Tag: The 19th Century

Is 2021 the Year of the Sea Shanty? By Baylee Browning-Atkinson

 

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I had so much hope for 2021.  After the ball dropped on New Years Day my street erupted into a fireworks display that I have not seen since the last time I saw the New York Philharmonic.  Let me be real with you, hypothetical reader, for a moment.  2021 was not the doorway to an alternate dimension, and the United States is plagued by disease, and political and social unrest.  The Covid-19 virus continues to spread virtually unchecked in the United States as vaccine wielding doctors and nurses entered the fray and begin to administer vaccines to the public.  Optimistic reporting promises a gradual release from this pandemic induced isolation mid to late spring.  Then, six days into the new year, domestic terrorists ran amok in the United States Capital in an attempt, as recent reporting is making clear, to certify the vote and bring violence and death to our elected officials.  At least 6 lives were lost and uncounted political officials, capital staff and police were left horrified by the assault on personal safety as Americans collectively witnessed an attack on a symbol of our democratic institution.  By January 13th former President Trump was impeached for the second time.  On February 13th he was simultaneously found guilty and acquitted.  Whatever we are experiencing in our personal lives, whether good, bad, or indifferent, Americans in particular have likely been watching their hopes for a better 2021 sink like a ship to the briny depths.

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Crisis and Catharsis on the Great South Bay with Baylee Browning-Atkinson

Birds Eye View of the Fire Island Surf Hotel

With approval from Governor Flower, Jenkins had purchased the debilitated Surf Hotel from proprietor David Sturges S. S. Sammis for the inflated price of between $210,000 and $250,000.  In the 1850s Sammis opened the hotel, an immensely popular and profitable summer resort in its time that had fallen into disrepair by the 1890s. After the purchase Jenkins had the site cleaned up and staffed with a manager and physician, and police guards. In anticipation of the passengers of the Normannia and their five-star quarantine, “Forty French cooks and waiters” were requested but never arrived. They “were stopped at Babylon and stoned,” effectively preventing them from embarking for Fire Island.  For selling the property to the state as a quarantine site Sammis was threatened with a tar and feathering by unidentified individuals.

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Scandal in the New York Harbor: Class-Oriented Quarantine with Baylee Browning-Atkinson

In my previous post, Being Blue in New York, I sketched out a brief history of cholera in New York City and the development of disease theory and of prevention and management strategies over the course of several outbreaks.  Today I am going to talk about quarantine, class, and immigration.

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The Year Without Summer with Fernie Amador and Bonnie Soper

 

Welcome, you’re listening to an episode of the Crisis and Catharsis podcast, where we explore stories of how people have found relief in times of crisis, focusing on artistic expression, like literature, music and art, but also expression in daily life, like cuisine and oral histories. This episode focuses on the summer of 1816 also known as the year without summer and the inventions and art that grew out of that environmental crisis. My name is Fernie, I’m a PhD student at Stony Brook University where I study Mexican migration history.  I’m here with Bonnie Soper, a PhD student at Stony Brook University who studies religious and political dissidence in early modern Scotland. 

Keep listening if you would like to learn about volcanic eruptions, the invention of the bicycle, and the creation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein… 

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Cholera: Being Blue in New York with Baylee Browning-Atkinson

 

New York Historical SocietyCholera is a disease that has a long and deadly history. A cholera-like disease is described as early as the 5th and 4th BC in ancient sources, such as the Greek physician Hippocrates and the Sushruta Samhita medical text. It crops up again in 1543 in the Ganges Delta. The disease was endemic to the Ganges Delta, until 1817, when contaminated rice spread from the Delta to the rest of India and beyond following trade routes and military troops to the rest of Asia, Europe and eventually the Americas. A disease which is endemic is native to or regularly found in an area or among a specific group. The WHO claims that “Cholera is now endemic in many countries.” Since this initial spread there have been six cholera pandemics. According to the World Health Organization, we have been in our seventh cholera pandemic since 1961, this one originating in Indonesia, though most of us might not know this. The United States in particular has not been affected since the fifth cholera pandemic, which occurred between 1881 and 1896.

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