Emily Dickinson's Grave, Amherst

A death-blow is a life blow to some 

Who, till they died, did not alive become;

Who, had they lived, had died, but when

They died, vitality begun. --816, Emily Dickinson

I live a stone throw away from the final resting place of a reclusive poetess Emily Dickinson. I just stumbled across her grave while I was strolling a graveyard like a wandering teenage boy. If you look around, history and wonder are within your reach, waiting for a dialogue between you and the unexpected delight.

Railroad Bridge over the Deerfield, Deerfield-Greenfield

Disused Boston and Maine railroad bridge over the Deerfield River

Google Map

Belchertown State School Cemetery, Belchertown (or lengthy thought about myself)

Also read: Belchertown State School

When one of our guys died, all that we'd have would be a graveside service...[T]he way this would be done is that the undertaker, whom I got to know personally, would come up with the body in the limo, and we'd go to the cemetery, and he'd be saying things to me like, "Now Bob, this guy was a nonentity. Let's not take a lot of time." -- An interview to Robert Perske, a former chaplain at the Kansas Neurological Institute.* Italicized by Shuko K.T.

Nonentity, the word stuck in my head forever. Such a disrespectful remark in a solemn scene of a person's death. Why would he say something like that? Were such remarks out of his character, or just a glimpse of an everyday life at an institution?

Oddities in Montreal II - a**holes who steal benches suck

A vestige of last summer. Bilingual cuss. I admit I do love the city.

You may also visit: Oddities in Montreal I- Fear is the Mind Killer

Belchertown State School, Belchertown

The Belchertown State School for the "Feeble-Minded" was established in 1922. The above is a theater with an underground gym where a basketball court and a mini bowling alley left abandoned with icy, squishy floors.

A series of journalistic coverages and lawsuits in the early 70's disclosed the Belchertown's unsanitary, overcrowded condition at some of the dorms where over 80-year-old residents lived with other 120 residents who were "mentally, all two-year-olds in the physical bodies of grown-ups."*  

The school was closed in 1992. A talk of converting the complex into a "5-star living " spa  surfaced in 2006, but even twenty years later, the site remains abandoned.

What is the power that institutionalizes people? Why is such authority dismantled now...or the structures are left derelict, but the system of institution became more invisible and more pervasive? What are the forces that led to the closure of the Belchertown and other countless institutions in the nation; benevolent efforts to place intellectually disabled persons into a community based care, frail of a large scale institutional care, or shift to private enterprise? Where did all the residents go after the closure? Do I know all the answers?

*Robert Hornick, The Girls and Boys of Belchertown. Amherst: U of Mass P, 84.

Locate Belchertown State School @ Google Map

Water towers, Easthampton

While I was exploring an abandoned textile mill in Easthamtpton, I found those two water towers by a rail-trail!

To be precise, three water towers: