A Random Assortment

~ I love this story of the Statue of Liberty of the Susquehanna.

~ The tiny handmade books of the Brontes.

~ Is pregnancy or is this the cutest nursery decoration ever?

~ On Geel, a town in Belgium in which there is an ancient tradition of caring for people with mental illness in the homes of the townspeople. This began as a Christian pilgrimage site that evolved into a place of continuing care; the article is pretty interesting both as a summary and as a Tocquevillian analysis. For instance:

At the same time, Geel’s story does suggest that psychiatry’s role could be limited, perhaps dramatically so: not at the centre of mental healthcare but on its periphery, as a backstop to the community. In an ideal world, might not the modern psychiatric clinic shrink back towards the size of the 19th-century hospital: a discreet ‘inside’, as remote from the majority of patients’ lives as possible?...
The boarder who celebrated 50 years in residence is by no means exceptional: another, recently deceased at the age of 100, had spent 80 years with the same family, in the care of successive generations to whom she had been first like a daughter, then a sister and finally an aunt.