The Deep & Simple Gold Mine

I stumbled (ok, Googled) upon an absolute gold mine this weekend. The Archive of American Television has posted a nine-part interview with Mr. Rogers from July, 1999. I'm only one hour into it, but already I'm thrilled, and moved, and so excited. And already I'm emailing Christofer saying, "We need to raise funds so we can license all of this great footage!"

I have two computers on my desk here at the MTV, a Apple and a Dell. I tend to do the bulk of my work on the MacBook, while watching broadband on the Dell (while, of course, CNN plays on the TV -- not so intentional, to be sure). So I was working and listening and I heard Mr. Rogers says, "Yunno what? Before we do that, can I say one more thing?"

I paused what I was doing, and watched...

"How many clothes can you wear? How many cars can you drive? How big of a shelter do you really need? Some people get so caught up in the trappings of life. At least I feel that they lose what is real. And so my desire is to help children realize that deep and simple are far, far more important than shallow and complicated and fancy."

I clapped and whooped out loud. Here he was saying almost exactly what he said to me that day in Nantucket! It's the thesis of the whole thing! And it completely hooks into what Bo and I discussed last week about consumerism's tendency to distract from spirituality! So cool.

But don't take my word for it. Set down what you're doing, and watch for yourself.

Archive of American Television Interview With Fred Rogers