Thursday, April 11, 2024

Dear diary, why you should journal

From eaglevoice.com 

By Gibson Lowenberg

Long ago in days now passed, journaling used to be a hobby that nearly every literate person would partake in. Now it has gone by the wayside in favour of social media and the internet. However, journaling can still be an extremely beneficial hobby. 

According to healthline.com, keeping a journal can benefit your mental health in several ways. These include reducing stress, boosting well-being, emotional processing, future moves and self-discovery. 

Many people view keeping a journal as just writing down their feelings, but it can be much more than that. 

You can draw in your journal, write out plans for the day, keep track of things you need to do, draft creative stories, and many more potential ideas. It can also be used when traveling, writing down your dreams and goals, and what you are thankful for. 

It’s your space to do what you want to do. You decide everything that happens within those covers.  

Tips for effective journaling include setting aside a certain time of day when you are able to reflect in writing. 

Also make sure to not overthink journaling too much, just write. Other ways to journal are by choosing a notebook that makes you feel the most creative and to try different styles of writing.  

If you are interested but don’t know where to start, there are plenty of tips online and on social media. You can start with a writing prompt, just writing about your day, facts about your interests such as sports or a good book you’ve read, or maybe even something cool you found on the ground while walking between classes. 

Other ideas may also include writing about things you would like to know more about or telling short stories. 

It can also be used as a form of therapy, as many licensed therapists recommend journaling about your feelings to become more self-aware.  

Years down the road, you can revisit a completed journal and look through the pages as a screenshot of your life at the time you wrote it. Relive the memories that you experience while writing that journal.  The choices are endless, what will you do?

https://www.eaglevoice.com/opinion/dear-diary-why-you-should-journal/

Tuesday, April 9, 2024

William Redfield & The Great September Gale of 1821

From newyorkalmanack.com

Waterways of New York City (Map by Julius Schorzman)Hurricanes are infrequent visitors to New York City. Major hurricanes, those with winds 111 miles per hour and above, making landfall in the city are rarer still. One of these was the first storm of the Atlantic Hurricane Season in 1821, originally called “The Great September Gale,” it’s now known as the Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane.


The Category 3 storm came ashore in Jamacia Bay, on September 3rd.  A 13-foot storm surge, which luckily hit at low tide, rose within an hour and flooded Manhattan Island from the Battery to Canal Street, uniting the Hudson and East Rivers. It tossed ships into the streets, and destroy harbor docks and the bridge to Ward’s Island. It also resulted in a major scientific discovery.

William C. Redfield

William C. Redfield (1789 – 1857), a native of Connecticut, was no stranger to storms. It’s said of his grandfather, Captain William Redfield (the younger added the C. to distinguish himself), that “his four sons who reached maturity all followed the sea, and of these the fate of the elder two was never accurately known.”

William C.’s father, Peleg Redfield, was a privateer during the American Revolution who was captured, and then escaped from the British. He also “followed the sea” his whole life.

As a boy, the bookish young “Bill Redfield” was saved from drowning in a mill pond. At 13 he was apprenticed to a harness and saddle maker. In a few years he was a member of several young men’s improvement societies, which were in fad at the time when many could not afford the cost of higher education.

He later wrote that he read “history, voyages and travels,” before turning to geology, “and pretty nearly all there then was upon chemistry,” before tackling zoology and the medical sciences.

Tramping Through America

Leaving Connecticut with a friend in 1810, he tramped to Hartford, New Hartford, Stockbridge and New Lebanon to Albany and then up the Mohawk Valley, keeping a diary handed down to his son John Howard Redfield, who described his travels:

“He spent the first Sunday in visiting the Shaker settlement near [New] Lebanon, and in attending their worship, of which he gives an interesting account. At Albany his attention was drawn to Fulton‘s new steamboat, and we may imagine with what care it was examined. How little could he then conceive that in after life steam navigation was to become his chief vocation.

“Continuing the journey up the Mohawk Valley, tramping from thirty to thirty-five miles per day, and stopping at night at such Dutch taverns as they met, they reached Whitesboro in Oneida County, a Connecticut settlement, where they tarried a day or two to visit some relatives of his companion.

“Henceforward the journey was through a wilderness, in which settlements became sparser and more insignificant, through Canandaigua to Buffalo. There they diverged to visit Niagara Palls, then a rarely visited wonder.”

He reached Ohio, then turned toward Pennsylvania, and passed through Virginia and Maryland. During a trading visit to Savannah in 1812 he encountered an earthquake.

“I have often heard him tell of the alarming vibrations which set in swinging motion everything pendulous, and of the unceremonious manner in which he and his companion were forced to leave their dwelling in the night, to seek shelter in the street,” his son wrote.

He seems to have traded over the next 15 years, presumably by sea, including to Alexandria, Virginia in 1819. His wife having died the previous spring, he married again in 1820.

1821 Atlantic Hurricane Track Map The Great September Gale aka the Norfolk and Long Island HurricaneThe Great September Gale

“On the evening of September 3, 1821, while [his new wife] was lying upon her death-bed, a gale, short in duration but terrific in violence, passed over Connecticut,” John Howard Redfield wrote. “Its greatest force lasted from about 7 pm till midnight. For many years thereafter it was spoken of as the  ‘Great September Gale.’

“I can remember how the wind roared, how the house shook, how I shared the alarm which was manifest in all those who were about me, and how I was impressed the next morning by the devastating force which had overturned out-houses and large trees in the vicinity of our dwelling.”

William C. Redfield saw something else in the storm:

“My father’s habits of close observation led him to watch the fallen trees and other effects of that destructive wind. At Middletown and Cromwell the wind had been from the southeast and the trees lay prostrated with their heads north-westward. But on reaching Berkshire he was surprised to see that they lay in an opposite direction, and he repeatedly called my attention to this fact.

“In conversing with the residents of that region and enquiring the time when these trees were prostrated, he was still more astonished to learn that the wind, which at 9 pm had been from the southeast at Cromwell, had been in Stockbridge and that region from the northwest at precisely the same hour. These facts at first seemed to him irreconcilable.

“It did not appear to him possible that two winds of such violence should be blowing directly against each other at the distance of only seventy miles.”

Ten years later his findings were confirmed in another hurricane and he published an article on the subject in the American Journal of Science. His “rotary theory of storms” helped change the way cyclonic storms were understood and he is considered a father of meteorology.

Steamboats, Railroads and Mount Marcy

In 1824 Redfield moved his family to the city of New York, where according to his own account he “was engaged in the construction of the steam vessels Commerce and Swiftsure, and the safety-barges and freighting vessels which have since been towed on the Hudson chiefly by these steamers; having acted as principal engineer and general agent of ‘The Steam Navigation Company,’ to which these vessels belonged.”

In this way he helped advance the Hudson River towing industry. (Safety barges were a solution to the general public’s fear of boiler explosions on early steamboats).

“His mechanical taste and engineering skill here found ample scope, and many improvements in steam boilers, in paddle wheels, and in the framing of hulls were introduced by him, to general favor,” according to his son. He was called on to give testimony about the dangers of boiler explosions.

William C Redfield 1789-1857 engraving by A H Ritchie from Genealogical history of the Redfield family in the United States (1860)”In 1828, when railroads were being introduced he proposed “a great railway from the Atlantic to the Mississippi” running up the Hudson River, and out the Mohawk Valley to the west, putting the knowledge of the country he gained while tramping across it as young man to use.

His pamphlet was titled Sketch of the Geographical Route of a Great Railway, by which it is proposed to connect the Canals and navigable waters of the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and the Michigan, North West, and Missouri Territories, opening thereby a free communication at all seasons of the year between the Atlantic States and the great valley of the Mississippi.

In 1837, Redfield helped organize the first scientific expedition to Mount Marcy with Ebenezer Emmons, guessing then that it was the State’s highest peak. For his efforts Verplanck Colvin named one of the peaks in the Great Range of the High Peaks Mount Redfield in his honour.

William C. Redfield was awarded an honorary Masters degree from Yale in 1839, went on to help found the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1843, serving as the organization’s first president. He published more than 60 academic papers.

Redfield died at the age of 68 in the city of New York on February 12, 1857, and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Illustrations, from above: Waterways of New York City (Map by Julius Schorzman) 1. Hudson River, 2. East River, 3. Long Island Sound, 4. Newark Bay, 5. Upper New York Bay, 6. Lower New York Bay, 7. Jamaica Bay, and 8. the Atlantic Ocean; the track map of The Great September Gale; and an engraving of William C. Redfield by A. H. Ritchie from Genealogical History of the Redfield Family in the United States (1860).

https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2024/04/william-redfield-1821-ny-hurricane/ 

Sunday, April 7, 2024

Book review: Pity The Swagman -The Australian Odyssey of a Victorian Diarist by Bethan Phillips

From nation.cymru

‘A waste of precious time and good candles’. This was the view expressed by Jenkin and Elinor Jenkins regarding their son Joseph keeping a diary, which he kept throughout his life, in Wales and Australia, having commenced in January 1839.

It’s just as well he paid no attention to his parents on this occasion, or else there would have been nothing for the late William Evans, a retired heart specialist and the diarist’s grandson, to edit and have published.

Likewise, “Pity The Swagman: The Australian Odyssey of a Victorian Diarist” by the late Bethan Phillips (having been republished by Y Lolfa this year), would not exist.

What we have here is quite the weighty volume, which surprised me at first, though I’m not sure why.

Having examined Joseph’s life through his diaries and providing additional historical context for the reader as she went (such as, among many other matters the Rebecca Riots, limited suffrage and the lack of a secret ballot in Wales, to the mistreatment of Chinese workers and indigenous Australians as well as the exploits of the Kelly Gang in Australia) Phillips succeeded in covering a lot of ground in great detail here, with equal weight given to Joseph’s life both in Ceredigion and Victoria.

               Pity The Swagman: The Australian Odyssey of a Victorian Diarist by Bethan Phillips is published by Y Lolfa

Drinking

A successful farmer, respected poet, friend of landlords and politicians in Wales, who took a great interest in education and transport (as his involvement with opening a school locally and helping to ensure the railway came to his corner of the world demonstrates) life for Joseph became increasingly undone between Joseph’s increasing socialising and drinking.

Indeed, the author notes that “Joseph was now a confirmed alcoholic” by 1866.

Inevitably, this led to things becoming difficult at Trecefel, the family farm, not helped by his refusing to keep two maids on for another year, which made more work for his wife, Betty.

In addition, tragedy struck the family with the death of his eldest son Jenkin from Tuberculosis.

Joseph eventually leaves his home and family under a cloud in December 1868, leaving, we later learn from a letter his son Lewis sends him, debts of over £600.

The reader then accompanies him, guided by the author, to Australia and following a quarter century of living in the Colony (now State) of Victoria, we then accompany Joseph on his way back to Trecefel.

This is once more under a cloud, between the break ins he suffered at his home in the town of Maldon and the over £200 others owe him which is never repaid.

Ironic that Joseph left debts behind at Trecefel, only to then leave Australia having failed to recover money owed to him.

Self-pity

No punches are pulled by Phillips here. The biographer frequently comments on Joseph’s self-pity, the fact that he blames everything from his date of birth, to fate, to Betty, for any troubles he has, but never seems willing to take any personal responsibility.

As demonstrated by the diary entry and response to it below, the author also takes aim at Joseph’s hypocrisy:

24 June 1887

Gold! Gold! Gold! – is on every tongue while the fine surface of the soil is shamefully neglected. Each man, myself excepted, appears to have come here to seek his fortune.

To which Phillips responds:

“This entry smacks of crass hypocrisy: Joseph not only dug for gold on many occasions, but also bought shares in claims. During his moral spasms, however, he conveniently forgot such things.”

Despite no punches being pulled where necessary, Joseph was also given credit when it was due. He was certainly a man of contrasts. The author tells us for instance, how Joseph, aside from the very occasional drink, abstained from alcohol altogether during his time in Australia.

He also was given to “taking up the cause of those less fortunate than himself.” Examples mentioned include a letter he had published in “The Australian” newspaper dated the 18th of November 1869 in defence of Swagmen.

Indeed, it is from that letter that this volume takes its title. The reader also learns of how Joseph’s principles were at odds with his colleagues.

When a Chinese worker he once worked alongside experienced abuse, Joseph was “prepared to court unpopularity in defending the rights of an abused fellow worker”.

In 1887, Joseph agreed to help an indigenous man named Equinhup “nicknamed ‘Tom Clarke’ by the whites” to claim compensation from The Railway Commission, as they’d taken land from his tribe.

After Joseph composed a letter for Equinhup to present to the Commission, they agreed to pay him “£1 in silver as compensation, but with a promise of more.” As Phillips notes “Whether or not this promise was kept is not known.”

Poetry

Accompanying this balanced, almost impossible to put down biography, are a collection of photographs from Wales and Australia, which aid the reader in visualising locations and events mentioned.

In addition, the appendices include the original Welsh drafts of Joseph’s poetry (the author noting in the acknowledgements the decision was made to include translations into English in the main body of the text “in the interest of facilitating the flow of reading”) a copy of Joseph’s will and information about the vessels he sailed on to reach Australia and to return home.

Having gone to Australia on impulse in 2016 myself (and even then, only for a month, to visit friends & relatives) to get away from the frustration of not having any luck finding work in Wales (only to then be offered a role as a butler three weeks into my stay by a very good friend, which I couldn’t accept, though I was very grateful for the offer) Joseph’s diary & more recently this biography, proved to be a very interesting read indeed. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

In fact, I spoke to Alan (who’d offered me the butler role in Australia) just prior to receiving my copy of “Pity the Swagman”.

We had a very interesting chat, with Alan telling me me about how he’d retraced Joseph’s steps in Victoria, calling at the various locations he’d been to during his life there, visiting the plaque to commemorate Joseph in Maldon, and visiting his grave on a return visit to Wales.

He also mentioned how he tried to find written records of the Eisteddfodau Joseph competed in during his time in Australia, but sadly, he was informed they were apparently lost in a fire some years ago.

Having arrived in Australia in 1969, a hundred years after Joseph, Alan also remarked “He was paid better than me!” (for doing the same agricultural work, adjusted for inflation I suppose.) I wonder what Joseph would have made of agricultural workers still being short changed, a century after his own arrival in Australia?

I have mentioned to my dear friend before now that he ought to put pen to paper himself.

Pity The Swagman: The Australian Odyssey of a Victorian Diarist by Bethan Phillips is published by Y Lolfa and is available from all good bookshops.

https://nation.cymru/culture/book-review-pity-the-swagman-the-australian-odyssey-of-a-victorian-diarist-by-bethan-phillips/