MC Brouder
When words escape the tongue, they often find their way onto the page.
MC has been a freelance arts & culture journalist for The Boston Pilot, Irish Central, Boston Irish Reporter, The Harvard Crimson, and ad agency 360i, among others. Here are a few samples of her work:
On Finding Love and Yeats in Ireland
Still don’t know what Love means,
Still don’t know what Love means.
It’s the refrain from a a song called "Jolene" by Ray Lamontagne, one of my all-time favorite artists.
Does any one of us know what Love is?
Is it in the softness of another’s touch? Or in the music of a child’s most perfect, innocent laughter? Is it blowing in the wind; in the kiss of a passing breeze that tickles your eyelashes before it departs, as quickly as it came? Maybe it’s in a stranger’s helping hand, or even, in that sad little man who’s always curled up and confused inside Francis Bacon’s paintings.
The art museums at Harvard University together house the fourth largest collection of artwork in the world. But as plans continue to renovate the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard’s collections are experiencing declining rates of student attendance—despite the recent efforts by administrators and the Student Friends of the Harvard Art Museums to attract new visitors.
Why aren’t more students touring the halls of the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museums? Why are there no flashy flyers advertising the exhibits dotting the Yard’s many kiosks and sandwich boards? And what can the museum’s administrators do to make their exhibit halls a more integral part of the Harvard student experience?
Thriving After Tragedy
When Rev. Vincent Fusco came to assess the damage at Coney Island Lighthouse Community Kitchen after Superstorm Sandy hit, his heart sank. “In a word, it was totalled. Totally and completely wiped out.”
Fusco is CEO of Coney Island Lighthouse Community Kitchen, which serves hot meals to hundreds of members of the surrounding community every week through both its onsite and mobile kitchens, along with hosting programs and courses for those in need.
After estimating that the building incurred a staggering $150,000 in damages from Superstorm Sandy, Rev. Fusco wasn’t sure whether the food pantry would become a casualty, or a survivor, of the storm. “When Sandy hit, we thought, this may be the end,” said Fusco.