The natural progression of my obsession with the concept of the Boy in the Bubble (or, in the case of my unfinished indie short, the Girl in the Bubble) was an obsession with the concept of leper colonies.
I think the interest started when I heard once about the leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana (pics from the 1950’s here, I think on NPR. The story had several sad details about being wrenched from one’s life, the isolation, the exile. The one detail that always stuck with me was that some people had clandestine picnics with family at the fence of grounds; patients on the inside of the fence, loved ones on the outside.
I think the other reason why I became fascinated was that it appears that it mainly all turned out to be unnecessary. Leprosy, now called Hansen’s Disease, isn’t actually highly transmissible.
That just haunted me, the idea of all those lives and freedom limited like that, for something that turned out to not even be true.
When I went to New Orleans in 2004, my hosts were indulgent enough to drive me all the way out to Carville to see the place. By the time we got there, though, it was too late to look at the Museum. We drove around the tiny little town - just a store and some houses, really - where off-site staff must have lived at one time. The street names all referenced being near the medical facility. Ointment Street was my favorite.
