Hi to all Osteopathic Hospital of Maine and Brighton Medical Center Alumni.

It's been a little over a year now since the OHM/BMC Reunion at The Portland Elks Club and about as long that ohmReunion.com has been up and running. I've added a number of things over the past year, and here are some of the highlights.

There are a few more Golden Club photo albums in the Reunion section. Remember, this section is password protected, so if you forgot your password, just ask. Helpful hint: once you sign on, bookmark the page to avoid having to enter the password each time you visit. Thanks to Anne White for making these albums available.

Engineering gave me a tour of their department, which truly spans the entire building. I took some photos, so now you can take a virtual tour of engineering and see what goes on behind the scenes.

Also from engineering, where several boxes of plaques are stored, plaques which used to be on doors and walls throughout the hospital. You can now view a number of these on the site.

There are eight higher resolution black and white photos of the hospital, which chronicle the phases of construction over the years.

Another recent addition is the 1993 Brighton Cookbook. You can click your way to approximately 450 of your favorite recipes and save them to file or print them out. Some good stuff here, some unusual, some funny, and a few by some well known folks such as Barbara Bush, George Mitchell, John McKernan, Jr., and Olympia Snowe.

The Maine Hospital Postcard area is fairly new. These are picture postcards of Maine hospitals of years gone by. Postcards offer a unique window to the past and I think you may find them very interesting.

Another new section is a look at what's been happening in the Cafeteria. As many of you know, they have seasonal displays throughout the year. I started taking pictures around Valentines Day, and have been adding the displays as they appear.

Now that summer is here, I thought it would be nice to add some photos of campus landscaping and flowers that the crews do such a nice job with.

Some other new areas are the 'Links' page, with links to departments within Brighton Campus and select area links in the community, and a Sitemap of all the places you can visit on the website. I changed the name of the area called "Discussion Area" to "Bulletin Board". There really isn't much discussion going on, but I am leaving it there in case anybody wants to post any news, events, comments or whatever.

The Archive Library at Maine Med has many issues of Rounds, spanning from 1988-1993. I've recently added nearly a dozen issues to the MMC Library Archives (full issues). Special thanks to Rachelle Blais at Archives for her help in making these available.

Recently, an article about ohmReunion.com was posted in Maine Medical Center's "What's Happening", March 2003, page 3. There is also a link to the site on the MMC Intranet home page (only accessible from within the company). To get there, go to: 
Search | MMC Health Lynx | Local Links, Communications, Calendars.

The ohmReunion.com website was accepted into the "Osteopathic WebRing". For those not familiar with webrings, these are a community of websites, united by a common interest and linked to one another to from a virtual "ring". Each site links to the "next", so that eventually, you could circle back to where you started. You can see the WebRing link at the bottom of the main page.

Another way I've tried to make the website more findable to those who may be interested, is by using web search engines. If you did a search on 'Osteopathic Hospital of Maine', you would find it using the following: MSN Search, Alta Vista, Excite, Hotbot, Metacrawler, Looksmart, Webcrawler, and Overture. You would have slightly less luck doing a search on 'Brighton Medical Center', but I'm working on that.

There are many articles posted in the Portland Newspaper section. In fact, I believe most of the articles about the hospital from 1937 and up are listed. If you wanted to do a paper on the history of the hospital, this would be a good resource.

The OHM/BMC Alumni (Golden Club), will be holding a luncheon at noon on Saturday, September 6, at the Village Café in Portland. There will be a guest speaker from the Ronald MacDonald House. Details to follow.

News from Maine Health and The Osteopathic Heritage Fund. The Osteopathic Heritage Fund advisory committee recently formalized funding guidelines and processes. To view these guidelines see the link on the main page.

At the University of New England in Biddeford, plans are in the works to create an Osteopathic Heritage Center. The following was reported by Janet Alexander at MaineHealth, Director, Affiliate Hospital Relation:

"Gretchen Sibley, on behalf of a group of interested parties throughout northern New England, submitted an application and received some start up funding from OHF for an Osteopathic Heritage Center. The Center as envisioned will house and display historical documents and memorabilia relating to the practice of osteopathy in this region. UNECOM renovated a room in the library for an initial collection and library staff there have been identifying, documenting and sometimes relocating materials from throughout the campus to the new site. An archivist has been hired and is at work overseeing cataloguing and planning with the advisory group how best to solicit additions to the collection, as well as to lay long term plans for expansion and eventual fund-raising for a permanent home, possibly a freestanding building at UNE or elsewhere in the region".

A number of folks have supplied me with items of interest to add to the site, and I am very thankful for their help. I am always looking for more to add, so just give me a ring (email or call the lab at 207-879-8350) if you have something you'd like to contribute. Keep an eye on the What's New list for the latest additions.

Generally speaking, you are receiving this newsletter either because you joined "Email Central" (about 70 members), you emailed me at some point with interest in the reunion website, you are an alumni that is either my personal address book, or I saw your name in the GroupWise address book and thought you may be interested. If you forgot your password for either the photo area or the email area, just let me know.

The next reunion is planned for Oct 22, 2005, so we all have plenty of time to spread the word about it. Any updates as to time and location for this event, as well as ongoing events planned throughout the year by the OHM/BMC Alumni (Golden Club) will be posted in Events.

Hope your summer is going well,

Steve Ramer

http://www.ohmreunion.com

mailto:ramer@ohmreunion.com