Tag Archives: long line

03/21/11

The Depressed Economy and Happy Food

(Picture from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.)

During the Great Depression most were very poor and could barely afford food which they needed to survive. The picture shows a very long food line in New York City. In the video I have chosen Clara who lived through the great depression showed us how her mom made pizza. On nights when mom made bread she will take a piece of the bread dough and they will have dinner for the night. Their budget conscious pizza makes my pizza look very high class. My first cooking book actually was a book full of recipes from the Great Depression era and I notice that they try to substitute anywhere they can for cheaper products and they used lard to replace butter and oil. I feel like the messages that these two sources communicate about the Depression is that although times where tough people still found away to make it thru and they looked forward to the little things like the way Clara describes about how her family gathered around the lamp.

02/18/11

Immigrants and Ellis Island

Medical examination Ellis Island, 1910, from Library of Congress

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Ellis Island, 1911, from Library of Congress

The pictures are from the Library of Congress. Although both pictures depict the immigrants in Ellis Island around the same time, the pictures are taken under different circumstances. The first one was taken while the officers were giving medical examinations to the immigrants, so the photographer can record a natural depiction of the scene. On the other hand, the second picture was taken while everyone was aware of the photographer, so most of the people in the second picture was looking straight to the camera. Despite of the different atmosphere in the photographs, both pictures convey a sense of weariness. This is reasonable because the long and tedious immigration processes could only wear out the liveliness of the immigrants and officers.