach the Human
Torch. His touch would consume us in fire. And he’s just the Human Torch, not
some star that has been sitting in the firmament for longer than you can
imagine. Like, even if you understand math, you can’t really imagine how old
the stars are.
“If their
glory exceeds that of ours.
“Oh, give
me a home, where the buffalo roam…”
