Ah, it's getting late already!  We were out much later than usual tonight, so I will have to make this quick!

Today I got up and got ready for work.  The day went by pretty fast, nothing super exciting going on.  I registered and finished setting up our new firewall.  We also framed and hung up the emergency evacuation instructions that I made last week.  Isn't that fun!

On my lunch break, I went out to my car and read the newspaper, did the Sudoku, listened to the radio, and then came inside to eat my soup while watching the last few minutes of Match Game.

At 5:00, I departed and headed home.  There was a lot of traffic today on 111 for some reason.  It was annoying.  When Dan got home, we watched a little of the news, and it was funny, during the weather, the humidity comes up, and it says "667%" so he says, "And the humidity is NOT 667%.  That would be very high."  It was very random.  I recorded it.

Anyway, after that we got ready for this KPPC thing at the Library!  It was a presentation by a former patient who is now making a documentary about the hospital.  It was really crowded and we had to wait on line because we weren't registered. (Although we didn't know we had to be registered.)  Anne Marie, who I know from when I worked there said we'd probably be able to get in, which we did.  The line got really long though, and others were unable to get it.  Anyway, it was interesting, and she showed many clips from the movie, which she hopes to complete in a year.  One of my professors from Stony Brook was there,  I took two of her classes.. she was a great professor, and I THINK my third grade teacher was there, too, but I'm not 100% sure it was her.  It looked like her.... or what I remember her to look like...

I think this movie will be really interesting.  I will have to see it once it's completed.  Two things that I really thought about during the thing...  #1, She asked everyone, Who had a family member in Kings Park, Who worked at Kings Park, Who was IN Kings Park.  And those who didn't raise their hands for any of those questions, she said, "Well, then why are you here?"  And that made me think.. I thought... Why do I find KPPC so interesting?  And the answer is, for me, as someone who only heard about the existence of this place after I graduated HS, and after it was closed down, the thing I find most interesting is that after seeing the grounds and walking around the abandoned buildings, I can't help but be fascinated by the fact that they're abandoned.  I think What history must they hold?  What went on in here for all of these years.  How did these places, and what went on in these places shape and effect the lives of the people who were patients here, and even the people who worked/lived there.

I don't think, if they were still in operation, that the question of what had gone on in the past really would be that interesting.  I mean, look at any building that's still operational of any kind.  I don't find that as interesting as something that was such a huge thing, and now is totally abandoned, and perhaps forgotten.  And maybe that's the reason... maybe because they're abandoned, they run the risk of being "forgotten" and I want to know what happened there, I want to know, and see, more about it.  Ah, you know me.. I'm crazy.

Anyway, #2, There was a sort of question posed, though not directly, as to weather the hospital and it's workers were "good" or "bad" people.  And there were, to be sure, people who were bad, or abused patients, with a harmful intent.  But the majority of people who worked there, I'm sure, tried to do the best job they could.  And I feel like the question lead to "was the hospital, and the state hospital system inherently bad."  But I think you have to say, "That was THAT TIME, they didn't know all that they know now, and so they did the best with what they had for the most part."  A woman in the audience said something along the lines of, the miracle of some medicines today is that they can chemically alter the brain, to get the person into a position to receive therapy, that the medicine isn't the cure, but it is part of the therapy.  And I feel like, those medicines weren't available then, and some of those people weren't mentally capable of getting the therapy they needed.  Then some drugs came along which calmed these people down, and made them "rest" in the sense that they weren't pacing, or banging their heads on the walls, or flipping out in one way or another, and that was all they had.  Maybe those medicines caused bad side effects later down the road, but they didn't know all of that then either, so it was the one thing that had a hope of calming down the situation... and they didn't know "well, if we wait 10 years, 20 years, some other medicine will come along, and I'll make these people able to function!"  I think that you can't look back at the history of health care of ANY kind with what we know now.  You have to look at it from the exact point of what they knew on the day they did whatever they did.  I mean, tomorrow they could come up with cure for cancer, and then we can look back and say How dare they do Kemo on people.  I dunno.  It's all we have, you know?   I mean, granted I don't know all the facts about what they knew then, and even what is known now... but it seems that sometimes people are too critical of the past, using today's eyes.

Phew.... made it through that long thought?  Well, the whole presentation was great, I thought the lady was really interesting, and is working on a really interesting documentary.  I can't wait to see the finished product.  (And maybe a shot of me in the audience will be in it!! haha!  I could be a star!) lol

So, after that Dan, Liz, and I went to Dan's dad's baseball game at Flynn.  We watched the second game, and they did great and won it.  We left after that, and now it's time for BED!

Until tomorrow...