with Original Art and Literature by: Copyright Michael Ramseur, 2003. Published by ARTSHIPpublishing Feb., 2005. LCCN # 20005922312 - ISBN # 0-9765975-0-0 . _______________________________________ This book, many years in the making, contains over 260 pages of startling medical, psychiatric, and historical facts, family memoirs, heartbreaking stories, poetry, fiction, nostalgic images and memoirs, and over 135 images of dramatic , original art-- thanks to contributions from scientists, artists, photographers, psychiatrists, historians, film-makers-- and interviews with ex-patients and staff of DANVERS STATE HOSPITAL. You are about to enter the portals of one of the nation's most beautiful and tragic repositories of human history, from a dark chapter of our collective past. SCROLL DOWN to sample this book, learn about the author and his current exhibit and book-signing, order the books, and review related links
This book is now available on Cd-Rom, Download, and NOW in its 2nd PRINTING: the CD-Rom is $ 54.50; Download, $ 44.50; Printed Book $ 79.50 used, and $ 125.00 new. (Resellers and book stores ordering more than 5, and libraries and Educational Facilities placing a prepaid order, receive discounted price of $ 79.50 per book You may use Visa, MC, Amex or check to order.
Please CALL: 508-394-1789 ... or use our secure server: click on image below
scroll down to SAMPLE this book: Table of Contents About the Author and The Contributors ...p. iv Epilogue ...p. 235 ________________________________________________________________________________________ About Michael Ramseur: artist, writer, and social worker He has devoted a major part of his adult life to observing and recording the history, evolution, moods, and destiny of the Mental Asylum at Danvers as an artist, a mental health care professional, and an historian. With this book he delivers a deeply-researched and comprehensive portrait of the asylum that has housed, inspired, cured, terrified and brutalized us for over 100 years, and which-- in spite of its stately beauty and its position on the National Historic Register--has recently been sold by the State of Massachusetts to a developer which has largely demolished it. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Please CALL: 508-394-1789... or use our secure server: click on image below other books by this author: and GHOST OF THE WITCH JUDGE with Justin Lassen and Trina Ragan *CLICK ON THIS IMAGE to order DVD's
Please WATCH THIS SPACE for this author's upcoming EXHIBITS & BOOK-SIGNINGS.... see DANVERS ART by clicking on the image below:
onafor Ramseur's CASTLE ON THE HILL website, click image below:
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Brad Anderson, Jeremy Barnard, the Bessey Family, Jerry Carroll, A. Andrew Chulyk,
mmSamuel A. Clark III, Annette DeClue, Helen Compton, Barbara Donohue, James Fitzgerald, Ann-Louise Silver, M.D., Julia Solis, Christopher Sparks, Mike “Dijital” Turcotte,
and Interviews with former staff and patients of Danvers State Hospital
Foreword by Steven Nisenbaum, Ph.D., J.D.; Introduction by Robert Whitaker; Epilogue by John Archer
Edited and Designed for Cd-Rom and Print by Helen Compton
Please allow up to 14 days to receive your CD-Rom or printed book.
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Acknowledgments ...p. vii
Foreword ...p. x
Introduction ...p.xiii
"And travelers now..." ...p. xv
Dedication ...p. xvi
Chapter 1: The Hill's Terrible Beauty ...p.1
Chapter 2: Good Intent, Terrible Cost ...p. 9
Chapter 3: Superior Confinement 27 Chapter 4: Prisoners Of The System ...p. 45
Chapter 5: A Curious Kind of Life ...p.57
Chapter 6: The Evils Of Overcrowding ...p.101
Chapter 7: Invasion Of The Brain ...p.121
Chapter 8: Bedlam! ...p.145
Chapter 9: Haunted ...p.171
Chapter 10: Visions Of A Dark Queen ...p.183
Chapter 11: Echoes From The Ruins ...p.201
Chapter 12: Testimonials To Desolation ...p.217
References / Bibliography ...p.238
Ramseur has been working in the field of human services for eighteen years, with most of that time spent on acute psychiatric units. Hewas until recently Director of Social Services at Baldpate Hospital in Georgetown, MA. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, CT. (1970), the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for several years during the mid-1970's, and the Simmons College School of Social Work in 1991.
A pastel artist for 27 years, Ramseur has focused on a range of subjects, including riders on the MBTA subway system in Boston, the Million Dollar Bridge in Portland, ME (now defunct), the textile mills in the Merrimack Valley (particularly Lawrence, MA.), and Danvers State Hospital. Ramseur has been drawing and writing about Danvers since 1986. He has been in numerous group and one-man art shows in Boston and the surrounding region. He has appeared on NECN in the context of USA film production, "Session 9", in which he was interviewed, with photographer Jeremy Barnard and sculptor Andrew Chulyk, in the DVD featurette "The Haunted Palace". Ramseur had a commissioned drawing on the St. Elizabeth Hospital published in the April, 1999 issue of THE NEW YORKER magazine in connection with an article on John Hinckley, Jr. by Elsa Walsh titled "Strange Love".
Included in this book are the passions, memories, reflections, visions, and fantasies of scores of those who have explored this institution, who worked and cared for its patients, whose friends and relatives were housed there, who made films and art there, whose families were raised there, and who cared deeply about its fate.
Ramseur, who resides on the northern coast of Massachusetts, is the proud father of a daughter, Georgia Bennett-Ramseur, who is studying music and the performing arts.
ASYLUM ON THE HILL
THE EYE OF DANVERS
this author's video collaborations:
*VORTEX with Charles I. Durgin and Trina Regan (available on DVD)
*PALACE OF SHADOWS with Richard Gavin (available on DVD)
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