Tuesday, April 16, 2013

"all our voices will blend when we touch common ground"

 
The world was a large and mysterious place.  Explorers traveled forth, with great pomp and circumstance and came back to tell of the strange sights and customs, dangers and diseases, wisdom and wonder that they saw.  They lectured to audiences and wrote books about all to this and more.
In the  1950s there was a revolution of  that shrunk the world down to their size of  a box that fits in ones living room.  This revolution of course was TV, and it spread out before us the vast array of humanity, the different lifestyles, the variety of skin tones and features, the ingenuity that made  life possible in so many different landscapes and climates.  It gave everyone of us the opportunity to see those far away places, people things and ideas.   I can only speak for myself, but it sharpened my curiosity, and made me want to know more about the  lives of people in other lands.
Now, if you will, travel forward to the late 60's, I was one of a group of High School students on a field trip, we were turned loose in a large bookstore, and the the book many if not most of us bought was "The Family of Man" .  riding home that evening on the bus, most of use had the reading lights on.

~~~~and now a few explanatory sentences from Wikipedia~~~~~
The Family of Man was a photography exhibition curated by Edward Steichen first shown in 1955 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
According to Steichen, the exhibition represented the "culmination of his career." The exhibition contained 503 photos from 68 countries which represented 273 photographers (163 Americans[1]) were selected from almost 2 million pictures submitted by famous and unknown photographers.[2] These photos offer a striking snapshots of the human experience which lingers on birth, love, and joy, but also touches war, privation, illness, and death. Steichen's intention was to prove, visually, the universality of human experience and photography's role in its documentation.
The exhibit was turned into a book of the same name, containing an introduction by Carl Sandburg, Steichen's brother-in-law. The book was reproduced in a variety of formats (most popularly a pocket-sized volume) in the 1950s, and reprinted in large format for its 40th anniversary. It has sold more than 4 million copies.
After its initial showing at The Museum of Modern Art in 1955, the exhibition toured the world for eight years, making stops in thirty-seven countries on six continents. More than 9 million people viewed the exhibit. The only surviving edition was presented to Luxembourg, the country of Steichen's birth, and is on permanent display in Clervaux / . In 2003 the Family of Man photographic collection was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in recognition of its historical value.[3]

World peace and and end to war, accepting that humans are all pretty much the same, was the hope then and now.  In "The Family of Man" we are more alike than we are different.  No matter where you live, the same things, love, family, birth, death, joy and sorrow are what make up our lives.  Our common ground, what should bring us together as a family of man.



When I first heard this song, "I thought who wrote that??? It's brilliant! " simple, truthful, straightforward; but especially joyful.







Common Ground


Common Ground Music - Ivan Lins Intersong Music ASCAP
Lyrics - Paul Winter, Michael Holmes, John Guth, Joel Sattler, Jim Scott




Voices are calling 'round the earth.
Music is rising in the sea.
The spirit of morning fills the air,
guiding my journey home.
Where is the path beyond the forest?
Where is the song I always knew?
I remember it's just around the bend,
in the village the music never ends.


In a circle of friends, in a circle of sound.
All our voices will blend when we touch common ground.


Somewhere is the melody we need.
There is a certain harmony,
Even a rhythm in the trees,
in the song that we've always known.
As every road comes to its end,
So every path must cross again.
Now I'm returning to my heart,
back to the song that is our own.


In a circle of friends, in a circle of sound.
All our voices will blend when we touch common ground.






Deep in my little kid soul, I still think, wish, hope and pray.


 

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