Last night, I watched PBS's excellent American Experience special on Rachel Carson, the author of "Silent Spring." I am sorry to say I have never read the book, even though it is one I clearly remember on our family's living room bookshelf c.1962-63.
Like many girls of my generation, I experienced early success in science (A+ in chemistry in seventh grade) followed by a swan dive. The biology teacher at my girls' private school was probably a great scientist but he barely spoke English, and I quite literally could not understand him. Biology is so word- and concept-oriented that this was a disastrous thing for a teenage girl, at least circa 1967. I made the "decision" that I did not like science or math, and the rest is history. I still remember many of the periodic table abbreviations and I can balance my checkbook, but that is about it. To this day, I probably would lose steam in "Silent Spring."
However, what riveted me last night was Carson's personal courage, her tenacity, and her prescience. She took a holistic approach to nature that was impossible for the nearly all-male scientific community to understand or accept. I've struggled individually with the "kill or be killed" mentality of our institutions. Watching this, I see clearly where pesticide use fits into that mindset, and am in awe of her fearlessness, and her determination to write the truth as she knew it. The glare of the spotlight may have taken its toll on her intensely private nature, as she sickened from cancer and died at 56, not long after the book's publication. Fifty-six.
My list of heroines just keeps growing and growing.
