The press workers union signed their new contract last week and they now work 40 hours for the same pay as their old 37.5 hours. There is one press run at night, starting at 11:40 pm. Sources say the crew shift times have changed as well, with the night crew starting at 10:00 pm and stopping at 6:00 am. The day crew starts at 5:45 am and stops at 1:45 pm. Press workers did not get a pay raisefor the life of the two-year contract and also lost 25% of their short term disabilty payments. As one pressman said, there are "not a lot of happy campers here" and added that "moral is at its lowest level in a long time."

Unfortunately, that's the case thoughout the company.

   Chicago Daily News press room 1903. Photo courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society.

This is Jerry Wheaton. He was court-ordered to Pennhurst at the age of three along with his older sister because his parents were fighting. He would be confined there until he turned 21. Jerry is a remarkable human being, one of those rare "good souls" who restore your faith in humanity and make you believe in angels just by being in their company.  His common sense, his moral intuition and his capacity to forgive far exceed my own. He did not belong at Pennhurst; if he'd had the same advantages as someone with loving parents he could have been spared all the horrors that he will have to live with for the rest of his life.

Pennhurst is not a place to be terrified of; it’s not a haunted insane asylum still full of the criminal element; it’s not a place to go urban exploring or searching for ghosts and entities; it’s a place where there but the grace of God go you or I. It’s a place where real people with real feelings and vibrant personalities lived out their entire lives with never a moment of freedom or privacy, just because they were different. It's a place where some were neglected and abused and even murdered because they were considered less than the rest of us. It’s a place where others like Jerry Wheaton and Roland Johnson managed to hold on to their dignity amid the most inhumane and degrading of circumstances. And it’s the only home some like 80-year-old Mike Koval would ever know. Sure he wants to go back there. Maybe it’s just morbid curiosity, but he still wants me to take him back just to see. Just to feel. Just to remember. 

Enjoy the photos.

Devon Hall and Rockwell Hall in the snow

Administration building cupola and window

Assembly Hall facade

Rockwell Hall rear

The storm seems to be winding down at last. Thank heavens we still have power. If you look at these update photos you'll see that we now have about 16 inches of snow, and not just any snow, mind you, but heavy, slushy, wet snow that weighs a ton when you try to shovel it. Lo and behold, along comes our neighbor Aaron with his shovel. What an angelic young man! He shoveled Joyce's walk and then did mine, pausing to pose for a photo next to the snow-hatted lamp post before heading back home for dinner and hot chocolate. God bless you, Aaron!

These photos were taken around 6 p.m.

This "cauliflower head" lamp post deserves another showing just for novelty's sake.

Here's another look at the afternoon's blizzard in the back yard.

Check the snow hats on these yard items! Look at the photo in the earlier post to see the difference in snow levels.

We are in the midst of our second major snowstorm in less than five days. Although we in the Lehigh Valley got off easy in Saturday's storm, only racking up about six inches, today's nor'easter is blizzard conditions with high winds and amazingly heavy snowfall.

We are expected to get more than 12 inches before this monster system winds its way down at midnight. Philadelphia got 28 inches on Saturday and are expected to get another 12 to 18 inches today.

This is the warning from The Weather Channel:

"A Winter Storm Warning is in effect. A significant winter storm or hazardous winter weather is occurring, imminent, or likely, and is a threat to life and property. Stay vigilant for severe weather."

Here are some photos from the back yard.

As you can see, there is very little visibility as the snow falls at the rate of several inches an hour.

  Looks like about 8-9 inches already.

A cardinal feeds at the bird station as heavy snow falls around it.

Mourning doves patiently wait for me to finish shooting pictures so that they can take cover from the heavy snow on my back porch.

Sunday was the first full day with my new videographer, Jackie Zabel, a Kutztown University student of electronic media. She is an amazing find—incredibly organized, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Despite the heavy snowfall on Saturday, we ventured down to the Pennhurst site but found it gated and locked. Took some shots and footage of what we could see from Brown Drive. The place looks very different in the blinding white snow—less decrepit and abandoned somehow.

From there, we headed to the Burger King to try to find Diane, a woman who worked at Pennhurst from 1980-84. There we got leads to several other places where we might find former workers and residents. We managed to track one resident down, but he declined to be interviewed. I asked him if that was because it was all bad and he said no, but still refused to talk about it. I looked into his eyes and he looked back at me without wavering. He did not want to talk about it. That was that.

We stopped at several diner-type restaurants in Spring City and Royersford to ask around and put up flyers. There we found one man who worked there from 1954 to 1956 as an aide in "Q" cottage. For him working at Pennhurst was more like just a job. He was fresh out of the military and the job promised free room and board on the premises. His rooms were above the old theater. We gave him a short on-the-street interview but the traffic was so loud I doubt we’ll be able to hear him at all. You could tell from listening to him that he hadn’t let the place influence him or bring him down. He agreed to a longer interview next weekend.

I put in phone calls (all went to voice mail) to all the people I'd been referred to. None returned the calls. Now is when it gets complicated. Now is when all the hackles rise up and the doors get quietly shut in your face. Even in 2010 it is still something to be hidden, to keep silent about, to keep in a locked closet. Witnesses will venture out from their shells for a few inches, then think better of it and scuttle right back into hiding. This is not a pretty subject—this is controversy, served up raw and bleeding.

Bill Baldini called Pennhurst "a hangover from the sixteenth century"—have we really progressed beyond? Should I take a survey to see if nice folks today would like a group home made up of the “intellectually challenged” to be built in their neighborhood? Would the mores have changed? Think you know the answer? E-mail me—I'd like to know.

No matter where you are about Pennhurst, it had to be excruciatingly stressful to be confined to live there. There are scars; there is PTSD—how could there not be? Imagine the noise—the screams, the moans, the shouting. Imagine the smell—feces, urine, bleach and over-steamed vegetables. Imagine the fear. I have to keep coming back to Roland Johnson’s prophetically insightful words:

“It sounded like vibrations: crazy people was going out of their heads, out of their wits.  It just sound like people that need to belong there... it sounded like -- fear; that something not right. It was just scary -- a frightened, scary place.” 

Quoted from "Lost in a Desert World" by Roland Johnson as told to Karl Williams.

The Pennhurst Project continues to be a volatile endeavor—each success brings its own corresponding failure. A wonderful visit with Greg Pirmann on Friday yielded lots of great stories and insights into the ever-unfolding microcosm of this enigmatic institution. I learn more every day, yet much of it is painfully depressing. This is another story of dreadful American failure in the shameful way we treated our disabled brothers and sisters in the 20th century. How do I portray this twisted web of a problem without showing some of the good? After all, there were caring, sympathetic people who worked there just as well as abusive and predatory ones.

I listen to the stories of the people whose lives intersected with Pennhurst and I am humbled. Some truly loved their jobs and found great satisfaction in helping those who needed them. Like Diane, who came as a teenager, a fresh-faced volunteer, and wound up getting a full-time job there in 1980, working on the same ward, C-4, that she'd earlier volunteered on. She was amazed to find that one of the women patients who'd been placed in restraints "24/7" because of her tendencies to hurt herself was now able to sit in a chair and walk about the ward unrestricted. 

Those are the success stories. They'll anger some, I know. I also know that it's important to show the horror so that the sins of institutionalization shall never be revisited, but what about those success stories? What about Roland Johnson, who overcame sexual abuse and psychological degradation to become an independent free man and an outspoken advocate for those who had no voice? Is he any different from a Frederick Douglass or a Harriet Tubman? We so tend to underestimate those we deem inferior from ourselves. Shame on us.

To work there, you had to go in positive. You had to feel you were there for the greater good. That's what separates the workers who loved their jobs and love to talk about it from the ones who now prefer not to revisit that time of their lives. I can respect both opinions. But what I can't do is tell this story as only horror. It just wouldn't be true.