Rachel Carson: not the silent type

Sometimes silence speaks louder than words, and sometimes a grrl has to climb up on top of a building and shout to be heard.  Rachel Carson tried it both ways.  

Born in 1907, Rachel grew up in a little farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania .  Her mother was always yelling at Rachel to go play outside, but once Rachel realized just how cool the woods and fields around her home were, well….her mom had to start yelling to get her back indoors!  Rachel and her mom took long walks, followed animal trails, and read together about the natural world.  Rachel went on to study at Johns Hopkins (where she took a degree in Zoology) and developed her life-long passion for the “underwater world” she and her mom first explored in the pond behind their home.  (So keep Rachel in mind when your mom wants to spend some quality time with you!)

Rachel wanted nothing more than to study the oceans, stream, ponds, and puddles of the world.  She joined the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and wrote for a radio show called “Romance under the Water” (cool, huh?).  She wanted more though, and became the first woman to pass the civil service test, the only thing that was holding her back.  Over the next 15 years she fought her way up the ladder, becoming the chief editor for ALL the publications of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (very cool)!  

If that was all she did, it would still be pretty amazing.  She graduated from Johns Hopkins in the 1930s, when a grrl at medical school wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms.  She broke the gender barrier of the U.S. civil service test.  She fought for her dreams and won not just the ability to study the underwater worlds she found so amazing, but also the respect of her colleagues (and a high paying job, let’s not forget that!).  She wrote numerous books about the oceans and the funky critters that live just a few feet below the waves and our line of sight.  

But that wasn’t all she did.  In 1962 her book Silent Spring was published, and that book changed everything for her.  Go, find a copy, and read.  I mean it, read that book!  Rachel was the first person to make people aware that pesticides and chemicals were not exactly “good things.”  She pointed out that pesticides were contaminating the natural food chains and were responsible for the destruction of “non-target” species like bald eagles and fourth graders.  Rachel shouted from the rooftops about the “silent spring” she saw around her, and she made people listen to that silence.  

She took her research to the White House and made President Kennedy read her book.  She held public meetings, handed out flyers, recruited doctors and scientists (many of them grrls like herself!), and DEMANDED that the world listen and more importantly, do something about it.  She lit the fire of the modern environmental movement, and that fire is still burning today.  

Get on-line and swing over to the White House website.  Drop President Bush an email reminding him that we all share the same planet, and that the pesticides he ignores today could be in his dinner tomorrow.  Sign it in memory of Rachel Carson.

 

Tracy Madison  grrl-e-grrl.com contributor