Blog 10

For this week’s event, I attended the Carole Maso lecture on April 11, 2007. Carole Maso is an English professor at Brown University. Today, she read some of her works that confronted ideas including coping with everyday issues that are presented in today’s world, pain, suffering, identity, and recovery. Her works can be applied to not only a single person’s life, but to the city of Baltimore as well as other cities.

One of the works that Maso read from is called “Mothering During Wartime”. This piece is a portrayal of the emotions felt by a mother whose child is fighting in Iraq. The feelings range from sadness to anger. Maso writes and gives the impression that the mother wants to absorb all of the pain and suffering experienced by her child who is in the midst of war. The poem describes feelings of despair but it also gives the reader hope in saying that life goes on. Events will unfold at different times but the most any person can do is meet them when they come. These events may be difficult to get through, but they are the events that will mold our identity and make us who we are. Just as in the way people learn from their mistakes, all of the events that occur in our lives have some affect on us that give shape to who we are.

“Young H Saved from Infamy” is a reminder of all the different issues that people face. In the piece is a description of a Holocaust survivor, a child in need of a bone marrow transplant, and the artist H. H had a difficult life but instead of choosing to give up he allowed for the events that were so difficult for him to help shape his future. He was able to use his past to mold a present life. He was not given up on by God so he felt that he needed not to give up. He needed to make something of his life and prove his worth.

The last point of Maso’s discussion was about cities. She spoke about living in New Jersey and how that has given her a different perspective on the different cities she has lived in. She also spoke about the September 11 terrorist attacks and how they have changed her life. Living so close the New York City, Maso spent a good deal of time there. She felt wounded by the attacks. In there aftermath, Maso has seen how fragile and timid many cities have become. These attacks changed the shape of the future of many places. Security has become on the most important issues and many people are afraid to fly. Maso said that if she could, she would be like an angel and take all of the cities in her hand as a means of comfort and protection for their people. She wanted to take away the pain experienced in the aftermath of terror.

Maso presents the idea of future in many of her works. She is open to the idea of possibility as well as personal growth. Her ideas can be applied to the Year if the City. By learning from the past and present histories of a city, we can grow to better understand the city itself and its people. In learning about the city, our ideas and views of the city will probably change and make us more capable to make changes that are so desperately needed in not just Baltimore but all places and in our lives.