Thank You, Ms. Carson

Next Monday, my graduate seminar wraps up its discussion of Silent Spring and related topics.  They have been a great group--excited about discussing the issues of today and comparing them to Rachel Carson's issues and assessing how she reached out to the public to raise awareness and concern through a number of different literary techniques.  I have been inspired by our discussions and readings, and of course by Ms. Carson's text itself.  I have more to say about the final chapter, but for now I wanted to leave you with her last words in Silent Spring:

"The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.  The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science.  It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth."  --from "The Other Road"  R Carson 1962

Thank you for your insight, passion, and reason, Rachel Carson.