I’ve tried keeping a journal on a few occasions, but it was years ago. Some of my sisters kept journals at the time and said it would be good for me to write things down and explore my feelings and thoughts. It never worked out that way, in my experience. Most days, I’d end up writing something down about the weather, for lack of any better ideas. Or, if I did compose an entry with any meat on the bone, it typically occurred when I was mad or upset. Then, I worried that the person involved would somehow find my journal and read the passage. Boy, oh boy, would that ever spell trouble. It caused undue anxiety, this needless worrying, keeping me up nights. So, yes. My journaling was short-lived.
Yet, some people are meant to journal, I think. They live exciting lives or have monumental days or nights. Like Lewis and Clark. Good thing for their journals. Or the guy who died trying to be the first person to the South Pole — Robert Falcon Scott. Then there was David Livingstone. I presume.
Looking at the short list, the common theme seems to be explorers. Adventurers. That probably makes for better journaling than the tales from Camden, Ohio. Day 783: “Coffee was really good today. Really, really good.”
From a historical perspective, journals are great. We can learn from those entries about what life was like, way back when. Take, for instance, the early European settlers here in America. Those New Englanders. Some of them kept journals. In fact, just this morning, one of their entries appeared in my “historical feed.”
The guy keeping the journal was named John Winthrop, and he started these meanderings on March 1, 1639. John was forty-two years old when he began writing things down in his little book. He was a fine English Puritan gentleman who had been trained as a lawyer. As such, he was chosen as the Massachusetts Bay Colony “founder” and governor. They picked him for the job while he was still in England.
Anyway, his journal started out as a day-by-day account of the voyage to America. “Today, more water. Yesterday, we saw water, and today was more of the same. Tomorrow, I suspect, we’ll see more water.” Okay. So John didn’t write that, but what else could there be, really?
Once he got here, to the Americas, he wrote about the first years of his governorship. But the journal also kept track of important events in the history of that area.
Yet, the best entry of all came on this date, January 18, 1644. Some of his buddies were out fishing one night, probably because they needed a little time away from their wives. But no matter. That is when they saw it.
A UFO.
Winthrop wrote that James Everell, “a sober, discreet man,” and two others had been rowing a boat in the Muddy River. That river flowed through swampland and emptied into a tidal basin in the Charles River. It was there that they saw a great light in the nighttime sky.
From the journal. For real:
“When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square,” the governor reported, “when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine.”
Over the course of two to three hours, the men in the boat said that the mysterious light “ran as swift as an arrow,” darting back and forth between them and the village of Charlestown. The town was a distance of approximately two miles. “Diverse other credible persons saw the same light, after, about the same place,” Winthrop added.
But then the creepy part. The governor wrote that when the strange apparition finally faded away, the three Puritans in the boat “were stunned to find themselves one mile upstream—as if the light had transported them there. The men had no memory of their rowing against the tide, although it’s possible they could have been carried by the wind or a reverse tidal flow…”
So there it is. The first UFO sighting on American soil. Or water. At least, the first one that someone wrote down.
Those poor guys in the boat just needed a little space from their wives, but instead, they got some outer space.
=========
“Journaling is like whispering to one’s self and listening at the same time.” Mina Murray
========
“People who keep journals have life twice.” Jessamyn West
=========
“In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.” Susan Sontag
==========
The first UFO sighting, in America, written down.
