Carl Sandburg
I am the people-the mob-the crowd-the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincoln. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincoln, — "I Am the People, the Mob," (1916)
Iney aue. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolnus. - "I Am the People, the Mob." (1916)
Carl Sandburg is dead. He died Saturday. He was 89. It was "pleasant." He was a poet, journalist, minstrel, guitarist, singer, historian, biographer. . .
thing more than a casual structure.
A high school drop-out at 13, Sandburg later went on to Lombard, where he received his college diploma and was editor of his college newspaper. After graduation he served as salesman, labor supporter, reporter, and advertising salesman. He kept struggling . . . struggling to keep his poet-side revealed.
His first works were disappointments. But then came "Chicago" in 1914. Its unconventional rhythms, diction, and imagery seemed to some to depart deliberately from those of conventional poetry. Nevertheless, the poem has some-
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler:
City of the Big Shoulders.
On his 89th birthday, Jan. 6, he said he would live to 99. He did not make it. His last year was quiet. He spent much time in bed. He kept in touch with current events. Occasionally he took a halting walk. In good weather he would sit on the porch of the small ranch home and strum his guitar.
He is now gone. But his poetry is here. Here forever to reign with Whitman's, Dickinson's, Donne's, and others.
When Abraham Lincoln was showered into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the as-
vasin... in the dust in the cool tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.
rockahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? . . . in the dust, in the cool toms?
any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns . . . tell me if the lovers are losers . . . tell me if any get more than the lovers . . . in the dust . . . in the cool tombs. — "Cool Tombs," (1918)
Atomic war?
"I do not know what weapons will be used in the next war," Albert Einstein said years ago, "but the one after that will be fought with bows and arrows."
The dangers of nuclear war which will sweep the earth are more latent than ever—China, the Soviet Union, the United States are showing us the way to mankind's destruction. As any event, as any aspect, the menace of a nuclear war, has made man stop and think about the facts he had probably seldom realized before.
Alarm keeps growing, though perhaps in the wrong directions. There are protests. There is concern about increased radioactivity everywhere. There is opposition to the construction of atomic piles, lest they explode. No doubt, the observation and publication of actually or potentially harmful phenomena is sensible and justified, but we must distinguish between three types of danger of which Karl Jaspers, the German physician and philosopher, warns us:
First, there are the dangers inherent in the peaceful use of atomic energy. The dangers seem to be substantial; disease and mutations may result from the continuous absorption of initially slight doses of radioactivity. But those, Jaspers said, can be studied and met like other dangers.
Second, in case of war there are dangers of unprecedented destruction. The superbombs, whether delivered by plane or rocket, immediately exterminate all life in a large area. In a larger surrounding area the victims die slowly. "In time," Jaspers continued, "survivors in this vaguely circumscribed zone will note disease and abnormalities in their offspring."
The third danger, due to cumulative effects which may be lethal contamination of the whole atmosphere, is the destruction of mankind and of life itself.
The atom bomb is today the greatest of all menaces to the future of mankind. In the past there have been imaginative ideas of the world's end, but now we face the real possibility of such an end. The possible reality which we must henceforth deal with, at the increasing pace of developments, is no longer a fictitious end of the world. It is no world's end at all, but the extinction of life on the surface of the planet.
A small thing in this situation is to think to look around us, to observe what is happening, to evaluate the world and ourselves, "until we feel the brutal new fact push our thinking to the very roots of human existence, where the question arises what man is and can be."
"I LISTA HAVE SO MUCH TROUBLE GETTING THEM IN AT CLOSING
HOURS ~~ WILL YOU TURN ON THE WATER, MAE?"
"Yessirree, Folks, Your Little Old Institution Of Higher Learning Has Right Here The Greatest Secret Cigarette Discovery Of The Age. Don't Crowd, Folks. Now I'm Gonna Tellya Something"
HERBLOCK
The Summer Session Kansan, student newspaper at the University of Kansas, is represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East St. New York, N.Y., 10022. Mail subscription rates: $4 a semester or $7 a year. Published and second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas every Tuesday and day of the week. Non-food折扣ed in national goods, service and employment advertised in the Summer Session Kansan are offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin.
The opinions expressed in the editorial column are those of the students on the staff of the paper. Guest editorial views are not necessarily the *xpression* on any opinions *xpressed* in the Summer Session Kansan are not necessarily those of The University of Kansas Administration or the State Board of Regents.
The Summer Session Kansan will print all the letters to the editor that space allows. All letters must be signed in ink by the sender with his address and the date of signing. The standard type of letter spaced and should exceed 290 points. Certain portions one or all of the letter may be deleted by the editor if they are contradictory to the policy of the paper.
Managing Editor Robert Stevens
Assistant Managing Editors Rick Folkmire, Rita Haugh and Roger Linnettii
Photo Editor Lynnel Q. Van Beschoten
Business Manager Tom DiBiase
EXECUTIVE STAFF
FACULTY ADVISERS: Business: Prof. Mel Adams; News: Blaine King
With Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe and Emily Taylor, dean of women, both on vacation
2 Summer Kansan editorial page Tuesday, July 25, 1967
KU students may have another decal to put on their rear window if the Lawrence license plate bill passes to go along side their KU registration and parking permits. What ever happened to the old safety rule of unobstructive vision?
Midwestern Music and Art Camp closes its 30th annual session this week. A few of the more romantic will be crying themselves to sleep, but the basic campers will be lying awake nights trying to devise some unique devastation before they go to the home fronts.
Skiteh Henderson departed camp Monday after a wonderful week. The no beer ban in Oliver Hall, where he was staying, must have gotten to him. He was willing to trade the $50 silver tray presented him last Saturday for a $4 case of beer.
KU's biggest flunk-out will be held this Saturday from 8 until noon. The Western Civilization department keeps claiming how few Jayhawkers are kept from graduating because of the exam, but at the same time will not disclose what percentage failed the exam last spring.
(the editor)
... just who is running the University this week?
Board of Regents beware. Now that Columbia University is pushing the experimentation with a cigarette filter that will take care of all the cancer causing elements, you may have to allow cigarettes to be sold with the proposed beer. Anyway, what is the difference in cancer causing elements in cigarettes from those found in cigars?
Capitol Hill has suggested a screening board for all the secretaries that want to wear mini-skirts. These men would decide which women could and could not. After looking over Mount Oread this summer the Inter-Fraternity Council might be wise in making the same move here in the fall.
Big Eight faculty representatives have new banned football mentors, such as Vince Gibson and Pepper Rodgers, from introducing prospective grid stars during half-time of basketball games. But the ever-bubbling Gibbon has come up with a new one. Each of the 11 Kansas State University sororities will host the football teams for Sunday dinner during the football season. What kind of public service will the KU Panhellenic Society have to come up with to top this?