Craig Bartlett spoke to students in Astronomy and Cosmologies

Lecture Hall 3 has seating for 100 people.  Last Friday, it was filled to the top row with students eager to hear from the revered creator of Hey Arnold!. For almost 2 hours, Craig Bartlett ’81 kept us enthralled with stories of his long and winding road: growing up in Western Washington, college at Evergreen, on to Los Angeles and the magic world of television.

He shared clips from the iconic Arnold series, as well as from the claymation Penny Cartoons (a segment on Pee Wee’s Playhouse). We were delighted to see extended clips of a show that never made it to air, Party Wagon (which can be seen on You Tube.This Bartlett fan says “opportunity missed, TV network people!”).

We also enjoyed hearing the story of how Bartlett moved to Henson Studios and created the pre-school hit series, Dinosaur Train for PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). Listen closely to that catchy theme song.  That’s Craig himself performing the song he wrote for the show opening.

Craig is turning his creative energy toward outer space as he develops a new series for PBS called Jet Propulsion.  It is his work on this show that created the link with the Evergreen program Astronomy and Cosmologies.  Don’t see it yet?  Here’s a blurb from the program description:
How have people across cultures and throughout history understood, modeled, and ordered the universe they perceive? From sacred stories to physics-based astronomy, we will explore a variety of cosmological concepts in science, literature, mythology, philosophy, history and/or archaeoastronomy.

Sound familiarly interdisciplinary, Greeners?  Ah yes.