{"id":277,"date":"2008-10-30T06:30:09","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T10:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/?p=277"},"modified":"2008-10-29T23:55:38","modified_gmt":"2008-10-30T03:55:38","slug":"northampton-memorial-setbacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/northampton-memorial-setbacks","title":{"rendered":"Northampton Memorial Setbacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/images\/071222.jpg\" alt=\"Northampton State Hospital\" width=\"484\" height=\"214\" \/><br \/>\nAn article in the Valley Advocate describes multiple problems with the creation of a Northampton State Hospital memorial: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.valleyadvocate.com\/article.cfm?aid=8631\" target=\"_blank\">The Theft of Memory<\/a>. As the article&#8217;s subtitle says, &#8220;In spite of contractual and moral obligation, there may be no memorial to the mentally ill on the prime land that was their legacy from the state.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While I can almost understand (but definitely not agree with) the desire to demolish an old asylum, it seems unconscionable to me to destroy such a place and then willfully, or even unintentionally, make it difficult for a fitting memorial to be created. This also reminds me that the memorial at Avalon Danvers hasn&#8217;t been completed either. I guess developers here in Massachusetts either 1) really are afraid that any hint of a psych hospital connection will scare away prospective customers (as if people are too clueless to discover the connection without a memorial), or 2) are just too stingy to spend a tiny fraction of their budget on a memorial, even when they&#8217;re obligated to by contract. Even if those two possibilities are false, we&#8217;re still left with the fact that the memorials are obviously the last thing on the developers&#8217; minds and will probably end up being hastily tossed together displays not worthy of being called memorials. It&#8217;s a sad final chapter in the story of these old asylums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An article in the Valley Advocate describes multiple problems with the creation of a Northampton State Hospital memorial: The Theft of Memory. As the article&#8217;s subtitle says, &#8220;In spite of contractual and moral obligation, there may be no memorial to the mentally ill on the prime land that was their legacy from the state.&#8221; While [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[230,9],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-news","tag-memorial","tag-northampton-state-hospital"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}