Blog 11

For the last blog of the semester, I thought it fitting to attend the closing Year of the City event, "Looking Back and Moving Forward." The event was basically a wrap up of all aspects of the Year of the City. I found it very informative because there were certain parts of Year of the City that I had not heard about or experienced.
For instance, I was unaware of how Year of the City was born, but learned thanks to Father Linnane's speech. Year of the City was devised after Hurricane Katrina had destroyed parts of New Orleans. Father Linnane explained that this devestation changed the way we view the world after a great city had been destroyed. It exposed the negative way in which cities operate. Instead of focusing on negativity, positive elements should be discovered about a city, which is why in Year of the City, students are encouraged to find the treasures in Baltimore.
Loyola's place in Baltimore also had an effect on the birth of Year of the City. Althought Loyola and the city are deeply intertwined, Loyola looks over Baltimore, but rarely takes part in the city. The prupose of Year of the City was to get students immersed in all it has to offer.
After Father Linnane's speech, many people involved with different parts of Year of the City spoke about their involvement with the program. The speaker that stood out the most for me was Jessica Kimak, who spoke about Loyola's Habitat for Humanity House. In this part of Year of the City, students worked on renevating an old house in Baltimore for a homeless woman to live in. Students worked long and hard during some of the coldest months of the year for the simple pleasure of knowing they had just removed one homeless person from the harsh streets of Baltimore. Pictures accompanied Jessica's speech, and I'm sure that seeing the home recipient's smile made it worthwhile to the workers. This aspect of Year of the City showed what a positive impact Loyola students had on one person.
One speaker, Amy Maher, said that Year of the City allows Loyola students to know about Baltimore- the poverty, housing situations, different areas, etc. At this point, I started to think about my own experiences with Year of the City. During the year, I have visited many different areas of Baltimore, such as Federal Hill, Mount Vernon, and the Charles Theater. I have volunteered at the Chara House, working with poverty stricken children infected with HIV. All of these events were in some way a result of the Year of the City. Because of my immersion into Baltimore, my assumptions about the city have changed, which is one of the goals of the Year of the City program.
Also during this presentation, I began to think about my friends at home, spread out in colleges all over the country. I thought about how some of them were in the greatest cities in the country, New York, Boston, Miami, and yet none of them had gotten to know their cities the way I had gotten to know mine. They had never taken a public bus to an area they had never been in, explored that area and then get themselves back to campus. Their lives were defined by the walls of their campus, while mine was spilling out into the streets of downtown Baltimore.
In retrospect, I am so grateful for Year of the City because it forced me to experience many things I wouldn't have done on my own.