Decentralized Query Catalyst

Come with questions, leave with questions. Curiosity is contagious? Citizen researcher, chronically ill, mental health advocate, and internet human (he/him). If anyone needs a reminder, intersectional feminism is for everyone. I support critical race theory, a free Palestine, agriculture laborers, and the right of our society to safe, compassionate, accessible and robust education

[ciquery]

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

"Rapid Jottings" by Kitao Keisai Massayoshi from Siegfried Bing's Artistic Japan v.6 (1891).

Full text here.

[harvardfineartslib]

What caught our eye in this photograph were the beautifully hand-colored watermelons!

They sure look inviting during these hot summer days. But this print wasn’t originally a color print. It was a monochrome albumen print made from wet collodion or dry plate glass negative, and colors were added by Japanese artists or colorists using water-soluble pigments.

Introduced in Europe in the 1840s, the practice of hand coloring photographs became more refined and widespread in Japan. By the 1880s, it had become a common practice and a defining characteristic of Japanese tourist photography.

Visit Early Photography of Japan, a digital collection of more than 40 souvenir photograph albums and illustrated publications with over 2,000 images from Widener Library, the Fine Arts Library, and Harvard-Yenching Library. These images primarily document the early history of commercial photography in Japan and are representative of what is often called Japanese tourist photography or Yokohama shashin.

Vegetables dealer 22 x 27 cm. Hand-colored albumen print mounted on cardboard and hinged in album. From the album: Japan, Korea, Port Arthur, Manchuria, p. 123 part of Early Photography of Japan HOLLIS catalog record Harvard Fine Arts Library, Special Collections EGS27.109  HOLLIS number: olvwork625892

[ciquery]

Written on the plaque:

“Lands of the historic Irvine Ranch including CRYSTAL COVE STATE PARK have been designated a CALIFORNIA NATURAL LANDMARK.

Dedicated April 2008.

Crystal Cove State Park is a part of more than 40,000 acres of original Irvine Ranch land that represents some of the rarest, richest and most threatened biological and geological features in the state.”

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

Two lunar maps, including a diagram of a lunar eclipse (top) from Balthazard-François de Merles's Papers from the 4th quarter of 17th century.

Full text here.

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

A crane with maple tree and deer with cherry tree from Shiichi Tajima's Masterpieces selected from the Kôrin school v.1 (1903).

Full text here.

[ciquery]

“So vent, own it, live to tell it, what made you want to die? What let you live? What does survival mean to you? What did it mean to James Baldwin? What does Jimmy mean to us when he is suffering and opaque, that he doesn’t as a purely oracular cultural hero whose subjectivity is masked by his capacity to reveal us to ourselves?”

Preface to James Baldwin’s Unwritten Suicide Note

BY HARMONY HOLIDAY

“Baldwin changes his mind, his mandate becomes more vivid to him. He has to keep witnessing these very agonies and ruptures, to keep coming unhinged and living to tell it. He is bound to this earth, where he must finish inventing Another Country. The suicidal impulse, a sign he is at an impasse, would fade and intensify in a haunting pattern throughout Jimmy’s life.

…

As explicit as depressive episodes and fixation on suicide are in Baldwin’s biography, as emotionally fragile as he was in private life, it’s almost sinister that he is used by the literary and cultural machine as a symbol of the uncomplicated and elegant great Black hope, the well-adjusted unwavering public intellectual and writer to whom we can all look for an example of how to master the discipline and the image of artistic genius.

…

What story does Jimmy Baldwin’s very real recurring attempts at suicide, even at the height of his fame and creative power, tell? How does his lust for death complicate his effectiveness at life, his legacy? For every James Baldwin, there are a whole lot of corpses, a lot of people who went under, he once lamented during an interview toward the end of his glorious tenure on earth. The versions of him who almost went under, and not just the stellar easy-to-admire iterations, are the ones in need of our love and recognition. As in James Baldwin, so in ourselves. This revisionist history becomes an ongoing act of love and reparation, of rescuing us from the edge by letting us admit when we reach it and almost leap forth, almost wanna be ready. Suffering that precipice in silence is not a sign of courage, not romantic, not poetic, not going to make you see what James Baldwin saw, not going to impede the truth from its clamoring march forward into and through and beyond you. So vent, own it, live to tell it, what made you want to die? What let you live? What does survival mean to you? What did it mean to James Baldwin? What does Jimmy mean to us when he is suffering and opaque, that he doesn’t as a purely oracular cultural hero whose subjectivity is masked by his capacity to reveal us to ourselves?

…

Maybe giving up, knowing that some part of him was not afraid to die, is what allowed him to live. It was a time for suicide, or good works, he suggested. Those were his choices. Such was the glamor of a Black American hero during that era.

…

Let the record show that the American Dream is so many nightmares that some Americans dream of death for comfort; and what are we doing to make it better? The profiles that paint this man’s life as some kind of literary fairy tale marred only by the political climate, are lies. Gay and Black and famous and beautiful and walking over the edge every day, James Baldwin longed to leave this world as much as he worked to save it from evils like race prejudice, homophobia, [unregulated] capitalism and imperialism—let the myth of the jovial cultural servant die at last, that he may live.”

[ciquery]

A quick moment to thank the people whose small observations or nudges, make everything feel a little less lonely. Contagious kindness

You know who you are - and even if this post isn’t about you, why not? To be a healthy caring presence is an unmatched potential that everyone may discover in their own spiritual symphony.

Thank you for the moments

Edit: it’s also okay to hibernate and calm down, if you’re feeling burned out. Rest is productive, and so is letting yourself be simple in actions and outputs

[ciquery]

blood·sugar·canto

by IRE’NE LARA SILVA

this is what they will not tell you

and this is what you must know

if you hear nothing else i say

hear this

you cannot live in fear

you cannot heal in fear

fear will never make you stronger

fear is the language many doctors speak

they’ll say this is going to kill you

your organs are being bathed in acid

amputation dialysis coma death

and when the body does not obey

as the doctor demands

more pills

more insulin

more syringes

more often

and it will wear on you

the constant battle of

necessity versus necessity

a box of syringes

vs

gas money

the price of sufficient insulin

against

the cost of groceries

testing strips and lancets

vs

the light bill

the cost of one healthy meal

vs

the cost of three fast food meals

another co-pay

and another co-pay

vs

the cost of not seeing the doctor

they will say there are no choices

but there are always choices

though the choices

we make out of fear

are not choices

fear is a prison

fear is worse

than the disease

fear

takes

everything

some will say this is war

war raging within us

blood turned against itself

our bodies falling in battle

the enemy everywhere

within and without

but the word war

turns us against ourselves

and the word disease

renders us victims

and the war is unending

and a war always claims

casualties

in a war

there is no room

for dreaming oneself well

and the first part of the dream

is learning to listen

to your body and to your blood

it is not as simple

as

eat this not that eat that not this

take this not that take that not this

do this not that do that not this

you learn to listen

until you are the one writing the song

and the daily challenges

are the discordant notes

you must work into the score

making something more beautiful

than what there was before

not planned not wanted

but more powerful

because it is truth

but the music

will not come

if you are afraid

music like most things in life

enters in only one of two ways

el amor o el dolor

through love or through pain

i know

no one said

we were worthy of love

no one said

we were precious

or that our lives were gifts

no one said

let us learn to love ourselves

heal ourselves

care for ourselves

care for each other

teach each other

how to begin

with this essential task

of

loving ourselves

i will begin here

with these words

learning love

one utterance at a time

i will not

live

in fear

i will make song

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/161809/bloodsugarcanto

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

A type of carriage referred to in the text as "L'Hirondelle" from Science new ser.:v.1 (1883).

Full text here.

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

Cut and polished fluorite, blistered copper, and agate from James Sowerby's British Minerology v.5 (1817). Full text here.

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

49 different seals used by artist Kawanabé Kyōsai to stamp his work over the course of his career from J. Conder's Paintings and studies by Kawanabé Kyōsai [1911].

Full text here.

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

A model of a giant octopus in the workshop of the Yale museum from Science new ser.:v.1 (1883).

Full text here.

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

A series of maps showing "The Waning of the Ice Sheet in New York State" over time from Annual Report of the New York State Museum 65th:v.1 suppl. (1911).

Full text here.

[ciquery]

Spring. A reminder to reset

[ciquery]

“I survived an attack,” she says, “and nothing happened to me, and I laughed it off. I thought nothing could scare me, nothing. My heart was so strong. And then I was scared of small things, and that just broke me. But, you know, in this journey I realised what it means to be actually brave. When you can not only fight the real threats out there, but fight within.”

—

Yousafzai glows when she talks about the girls’ school she opened back home – she felt it was not enough. There was “always this feeling … could I do more?” Her youthful idealism began to flake and peel off in patches, and then rub clean away. “As I was getting older,” she says, “I was realising that things are not as straightforward. Things are more complex.”

—

As a teen, Yousafzai had seen the world as a biddable place. She would reason with world leaders! Show them girls’ education was important! As she got older, she began to see the world as it really is.

You became cynical? I ask.

“Yeah,” she says, “for sure.” She gives a bitter, clipped laugh. “100%.”

—

“I do feel like I’m more cynical,” she says. “But, at the same time, I do my work. I know that optimism is the only way you can keep going, because there’s no other option.”

‘To the men who ran the world, I was just a photo op’: Malala Yousafzai on growing up, getting cynical – and how getting high nearly broke h

The global icon of women’s education is ready to tell the full story of her turbulent recent life, from arguing with her parents to being gh

[ciquery]

It’s a weird day. Alone for the holidays (passively accepted it without any emotional protest or sorrow this time), underwent a root canal operation by an overworked endodontist, and mulling over the birthday of our deceased cousin - who should’ve been here, enjoying life.

Wavering between grief, sentimentality, and stoic fatigue.

This is what it means to be alive. Feeling big and small, powerless and yet connected.

I wish my cousin were here, I wish I hadn’t lapsed in my sanity, I wish life weren’t so messy and people so caustic.

But I’ve been looking up old songs for nostalgia, and I’ll think of our cousin’s electronic music zest as I listen to this track

[ciquery]

Listening to this again and thinking of our cousin