CHANGES IN A LIFETIME

A Death and a Lifetime, 1920 (Maine State Museum)

Looking through the kitchen doorway, we can see a dead man laid out on the parlor table. The body has probably been embalmed. In earlier times, it would have been kept on ice, with the hands wrapped in wet cloths. It hasn't been put in a casket yet-perhaps the family wanted to have a portrait photograph taken of it before it was laid away.
      If this dead man had been about sixty years old when he died, there were still slaves in the South when he was born, and the microbe was yet a mystery. On Maine farms, oxen and sheep were much more common than horses and dairy cows. Passengers on wood-burning railroads braced themselves against the jerky ride imparted by rough tracks and link-and-pin hitches. A vast fleet of fishing boats sailed offshore each summer to fish on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Maine-built square-riggers, by themselves, made up one of the world's greatest merchant marines and sailed all over the world, delivering and picking up cargo.
      This man's life saw the rise and demise of the horse-and-buggy era, and the development of petroleum and electrical power. He had no doubt seen an airplane, and he may have owned an automobile. That he survived the deadly diseases of childhood and lived long enough to die when he did could have been due to major advances in public health-even simple things we take for granted today, like clean drinking water, public sewers, and doctors who wash their hands. When he was a boy, he wore homespun, but his corpse will be buried in a store-bought coat. Old-time Yankee thrift, however, still endured. Showing appropriate respect for the dead was one thing, but senseless extravagance was quite another. As a rule, male corpses were buried without their trousers, so that someone else could use the pants.
      These same sixty years of change, covered by the photographs in this exhibit, were one of the most interesting and dynamic eras in the history of the State of Maine.

The man in this photo, which was taken in 1920, could have fought in the Civil War as a young man. The changes he witnessed in his lifetime included the change from manpower and horsepower to mechanical engines fueled by oil and steam. He saw transportation evolve from horse-drawn wagons to vehicles powered by gasoline, and the beginnings of air travel. He never saw computers or rocket ships. More than likely he harvested wood for home heating, raised his own vegetables, meat, and dairy products. Judging by the oil lamp suspended from the ceiling, he probably never enjoyed the convenience of electricity.
      He would have voted for or against the thirteenth through possibly the nineteenth amendments.
      The twentieth century produced more innovation and change than all of the other years in recorded history together. As you research and ponder the photos you see displayed and those you find as you talk with family and community members, think about the changes you have seen in your lifetime already.

Discussion:
1. List some of the changes that have happened since your birth. Ask your parents for a list, and your grandparents-or neighbors or friends of different ages.
2. Have all the technological innovations been changes for the better? Write a short essay explaining your position.
3. What care must be taken as the world heads into the twenty-first century?
4. Discuss:
      - economics of change
      - politics of change
      - the impact of technological development on ecology
      - the importance of paying attention to how inventions change the world
      - questions and issues you have discovered during this study

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B, C, D, F, E, H
SS/H: A, B, C
SS/G: B
SS/E: A, B, C, D
SS/C&G: A
S&T: B, D, H, I, M