So far in class we have covered a variety of things from the Gilded Age to natural disasters like the Chicago Fire, Johnstown Flood, and Galveston Storm. While covering some of these topics and natural disasters we have come to see them through different lenses, digging deeper into these disasters, than just looking at the devastation caused, but also the hidden ramifications. \u00a0After looking through the past blog posts I\u2019ve noticed how some themes have come up repeatedly.\u00a0 A theme I was able to pick out after reading the posts was the notion of man\u2019s ability to change nature or in other words \u201cman vs. nature.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen this theme since the beginning when we talked about the Gilded Age where JOHNKANE<\/a> talks about how \u201cas Calhoun describes, many cities were being created with a more modernized organization and innovation.\u201d\u00a0 We are able to see how as societies grew men molded the land to meet their needs.\u00a0 JohnKane goes on to say that this was done by the addition of \u201csewage systems, lighted streets, parks, and other amenities being constructed to enhance urban life.\u201d\u00a0 Men didn\u2019t just mold the land to meet their needs in terms of sanitation or leisure time (hence sewage systems and parks), but they also did it to make money. In the post by GRAVITY21<\/a> we see how the \u201cboosters\u201d who were people who wanted to make money off of the land, ran into the problem that \u201ccitizens wanted to build a harbor in the mouth of the Chicago River\u201d but \u201cthere was a hindrance preventing them from achieving their vision.\u201d\u00a0Gravity21 goes on to talk about how that issue led to \u201cthe Chicagoans to \u201ctake fate into their own hands\u201d by constructing plans for a canal, which led to the creation of the first part of second nature.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0ZHEDRICK<\/a> in his post describes \u201csecond nature\u201d as \u201cpertaining to the man-made creations that allowed for the city to expand its commercial opportunities.\u201d This shows us how man didn\u2019t let nature get in the way of making money and how man has changed nature.<\/p>\n

Another theme brought about in the blog posts was the issue of manmade disasters. In terms of the Johnstown Flood MCKENNDY21<\/a>\u00a0stated that \u201cGodbey first retells the story of how the flood happened and how it could have been prevented if people would have built the dam correctly the first time and then checked on it during the storm to make sure it hold it up it could have prevented a natural disaster.\u201d MCKENNDY21 then states that Godbey \u201cgoes as far as saying \u201d the Johnstown Flood was clearly manmade\u201d. \u00a0PETERROSSI1<\/a> talks about how during the Galveston hurricane the argument for the loss of life being a manmade disaster can be made because he thought that \u201cignoring the warnings of a storm, is a form a negligence that can be blamed for the loss of life in the storm.\u201d\u00a0 These two points help us see that the argument for a disaster being manmade can be made on some disasters that occurred throughout or nation\u2019s history.\u00a0 These were just some reoccurring themes that I was able to pick out from the first part of the semester.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s fascinating how even though these events are different, similarities can be made between them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So far in class we have covered a variety of things from the Gilded Age to natural disasters like the Chicago Fire, Johnstown Flood, and Galveston Storm. While covering some of these topics and natural disasters we have come to see them through different lenses, digging deeper into these disasters, than just looking at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1628,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions\/1628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}