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]

[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

[ciquery]

Sometimes it feels like if I can’t choose my response and presence in this world, the kind of person I want to be, then I truly have nothing.

So many who live out their lives in reactive loops, some kind and respectful (I suppose that could also be a loop) but also some with bitterness and spite. Something shattered my kind and calm reactive loop, and I don’t want to be an easy victim anymore, but I refuse to fall into the “it’s a cruel world” trap. Teamwork, collaboration, and peer compassion, are the only reasons that humans survived past the stone ages

[ciquery]

Still figuring this out :| it’s a practice, not an arrival

[harvardfineartslib]

On the cover of this publication entitled “I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America” is Septima Poinsette Clark (1898 – December 15). As one of the most effective activists for the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. referred to Clark as "The Mother of the Movement". Believing that literacy was the key to empowerment, Clark developed literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for Black people.

Recalling how she and her team recruited teachers for a citizenship school in the South, she said: “We were trying to make teachers out of people who could barely read and write. But they could teach. If they could read at all, we could teach them that c-o-n-s-t-t-u-t-i-o-n spells constitution.”

Here are more remarks from Septima Clark:

“I think that the work the women did during the time of civil rights is what really carried the movement along. The women carried forth the ideas. I think the civil rights movement would never have taken off if some women hadn’t started to speak up.“

“I’d tell the children of the future that they have to stand up for their rights. They have an idea that they can. But I feel that they are shadows underneath a great shelter and that they need to come forth and stand up for some of the things that are right.” (From “I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America”)

I dream a world : portraits of black women who changed America Photographs and interviews by Brian Lanker ; edited by Barbara Summers ; foreword by Maya Angelou. New York : Stewart, Tabori & Chang : Distributed in the U.S. by Workman Pub., 1989. English HOLLIS number: 990016501590203941

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

"The Cat's Dream" by Utamaro from Siegfried Bing's Artistic Japan v.6 (1891).

Full text here.

[ciquery]

It’s okay to be naive. Trust means that you still believe in the possibility of good things, and over time you’ll learn when to give it and when to withhold it.

[vintage-tigre]

[ciquery]

Happy tears on the tram ride home, after messaging friends of the safe flight back - and thanking them for the happy memories. Probably looks strange to onlookers but ugh what is a life, without people who make foreign lands feel like home :’) i miss them

Weird mix of melancholy and joy, and lots of gratitude - after spending so much time feeling like a burden to people i care for, to get a reminder that some friends will accept you as you are

[ciquery]

To have goofy, kind and earnest friends is a treasure -

something invisible you’ll never measure,

a calm amicable love which makes goodbyes a sighful endeavor.

I love my friends, and I wish them health, measured challenges, and peace - a life well lived, always together