The Spectrum

Spent a good part of the day reading (or re-reading) some of the extraordinary letters of TB patients from the 1930s and 1940s that we have been lucky to find -- this for the scripts we will use for our vocal auditions taking place on Sunday, March 2, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Warwick, R.I. I was struck, again, by the sheer power of our material. Not to get carried away, but I really do believe we have found a tableau, a canvas, call it what you will, on which timeless themes are writ. Man, if we can't bring this across on screen, we need to hang it up.

Here's an example of the numbing sadness -- laced with a still-strong sense of youthful optimism and hope -- that a teenage girl experienced. Sadly, Barbara was doomed to die of the White Plague, at age 18. This is from a letter she wrote to a relative in 1949, almost exactly one year before she died at Wallum Lake. Everett is the man she loved, but as her disease intensified, he turned away:

``Gee, I haven’t had company all week. I’m so lonesome. If I ever know anyone in a place like this when I’m well, I’ll visit them as often as I can. Poor Alma goes two, sometimes three weeks without a visitor. At least I know you’ll be here Sundays. Dad promised he’d be up this week, but I haven’t seen nor heard from him. I wish he’d call me and tell me he’s not coming. Or write. Everett, too.
``I get ready for company every single Thursday and I have company, all right: Disappointment, that’s about all. Good thing we have movies…''

And here's the other extreme, a letter in the 1930s from a young TB patient to his beloved Nina, a young woman who had recovered from TB and was now a nurse, carng for TB patients like Ed. They had a happy ending, marrying and having a child and spending the rest of their long lives together. We like happy endings! Check out the last line -- could a love letter possibly be more sweet???

``Oh, Darling, I wish I could see you more often. I feel so much better when I see you and then, too, I can kiss you at least once in a while. I’m afraid that when we’re married you will grow so tired of my loving you all the time. I’ll be kissing you all the time and on the very slightest excuse. Will you mind? I love you, darling, and I hope that next year we can begin to live as we should live.
``Please get to bed early, darling, and remember I’m thinking about you all the time and want you so close to me. Gee, I love you.
``A million, million kisses to the dearest little girl in all the world.
``Yours ‘til the moon drops in the sea.
``Ed.''

Good Press, Good Publicity

We invited a writer for The Valley Breeze to join us on a recent shoot at Zambarano, and his story in this week's edition of the paper, which circulates in northern Rhode Island, is a welcome addition to the coverage we have been getting. In his piece, Ethan Shorey wrote about a former patient whose narrative is among those we are documenting. ``Emily's story was one of many Bettencourt and Miller are capturing, detailing unpredictable stories of hope, fun, humor and even discovered love, even though many resdients were living with, and dying from, the number-one killer disease of the early 20th century.'' Which is about a good a description of our aim as any. For the full text, visit The Valley Breeze.

-- Wayne

Patient Number One wasn't the first...

During lunch today, I stopped at the city archives and gleaned a few tidbits about Patient Number One, George S. Barrows, from Providence's death records. The S. is for Sprague, his mother and stepmother's maiden name. He was single at the time of his death. He died of "tuberculosis of lungs and brain."

I also looked up his older brother, Frank Perry Barrows, who died eight years earlier, at the age of 26. Frank died Jan. 3, 1899, in the Homeopathic Hospital of "acute miliary tuberculosis."

So, George was not the first in his family to die of tuberculosis. He must have had a particular sense of foreboding as he made his journey to the lake.

I still have to check out George and Frank's mother's death record.

The picture above shows the ledger book that records George's death. The city archives is a visually rich place with an archivist who looks straight out of central casting, complete with a bow tie.

-Paul Parker

Bad News, Good News

After Sunday's meeting, I did some archive work on the Web and found that Patient Number One, George S. Barrows, and his brother and sister all appear to have died without children. This makes it highly unlikely we'll connect with living relatives who know much about him. I still have to confirm this, though. And I haven't given up hope of finding archival tracings of George.

On the good news side, I had time on my lunch break to zip up to North Burial Ground to see whether George has a gravestone. I found it, and snapped the above picture with my cell phone. The cheap camera and the afternoon sun behind the east-facing stone account for the crummy quality, but there he is.

-Paul Parker

A Toast to the R.I. Council for the Humanities!

We are pleased to announce that the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities has just awarded a grant to help underwrite ON THE LAKE. Thanks, Council, for this vote of confidence in our project! We are incurring substantial expenses and seeking further funding but this is a great start. Like Rhode Island PBS, which has written a letter of commitment to broadcast OTL, the Council’s vote is an endorsement of our idea, our crew, and our dedication to bringing to life an extraordinary and important but mostly forgotten story.

-- Wayne

The Crew at Midway's New Studio

Had our second full-crew production meeting today, our first at Midway Picture's new home in an old industrial building turned cool new arts and what-not complex on the Providence waterfront. This is our crew, in our usual business attire; please pardon Dave, bottom row center, the guy holding the green ball, he always forgets to take off his hat for formal pictures. The collective energy today was outstanding, and as we wrap principal photography we feel as if we are in a very, very good place with ON THE LAKE. Dave's choice of furniture matches the industrial-wasteland view out of the many spacious windows (the dinosaurs on the shelves are a neat touch, as I am sure his sons will agree), but gentle snarkasm aside, this is a great space, in a great location, with great afternoon sun, and, we strongly suspicion, many great films to come, starting with OTL.

-- Wayne

Powerful, Raw, Extraordinary Emotion

Just when we think we’ve maxed out on emotion, along comes an interview that blows us away. Such was the case on Monday, when, during an all-day shoot, we filmed a woman who went to Wallum Lake in the early 1950s as a young teenager. Here was this happy, normal young girl who developed a bad cough, which intensified as she began coughing up blood. Sent to a general hospital, where leprosy was a possible diagnosis, Barbara was terrified. If it was leprosy, would her skin begin to flake off? Would she lose limbs? I remember my own childhood, in the 1960s, when I, too (without symptoms, just healthy paranoia), was horrified at the thought of a disease that would basically rot you into the grave.

In Barbara’s case, TB was diagnosed. So highly contagious, and she was not allowed to go home to say goodbye to her sisters or see her house or have one last look at her bedroom -- but was sent directly to Zambarano. Her dad, wanting to be nice, told her that she would probably be there for only about two weeks. That was scary, but at least there would be light at the end of the tunnel. And then, waiting alone in an examining room behind a curtain, she overheard a doctor tell her parents that she would likely be there for two years or more. Barbara freaked out, and tried to run away. They caught her, of course. Things only got worse from there, with her roommate dying and taken away under a sheet in the middle of the night, and more, much more, that we will use in OTL.

But as we have found time and again, from the midst of this horrible disease and these often-horrible circumstances, come stories of triumph and love. In Barbara’s case, it was Ralphie, a fellow TB patient about her age, handsome… and she soon had a crush. And Ralphie for her. They met only every few weeks in the auditorium, while watching movies -- but a kindly nurse let them sit together (defying the rules of girls on one side, boys on the other) and there they sat, holding hands and whispering sweet things to each other. Ah, love.

This is only a glimpse into the interview, which, as noted, blew Dave and me away. So far away that we took no notes, as we usually do, and have assigned a member of the crew to get us a transcript ASAP. I will savor every word.

We had two other good interviews on Monday and with so many great stories now we are nearing the end of principal photography.

A last note, regarding the aforementioned ghosts: The central steam tunnel was flooded after a heavy rain, meaning we had to find another way to get into the Danford building. We did get in. And then, after our last interview, as Dave and I were alone (or so we assumed), the sun setting, we heard whispers… probably just the steam pipes, right? What were they saying? Have we outworn our welcome? Do we know them too well? Methinks not, it was probably just a bad ghost day. Our commitment to them is that we will tell their stories, and the stories of the many others, the former patients of Wallum Lake. And we’ll do it with dignity and class, and powerful emotion.

-- Wayne