Arts in New York City: Baruch College, Fall 2008, Professor Roslyn Bernstein

Some people call it a game, others say it’s a pastime; but to me, baseball is life.  The smell of a new wooden bat, fresh cut grass, and perfectly raked dirt is all I need to be happy.  Baseball has been an aspect of my life since I first stepped onto the top of the dugout of legendary Yankee Stadium.  At the age of four, my tiny body bounced up and down on this structure, ignorant to the history I was making in my own life.  Ever since that day, I knew it was this great sport that flowed through my veins.

Unlike many other things in life, baseball is straightforward.  It makes perfect sense to me.  School, on the other hand, is filled with complicated formulas, historical facts, and tests to study for.  All of these things that cause anxiety and made everyday life tedious are forbidden here on the baseball diamond.  It is almost as if there is an unwritten rule that says, “forget everything, just think baseball.”  Now this is something I can relate to in every way, shape, and form.  Catching, throwing, and hitting a baseball are what I take pride in, things I live for. [Read more →]

When I walked out of the elevator of the seventh floor of the William and Anita Newman Library Building, I saw posters and flyers telling all that Francine Prose was amongst us.  To be honest, at first I didn’t truly understand the magnitude of having such an accomplished writer at Baruch willing to talk to Macaulay Honors Students about her life’s work.  I soon realized this was a privilege not just a mandatory part of my Arts in New York City course.  Professor Roslyn Bernstein and the rest of the esteemed Baruch College staff had nothing but praises regarding Francine Prose and the novels she wrote, including the book my fellow classmates and I recently read, Reading Like a Writer. [Read more →]

Trying to keep a positive attitude about the upcoming opera, as I walked into the Metropolitan Opera my perspective drastically changed.  Earlier in the week, I was actually looking forward to “Doctor Atomic” since it was based on a topic I was greatly interested in, the atomic bomb.  One thing I was not looking forward to was the opera style singing that was to be expected in the performance.  When I think of opera, I imagine heavy-set opera singers singing so loud that it shatters wine glasses and audience members’ eyeglasses.  This was the way it was in the old days, opera singers were usually heavy men and women because they were the only singers capable of hitting the loudest notes.   I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was wrong about the big-boned singers.  To be fair, as an eighteen-year-old college student, opera is not my music genre of choice.  I would be much happier listening to hip-hop, rap, or even country music. [Read more →]

As soon as Jeff Mermelstein entered room 12-170 I knew it was going to be a fun, action-packed class.  It began with him asking Yuriy, a fellow classmate, and I to change seats in order to set up his projector.  Gladly, we did as asked.  As we were moved our belongings, Jeff cracked jokes to us and could have been mistaken for a college student himself.  Previously, I was expecting that class to be just another talk with a photographer, but I was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t. [Read more →]

When I initially sat down in anticipation of “Waltz With Bashir,” I didn’t know what to expect.  My instincts told me that it would be an old-fashioned movie with dated, classical music, making sense of the name of the play.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was wrong.  The delivery and style of the movie was truly unique and unlike any other production I have ever seen before.  [Read more →]

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All throughout our world vandalism can be found almost anywhere.  We may have to look a little harder and dig a little deeper, but no matter what anyone tells you, vandalism is always around.  Whether it is graffiti on the wall of the corner drug store or defacing a park bench, vandalism is a crime that has been plaguing places all over the world for years.  This crime can be especially seen in the five boroughs of New York.  Living and growing up in Staten Island, I wanted to focus on the ever-growing problem of vandalism around my home. [Read more →]

I titled my collage “The Cage” because I feel that there are two different parts to me. This duality is demonstrated by my mixed use of media and dimensions. I choose first off to put a set of red lips the same proportions as mine. I feel that they are literally the feature that stands out the most in mean and I betray most of my emotions by twisting and scrunching them up by turns. I choose a woodcarving I made to symbolize my ability to create something beautiful out of a simple block of wood using my hands and a chisel. It serves as a pedestal of sorts for my lips as my creativity holds up my sensitivity. 

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 Susan Meiselas’s decision to pursue photography has taken her around the world. From Nicaragua, El Salvador, small towns and even South Bronx Mieselas had focused on capturing the horror of war ravaged and impoverished nations. In her series “Carnival Strippers” she focused on following the itinerary of carnival strippers. She took pictures not only of their performances but their own personal moments when they stopped being entertainers on stage and started being human. [Read more →]

             First and foremost Samuel Freedman is know to the world as a widely read New York Times columnist, author and professor at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. To our IDC class and to anyone who has read his book “Who She Was”, he is a penitent son.

            Courteous as befits a man of his intelligence he entered our class a few minutes late with an apology and a reminder to Professor Bernstein that he had sent her two messages to alert her to his lateness. Even with deadlines earlier that morning he still took the time to come speak to our class. Mr. Freedman showed us immense presence of mind.           

He confessed in our class, as he looked down at his black patent leather shoes and nondescript dark slacks, “He wasn’t a very good son”. This confession is the first part to an explanation as to why he would write a book about his mother. Mothers are very interesting I suppose because everyone has one it is a universal subject. It was not impulse that drove him as he realized at her burial that he did not know her, it was guilt.

Running his hand back against his prickly salt and pepper hair he admitted he was “complicit on the silence of that subject”. He sugar coated his confession with a lower more even tone as he shifted side to side at the edge of the table at the front of the classroom, that he was at times uncommunicative and condemning of his mother. As he smiled at our questions and raised his shaggy eyebrows at some of them it was clear that he hadn’t quite gotten over this guilt in writing this book. He was as he put it “filled with shame and remorse at not being a more attentive son and better to her when she was sick”.

            I believe his guilt motivated him to research the aspects of her life with a “fanatical” attention to detail. He “knew what she was” but not “how she got there” and in saying that he acknowledged that he unfairly cast judgment on her. According the Professor Freedman if you “write about your own specific experiences and if done right, readers bring own experiences with reading and find connections”. It is sad for a young, idealistic student such as myself to admit this but theme of a son unable to reconcile with a parent is universal. Any adult with that much influence and proximity to a young child is bound to create disputes and disagreements. He believes in the “Periodic table of human nature – everything in material world can be broken down to finite elements; no matter what happens in human existence, everything breaks down to love, hate, disappointment, human personality, as long as you’re true to those, people will find the points of connection”. These themes are not all sad but Samuel Freedman is correct in his assertion that human beings sometimes relate to each other less in aspects in happiness and more in aspects of suffering because the later is just so much more prevalent.

            His final piece of advice to a group of idealistic and high achieving students that compromise Professor Bernstein’s Art’s In New York class addressed the future. As young individuals we will all eventually become parents ourselves. He warned us to be careful of denying our children of their “hearts desire”. If it is not something that “will kill them like drugs or something be careful of denying them that”. His mother was denied a chance of a happy marriage based on her love for Charlie and that is how she changed. I still find it unsettling how he could write in such a detached manner about his mother, someone who was in his life for so long. Only in addressing her past and sharing it was he able to find some sort of redemption. In forgiving her for her he forgives himself for the lack of communication between them. The book is written and published and he can move on to the future now.