In honor of Sunday, the summer solstice, and Father’s Day, we took the day off and did a ten-mile kayak trip along the coast. I did not look at the news, or my email, or my messages, or Twitter, or anything. I don’t remember the last time I did that. Maybe 2014?
Serendipitously (or was it that?), before reading your post just now, I had just downloaded all three of Rachel Carson's three New Yorker magazine articles in 1962 (June 16, 23, 30) entitled Silent Spring I, II + III. Rachel was mocked, ridiculed, and shamed by men from DuPont, the government, the press - while she was dying from breast cancer - and yet, she put on a wig, and faced their withering scorn, and Mike Wallace. She was a woman of a "certain age" who dared to find her true love, and still care for her adopted nephew after her sister's death. She did all this because she knew she had to. And then she died, two years later at age 56. Today, we all the better for her courage. Where did she find that?
You're a national treasure, Heather— hell, an international treasure. I honestly don't know what so many of us would do without your clear vision, innate ability to articulate even the most hidden truths, and your integrity.
I hope that you hear this from many others. We all feel it, and are grateful...
This post touched me. I read Silent Spring in 1967, a senior in high school. 35 Years later I saw my first bald eagle. Today I survey nesting eagles & osprey for our natural resources dept (volunteer). I feel so utterly fortunate to live in a place where eagles fly over my house, as do pelicans, nighthawks, osprey. At night owls talk amongst themselves in our pines. Every Single Day of my adult life I eagerly wait for morning bird song and hope to never, in my lifetime, witness a silent spring.
This might not be there with ospreys and eagles, but it strikes me HCR saw those birds in a clear blue sky. 40 years ago, when I would fly down to Los Angeles, the only way I could find the airport in the smog was to fly directly over it, look down and see it, then circle to the landing pattern keeping it in sight so I didn't lose it. Nowadays, just about every day it isn't raining or there's a temperature inversion, I can see all the way across the San Fernando Valley in all directions. The other week, I was going through my photo records - back in 1978 I took photos at an air show at Chino where the background was just a grey nothing. Three years ago, I stood in the same spot taking photos, only there were mountains to the north and south and big hills to the east and west to be seen - they were there back then, too, but you couldn't see them for the smog. 40 years ago in the winter up in the Central Valley, they used to get what was called "Tule Fog" and there were regular reports at least once a winter about a major pileup with 100+ cars damaged when the fog closed in. That was due to dust in the air, humidity, and "particulate matter." I can't remember the last time I saw a new report of one of those kind of accidents.
All that stuff people started doing 45-50 years ago has had an effect. On just about everything, from the birds to the air they fly in.
I have come across several passionate environmental professionals whose mission was launched after reading Silent Spring, myself included. It warms my heart. For me, I found her book on a shelf in my middle school library and took it home. It became the motivation for my “DDT and the Peregrine Falcon” report, handwritten on notebook paper and tied up with aqua yarn and then, later, years of study and work to reduce energy use and climate degradation. Thank you for sharing your Father’s story and your deep understanding. There are many successes.
Silent Spring inspired me to focus my career in enforcement of environmental laws. I worked for the State of California for 35 years, inspecting hazardous waste handlers, prosecuting violators, and I cleaned up hundreds of sites contaminated with chemicals or abandoned hazardous waste. I am so thankful for people like you who are blessed with the rare tools to articulate the innumerable wrongs bad people do to society, to assuage their egos, or for their own personal gain.
Heather, your spirit shows us that, even in dark times, we should still have hope. Things can change for the better. It should also encourage us to refuse to stay silent, speak out, and stay strong, regardless of our opponent's size. Thank you.
I live in South Florida and raise butterflies on my pesticide free property. Every summer, the county mosquito fog trucks make their rounds through my neighborhood…killing ALL of the pollinators. My calls and letters fall on deaf ears to those in charge of making the decisions to spray. It’s heartbreaking to wake up on the same property that was buzzing with life yesterday to find the garden completely still and to find butterflies floating in my pool. Thank you for sharing this lovely story of hope and possibility. Without that, what do we have?
Mother Earth will survive and thrive, that is not the concern. she will evolve into a different place after eliminating the invasive species we have become. She will spin on, after the human experiment has burnt itself out.
Naomi Klein asks, “What is wrong with us?” in her recent book. Although the word ‘absolute’ is rarely in my writing or thoughts because it means "a value or principle that is regarded as universally valid or that may be viewed without relation to other things” and I find little 'universally valid’ or 'without relation.’
Pondering the question posed, a possible answer woke me in the middle of the night with the notion of ‘absolute greed’ as the driving force behind the recalcitrant, intransigent actions related to continuing, in the face of catastrophic changes already upon Earth, burning carbon. We continue to drill, dig, frack, and by any means obtain fossil fuel. We burn increasing amounts of biomass. [This is certainly not a complete exegesis—add your own issue or concern.]
We are evidencing hatred of the biophilic, distracted by the latest post, the most recent atrocity, our navels...
Despite the urgent need, in order to protect an environment in which humans can function [certainly not the one we now know to be transforming at a fairly rapid clip] to make a 180-degree pivot in how we live, this is not universally happening. One person, even one million persons transforming from a fossil-fuel-based life will change very little. We have claimed ignorance and gone too far toward destroying the human-viable atmosphere of our planet.
The children suing local and federal governments for clean air and water, for “not doing all they can do to protect our future,” is such a sad comment on our greed-based humanity, ever further from origins and sustenance and balance within the Gaiaic systems that nurtured our evolution.
A human life is brief, merely a moment in time, no matter how long we live. Perhaps this brevity is one way we have moved so far from our place on the planet so rapidly that we disconnected from Earth as anything but potential profit.
The masses of people—billions of us—where are our heads and hearts? Are we medicated? Religion as the opiate, although some would have it be television or social media or whatever numbs and nulls us. We dance about the head of a pin while Rome burns. Perhaps it is my own ignorance…but this is a rabbit warren of conjecture. Whatever obscures the reality, we are simply not making the radical, as in to the root, changes required. There is no compelling narrative of focus or transformation of the dominant paradigm which is subversive to life.
This apathy is making me crazy, so beyond making changes in my personal life [which are totally inadequate to the need] I am compelled to give voice to the anguish I feel as grandchildren are born. Beautiful beings, old souls, innocent of the rape of Earth but certain to live and die in the consequences.
The urgency is palpable. We are melting, storming, drying, flooding, quaking—Earth is offering messages, alerts, warnings—and there are many who heed. We are, simultaneously [as we burn, drill, dig, and frack] re-learning how to forage, grow our own food in the circular nature of Demeter, clean our water, re-center community, power our own movement [e.g., bicycles], turn to air and sun and water for biophilic energy, heal without violating, add your own contribution here.
I once had a teacher who taught that the actions of one was revolutionary and significant—and contributed to changing the world. I no longer believe that the quiet, solitary, changed life will change the world. Too many people are living that life, or as close to it as they can get, and the world is not changing. We no longer have the luxury of each one teach one.
Entire systems of government, industry—all the complexes working in concert to extract evermore; maintenance of fossil fuel-based economies; the focus on 'growth' at any cost; the “free” markets—which are supported and rigged so as to no longer actually be anywhere close to free; the obsession for the profits of making war; the fractured “health care” system; [enter your own concern here]—Earth and our continued existence [in some type of very altered, but supportive to human life environment] need all this to change in rapid fashion, in response to the emergent messages we are getting that we have gone too far.
We have been kayaking the past month+ along some local rivers in metro west MA where eagles, blue heron, osprey, swans, geese, ducks, etc. dot the waterways. While the scourge of DDT has dissipated, residential and farm/orchard fertilizer/pesticide run off, heavy metals from manufacturing, munitions from military, all have left residual pollution.
And, we are just discovering the extent of PFAS (forever chemicals) in drinking water supplies in many communities across the state. We desperately need more “Rachel Carsons”!
My father began his career as an environmental engineer at Dow Chemical Company in 1951. Always between a rock and a hard place, he secretly reported the company to the state health department whenever he discovered illegal dumping. I have his cooy of Silent Spring.
Thank you for writing of a father who taught you about the natural world. My dad did the same, taking the three of us kids camping in western and eastern WA and BC multiple times each summer. We participated in the Ranger programs, learned about all kinds of bugs, slugs, critters and creatures. Because of his influence, as an adult, I studied native plants and habitat restoration and continue to derive great pleasure from the natural world. I am working in my own neighborhood to repel the invasive species (ivy, Himalayan blackberry, English holly, etc.) on our forested common areas while encouraging the native species. I taught my kids to appreciate nature and am absolutely delighted that my granddaughter would rather be outside collecting rocks and leaves than watching YouTube. She recently said that every time she's outside enjoying herself, she usually gets wet. She's 4 years old and loves lakes, rivers, streams and her little backyard swimming pool. She's my Hope For The Future.
While Dad was a staunch Republican, that was at a time when the Republican national platform included preservation of nature. He would be absolutely devastated by what the party has become. As am I. I hope I am carrying on the dedication to Nature that Rachel Carson espoused.
I have had pairs (one pair at a time) of osprey nest at my place for the past 20 years. Watching nature daily like that is hard at times, joyful at others, but of course, the parts that aren't man made are just part of the deal, which we humans have such a hard time with. One year a microburst swept through and knocked the babies out of the nest before they had fledged. They landed on the ground beneath the nest. The parents flew around aimlessly, lacking their purpose, for the next couple of months. One year, the babies did not survive. No idea why. This year it seemed to take much longer than normal for them to produce eggs and settle into brooding. One year, there were three babies! When they started flying, it seems like there were osprey everywhere I looked! Watching the young start standing up and stretching out their wings for the first time is such an awesome sight. There used to be a big dead elm near the nest. The dad would sit in the elm, the mother in the nest, shrieking flight instructions at their kids. One mom dive-bombed me when I walk the dogs by, but mostly they get used to us and keep sitting quietly. I talk to her in a friendly and supportive way hoping that helps. Sometimes the pair is very quiet. Sometimes other osprey stop by to visit. The other day I had five circling over my house. I always miss them when they leave and am always relieved and thrilled when they return on April 1st, almost to the day. So much we don't know. But I have the utmost respect for their focus and commitment to their life. The mom sitting on that nest through cold, heat, rain, hail, thunder and lightning. The dad always sitting nearby or going over to the lake to bring back a meal.
Serendipitously (or was it that?), before reading your post just now, I had just downloaded all three of Rachel Carson's three New Yorker magazine articles in 1962 (June 16, 23, 30) entitled Silent Spring I, II + III. Rachel was mocked, ridiculed, and shamed by men from DuPont, the government, the press - while she was dying from breast cancer - and yet, she put on a wig, and faced their withering scorn, and Mike Wallace. She was a woman of a "certain age" who dared to find her true love, and still care for her adopted nephew after her sister's death. She did all this because she knew she had to. And then she died, two years later at age 56. Today, we all the better for her courage. Where did she find that?
One person can change the world…. And you are one of them….Thank you Professor.
You're a national treasure, Heather— hell, an international treasure. I honestly don't know what so many of us would do without your clear vision, innate ability to articulate even the most hidden truths, and your integrity.
I hope that you hear this from many others. We all feel it, and are grateful...
This post touched me. I read Silent Spring in 1967, a senior in high school. 35 Years later I saw my first bald eagle. Today I survey nesting eagles & osprey for our natural resources dept (volunteer). I feel so utterly fortunate to live in a place where eagles fly over my house, as do pelicans, nighthawks, osprey. At night owls talk amongst themselves in our pines. Every Single Day of my adult life I eagerly wait for morning bird song and hope to never, in my lifetime, witness a silent spring.
This might not be there with ospreys and eagles, but it strikes me HCR saw those birds in a clear blue sky. 40 years ago, when I would fly down to Los Angeles, the only way I could find the airport in the smog was to fly directly over it, look down and see it, then circle to the landing pattern keeping it in sight so I didn't lose it. Nowadays, just about every day it isn't raining or there's a temperature inversion, I can see all the way across the San Fernando Valley in all directions. The other week, I was going through my photo records - back in 1978 I took photos at an air show at Chino where the background was just a grey nothing. Three years ago, I stood in the same spot taking photos, only there were mountains to the north and south and big hills to the east and west to be seen - they were there back then, too, but you couldn't see them for the smog. 40 years ago in the winter up in the Central Valley, they used to get what was called "Tule Fog" and there were regular reports at least once a winter about a major pileup with 100+ cars damaged when the fog closed in. That was due to dust in the air, humidity, and "particulate matter." I can't remember the last time I saw a new report of one of those kind of accidents.
All that stuff people started doing 45-50 years ago has had an effect. On just about everything, from the birds to the air they fly in.
I have come across several passionate environmental professionals whose mission was launched after reading Silent Spring, myself included. It warms my heart. For me, I found her book on a shelf in my middle school library and took it home. It became the motivation for my “DDT and the Peregrine Falcon” report, handwritten on notebook paper and tied up with aqua yarn and then, later, years of study and work to reduce energy use and climate degradation. Thank you for sharing your Father’s story and your deep understanding. There are many successes.
Silent Spring inspired me to focus my career in enforcement of environmental laws. I worked for the State of California for 35 years, inspecting hazardous waste handlers, prosecuting violators, and I cleaned up hundreds of sites contaminated with chemicals or abandoned hazardous waste. I am so thankful for people like you who are blessed with the rare tools to articulate the innumerable wrongs bad people do to society, to assuage their egos, or for their own personal gain.
Namaste.
Heather, your spirit shows us that, even in dark times, we should still have hope. Things can change for the better. It should also encourage us to refuse to stay silent, speak out, and stay strong, regardless of our opponent's size. Thank you.
Even when you take the day off, you have an important story to share... thanks - sleep well
I live in South Florida and raise butterflies on my pesticide free property. Every summer, the county mosquito fog trucks make their rounds through my neighborhood…killing ALL of the pollinators. My calls and letters fall on deaf ears to those in charge of making the decisions to spray. It’s heartbreaking to wake up on the same property that was buzzing with life yesterday to find the garden completely still and to find butterflies floating in my pool. Thank you for sharing this lovely story of hope and possibility. Without that, what do we have?
Mother Earth will survive and thrive, that is not the concern. she will evolve into a different place after eliminating the invasive species we have become. She will spin on, after the human experiment has burnt itself out.
Naomi Klein asks, “What is wrong with us?” in her recent book. Although the word ‘absolute’ is rarely in my writing or thoughts because it means "a value or principle that is regarded as universally valid or that may be viewed without relation to other things” and I find little 'universally valid’ or 'without relation.’
Pondering the question posed, a possible answer woke me in the middle of the night with the notion of ‘absolute greed’ as the driving force behind the recalcitrant, intransigent actions related to continuing, in the face of catastrophic changes already upon Earth, burning carbon. We continue to drill, dig, frack, and by any means obtain fossil fuel. We burn increasing amounts of biomass. [This is certainly not a complete exegesis—add your own issue or concern.]
We are evidencing hatred of the biophilic, distracted by the latest post, the most recent atrocity, our navels...
Despite the urgent need, in order to protect an environment in which humans can function [certainly not the one we now know to be transforming at a fairly rapid clip] to make a 180-degree pivot in how we live, this is not universally happening. One person, even one million persons transforming from a fossil-fuel-based life will change very little. We have claimed ignorance and gone too far toward destroying the human-viable atmosphere of our planet.
The children suing local and federal governments for clean air and water, for “not doing all they can do to protect our future,” is such a sad comment on our greed-based humanity, ever further from origins and sustenance and balance within the Gaiaic systems that nurtured our evolution.
A human life is brief, merely a moment in time, no matter how long we live. Perhaps this brevity is one way we have moved so far from our place on the planet so rapidly that we disconnected from Earth as anything but potential profit.
The masses of people—billions of us—where are our heads and hearts? Are we medicated? Religion as the opiate, although some would have it be television or social media or whatever numbs and nulls us. We dance about the head of a pin while Rome burns. Perhaps it is my own ignorance…but this is a rabbit warren of conjecture. Whatever obscures the reality, we are simply not making the radical, as in to the root, changes required. There is no compelling narrative of focus or transformation of the dominant paradigm which is subversive to life.
This apathy is making me crazy, so beyond making changes in my personal life [which are totally inadequate to the need] I am compelled to give voice to the anguish I feel as grandchildren are born. Beautiful beings, old souls, innocent of the rape of Earth but certain to live and die in the consequences.
The urgency is palpable. We are melting, storming, drying, flooding, quaking—Earth is offering messages, alerts, warnings—and there are many who heed. We are, simultaneously [as we burn, drill, dig, and frack] re-learning how to forage, grow our own food in the circular nature of Demeter, clean our water, re-center community, power our own movement [e.g., bicycles], turn to air and sun and water for biophilic energy, heal without violating, add your own contribution here.
I once had a teacher who taught that the actions of one was revolutionary and significant—and contributed to changing the world. I no longer believe that the quiet, solitary, changed life will change the world. Too many people are living that life, or as close to it as they can get, and the world is not changing. We no longer have the luxury of each one teach one.
Entire systems of government, industry—all the complexes working in concert to extract evermore; maintenance of fossil fuel-based economies; the focus on 'growth' at any cost; the “free” markets—which are supported and rigged so as to no longer actually be anywhere close to free; the obsession for the profits of making war; the fractured “health care” system; [enter your own concern here]—Earth and our continued existence [in some type of very altered, but supportive to human life environment] need all this to change in rapid fashion, in response to the emergent messages we are getting that we have gone too far.
What will it take?
We have been kayaking the past month+ along some local rivers in metro west MA where eagles, blue heron, osprey, swans, geese, ducks, etc. dot the waterways. While the scourge of DDT has dissipated, residential and farm/orchard fertilizer/pesticide run off, heavy metals from manufacturing, munitions from military, all have left residual pollution.
And, we are just discovering the extent of PFAS (forever chemicals) in drinking water supplies in many communities across the state. We desperately need more “Rachel Carsons”!
My father began his career as an environmental engineer at Dow Chemical Company in 1951. Always between a rock and a hard place, he secretly reported the company to the state health department whenever he discovered illegal dumping. I have his cooy of Silent Spring.
Thank you for writing of a father who taught you about the natural world. My dad did the same, taking the three of us kids camping in western and eastern WA and BC multiple times each summer. We participated in the Ranger programs, learned about all kinds of bugs, slugs, critters and creatures. Because of his influence, as an adult, I studied native plants and habitat restoration and continue to derive great pleasure from the natural world. I am working in my own neighborhood to repel the invasive species (ivy, Himalayan blackberry, English holly, etc.) on our forested common areas while encouraging the native species. I taught my kids to appreciate nature and am absolutely delighted that my granddaughter would rather be outside collecting rocks and leaves than watching YouTube. She recently said that every time she's outside enjoying herself, she usually gets wet. She's 4 years old and loves lakes, rivers, streams and her little backyard swimming pool. She's my Hope For The Future.
While Dad was a staunch Republican, that was at a time when the Republican national platform included preservation of nature. He would be absolutely devastated by what the party has become. As am I. I hope I am carrying on the dedication to Nature that Rachel Carson espoused.
I have had pairs (one pair at a time) of osprey nest at my place for the past 20 years. Watching nature daily like that is hard at times, joyful at others, but of course, the parts that aren't man made are just part of the deal, which we humans have such a hard time with. One year a microburst swept through and knocked the babies out of the nest before they had fledged. They landed on the ground beneath the nest. The parents flew around aimlessly, lacking their purpose, for the next couple of months. One year, the babies did not survive. No idea why. This year it seemed to take much longer than normal for them to produce eggs and settle into brooding. One year, there were three babies! When they started flying, it seems like there were osprey everywhere I looked! Watching the young start standing up and stretching out their wings for the first time is such an awesome sight. There used to be a big dead elm near the nest. The dad would sit in the elm, the mother in the nest, shrieking flight instructions at their kids. One mom dive-bombed me when I walk the dogs by, but mostly they get used to us and keep sitting quietly. I talk to her in a friendly and supportive way hoping that helps. Sometimes the pair is very quiet. Sometimes other osprey stop by to visit. The other day I had five circling over my house. I always miss them when they leave and am always relieved and thrilled when they return on April 1st, almost to the day. So much we don't know. But I have the utmost respect for their focus and commitment to their life. The mom sitting on that nest through cold, heat, rain, hail, thunder and lightning. The dad always sitting nearby or going over to the lake to bring back a meal.
Thank God for the Rachel Carsons in our world. Wish I could have seen the ospreys and eagles.