Wednesday, May 28, 2008

A Correction and Transparency

I apologize that my first link did not work. I have tried this again, so hopefully the real Ridges pictures are here. Thank you for your comments alerting me to the fact that it did not work correctly.

Secondly, I have been asked how I was granted entrance into The Ridges. I am an Honors Tutorial College student here at Ohio University. During fall quarter of every freshman year, the incoming class has to take a seminar. Our seminar was taught by Dean Fidler and Assistant Dean Hodson, and focused on The Ridges and Athens County History. We read a novel titled Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine. While this novel did not focus on The Ridges, it did focus on a similar asylum and similar treatment practices. At times it was a slow read, but still very fascinating and I recommend it if you are interested in learning more about the doctors involved with leading lobotomies on patients. But I digress...

At the end of the seminar, the deans had arranged for the class to take a special, one-time offered trip in and throughout The Ridges. I know that they had to pull a lot of strings to do so, because of all the problems previously caused by students entering The Ridges. For me, this was the fall of 2006. So, most of these pictures are a little over a year old (except the first picture of the first post, which I just took 2 weeks ago). 

As promised, my next post will focus on the body stain, and expunge the rumor of the Wilson Hall "suspicious death". I just wanted to clear up any confusions or possible conflicts of interest.

2 comments:

Shari Stuerenberg said...

Jessica,

Very interesting story of how you were granted entrance into The Ridges. I'm actually jealous - it looks like a very cool place to see.

One random question/comment - I noticed in looking through the picture gallery that there used to be lakes on the grounds of The Ridges. Where did these lakes go? When/how did they decide to redo the grounds ... and did the lakes simply dry up?

Jessica said...

Jessica -

Thanks for re-posting the link to the Ridges pictures. They're all really interesting, especially the ones that are postcards. Seems to be kind of ironic to have postcards of a mental health center...

Anyway, I also appreciate you clearing up any ambiguity about how you know so much about the Ridges as well as how you were allowed in. I've been up on the grounds a few times, but obviously haven't been in the buildings, so I agree with Shari - I'm jealous too!