Monday, January 28, 2013

CARVILLE, LOUISIANA (and a Healing Water giveaway)

In keeping with World Leprosy Week, I'd like to call your attention to the former leprosy hospital in Carville, Louisiana. It's closed now but in previous decades, if you lived in mainland, USA and contracted leprosy, you could be sent there to live.

Today, the former hospital houses a museum that commemorates those years and that offers information about leprosy.  

Just in case you cannot hop in the car and head to Louisiana, consider one of these virtual tours.
I have this lovely, immensely informative book about Carville.  It not only clears up some of the confusion about leprosy but also shares stories of people who were hospitalized and their heartwarming interactions with the Carville community.  

As James Carville says in the book's Forward, "...our little town in southern Louisiana became a model for the world, a place of hope, progress, and tolerance."

Sounds much like Kalaupapa, Hawaii where my Healing Water takes place.

And BTW - this week, Linda Andersen is giving away a copy of Healing Water over at A Writer's Playground.


8 comments:

  1. Thanks for this, the virtual tour was very interesting. I have always wondered about Carville and what it was like there. As I said yesterday, I read that book by Betty Martin who went there as a teenager.

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  3. I want to get my hands on Miracle at Carville. Am glad to know the author's name.

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  4. Hi Joyce,

    Glad to know about this museum. I love history. I added a link to your guest blog post to send readers here. It's great how much attention we're bringing to this topic.

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  5. Thanks Linda for linking. I just discovered a PBS documentary on Carville. Think I'm going to blog it. Hoped to find a trailer to post here but did not.

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  6. Fascinating. I had no idea there had been such a hospital in NC. None of our local libraries has either book, but maybe I can find them at the university library. Thanks for letting me know about them.

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  7. Rosi. Yes, maybe University library or ILL would work.

    The hospital was actually in Louisiana, though.

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