Hill Cumorah, Palmyra, NY

We traversed to the historic Hill Cumorah site after seeing the Joseph Smith historic site outside the town of Palmyra.

Even though there were a few cars parked outside the visitor’s center, the place was rather creepy. The wind was incredibly torrential that day, and the air biting cold. There was no human activity at all. Everything was stone cold and still except that monstrous wind! Still, we braved the fierce winds that nearly blew the camera out of my hands, and reached the summit.

Hill Cumorah is a drumlin, a humpbacked whale-shaped little hill supposedly created by ancient glaciers. Some postulate that drumlins were formed by catastrophic flood waters releasing currents of water under great pressure by glacial ice. They are so notable because they seem to pop up out of nowhere, up from a flatter area of land.

I had been here decades ago, as a young person, to see the historic Easter pageant held every year on the hill. I remember the experience well. We’d arrived early; my brothers and I ambled up the rocky walls and steep hill, exploring the site before twilight settled. As dusk approached, more visitors arrived and we returned to where the family was sitting on the lawn. As darkness fell, the colorful lights and bombastic music of the pageant began. It lasted several hours.

This is the site where Joseph Smith claimed to have received the golden plates from the angel Moroni. After Smith transcribed the plates into the Book of Mormon, Moroni instructed Smith to bury the plates. Later attempts were made to discover them… but NO ONE knows where the gold plates have gone…..

The top of the hill is like a park, with numerous monuments and engravings. Besides the unusually shiny Moroni on a pillar, there are plaques detailing the Joseph Smith accounts. I say “accounts” because after a few years, Mr. Smith was inconsistent with his stories. My daughter read a few excellent books about Mormonism a few weeks before we visited Palmyra, oddly enough. If you’d like a little insight into the Mormon story and biography and character of Joseph Smith, she recommends them: “Reasoning from the Scriptures” by Ron Rhodes; “The Mormon Mirage” by Latayne C Scott; “Out of Mormonism” by Judy Roberts.

Can you see how violently the trees are bending? It was so windy I almost lost my camera!

The incline is quite steep, but very invigorating. We walked across the summit, following the concrete pathway around the hill.

My parents never decided to join the Mormon Church. My stepdad believed it to be somewhat ridiculous, riddled with errors and conflicting testimonies from Smith himself, and full of silly folk magic that plagued many of the paganistic settlers of the Upstate New York wilderness. During the 1800s, New York and New England were a “hotbed” of mystical fervor, sprouting excitements such as the Oneida Community (another polygamous commune), the Cardiff Giant, Christian Science, and etc. I think many of the religious movements sprang up from a great dissatisfaction from the dead religions found in conventional Christian churches. It’s such a shame that the Christian churches has strayed so far away from Biblical doctrine that they had nothing to offer people anymore.

After we wandered the site for a time, we decided to leave. I still can’t get over the ferocity of the wind!

The Old Main, or Utica Lunatic Asylum, NY

The Old Main is the local name for the original New York State Lunatic Asylum of Utica. It has had many names over its 150-year history: Utica Lunatic Asylum, Utica State Hospital, Utica Psychiatric Center. I didn’t travel out to the Old Main in Utica– not this time. I’ve been past the building a few times, and have walked the grounds when we visited an acquaintance of my husband’s, who was attending an alcohol treatment program there. That was fifteen years ago. I thought I had taken photographs then, as I was awestruck by the building’s architecture, but either I am wrong or I lost the photos. This is a “virtual visit.” Roger Luther has graciously granted permission to post his photos of the Old Main. For a multitude of awesome photos and a good summary of the Old Main’s history, check out Luther’s NYSAsylum.com. The photos are spectacular.

The building was open for patients in 1842, but is in terrible disrepair now. It is famous around the world for its architecture, and was home to many of the “firsts” in mental health in the nation. It was the first institute for the treatment of the mentally ill (previously, people had merely been confined). Remember the movie Jane Eyre? Orson Welles’ character kept his insane wife locked up in a tower. It wasn’t too uncommon for mentally ill and insane people to be locked up and the key thrown away. I personally think that a lot of mental illness came from the ingestion and absorption of lead, which was abundant in pipes, lining cisterns, in paints, etc.

The Old Main was the birthplace of the American Journal of Insanity by Dr. Amariah Brigham (this publication would later spawn the American Psychiatric Journal). Dr. Brigham changed the way mental illness was treated. He believed that most mental illness was caused by environmental problems (contaminated food or water, side effects of diseases) or mental strain (depression, stressful lifestyle). Unlike today’s physicians and Big Pharma, who are endlessly shoving pills down throats, Dr. Brigham believed that strenuous exercise, clean foods, and good hard work would cure most of the mentally ill. He was right, for most cases.

The architecture of the building is truly stunning:

[It] is internationally recognized as a monumental example of the Greek Revival architecture tradition… The huge size of the stone structure is perhaps its most significant feature; being 550 feet long and averaging 50 feet in depth. The projecting central portico is 120 feet long and is dominated by six limestone columns 48 feet high and eight feet in diameter at the base. “No European public edifice has a grander Greek Doric portico than that which dominates the tremendous four story front block….” architectural historian Henry Russell Hitchcock wrote in his definitive Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

The Utica building’s Greek Revival, doric columns (six of them) are eight feet in diameter at the base and 48 feet high. They are at the main entrance which also has a gray facade made of upstate New York limestone. Two four story main wings extend laterally from the entrance. Later construction added wings to either end, greatly increasing its capacity (parts of these additions have since been demolished). One estimate compared the asylum’s original square footage to that of a 26 story sky scraper. In the attic, visitors may still see murals and the stage of a patient’s theater; sunlight still floods the vacant day rooms downstairs.

In 1850, a listing of accommodations noted: 380 single rooms for patients, 24 for their attendants, 20 dormitories each accommodating from 5 to 12 persons, 16 parlors or day rooms, 12 dining rooms, 24 bathing rooms, 24 closets and 24 water closets. The mechanical systems of the original building incorporated the latest improvements. Hot air woodburning furnaces in the basement provided heat for the building. Ventilators opening from the rooms to flues in the walls allowed air to circulate constantly. Hot and cold running water was supplied to each floor, the cold water coming from the roof while the warm water was pumped by a steam engine from basement storage tanks.

Don’t these old romantic pictures make you feel like you are putting your loved one in a tender, safe place?

Those old Elm trees in the Utica area were so beautiful, weren’t they? Back then, even the asylums were built and kept up to be beautiful. But the truth is, the things that went on inside weren’t always beautiful. The Utica Crib was invented here. It was a combination cage and bed, to restrain the uncontrollable patients. The crib was sometimes suspended with chains and would rock the patient, to soothe him.

Critics called it savage even though some patients preferred it. It was removed from use in 1887.

There’s more history that runs down the Main’s halls. Famed abolitionist, U.S. Congressman, and Hamilton College alumni Gerrit Smith was admitted to the Old Main for over two months. The story is filled with speculation and intrigue! Smith (whose homestead we Mecombers hope to visit this spring when we go on our Heritage Freedom Trail trip) was a “Free-Soil” advocate, and an outspoken supporter of violent abolitionist John Brown. (We hope to visit John Brown’s historic site, also!) “They” say it was John Brown who started the Civil War.

To be associated with such a “vigilante” as John Brown was political suicide. After Brown’s failed raid on an arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and his hanging a few weeks later, Gerrit Smith was fingered for aiding and abetting Brown’s violent raid. Smith was promptly admitted to the Utica Lunatic Asylum (by his family). Some historians have speculated Smith was admitted to avoid his critics and investigations. Others, exposing more details of Smith’s illnesses (including a long bout of typhoid that contributed to his chronic health conditions), said Smith was genuinely distressed, having been depressed for a long time. They say it was the Harper’s Ferry incident that “broke the camel’s back.”

One source claimed:

“Gerrit Smith shows continued marks of insanity,” a New York journal reported later that month. “No one is allowed to see him, but it is understood that he refers in his ravings to the Harper’s Ferry matter, and supposes himself arrested.”

And another source has a longer and extremely interesting report of the history. You can find that at The “Black Dream” of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist.” I found the information and story there riveting. Here’s a portion:

The New York Herald dispatched a special reporter to visit Smith at Peterboro in late October to obtain more information concerning the abolitionist’s ties to Brown and the Harpers Ferry raid. The only statement the reporter could get from Smith was this remark: “I am going to be indicted, sir, indicted! You must not talk to me about it. . . . If any man in the Union is taken, it will be me.” This reporter had covered Smith’s gubernatorial campaign the previous fall and made some very interesting comments upon the changes in Smith since that time.

Concerning the controversy which followed the raid, the reporter observed:

[It] has not only impaired his health, but is likely to seriously affect his excitable and illy-balanced mind. . . . His calm, dignified, impressive bearing has given place to a hasty, nervous agitation, as though some great fear was constantly before his imagination.

The Herald reporter concluded from his visit with Smith:

He is in evident alarm and agitation, inconsistent with the idea that his complicity with the plot is simply to the extent already made public. I believe that Brown’s visit to his house last spring was immediately connected with the insurrection, and that it is the knowledge that at any moment, either by the discovery of papers or the confession of accomplices, his connection with the affair may become exposed, that keeps Mr. Smith in constant excitement and fear.

The Herald account was only one of several reports of Smith’s increasing state of agitation in late October and early November. The Rochester Daily Express reported that Smith had been “constantly wringing his hands and bemoaning the fate of poor Brown” and that the abolitionist’s friends were “apprehensive that his reason would give way under the load of grief and anxiety. . . .” The Albany Argus related that a visitor to Smith’s home shortly after the time of the raid reported that “his eye was wild and his appearance haggard, and his motion spasmodic and uncertain, but unceasingly restless”. Smith’s sleep and eating habits became increasingly erratic. He was despondent and his family feared he might attempt suicide. He even talked of going to Virginia to share John Brown’s fate. Finally, on 7 November, friends and family members were able to persuade Smith to accompany them to the state asylum at Utica by assuring him that he was on his way to Virginia.

Back to the Old Main. After years of dwindling financial support and the construction of better buildings, it was closed in 1978. The Old Main is in great disrepair now.

Some of its old wings have been demolished. You can see that there are huge gashes in the walls, allowing moisture and critters to invade.

When I attended Utica’s Genesis Group meetings years ago, there was some discussion about what should be done with the Old Main. There were some who wanted a museum of mental illness (which I didn’t think would be a very attractive draw), others wanted a Revolutionary War museum housed there, since central New York is so rich in history of that era. And others suggested that the City of Utica move its main offices there. There was talk about trying to get some rich investor to pour his billions into the place, but I don’t think anything came of that.

Part of the building was renovated a few years ago, and these rooms house the Records Archive and Repository for the NYS Office of Mental Health. But I think restoring the entire building could never be accomplished by the city (or the state) alone.

Sometimes, these beautiful old buildings are too difficult to restore, and they outgrow their usefulness; although I’m not ruling out any miracles. For now, the Old Main still stands.

Photos courtesy Roger Luther at nysasylum.com. (Thanks, Roger!)

I Write Like L. Frank Baum

Funny! I discovered this website “I Write Like” thanks to blogging friend Karen. You paste a section of your writing into the applet, which then analyzes your writing style and compares it with other authors.

I got L. Frank Baum. That’s funny, because I have never read one of his books. But at least he was a New Yorker! He was from Chittenango, NY, a town along Route 5 that was actually founded by my ancestors.

The section of writing I had analyzed was from an older essay I wrote, “Eating Crow.” I wrote it early one morning, before the clamor and clutter of the day had struck. I like the piece. I’ll include it here for you.

Eating Crow

Where did that expression come from? It has negative connotations mostly, I suppose, because of the crow. It is early morning and the world is still quiet. The rustle of cars on the road hasn’t begun outside my walls yet. I am sipping coffee, pondering whether I should start the laundry early. A group of crows is in the neighborhood. I can hear their cackles all the way down the street and in my yard. It is strange how sounds echo so clearly very late at night and in the early morning. Why is that? Is the air thinner at those times so that sounds echo more easily?

The American crow is a despised bird. Well, at least, I despise them. And a group of crows is not called a group, it’s called a murder. How appropriate.

Crows are pesky birds. They drive out all the other songbirds in the summer. Now that it is autumn, and most of the songbirds have migrated or are in hiding, the crow finds advantage and comes boldly out of the woodwork. The crow is such a brassy, crass bird. There is a superiority in their eye when they stare down at you from their perches in the highest trees. Any seeds (or dog food) that I leave out for other critters are promptly stolen by these murders of crows. They descend arrogantly– right in front of me– in a black cloud of greasy feathers to gobble up the treats. I chase them away and they flap half-heartedly– just enough to move out of stone-throwing distance. But even before I’ve turned my back, they are back again, eating another’s seeds. My cats are terrified of the birds and refuse to chase them. Some help they are. They probably pay off the crows with cat food, begging the birds to allow them to stay here. There’s probably a whole mafia ring of crows controlling my property underneath my nose.

For the past few years, Upstate cities have been plagued by murders of crows. You can’t shoot them out of the city trees and off apartment balconies, so people have resorted to banging pots, blowing sirens, and aiming laser lights at them. This is in the hopes of disturbing their nesting places. It works, temporarily. The murders of crows flee the cities like a CEO on vacation, and head for the hills– my hills. So now I must cope with them– until next summer when the crows descend to feast upon the city again.

Some folks say crows are smart. Aesop’s fable, The Crow and the Pitcher, is about a wise bird. In the story, a thirsty crow comes upon a pitcher with some water at the bottom. His beak cannot reach the water. The crow drops pebbles in the pitcher, one by one, to raise the water up to a level where he can drink. I think it’s an odd story, because wouldn’t the water trickle down around the pebbles back to the bottom? The stupid crow should have used a big rock, that will raise the water for ya.

Noah sent out a raven from the ark. I have wondered if this was a crow. Crows are sometimes called ravens. Noah’s dove had returned, but the raven never did. Noah took that to mean that the raven remained alive, and there was dry land where the bird could live and eat. I know this is true because crows never die and they always go to the best feeding places first and never share.

When I was a kid, my mother constructed a scarecrow for her garden. Who ever came up with that idea first? I wonder if it ever worked. The crows completely ignored our scarecrow. They used him like a Charmin toilet roll, that murder of crows.

I suppose crows do serve a purpose. Somewhere, in the great universal scheme of delicate ecological balance, I know they must serve a purpose. Don’t ask me what it is, though. I just might cast my vote to bring to extinction those murders of crows.

They are quieter now. I can barely hear them far up the hill in the back. The cars outside are starting to rustle and overpower the ubiquitous cackling. I guess I should get the laundry going now.

Two Really Fun Books

Oh I got two books over the weekend and we are going to have such a blast with them! I saw them while browsing at Barnes&Noble, but found them online for excellent prices. I love it when I get good deals.

The books have a lot of stuff about weird and wacky history, real and perceived events, roadside oddities, and other small but unique and quirky stuff.

For example, did you know that New York has it’s own unearthed, prehistoric giant (proved to be a hoax)? Or a sea serpent named Champ that lives in Lake Champlain? Or that the guy who wrote the Wizard of Oz was from a town in Upstate NY (about 40 minutes from here)? Or that the guy who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance was from around here? Or that one of the biggest religious revivals started right here in Utica, NY, and spread across the nation, sparking the nation to come against black slavery? Oh and there’s much more!

This is just the kind of stuff I love to discover when we travel. I hope to use the books as a springboard of sorts, to scout out quirky places, and also to write about some nifty and interesting things I’ve discovered in the books.

So you can expect to be hearing more from me about these. First I have to go read the books!

Selling the Cell Tower

I’d mentioned that we went to see the Fenner Windmill Farm again today, in Madison County. I don’t know what it must be like living up near them, but I do think they are rather beautiful, and majestic. The entire area up there is absolutely beautiful; I tell the kids that this area of New York is probably the most beautiful of all. People are very wise to want to preserve its beauty.

There were several new cell phone towers up there from when we last visited two years ago. I never knew it before, but landowners lease a portion of their property to cell tower companies. What a lucrative idea, that of cell tower site promotion! I used to think that cell phone towers marred the scenic countryside, but I have changed my mind. I think if towers are placed tastefully, why not? It benefits the landowner, who gets that extra income that, here in New York State, is always welcome. And since obtaining a cell phone, I am much more appreciative of cell service out in the “boonies.” Winter driving in these parts can be life-threatening; I think it is beneficial to have phone service available for emergencies. Of course, I’m against speckling every square yard of farmland with towers; but towers are more powerful these days, and I was impressed with the ones we saw today.

It was only about a decade ago that people in the Adirondacks were up in arms about cell phone towers in the forest. The cell tower company tried to appease the people by camouflaging the tower as a pine tree. LOL, it didn’t work very well; everyone around here calls in “Frankenpine.” But cell phone towers are becoming part of our way of life, similar to the telephone poles and electric wiring poles of yesteryear. What do you think? Do you think towers mar the scenery? Do you think the cell tower industry can have a symbiotic relationship with landowners?