Welcome to Devens

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Searcher08, I'm sorry I asked if it was a Bilderberg meeting since you already said it was. Sintra, 1996, though. That was a biggie.

[American Dream]

Hi IanEye-

There could be many towns with at least one foot in the Stepford wives' dimension. I have noticed a pattern in a few towns that seem to have a military/spook presence. These towns are in close proximity to a major military base known to house military intelligence tasked with domestic operations, multiple special forces detachments, and also specialized training centers for espionage and black ops. Weird thing about the towns in proximity is they seem to get mayors with extensive military backgrounds- officers with biomedical and/or PR backgrounds, long, long histories with the military, that sort of thing.

Now this seems to me a likely way that black ops would be protected, be they as mundane as medical monitoring of veterans, all the way through to social engineering and mind control experiments. So if you're wondering about certain towns, I say check out the mayors, and check out the permeation of elite military into the community...

Also, I have also heard of spook "retirement towns" that may host covert ops. Kathleen Sullivan said she lives in one such area in Tennessee, and another such notorious "spookville" is on Jupiter Island in Florida.

[IanEye]

Hello Everyone,
People have been talking lately about 'The Handmaid's Tale' in reference to Family alum Stupak and his lame amendment to the House healthcare bill, so I figured I'd kick this thread.
Devens has quite the Gilead vibe.

I also had a nice day in the country this past weekend, going back to the town of my youth. Things are looking a little overgrown there.
It is a little further west of Devens and the Miskatonic River, but I made it back to the Village by nightfall, and the pictures seem to fit here:

[IanEye]

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It's always nice on Labor Day to be able to take a bit of R and R (Research & Reconnaissance).

So, I tightened up my Tevas, and took a stroll through the grounds of that little ole town known as Devens.




*

[IanEye]

winterlocking cold breeze
of an old new
england crime on the nape
boneache always underfoot
now the failing sun and plangent
dance of winter birdsong
they know it's time
evening up
to leave it to the crow swamp alders
or other ones who'd own a web
of tears thrown to the wind
so long ago they froze

Thank you Norton.

[American Dream]

The Decline of Danvers State Hospital

For nearly a century, Danvers was a model asylum that hosted visitors from all over the world, including townspeople, family members, and friends. The formal gardens alone attracted roughly 12,000 visitors annually and those visitors often brought gifts for the patients such as books, magazines, and flowers for the wards. Danvers played host to visiting doctors and specialists, set up community outreach clinics, and established a nursing school.


Danvers State Hospital

These were the halcyon days of the asylum. In spite of brief mentions of overcrowding in early annual reports, Danvers was able to treat patients in relative comfort and, in most cases, discharge them as recovered. The great shift in mental health treatment came with the invention of psychopharmaceuticals, the early “hypnotics.” Though drugs like chloral hydrate, morphine, and opium had been in use for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the advent of modern antipsychotics such as chlorpromazine (Thorazine) “revolutionized” the care of the “mentally ill.”

With the help of this new breed of drug, hospitals were able to admit and manage a greater number of patients. The population at Danvers peaked at nearly 3,000 in the late 1960’s and into the early 1970’s. Patients were regularly treated using not only psychotropic medications but also electroshock therapy, hydrotherapy, and psychosurgery (also known as the prefrontal lobotomy). Asylum populations began to shift dramatically and hospitals moved away from the centralized model, choosing instead to unitize, working with the various regions to provide as much community support as possible.

Eventually reports began to surface of abuse and neglect within the hospital’s walls. Suspicious deaths, patient escapes, and violent assaults were all recorded (though not in as great a number as some might expect). By the late 1980’s the hospital’s main operations were moved from the Kirkbride to the more modern Bonner Building across the way. By the time the remaining hospital buildings were closed down for good in 1992, the buildings had begun to decay and by and large the public was happy that the state hospital was no more. The doors to Bradlee’s architectural masterpiece were locked and the Castle on the Hill was abandoned. The remaining and lasting impression of Danvers State Hospital was that it was a snake pit where the mentally ill went to languish and often die.

Soon after its closure, Danvers State Hospital would become the haunted house on the hill where kids dared one another to sneak in. It fell victim to vandals and arsonists, graffiti artists and scrappers. For many, it was an eyesore that couldn’t be demolished soon enough. For others, it was one of the few remaining bastions of an era of hope and enlightenment. Prior to the creation of the state hospital system, those deemed mentally ill were cared for at home, isolated from their community and feared by those around them. As families began to work outside the home and were not able to care for the mentally ill any longer, the responsibility fell to the states to find reasonable accommodations. The first institutions to care for the mentally ill were poorhouses and prisons. As wave after wave of immigrants reached the shores of the United States, the poorhouses overflowed and the number of insane poor skyrocketed. Many who caused problems in the poorhouses were transferred to jails or prisons but that was still nothing more than a temporary solution.

The first public asylum in the United States was built in Worcester in 1833 after noted social reformer Dorothea Dix discovered the mad chained in unheated prison cells alongside alcoholics and murderers. She was appalled by the conditions in which these individuals were kept and lobbied the state of Massachusetts for more humane treatment of the mentally ill. The American asylum system was born. In spite of its eventual decline, the system of care for the mentally ill in the United States began with the best of intentions: to care for the weakest among us in a thoughtful and humane way. Eventually, changes in legislation, the advent of the modern healthcare system, and a shift in human rights would bring the entire system to its knees in favor of community treatment.

As a photographer and historian, Danvers captured something in me that I often have a difficult time explaining. The architecture — and the knowledge that it played a part in the overall treatment model — sets the Kirkbride asylum apart from any other historical structure. As a writer and educator, I find that Danvers is an ideal vehicle for keeping conversation flowing about the treatment of mental illness as the specter of the asylum touches such a varied group of individuals, from former staff and patients to urban explorers and ghost hunters. Danvers lives on in a very real way, and not just because the façade still stands. It bears a lasting legacy that I hope is captured in the book.

Katherine Anderson, MAT

https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/09/de ... -hospital/