The Coler Chronicles: Collected Bloggings of the Institution Days

Dispatches from Ventboy Alcatraz

From inside the walls of the institution, Coler-Goldwater, I continued to create content, to blog, and we added video blogging from the inside.

I wrote the following blog posts about the institution, where I lived from August 28, 2008 to September 10, 2009:

All nine video blogs can be found here: First Video Blog Series From Inside An Institution

these video diaries/rants are me speaking on camera about the institutional experience and related policies… the commentary on the formative “stakeholder meetings” that shaped the Affordable Care Act is one of my most important videos, I think.

Note: the respect I have for the staff and bond felt with the other patients is very real, and though these diaries vent frustration and the heat felt at the time, their intent is to shed light not heat and to educate about the real world conditions and actual lived experience of disability in public long-term care hospitals.  Please understand that I blame policies not people.   I want to give Love to the human beings within the surreal constructs I’ve described.
In addition, you should know that the unit A13 I describe and the hospital Coler-Goldwater itself no longer exist in the forms I encountered, having closed/dramatically shifted at the end-of-2013 without the best transition plan for the people there…

I collected everything here for convenient access for readers who’d like an intimate look “on the inside.”

Nick