Did you know that loneliness is contagious? That it can spread among friends and across social networks? So say researchers who recently published a study, conducted over the course of 10 years at three leading American universities: Harvard University; the University of Chicago; and the University of California, San Diego.
If your list of New Year’s resolutions includes experiencing more meaningful connections with your family, friends, and neighbors, consider joining psychiatrists Dr. Jacqueline Olds and Dr. Richard S. Schwartz in the BMA’s Meyerhoff Auditorium on January 10 at 3 p.m.
Olds and Schwartz, authors of The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century, published in 2009, will speak to how the modern American lifestyle leads us to feel lonely. As O, The Oprah Magazine wrote of these two Harvard Medical School psychiatrists: “their finger is on the pulse of something very real.” WYPR Culture Contributor Tom Hall will interview Olds and Schwartz about social isolation and its impact—and audience members will have ample opportunity to pose questions.
In their book, Olds and Schwartz hone in on a fundamental contradiction in contemporary American life: we feel that we must be busy all the time, yet this busyness isolates us from family and community. We work harder and longer, fill our calendars with obligations and activities, and even over schedule our children, yet many of us still feel a deep sense of isolation.
Social networking increases this feeling of loneliness. We are tethered electronically to others, but experience little of the old-fashioned sense of friendship, common cause, and community engagement that offered comfort in years past.
The Ritual of Public Solitude by Tonya Gregg
In the drawing above, currently on view at the BMA, Baltimore artist Tonya Gregg captures the sense of isolation that results from obsessive preoccupation with life on the internet, a sheer visualization of Olds and Schwartz’s thesis.
The impetus for Olds and Schwartz’s discussion at the BMA was the Museum’s current exhibition Edgar Allan Poe: A Baltimore Icon, and Alone, the only poem we know Edgar Allan Poe wrote in Baltimore.
Before you come to the discussion on January 10:
•Read Poe’s Alone.
While you’re at the BMA:
•Visit Edgar Allan Poe: A Baltimore Icon, which explores the theme of love and loss through Édouard Manet’s illustrations for Poe’s most famous poem, The Raven.
•See the companion exhibition, Baltimore Inspired by Poe, co-organized with the community arts group Art on Purpose. It features work by teaching artists and community participants, who took part in workshops last spring at the Enoch Pratt Free Library.
As a Poe devotee, Halloween weekend was truly a high point. The edgy 
Doreen Bolger is always on the move because she can’t stop seeing, supporting, and writing about the arts in and around Baltimore City. Her lengthy love affair for the arts began in Long Island when her father, an executive in the textile industry, brought home breathtaking fabrics every night from the heart of the garment district. 