1. When and where was this image captured?

2.  What is happening in this image?

3. What specific people/objects do you see? 

4. What do you notice about the object's condition or the people's expressions or appearance?

5. Why would the person choose this particular scene to capture?

6. What information do the words accompanying the image provide?

7. What is missing from the image?

8. What problems for people are suggested by the images?

9.  What is interesting or surprising about this image?

10. What additional information about the event did you learn from  this image?

Personal Account Analysis:

1. When and where did this interview take place?

2. What encounter with nature is described in this personal account?

3. How long after the event occurred was this inteview made?

4. What words or phrases best create a visual image of the event?

5. What attitude towards this event does the person seem to have?

6. Who or what at does this person seem to believe is responsible for this event occurring?

7. What problems or effects does the event seem to have had on people's lives?

8.  What lesson does this person seem to have learned from this event?

9. Is there anything interesting or surprising to you about this person's reaction to the situation?

10. What new insights into the natural event does this interview provide you?
 

1. If there is a cover to this piece of sheet music, examine it carefully.  What message does the cover give you about the event?

2. What natural event is this song about?

3. Read through the lyrics. Write a  summary describing the main idea of the song.

4. List any words in the song with which you are not familiar. Find their meanings in a dictionary.

5. Choose one or two phrases of the song that are interesting to you. Explain why they caught your attention.

6. Who or what does the song writer feel is responsible for the event?

7. What problems or effects of the event are mentioned in the song?

8. What new insights does this song give you about the event described?

9. What surprises you about the song?

10. What questions do you have?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  1. What additional information
  about the event did the other sources
 provide? 
 

Treasury department. United States Public health service. Influenza spread by droplets sprayed from nose and throat. Cover each cough and sneeze with
handkerchief. Spread by contact. Avoid crowds. If possible, walk to work. Do not spit on floor or sidewalk. Do not use common drinking cups and common
towels. Avoid excessive fatigue. If taken ill, go to bed and send for a doctor. The above applies also to colds, bronchitis, pneumonia, and tuberculosis.
[Washington, D. C. 1918].
 

An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
 

Personal Account:
 

[The Influenza Epidemic] 
 

1938-9 Mass. Section

Interviewer's Name: Jane K. Leary, 32 Acorn St. 

Information: James Hughes, 51 Johnson St. 

Assignment: The Shoe Laster of Lynn.

5/24/39 

The Influenza Epidemic  (1918) 

"Well, how ya been since? 

"Since I seen ya last, we've been having a bit a spring weather. Tame, ain't it? We had a long cold spring. 

"And ain't there been a lotta sickness though? I never seen the like of all the pneumonia there's been. And most anybody that ya see on the street's got a cold. 

"But at that, it ain't so bad like I knowed it to be many's the time in Lynn since I come here. Do ya remember the flu that come the time of the war? Always a war brings something and I always thought that flu wasn't just the flu. It wuz more like the bubonic plague. 

Anyways a lotta them that died of it, turned black, just like they wuz said to have turned black in Ireland in '46 an' '47 when they had the
bubonic plague there.

"Three months the rage of it wuz here in this city. Down in Philadelphia and around that way, I heard it wuz a lot the worse, There I guess they died like fleas.

Wuz bad enough here too. The people wuz scared everywhere. Most everybody wore a bag with something in it to
prevent gettin' it. Something like moth balls they wuz
in that bag. I wore one like all the rest. 

"Everybody wuz adrinking whiskey too to prevent it. I believe it helped too. Anyway it did me. 

"I wuz in Boston when I felt it comin' on me. I took a couple drinks and ya know I hardly felt them at all. Any other time and I'da been afeelin' good from the drinks I took, but them I didn't feel at all. 

"When I got to Lynn, I took a couple more, and them I didn't feel neither. Just like I never had a one. When I got home, I said to my wife, 'I got the flu and when I get in bed, I want ya to give me some more a this whiskey to drink. 

She did and did I sweat? I had to keep changin' my nightclothes two, three times. But ya know, it done the trick all right. I wuz a lot better in the mornin'. 

"I had to keep away from the shop for about a week though,
and I sure felt weak for about a month. But I didn't die like a lotta others did. I think it wuz that whiskey that saved me.

"When I wernt back to work, there wuz only about four men in the  rink when there should a been around fifteen.
They wuz all sick with the flu. Them that wuz there looked at me when I come in and said, 'You're as pale as a ghost.' 

Consumption in the Shoe Shops

"In the old diays there wuz an awful lotta consumption in the shops. Then, the doctors said that that disease runs in families. And I believe it does. Anywiays then, they didn't do nothing about it, for there wuzn't the hospitals and the like to take care of them. So most of them fellas that had it, just kept right on workin' just as long as they could. Many's the one that would spit up blood sometimes, but they kept on working. 

"I knowed one fella that worked at the bench with me, that had it and had it bad. But he didn't pay no special attention to it. He wuz always cheerful. Well, one day he had a hemorrhage right there before us. They took him home and the next day he died. 

"Yes, there wuz a lot like that. Anybody that didn't have it, didn't think there wuz any hope at all for anybody that had the consumption. But the one that had it wuz
always cheerful and would try to make himself believe he didn't have it at all. 

"That's the way with them. But I believe it runs in families. Don't you? 

Source

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940

Lyrics:
 

INFLUENZA

"Learned it off a holiness boy in Amarillo, Texas."

       In nineteen hundred and twenty-nine, men an' women sure was dyin', 
       From de disease what de doctors called de flu. 
       People was dyin' ev'ywhere; death was creepin' th'ough de air, 
       For de groans of de sick sure was sad.

       Chorus:

       It was God's almighty hand; he was judgin' this old land; 
       North an' South; East an' West could be seen, 
       Yes, he killed de rich an' poor, an' he's goin' to kill more 
       If you don't turn away from your sins.

       In Memphis, Tennessee, doctors said it soon would be, 
       In a few days influenza will (we'LL?) control. 
       But God showed that He was head, an' He put de doctor to bed, 
       And the nurse they broke down with de same.

       Chorus:

       Influenza is a disease, makes you weak all in your knees; 
       'Tis a fever ev'ybody sure does dread; 
       Puts a pain in ev'y bone, a few days an' you are gone 
       To a place in de groun' called de grave.

Source document:The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip, Library of Congress

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