Yesterday I stopped by The Abbott Gran Old Tyme Medicine Show blog and this post captured my attention. http://abbottgran.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/latches/ The post is about an exhibit of suitcases found in the attic of the Willard Asylum, a state mental hospital in New York state. I clicked on one of the links http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org/indexhasflash.html and was transported into a world of pictures that just broke my heart.
The site contains pictures of the suitcases and fills you in on some of the patient's lives. Many of them lived most of their adult lives inside that building and never got to unpack their suitcases and have their belongings to keep them company. The suitcases are filled with the remnants of unlived lives and as a writer I just wanted to sit here and write their stories.
Old pictures are a great source of inspiration for writers but so, too, are old suitcases, trunks, and boxes that you might find in your own attics or storage lockers. Imagine finding an old truck with a yellowed wedding dress, dried flowers, and a torn wedding invitation. Or perhaps a tuxedo, a dozen passports and a gun. You can let your imagination create the items or take a trip to the flea market or an auction and pick up one of those dollar boxes of odds and ends and see where they take you.
3 comments:
It broke my heart too although I try to keep off of her blog. In my second attempt at a novel, the protagonist spends a long time at two mental hospitals. I did a bit of research on them and was appalled. I remember when my high school art teacher was sent off to one for having an affair with the math teacher. Needless to say, he didn't go anywhere.
Wow. Evidently it didn't take much to find oneself incarcerated there for 40 or 50 years. If somebody thought you were a little odd, that was enough!
Sorry to be so late with a response! I think many men took advantage of mental hospitals to rid themselves of wives they no longer wanted, Patti. Women had to be very careful in what they said and did to avoid being locked away. It's scarey to think about how few rights women had back then and how easily they could done away with.
No, it didn't, Anonymous! It was the ideal place to rid yourself of the problem people in your life. Once incarcerated, there was no way out.
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