(no subject)
The
first cry of a newborn baby in Chicago or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or
Rangoon, has the same pitch and key, each saying, “I am! I have come
through! I belong! I am a member of the Family.”
When you look at
these images you see that the wonder of human mind, heart, wit and
instinct, is here. You might catch yourself saying, “I’m not a stranger
here.” People, flung wide and far, born into toil, struggle, blood and
dreams, among lovers, eaters, drinkers, workers, loafers, fighters,
players, gamblers. Here are ironworkers, bridgemen, musicians, sandhogs,
miners, builders of huts and skyscrapers, jungle hunters, landlords and
landless, the loved and the unloved, the lonely and the abandoned, the
brutal and the compassionate - one big family hugging close to the ball
of Earth for its life and being.
Here or there you may witness a
startling harmony. In a seething of saints and sinners, winners and
losers, in a womb of superstition, faith, genius, crime, sacrifice, here
is the People, ever lighted by the reality or the illusion of hope.
Hope is a sustaining human gift.
Everywhere is love and love-making,
weddings and babies from generation to generation keeping the Family of
Man alive and continuing. Everywhere the sun, moon and stars, the
climates and weathers, have meanings for people. Though meanings vary,
we are alike in all countries and tribes in trying to read what sky,
land and sea say to us. Alike and ever alike we are all on continents in
the need of love, food, clothing, work, speech, worship, sleep, games,
dancing, fun. From tropics to arctics humanity lives with these needs so
alike, so inexorably alike.
If the human face is “the masterpiece of
God” it is here then in fateful registrations. Often the faces speak
what words can never say. Faces of blossom smiles or mouths of hunger
are followed by homely faces of majesty carved and worn by love, prayer
and hope, along with others light and carefree as thistledown in a late
summer wind. They are faces beyond forgetting, written over with faith
and dreams of mankind surpassing itself. An alphabet is here and a
multiplication table of living breathing human faces. An epic woven of
fun, mystery and holiness - here is the Family of Man!
- Carl Sandburg
first cry of a newborn baby in Chicago or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or
Rangoon, has the same pitch and key, each saying, “I am! I have come
through! I belong! I am a member of the Family.”
When you look at
these images you see that the wonder of human mind, heart, wit and
instinct, is here. You might catch yourself saying, “I’m not a stranger
here.” People, flung wide and far, born into toil, struggle, blood and
dreams, among lovers, eaters, drinkers, workers, loafers, fighters,
players, gamblers. Here are ironworkers, bridgemen, musicians, sandhogs,
miners, builders of huts and skyscrapers, jungle hunters, landlords and
landless, the loved and the unloved, the lonely and the abandoned, the
brutal and the compassionate - one big family hugging close to the ball
of Earth for its life and being.
Here or there you may witness a
startling harmony. In a seething of saints and sinners, winners and
losers, in a womb of superstition, faith, genius, crime, sacrifice, here
is the People, ever lighted by the reality or the illusion of hope.
Hope is a sustaining human gift.
Everywhere is love and love-making,
weddings and babies from generation to generation keeping the Family of
Man alive and continuing. Everywhere the sun, moon and stars, the
climates and weathers, have meanings for people. Though meanings vary,
we are alike in all countries and tribes in trying to read what sky,
land and sea say to us. Alike and ever alike we are all on continents in
the need of love, food, clothing, work, speech, worship, sleep, games,
dancing, fun. From tropics to arctics humanity lives with these needs so
alike, so inexorably alike.
If the human face is “the masterpiece of
God” it is here then in fateful registrations. Often the faces speak
what words can never say. Faces of blossom smiles or mouths of hunger
are followed by homely faces of majesty carved and worn by love, prayer
and hope, along with others light and carefree as thistledown in a late
summer wind. They are faces beyond forgetting, written over with faith
and dreams of mankind surpassing itself. An alphabet is here and a
multiplication table of living breathing human faces. An epic woven of
fun, mystery and holiness - here is the Family of Man!
- Carl Sandburg