Today the text is the music and the music is the text. The words of the 1948 UN Human Rights Declaration, in their demands for and implicit belief in humanity – the vision of a better and fairer world that is within our reach if we choose it – remind us that we still have a long way to relieve the trauma that millions of people undergo everyday, imposed by cruelty, greed and injustice.

Eleanor Roosevelt, credited with its inspiration, was the chair person of the UN Committee that drafted the document. She referred to the Declaration as the “international Magna Carta for all mankind,” and considered the 30 Articles of the Declaration as her greatest achievement. It was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. Here is Roosevelt reading the preamble.

Composer Max Richter put her words to music, incorporating her reading of the preamble into a piece called All Human Beings from his new album Voices, to be released by the end of July. He then crowdsourced hundreds of readers of all ages who repeated the words in various languages, interwoven with the music. They are the voices of the title.

Here is an interview with the composer about his approach to music as a conduit for political or philosophical thought and here is a play list of his works broadcast on NPR.

Photographs today are a variety of finches, gold finches, house finches – the male plumage still intense for mating, to produce a second clutch of eggs. Their color comes from pigments in the food they eat, and so varies depending on the quality of the food. The better quality food, the more intense color, the more likely to be chosen as a mate by Ms. Finch….

I chose finches because they range across the entire world – in tune with the United Nations mission. Bunting, canary, cardinal, chaffinch, crossbill, Galapagos finch, goldfinch, grass finch, grosbeak, and sparrow classify as finches.