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Letters to Artvoice
Richardson Snow Globes: Not Funny
by Amy Upham
I picked up my Artvoice Holiday Guide with the hope I would get great ideas for holiday gifts for my friends and family. Instead I got derailed by the first gift suggestion into a total state of disbelief: an insane asylum snow globe? The description under it, to give it to your loved one to say “I’m crazy for you”? After working in disability rights advocacy for years, I thought to myself: are these people serious? And even if they are joking: is this funny?
So I’ll give you my impressions. It’s not funny. Lobotomies (chemical and surgical), insulin-induced comas, forced electroshock (which is still legal in New York) are not funny, nor does the architectural beauty of the two towers, which by the way is where the administrative offices were--not the patient wards, overshadow the degrading treatment there. Would you put a concentration camp in a snowglobe? How about Guantanamo Bay? I hear there’s some great mortar and brick over there.
While the Richardson Corporation rakes in cash to rehabilitate what became the shame of our nation, I have a suggestion for the city. Tear the row houses where the mentally unstable were tortured down and turn the towers into a museum on the history and collapse of “moral treatment” in psychiatry which is why these buildings were made so beautifully initially, so that our city might understand why some of its residents near the psychiatric grounds mumble, stumble, drool and curse. That’s a better Christmas gift than mocking them in our local progressive newspaper.
This holiday season, as architects seize upon this cash opportunity, let us remember as progressives what sets us apart: we back the little guy. We question big money. We dig into the roots of oppression. We don’t slander our neighbors. We don’t put snowglobes of the administrative offices of torturers on our holiday list as our number one gift idea. I didn’t even look at the rest of the gifts; I guess I’ll go to Walmart where they are getting paid slave wages, but at least they’re not getting holes drilled into their heads.
Amy Upham, Buffalo
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Reader Comments (posting new comments is closed!)
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Tim 04 Dec 2009, 21:29
My Great Aunt spent her final years there, because she was poor. It was actually a place where a lot of people went because they were broke, not mentally ill. It was a different era in the 50's.
Peter A Reese 05 Dec 2009, 05:42
Excellent points made here. Even though this may be significant architecture, do we really want to preserve this memory to a horrible period in the treatment of the mentally impaired, as if it was Disneyland?
joe 05 Dec 2009, 13:10
let us remember as progressives what sets us apart, we're simultaneously holier than thou and haven't a shred of humor about us give me a break i'd love one of these for Christmas.... i'm c-c-crazy for snow globes
jay ferrari 08 Dec 2009, 09:17
Amy Upham get a life. Is that better that these people are shuffling down the street pushing their shopping carts full of possessions NOT on their meds. A lot of health care professionals did a lot of good for thousands of people NOT all was experimentation etc.
Darlene 08 Dec 2009, 13:19
First of all Amy it is not celebrating what went on inside the asylum it’s celebrating the architecture of the building built in 1870. The complex is internationally regarded as one of architecture's great treasures. In 1973 it was added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places, and in 1986 it was registered as a National Historic Landmark, one of only seven such sites in Western New York and is listed on the National Trust's list of twelve nationwide "sites to save" and the Preservation League's statewide list of seven "sites to save. This is series #2; the first globe was City Hall. So you should get your story straight and find the reasons behind why the globe was made. Electric shock treatments are still used today to treat depression in people and it has been working if it bothers you speak up about it and contact the right people you say your working in a disability rights advocacy right? It’s not like they put straight jackets and surgical instruments used in procedures inside the globe. No one is mocking anything one again it is a beautiful old building and unfortunately they do not make them like this anymore. Most of the great architectures years ago created hospitals and asylums using the wonderful tower layout, which is absolutely stunning. This design was representative of what was then known as the Kirkbride system, named after the physician who developed it. Just so you know architects did not create the globe so you’re wrong about that. Look past the globe and move on it’s not that serious really? Medical technology was terrible years ago that I'll admit but that’s why things are so much better today, we live and learn. God Bless all the people who were in there.
pls payday loan store
21 Feb 2011, 17:05
I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order.
toubrelet 01 Mar 2011, 19:40
I had a great '70s. I survived it, and that's always good news.
oriersjom 03 Mar 2011, 09:31
I'm a firm believer that character is highly overrated. Character is a trick that we do with the audience's collusion.
Essesyrax 09 Mar 2011, 17:29
It's funny how the hippies and the punks tried to get rid of the conservatives, but they always seem to get the upper hand in the end.
theantendapse 14 Mar 2011, 15:29
Every one lives by selling something.
TOWLMEREWER 31 Mar 2011, 12:12
There are certain things that ordinary people have that celebrities don't have.
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