The Miracle Planet
...earf
This week we are locking in. We are sitting cross legged on the floor with our backs against the foot of the couch. We are propping our arms up on the coffee table. And we are grabbing a Mondo™ out of the fridge as we take in the astounding sights and sounds from the most interesting planet of them all: Earth.
I came across this box set at a thrift store that halted the intake and sale of VHS tapes years ago. Feeling a little confused as to why this was placed on the media shelf there, I brought it to the counter for the worker to give me a price on. They told me they couldn’t sell it because it’s not on their list of approved items. I was a little annoyed by that response, but politely asked what they intend to do with it if they couldn’t sell it to me. The employee set it back down in front of me in a bag without saying another word. We both smiled.
This was just a few months back. I thought about that interaction quite a bit over the time since, and this week I returned to that same store to dig through their clothes, as it’s starting to get warm here and all the nice shorts get picked through before summer hits.
To my surprise, the same employee came up to me to let me know they would be taking in VHS and DVD donations again, and asked me for advice on what the items should be priced at. I let them know what I felt was fair based off of the prices of media in other thrift stores in the area,
They pulled the employees only door open for me to peek inside and showed me what looked like a dozen moving boxes full of tapes. I hadn’t known this because I didn’t come back there for a couple months, but they had talked to the owner of the shop and got them to agree to start selling VHS and DVDs again for the first time since 2022. This is wonderful news to me!
They let me know they’d be hitting the floor next week and asked if I would stop by, which of course I said yes to!
From my time spent talking with the guys at the scrap yard and dump, I know there’s thousands of tapes that get thrown in the trash every week just in my area, and the main reason for this seems to be that most chain thrift stores just aren’t accepting them anymore. Around here we have a many independent thrift shops, and a good selection of Goodwills, but when Goodwill stopped accepting them in 2021, many of the independent stores followed suit.
It’s nice to see that some of the shops are coming around to seeing this decision as an error, and though it feels odd to say that I had a hand in it, I am happy with the outcome. I have thought about what could possibly be in all those boxes since i left, and I can’t wait to find out next week!
So let’s celebrate a little by popping in a few Reader’s Digest Educational tapes!
The Miracle Planet: Riddles of Sand and Ice
1992 | Runtime 55 Minutes
Earth's climate -- the delicate balance of water, sunlight, and temperature that defines the limits of life -- is constantly changing in ways that we are just beginning to understand.
Join respected television journalist Bill Kurtis as he explores the immense effects that the changing cli- mate has on the miracle planet's life. Find out what causes an ice age and watch, as though from space, as a glistening blanket of ice covers more than a third of the globe. Tunnel inside an Alaskan glacier to see for yourself how it moves, breaking off rocks and taking them with it. See the massive boulders from Northern Canada that were left in New York City's Central Park by a mile-thick glacier, then witness the spectacle of today's Manhattan under another such sheet of ice. Journey to the Sahara to see how the latest ice age, as it brought freezing death to much of the planet, made the desert bloom. What does the future hold? Are we heading into another age of ice? Or will our own effects on the atmosphere bring about a very different kind of climate change?
The Miracle Planet: The Heat Within
1992 | Runtime 55 Minutes
Amazingly, our planet, largely covered by cool oceans, is hot enough inside to shine like a star. Even more amazing, it was the energy from that blazing inner furnace that was responsible for bringing the blanket of water to the surface in the first place.
Join respected television journalist Bill Kurtis as he travels to the far corners of the earth, visiting places where the heat from within breaks forth -- Yellowstone, with its geysers and seaming vents; Iceland, the world's largest volcanic island and still growing; the great rifts in the ocean floor, where water grows hot enough to melt lead; the high Himalayas, thrust up from the ocean bed because of the heat within. See Earth as it once was, with only one continent, and watch as the seething power of the planet's inner furnace breaks that continent apart and carries the pieces to their pre- sent positions. Discover the many ways in which the heat within has shaped and continues to change — the very nature of the miracle planet we share.
The Miracle Planet: The Third Planet
1992 | Runtime 55 Minutes
Earth: enwrapped in clouds, rich in water, suspended like a jewel in space a unique planet of intricate systems, perfectly balanced to sustain a bewildering and splendid diversity of life. How did it come to be the way it is?
Join respected television journalist Bill Kurtis on a journey of discovery into the most distant past. Watch the sun itself form from dust and hot gases, the inner planets from colliding meteorites that brought water and amino acids the building blocks of life. See how Earth's position, third from the sun, makes it alone a refuge for life. Witness the miracle of the first rainfall. See how meteorites continue to bombard our planet, and be a spell- bound witness to the most recent catastrophic collision, 65 million years ago, which may have brought an end to the Age of Dinosaurs. And what of the future? Another such collision is sure to happen some day - but when?
Well, that’s it for this week! I hope you enjoyed the tapes! If you’re looking for more, please check out my page on Archive.org for the full list of digitized media. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message right here or drop a comment below. If you haven’t already, please check out the one of my ocean-themed posts below, or all of my other previous posts here. Thanks so much for checking out this week’s edition of Diptych!
See you soon!
—Forrest
An $8 liquor store box full of nature documentary tapes from a school library sale
Back in mid November when the (good) news that Archive.org would eventually be full restored being circulated, I thought about what I’d like to do to celebrate. I’d been going through a box of tapes I’d picked up recently from a school library sale —watching an hour or two of these nature documentaries every day and really enjoying them. Sometimes I’d put them on in the background with a record on or muted while I write or think or do some other task, but while I’m often able to do this with movies or tapes, these really captured my attention.
Baked Alaska
Since the new year, I’ve come across quite a few tapes centered around America’s largest state, Alaska, so that’s what I’m highlighting in this week’s article. From Juneau to Denali, the dawn of civilization to the year 2000, there’s no way to cover everything Alaska has to offer, but this week we tour the Inside Passage and beyond.
Welcome to Train Month!
Well, it’s June, and I’ve got a surprise for all my railfans! As I mentioned back in March, I’ve been collecting train media for well over a year now, and it’s FINALLY time to share what I’ve found. I’ve got tapes from yard sales, a DVD from my local Goodwill, box sets from a library free bin, and maybe even an LP from a record shop! I know many of you have been waiting a long time for this, so ALL month I’ll be bringing you the best train content I could find. And uh… I’ve found a lot!