Mental Hospital Nostalgia

Further residue from my trip back to Indiana. Here's a picture of the State Hospital (mental hospital) where I worked when I was in college.





They're tearing parts of it down as it's ancient and endangered structurally, but I just wanted to post this to get some validation...


IS THAT OR IS THAT NOT A SPOOKY PLACE?


I always thought so, especially when I worked the midnight shift, but then again that's why I was there.

I also found this old postcard online (who exactly sends postcards of mental hospitals?). I like that it's called an "Insane Asylum."





Patients would drown themselves in the lake. My mother was a nurse there and told me about this one young woman who threw herself in to drown. Before she did, she took off her shoes. I guess she didn't want them to get wet

Fannymania!

If it weren't for the dark glasses, I wouldn't bother you about Fanny Crosby. But really -- blind people don't look like this any more. Well, actually, no one looks like this anymore. The only time we get to see someone remotely like this is in cheesy thrillers where they flash back to the murderer's childhood, and the director needs a scary disciplinarian figure to stand in as shorthand for "religious-repression-inevitably-leading-to-a-career-as-serial-killer."

I'm not sure how scary Fanny was. (How scary can anyone named "Fanny" actually be?) But she certainly was religious.


I found her picture when I was looking through a midi archive for a hymn I needed for some project, and then learned that Fanny was probably the most prolific hymn writer of all time. 8,000 of her poems were set to music, which really makes me feel like I ought to spend a bit more time on this blog thing. She married another blind composer named Alexander Van Alstyne. I suppose they had a lot in common. Apparently, she was really into crimping her hair too, as you can see from the picture to the right. Anyway, she was kind of a big deal at the time and hung out with Ulysses S. Grant and so forth.


I was almost ready to close the book on this historical footnote,or at least trying to stop myself from obsessively Googling images of the old biddy. But then I started to notice other images -- hints of a zealous Fanny Crosby cult lingering on into our present day. Fanny Crosby books, dolls, and the strangest manifestation of Fannymania of all, THE FANNY CROSBY IMPERSONATOR! And not just one but TWO! The first being Ann Sweet of Uttica New York and the second Bonnie L. Bachman of Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Bonnie's a bit more the entrepreneur as she does a whole "Christian Heroines" series in which she appears at "Conventions, retreats, seminars, banquets, medical communities, churches, camps, minister's wives weekends, home schooling groups" etc., rendering "verbal portraits" of the stalwarts of the faith.



WHO IS HOTTER?

Ann

Bonnie

LATE BREAKING NEWS!
Only days after this listing was posted, Bonnie's "Christian Heroines" site was shut down! Perhaps Ann may have won this battle, but the war goes on as Bonnie's still in the business of dramatic "verbal portraitature" with an alternate site, "Nursing Heroines" some of whom are surely Christians. But the real news come from Potsdam, NY, where a new challenger by the name of Linda Caamaño (right)arises to don the dark glasses and leap into the battle of the bonnets. Listen in as she declares I AM FANNY CROSBY..."