Day of the Living Dead
As someone with a profound interest in and curiosity about death culture, I was very excited when visiting family last summer I had the opportunity to visit several cemeteries outside of Denver, Colorado. Headstones can tell us so much about the past and I am endlessly fascinated with them as rich sources of material culture, and taking the time to visit them instills within me a sense of connection to peoples, places, and times that feel so out of reach and foreign. One cemetery in particular, located in an abandoned-ish mining town, gave me more pause than usual. I was caught off guard by just how... active this cemetery is. There were so many gifts left throughout the cemetery, many more than I am used to seeing, particularly where the headstones have been so worn and weathered as to be nearly indecipherable. As I worked my way throughout the cemetery, which had been built into the landscape and not the other way around, I found countless children's toys, coins, and even small works of art left as tokens of respect for those who had passed long ago. This experience instilled in me the notion that the connections that exist between the living and the dead are very real and that our humanity brings us together, with brief fleeting moments and offerings facilitating the very real exchanges between the past and the present for which so many long.
A cemetery
Summer 2020
Kendyl M, Schmidt, 34, PhD Student
day-living-dead
The Original Starry Night
"Starlight Over the Rhone" is a precursor to the much more famous "Starry, Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh. It features a boundless black sky that merges into the murky waters of the Rhone below. Stars shine brightly above and are reflected in the river.
The sky, of course, is the most impressive piece of the work, but what I love most about this piece, is the couple walking along the river. The two appear in the bottom right of the painting, and are dwarfed by the landscape. Their faces are indecipherable, and they drift through the space. I think about them often, mostly I think about the idea of relationships and humanity. There are two people, together, compact, wandering, amidst this vast emptiness. They are together.
We don't know who they are, but their comfort is palpable. It almost doesn't matter who they were, it is simply the idea they present: an idea of comfort, of belonging, of compassion, of love that exists amongst all the black. I look at this painting whenever I feel sad, and think about all the love in the world. I think about how in a universe full of emptiness, of vastness, we still have each other here.
Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh's painting "Starlight Over the Rhone"
2011
Katie Ligmond, 27, Ph.D. Candidate in Visual Studies
original-starry-night
The world we live in isn't as big as you may think
On Tuesday February 6th of 2018, I watched SpaceX launch Falcon Heavy and successfully land two of its boosters. This launch was inspiring to many people because it was the first rocket launched capable of reaching Mars. The fact that Musk choose to launch his personal Tesla Roadster as a deadweight payload was a truly remarkable sight. The world was shown video footage of an already revolutionary electric car soaring above the atmosphere on a rocket developed by a wildly successful private space company.
However, this was very touching to me for a different reason. The last time the world experienced this level of competition over space exploration was the cold war. This race granted us a variety of technological innovations that helped the quality of life of citizens all over the globe including braces, smoke detectors, freeze dried food, and water purifiers just to name a few. These are great products but it is saddening to know that they were only possible due to a huge conflict between world superpowers where disputes between politicians put millions of innocent lives at risk.
The world we live in is full of conflict and competition. Tensions are high between the citizens of our nation and it is easy to feel like the world is very divided. I want to see a generation that focuses on bringing people together and fighting to improve everybody's quality of life rather than focusing on distances and widening cultural divides.
Seeing a dummy in an electric car soaring through the atmosphere instead of a nuclear warhead hit me with a wave of emotion. The blue sphere in the background was mesmerizing- you cannot see borders, buildings, populations, or the small parts of life we become accustomed to. The only sight is the entirety of our world. Just a small orb containing every human, every home, every life on earth together. Space exploration not only allocated money toward research and science rather than war and hate, but it brings the human race together in a way that nothing else can do.
I truly feel like my life has changed since seeing this. Whether I am driving around or standing in line among strangers I feel more care and respect for those around me. I know that I am a very insignificant part of our entire world and I feel more connected to those around me rather than living life looking for differences. Some may argue that we should focus on problems here on Earth but I think that space exploration brings us the innovations we did not know we needed here in the first place. In addition to that, I have never felt as connected to the rest of the world as I do now after seeing the February 6th launch. I think it is time we focus less on being citizens of our divided nations and put more effort into becoming citizens of this planet we share.
SpaceX
Falcon Heavy launch
February 6th, 2018
George, 21, student
world-isnt-as-big-as-you-think