THE RETURN OF THE EYE

By: Laila Schwin and Valery Warner

April 7, 2022

Have you ever wanted to take a walk through an alien realm and explore all of the possibilities of a new land? Well, Otherworld can provide all of that and maybe even more.

Otherworld is a Columbus-based, immersive art experience that leads the viewer through a story of tourism in an alternate world. The experience utilizes countless, different art mediums from an extensive team of artists to create a fully-immersive experience for guests. 

The experience starts with you, the viewer, who will become a beta tester for Otherworld Industries in their pursuit of researching alternate worlds. The viewer is left alone in the seemingly-abandoned laboratories, and it is your task to find out the secrets of the lab and maybe even do some traveling between the worlds. 

The experience features 47 different rooms of abstract art, spanning a total of 32,000 square feet of mysteries and new experiences. 

Otherworld was built and created by over 40 artists who believed that traditional museums, galleries, and theme park attractions did not match their level of anticipated excitement and entertainment. Their plan was to create an experience to immerse the viewer in an unknown environment through highly interactive technology and large-scale props.

The Otherworld experience contains a large number of art forms such as metalworking, programming, animation, sculpting, digital fabrication, and creative writing. The result of these art forms from such a large team of artists is a wonderful experience. 

Tickets for Otherworld are only available online, and you must schedule a specific time slot for your tickets on your planned day of attendance. You can, however, stay and experience the art for as long as you want following your arrival time slot. Tickets range from $25 to $30 per person, while lower prices are offered for children and senior citizens. Tickets can be purchased here.

If you are looking for a new art experience or just a fun place to go, Otherworld is definitely a great option for the whole family to enjoy.

By: Laila Schwin and Valery Warner

March 24, 2022

Clarissa Harlowe Barton was an American nurse and the founder of the American Red Cross. She served as a hospital nurse during the Civil War as well as a teacher and a patent clerk. She is well-known for her humanitarian work and for advocating for civil rights. 

Barton was born December 25, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts. Her father was Captain Stephen Barton, a member of the local militia. Her mother was Sarah Stone Barton. At the age of three, she and her brother Stephen were sent to school where she learned how to read and write. She also met her only friend there, Nancy Fitt. 

At the age of 10, she assigned herself the task of nursing her brother after a fall; she learned how to distribute medicine and how to take care of his body. She continued to care for her brother, and he eventually made a full recovery. 

Barton’s parents attempted to make her less timid by sending her to school at Colonel Stones High School. She became depressed, more reclusive, and refused to eat, so her parents brought her back home. 

She spent her childhood engaging in what were considered more masculine activities, and she was sent to spend some time with her female cousins to learn social skills and a more feminine way of life. 

Barton’s parents went on to convince her to be a school teacher to help her become more social. She received her teaching certificate in 1839 when she was only 17-years-old. She led a campaign to redistrict her school to allow the children of workers to attend the school, too. Barton also demanded equal pay in her teaching job due to the influence that she had in that campaign. Barton went on to teach at various schools for 12 years. 

In 1851, Barton’s mother died. Soon after her mom’s passing, she decided to find further education at the Clinton Liberal Institute in New York. She focused on learning languages and writing and was well-revered on campus. In 1852, while teaching again, this time in Hightstown, she was contracted to open a free school in Bordentown, New Jersey. The school later got funding for a rebuild, and upon the completion of the new school, Barton was demoted to an assistant rather than keeping her position as principal. She ended up quitting shortly after. 

In 1855, Barton moved to Washington D.C. and started working as a clerk for the U.S. Patent Office. She was the first woman to hold that clerk position within the federal government and was initially being paid the same as her male counterparts. She was later demoted, and in 1858, she was fired because James Buchanan found her “Black Republicanism” unfitting for her role. In 1861, she returned to the patent office as a temporary copyist, the same position she held after being formerly demoted.

On April 19, 1861, the Baltimore Riot began the combattant history of the Civil War. Barton wanted to serve her country, so she went to the railroad station where the men were being transported; there, she nursed over 40 men. Proving crucial, she provided assistance to the men in uniform and personally took supplies to the building to help the soldiers. Barton, along with several other women, provided clothing, food, and supplies for the sick and wounded soldiers. She learned how to store and distribute medical supplies and offered emotional support to the soldiers by helping them write to their families, talk to the men, and read books to them. 

She continued on collecting medical supplies to care for Union soldiers. In August of 1862, Barton received permission to work on the front lines of the war providing medical care to wounded soldiers. She began reaching out and posting ads in newspapers to get medical supplies for the battlefield. During the First Battle of Bull Run, she distributed supplies, cleaned field hospitals, treated and dressed wounds, and served food to the soldiers. Barton provided medical care for both Union and Confederate soldiers. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

Barton was appointed as the “Lady in charge” at the hospitals by serving the Army of the James. She became informally-known as the “Angel of the Battlefield” due to her swift medical services. She served on the front lines providing medical care for the battles of Fairfax Station, Chantilly, Harpers Ferry, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Petersburg, and Cold Harbor.

Following the Civil War, Barton gained permission to go forth with “The Search for the Missing Men” in which she responded to inquiries from the families of missing soldiers. She went on to run the Office of Missing Soldiers in Washington D.C. and helped identify and locate more than 22,000 missing men. In 1865, she helped find and properly bury nearly 13,000 people that had died at the Andersonville prison camp where the Confederate army held them as prisoners of war. Over the next four years, she returned more than 20,000 Union soldiers to proper and marked graves.

Barton achieved widespread recognition by delivering lectures around the country about her war experiences in 1865–1868. During this time, she met Susan B. Anthony and began an association with the woman’s suffrage movement, while also becoming a civil rights activist. Baron became mentally and physically tired after her worldwide tours, so her doctor suggested that she move far away from her work. She closed the Missing Soldiers Office in 1868 and traveled to Europe. In 1869, during her trip to Geneva, Switzerland, Barton was introduced to the Red Cross and Dr. Appia. He later would invite her to be the representative for the American branch of the Red Cross and vowed to help her find financial benefactors for the official start of the American Red Cross.

In the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870, she assisted the Grand Duchess of Baden in the preparation of military hospitals and gave the Red Cross society much aid during the war. When Barton returned to The United States, she inaugurated a movement to gain recognition for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by the United States government. Barton finally succeeded during the administration of President Chester Arthur, using the argument that the new American Red Cross could respond to crises other than war, such as earthquakes, forest fires, and hurricanes.

Barton later became president of the American branch of this community. The first local society was founded August 22, 1881, in Dansville, Livingston County, New York, where she maintained a country home. During the Spanish-American War, this Red Cross aided refugees and prisoners of war. 

In 1884, she helped with floods in the Ohio River. In 1887, she provided resources to Texas during a famine. She also assisted workers who were affected by a tornado in Illinois and also treated those affected by Yellow Fever in Florida in 1888. The list of her achievements and the people who she helped is endless. 

As criticism arose of her mixing professional and personal resources, Barton was forced to resign as president of the American Red Cross in 1904 at the age of 83 because her leadership style fit poorly into the structure of a charity. She was forced out of office by a new generation of all-male, scientific experts who reflected the realistic efficiency of the Progressive Era rather than her idealistic humanitarianism.

Barton died at her home in Glen Echo, Maryland, on April 12, 1912. Clara Barton had a lasting impact on the medical field and on repatriating missing soldiers. Her work with and establishment of the Red Cross represents an important development that has supported and saved many people.

[Information retrieved from redcross.org & biography.com.]

By: Laila Schwin and Valery Warner

March 17, 2022

Elizabeth Jane Cochran, more commonly known by her pen name, Nellie Bly, was a journalist, charity worker, and inventor. She is well-known for taking a trip around the world in 72 days and for the way that she shaped the concept of investigative journalism. 

Bly was born on May 5, 1864, in “Cochran’s Mills,” now part of the Pittsburgh suburb of Burrell Township in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. She was one of 15 children. As a young girl, Elizabeth often was called “Pinky” because she frequently wore that color. As she became a teenager, she wanted to portray herself as more sophisticated, so she dropped the nickname and changed her surname to “Cochrane”.  In 1879, she enrolled at Indiana Normal School but later was forced to drop out because of a lack of funds. In 1880, Bly’s mother moved their family to Allegheny City (now known as the city of Pittsburgh). 

Bly’s first attempt at journalism were responses to articles within the Pittsburgh Dispatch under the pseudonym “Lonely Orphan Girl”. She responded to misogynistic articles about how women were only meant for birthing and housework. She was offered a job writing articles for the Dispatch, and after her first article, which argued for divorce law reforms for women, she was offered a full-time job and the pen name of Nellie Bly. 

Her early journalistic endeavors were within the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper. She focused on the working conditions of women working in factories as well as general women’s societal issues. She was later informally demoted to solely writing about fashion, gardening, and women’s society upon the complaints of factory owners. She continued her political and investigative journalism on a trip to Mexico where she protested the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and the suppression and imprisonment of Mexican journalists. She later had to flee the country upon threats of arrest and went on to publish her experiences in the book, Six Months in Mexico. 

Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887 for New York City. She began to face rejection from new editors who would not consider hiring a woman. She eventually talked her way into the office of Joseph Pulitzer and took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to fake insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, now named Roosevelt Island. Bly checked herself into a boarding house called Temporary Homes for Females where she stayed up all night to give herself the “disturbed woman look” and began making accusations that the other boarders were insane. Refusing to go to bed and scaring others, the police were called to take her to the nearby courthouse. After being examined by a police officer, a judge, and a doctor, Bly was taken to Blackwell’s Island.

After ten days, the asylum released Bly, and she later published a book called Ten Days in a Mad-House which prompted the asylum to implement reforms, thus bringing her fame. She had a lasting impact on American culture and shed light on the experiences of women beyond the asylum, too. 

In 1893, Bly used the celebrity status she had gained from her asylum reporting skills to schedule an exclusive interview with the allegedly insane serial killer, Lizzie Halliday. Her two-part series in October of 1887 was a sensation, effectively launching the decade of “stunt” or “detective” reporting, a clear precursor to investigative journalism. The stunt girls, with Bly as their prototype, were the first women to enter the journalistic mainstream in the twentieth century. 

In 1888, Bly wanted to embark on and document a journey similar to the fictional one of the adventure novel Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. On November 14, 1889, Bly boarded the Augusta Victoria and began her trip around the world. She brought very few of her belongings and relied solely on the most essential items. During this, the newspaper Cosmopolitan hired a reporter to set out the same day as Bly to beat the time of her worldwide journey. Bly was unaware of this competitor for most of her journey and ultimately did not care about the competition that was created. 

Bly had a near endless list of experiences in the places that she traveled. Her trip ended up lasting 72 days and was mostly traveled by ship and train. She set a world record for circumnavigating the world. Later on, however, the record would go on to be beaten many times, with the current record being just under 36 days.

Following her trip, Bly began to write serial novels for the New York Family Story Newspaper. Her first was Eva the Adventuress, based on the life experiences of Eva Hamilton; several of the chapters were published before Bly returned from her trip. Between 1889 and 1895, she wrote eleven novels. Most of these novels were thought to be entirely lost until their rediscovery in 2021. 

In 1895, Bly married Robert Seaman. He was 73 and failing in health at the time. Due to this, she took over as head of Iron Clad Manufacturing Company, a position previously held by Seaman. While working there, she patented both a novel milk can and stacking garbage cans. Due to embezzlement by other people within the business and general business-based negligence by Bly, the company went bankrupt. 

She went back to reporting after this and wrote stories from Europe’s Eastern Front during WWI. She was one of the first people and the first woman to visit the war zone between Serbia and Austria. She spent much of her life following this and continuing to write in newspapers. 

On January 27, 1922, Bly died of pneumonia at St. Mark’s Hospital, New York City, at the age of 57. In 1998, Bly was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and was one of four journalists honored with a U.S. postage stamp in a “Women in Journalism” set from 2002. 

Nellie Bly will forever be remembered for her accomplishments and impact on journalism. 

{Information retrieved from Womenshistory.org.}