the humanities

Not long ago, a clutch of gray haired veterans gathered under a grove of trees near the shining work of contemporary art called the Vietnam Memorial. They wore floppy jungle hats and faded camo fatigues that were tight now across their paunches. At the foot of the polished black granite walls, inscribed with names of those who perished in Vietnam, visitors left poems and letters, snapshots, mortarboard tassels, homemade cookies, a worn baseball glove, the foil wrapper from a Hershey's Kiss. Within the low-slung walls' embrace, people spoke in whispers as though in church. The group of sniffing vets huddled together, arms draped over each other's shoulders. A melody, soft and low, began to lift from the circle they formed. The people at the wall paused, without turning their heads, to hear a hushed rendition of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. The veterans intoned, "If you get there before I do,/Comin' for to carry me home,/Tell all my friends I'm a comin' too./Comin' for to carry me home."

Initially, critics called the untraditional memorial a "black gash" and an "enormous pit," but now the artfully wrought monument is the most visited shrine in the nation's capital. People kiss it, caress it, salute it, scream at it, pray before it, tape missives to it. Its sublime and receptive design makes "the wall" an inviting public site where citizens enact personal rituals of grief. Assembling in its shadow, those veterans drew upon a rich heritage of hymns and spirituals to enact a spontaneous liturgy that gave expression to their sense of loss. In this vignette, the traditions of music, art, and poetry are vital sources and vehicles that help people express and make sense of what it means to be human.

The humanities are alive. So much are they a part of us that NEH chairman Bill Ferris, Gr'69, calls the humanities "the intellectual air we breath, the cultural sea we swim in." He writes: "The humanities are the subject areas of history, literature, and languages, which taken together offer the best insights we have into our values, traditions, and ideals. Focusing on these ideas, discussing them, drawing strength from them and becoming more human because of them is the humanities in action."