For Rachel Carson

To Earth Day and the Women who made it possible.

(I wrote this today, 2011 Earth Day for sweet Hallenger’s class another wonderful women, the piece is a bit pedestrian and this author deserves more, I will work on it when I have some time, until then My Homage to Rachel.))

It has been suggested to us that we choose an author that we find has a voice much like our own. Here I feel some-what like a Salieri to Mozart. There will never be a day when I can match the caliber of depth involved in the research this writer undertook to do her ground breaking book. Nor in my wildest pursuit of language will I ever be able to pen anything close to the lyrical beauty by which Rachel Carson wrote it.

Her book is considered to be science writing. What ever genre we want to label this book, a manifesto, a love story, a marine biologists field note book, it matters little to me, as it is and arduous pouring out of ones heart in a convincingly passionate art of story telling. A story that moved a generation in America and beyond into action, It is writing at it’s best, the author is Rachael Carson, the book is Silent Spring.

While I normally resonate with the renegades and word smiths, such as T. Corsogon Boyle, Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson or Tom Robbins who I honored last time, today with Mother Earth being the battered wife she has become, the thankless and reviled provider who gives and gives until she is rendered anemic and almost empty, I felt compelled to shine a light on a book that is timeless and still holds gargantuan weight, and gives those who care great guidance on how to stop the man made abuse we heap on our support system

This is a story that helped shape and herald in an environmental movement.

Choosing Silent Spring did not win without some struggle, there are some contemporary science writers that make my mouth water and my heart race when I read them. Two come to mind. Natalie Angier, a women who’s brain, wit and humor cuts the confusing cloud of science away to reveal to the laymen all facets of the scary stuff and make us beg for more. I beseech you all if you have not read anything Natalie has penned you are missing out on a wild romp. Then down the science rabbit hole I tumbled, should I consider Julia Whitty? Both authors do our world a great service but it is Rachael who set the bar for all of them.  It is her book I often turn to for encouragement, wisdom and solace. It is Rachel’s character of spirit that I return to again and again, the well I drink from and the heroine I so much would love to be just a smidgen like when the world and all her woes come pressing down on me. 

Her words and even her appearance were delicate, woven with a compassionate and gracious skill that on occasion stumped her opponents who surely underestimated the message she was preparing to deliver in her book. A message as ferocious as any mothers warding off danger to its young, so relentless in detail and scientific exposure that her voice would sound a loud enough call to wakeup a large enough section of America with it. No one could ever again, once awakened, look at our planet and what we do to it as a species now that the vale of ignorance or innocence had been lifted. With grace and powerful evidence Rachel pulled back the curtain of Oz for us to see the ugly hand attached to humanity. Whether it be  corporation or commoner if we kept silent we were then complicite in our own demise and poisoning of the planet. Our lifestyle and our need for more was killing our planets living systems at a rapid pace.

What makes this particular book even more extraordinary is the time in which it was written. With any author the era or political climate they lived and wrote in gives us a great deal of information about them.  As a women and a scientist no less, who was able to get things published in the 50’s may seem a small undertaking but it was monumental. What she discovered as a field scientist, a biologist and marine biologist while working for the US fish and wildlife Service, shocked her and lead her to be an advocate for the living things that could not defend nor speak for themselves. Here it doesn’t hurt to say that not all scientists nor people who discover truths have the courage to tell them. And it is of course because telling them, as we can see today, comes at a great personal price. That was no less true for Rachel,  with great odds, power and finance stacked against her, she stood her ground. Her understanding of science and biology coupled
with her conviction that this knowledge must be revealed, drove her to continue when others may have conceded defeat. She exposed to us the naïve position that our world is segmented and compartmentalized.  She showed us the fallacy of trying to save one thing by killing many was worse then Myth.  Pesticides used to poison one critter, is like the futile effort to pluck plastic out of our oceans today expecting not to disrupt entire ecosystems, it is just not possible. 

While birds went the way of poison, along with the bugs, now our bees and butterfly’s, floras pollinators are in such decline we must take Rachel’s message to the highest mountain-tops and shout. We must do what she did in the early 60’s when she began to expose to the civilian population that what happens to one thing will most certainly effect another.  In doing so she helped show us the beauty and interconnectedness of the webs of life, and the dire consequences of what happens when we foolishly disregard that wisdom. Clearly this is an ongoing battle to this day, to have enough of us realize that what we do actually has an affect on the world around us.  In other words if you shit in Africa it will end up in your own back yard, or if you have a nuclear plant spill in Japan it ends up on the shores of California and on your dinner table.
    
That Rachel Carson was reviled, by huge chemical and pesticide-company’s along with the growing agribusiness after world war two, should come as no surprise to us.  Her warnings began to show a population that had pretty much  bought the American dream hook line and sinker just how high the stakes were for these new and powerful corporations, companies that had been born and expanded during the war. The public began to see that some companies would do just about anything to make their bottom line. Even if the line they crossed was neither ethical or sustainable for a healthy planet.  Mention her name to a Monsanto or Dow executive today and you will still get a very negative response.

While she began to publish and talk about her findings on the dangers of pesticides, DDT in particular, she was ridiculed, dismissed and threatened. When that didn’t shut her up,. She had the full Monty of fear mongering thrown at her.  Rachel never married so she was called  lesbian, as if that mattered, she was called a communist, a traitor to her country and had she been alive today she would have been called a terrorist because after all if you don’t like chemicals, oil, and the complete marching band of toxic monsters, then you must be working against national security.

-    There was no woman’s movement, no effective birth-control, no right to choice and certainly no equal pay when Rachel was working on Silent Spring. In general if women went to college at all, often they went to find a better pedigree of husband, and to better become the good women behind that husband. So that Rachel had a degree, did not have a husband, nor a movement to stand with her while she worked to publish her book shows us her tremendous conviction, and a courage so profound she was able to tap into a well spring of it while being mesmerized by the beauty and diversity of all living things. This  deep reverence for all the fascinating living things she studied would fortify her to weather the obstacles that were to come.  Watching the living flora and fauna die, knowing why it was happening and not speaking up was unconscionable and unacceptable to her. (And because I have read her book and understand it, I have been shown that to stand  by
quietly watching as  the dying of our flora and fauna takes place as a result of our life style today is  unacceptable to me as well. That to remain silent, to give up is as criminal or certainly as cowardly as any act by those who perpetrate it. Complacency and cynicism, a recipe for paralysis and failure. Something we as a species in total have never accepted.)  

Her book took longer than she had hoped to complete due to her own ill health. She persevered and refused to die until it was finished.  A little over a year after Silent Spring’s publication Rachel Carson died of breast cancer. Her will and determination is one that is difficult not to admire and be irrevocably inspired by. A heart so generous its rhythm can be felt today.


When I am reminded that out of the animal kingdom it is only mankind who has been able (other than mother nature herself) to alter, transform, enhance and more often then not disrupt and destroy the environment, It is Rachel who’s words I turn to. And when I find that science is under attack or downright suppressed so that the worlds citizens are kept ignorant or silent to the plight of our flora and fauna, many that are sick and dying, causing me to lose heart and courage because of these unspoken truths that seem to difficult to tell and to insurmountable to overcome, again it is Rachel who plucks up my sporting blood.  Just as the letters  that asked Rachel back in the very early 60’s what could be done.” I recall some of Rachel Carson’s words. They soothe me and they shore me up…. And I know . Where then does the responsibility lie?  It lies with me. Who is to sing a song loudly for our winged family, to speak loudly and clearly in defense
of all things living whether we recognize a value in them or not?  I know it is my voice and my song that must be sung.

And for the very mother that sustains us all, earth, she says this, “In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.”  

Ms Carson wrote this at a time when there was no certainty that what she was saying would make print to paper, let alone  be welcomed into a modern world that felt invincible. And yet one voice added to another, and then another, giving rise to the vocal orchestra that  changed  the winds direction and bought a little time for us. Gave us some breathing room to learn more and fight.

If your heart breaks open from the state of affairs today and you need a little lift, if you never read another thing on the environment, Rachel Carson’s book should be your bible. 

We are told and  to often we are under the spell of  the falsehood of our own powerlessness. that what we do or say does not matter. Certainly what we do not do causes harm when we know better. And what we do  without conscience  creates harm from the smallest acts to the largest and most destructive. That we can see.  So then it is easy to not see the good. It is easy to believe doing nothing will not hurt or will not change. Nothing could be more wrong. Inaction is leaving the arena open for only those who act.  Often what we do or say is not so apparent. So it must be noted that the opposite is true,  that what we do with great courage, and awareness, even if it feels like the most feeble and futile act added in it’s mighty numbers hits a critical mass , so even a  single  small act has great residuals.

To conclude in my homage to this most spectacular women on Earth Day I will quote a portion from her book.  This  is someone asking Rachel what to say or do.  

From Chapter 8 And no Birds Sing  “After several years of DDT spray, the town is almost devoid of robins and starlings; Chickadees have not been on my shelf for two years, and this year the cardinals are gone too; the nesting population in the neighborhood seems to consist of one dove pair and perhaps one catbird family.”

“It is hard to explain to the children that the birds have been killed off, when they have learned in school that a Federal law protects the birds from killing or capture, ‘Will they ever come back?’ they ask, and I do not have the answer. The elms are still dying, and so are the birds. Is anything being done? Can anything be done? Can I do anything?”  

And I weep that we still have to ask these same questions multiplied by X10. And Yet we know they must be answered. Yes, I will add my voice and speak for the voiceless. I will speak for the winged beauties and the waterways and watersheds and oceans with her multitudes of life. Yes Rachel I will speak for our mother….so that all of her children can sing.