Fairbanks Morse Scale

was the letters "F M" stretched like that, or was that a photographic trick?

What was weighed with a Fairbanks Morse scale?

guys, im not trying to be a jerk, but lets respect Motts and try and keep this on topic? this is for comments, not a message board. (not that Steely Dan stinks.... but i prefer Metallica and Nirvana!)

Dear sam,

im sure if motts didnt like it, he would let us know

love
anna

Sam, if you think Ed and I are off task here, just WAIT till you come across the multiple times that ~Me and I are discussing light fixtures and soap when it has absolutely no relevance at all to the picture at hand. I am sure you will be properly horrified. :-)

However, as someone noted earlier, some of us are just "bonding" as we each explore this site - we aren't even selling anything. Well, Ed and ~Me aren't selling anything. *I'M* trying to sell the concept that anyone who thinks in black-&-white about institutions and what went on there simply by looking at websites and poking through one or two abandoned places isn't going to have the first clue about what happened there, why it happened, or how it happened, and won't be able to stop it from happening again.

Some people seem to come to this website simply so they can be properly shocked and outraged (and titillated, I'm guessing) at the horrible treatment that sometimes occurred at these places and then throw stones at the staff that they seem to believe spent all their days and nights just coming up with new and different ways to torture these people, when in fact the staff were normal people like you and me (well, maybe not like ~Me) who were forced to work under horrific situations with no resources, no support, and pitiful amounts of money.

But if you are looking at it that way then you have missed what it takes to keep it from happening again. As soon as you blame the parents or the staff or the legislature or the scientists who were "in charge" at the time, you are missing that it was an entire culture that allowed this to happen and an entire culture that actually created this by wanting people who were different to be anywhere but in THEIR community or in THEIR schools.

You hire someone and put them into a setting with 30 profoundly handicapped people, give them crappy pay, minimal training, no control, and even less supervision, and then expect them to take care of people who are engaging in fecal smearing, poking their own eyes out, destroying furniture, banging their head, eating anything they can get their hands on, wetting on themselves, screaming for hours on end, and running around naked (and fighting you tooth and nail as you try to dress them). And expect the staff to do it well and be happy with their charges and expect them to have lovely bathroom partitions and pretty beds and curtains everywhere for privacy and tons of stimulating leisure materials (which their charges will possibly break and/or eat, but many will not even look at). And don't turn your back on your group for a minute because one of your people might run away and then you will be in trouble for "not watching them." Or one of them might hit the other over the head with one of the lovely toys you provided for their stimulation and entertainment and cause a concussion and then you will be in trouble for "not watching them." Or one of them might take that lovely set of curtains you put up for privacy and eat an entire curtain panel (while you are breaking up the fight between two others) and the curtain panel gets stuck in their gut and when they have to be rushed to the hospital, YOU are the one who gets in trouble for "not watching them." Hell, the majority of those staff deserved a parade just for showing up for work day after day.

Were there bad staff? Of course! There are bad people everywhere, to the best of my knowledge. Do I condone what people did, even under the terrible conditions they were forced to work under? Of course not! But I sure as hell won't sit here and throw stones at the whole group of them, having worked for many years with these very difficult clients and knowing that, even though there were some cruel and sadistic staff, the majority of them were decent people who cared very much about the people they took care of and spent their own money and free time doing extra things to make these peoples' lives as pleasant as possible under these stark and sterile conditions.

What would I do if I had a tape showing all the stuff you describe as having gone on at Pennhurst? I would think of what it would feel like if that was MY little sister or brother that had been ridiculed and tortured and put on film for eternity to be gawked at buy a bunch of kids who seem to think it was funny enough to hang onto for year after year. And then I would take that tape and call the police and/or a local news station and I would yell and yell until someone was arrested and prosecuted and convicted. Anyone who knows that abuse went on, knows there is documentation of it, and yet does nothing about it is part of the problem. And that's a fact. To stare evil in the face and walk away is to be part of the evil.

However and at the same time, for people to focus solely on the abuse that occurred is to ignore all the positive things that the good staff (who were the majority) did, it makes the families who were told to give up their children feel even worse about having done it, and it makes the people who lived in these places caricatures who exist only so we can have someone to pity and to feel righteous indignation over regarding their bad treatment. They are MORE than that to me and I want them to be seen in their proper context - as human beings who were placed away from others simply for being born different at a time when it was a crime to be different, and who are now getting more rights and training and community experience and all the other things that you and I take for granted.

If you focus only on the ugly parts, soon all you will be able to see is ugliness everywhere you look.

DAMN, ~Me! This was one of my longest rants yet, and this one even qualifies as a true rant! :-)

Em, sorry 'bout that, Motts. Must be them female hormones I done heard about. :-)

Lynne,
Hehe you said 'titillated', Hehe.

No seriously, Lynne I have found that your posts have enlighten a few, if not many.
As for Sam, I think he meant what he posted with the utmost respect for Mr. Motts and not to condemn any of us who are posting. Yet, I totally agree with you this is your longest and a true rant but THIS is your best rant ever! Thank you for such.
Kisses blown in your direction!

alright..... i have to agree w/ what lynne said. that soap / light fixture thing is different, tho :)

Ok, found some more to say, when i found this sight I was looking for cool pics of abannonned places, but after a few days on this sight i realized there is so much more then just empty spaces, when i look at the pics now, i think about what these places must have been like before closure, and the people who lived and worked there (even doing a little research on these places elsewhere) My hats off to Motts, and his wonderful photoraphy, and people like Lynne and others who leave comments which I think compliment the photos, I dont think a few comments that have nothing to do with the photos will hurt, it helps break the ice with people with like interests. (thanks to the comments i've actually talked via e-mail to a few!)

gee lynne, I wish I'd known about this site back in July so I could have posted this when you might have actually seen it, but beautifully well said. I have been savoring this site, looking at it every night for over a week now. The more I read the comments, the more I was thinking exactly what you just said so well. If all we come away with is titillation and horror, we haven't learned very much. I taught for three years in a home for troubled (mentally ill) youths and I learned that this problem is never as simple as it seems. It is only too easy to tar all mental health workers with the same brush, but most are hard working decent people trying to make the best of a bad situation. Lets not forget in all this, that the patients are mentally ill, which means that their brains work in bizarre and disfunctional ways. Some of them aren't safe in the outside world, by which I mean that they will hurt themselves or be hurt by someone else. Some are too trusting, making them easy marks for thugs and criminals. Some have no grasp of reality. And some are predators in their own right. So while some can survive in the outside world with the help of medications, some left these hospitals only to be homeless, hungry and cold. Others left only to commit a crime and are now in prisons where they are getting abuse the likes of which was unheard of in these hospitals. Sometimes I think that closing these old institutions was a truly unkind thing to do to the patients. They were not equipped to go out into the world and make a living. Thats why they were in the hospital in the first place.

Thanks, Jane! It's easier to see more of the picture if you've actually walked the walk, isn't it?

Jane and Lynne. Wonderful posts. Having worked with developmentally disabled teens I can agree so much. And there are some who do better on the 'inside' than the 'outside'. Someday, I hope, society will find the correct balance. They haven't yet but I give humanity hope.

Vandals and graffiti sprayers, you better leave these things alone - they are for looking, not for defacing. They're too precious to be defaced!

I worry about their future.