Good morning,
I hope you are all well.
Do you feel a different
energy in September? Is the start of
autumn your New Year? It is for me, and combined with the energy of cooler temperatures and
two rainfalls I'm feeling better than I have in a while.
By two steps of the
serendipity that guides my life and this blog, this morning I found the
wonderful Orion Magazine (www.orionmagazine.org)
by happening upon an article by a writer/educator whose work I respect, ecologist
Sandra Steingraber.
In The Fracking of Rachel Carson: Silent
Spring’s lost legacy, told in fifty
parts Steingraber
weaves together information about Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, with factual information about fracking, and its
effects on people. (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7005)
This is the first article I've managed
to get through about fracking. I've
heard about it of course ... it has to do with the injection of water and
chemicals and explosives deep, deep into holes and pipes underground to disrupt
trapped gas, and capture it for use. The
first time someone told me about fracking, and I commented, I was called
"niaive". I'd said that surely
you cannot put holes and chemicals underground without messing up all sorts of
things you'd never expect to mess up.
Steingraber's article gives readable text that explains just how messed
up things get when fracking is done. Water tables are polluted, animals and people
get sick - very sick.
The
"hook" that got me through Steingraber's article was the link she
made with Rachel Carson and her work. As Steingraber says about Carson: "She sat
on a mountaintop and thought about oceans". For me, there is incredible beauty in
this image of scientist, dreamer, and visionary ... and thanks Sandra for
giving me this gift.
Fracking
is causing horrendous pollution and health problems to the land, water and
living creatures in the lands around Rachel Carson's most beloved home turf,
the Appalachian area of Pennsylvania, where hawks fly over
geologic remnants of oceans. That
contrast inspired Carson to a lifetime of study.
After Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, she spent much time
speaking to groups about the damaging effects of petrochemicals on the
environment. She also defended her
comments to media and committees, and rebutted attacks by chemical industries.
She kept secret that she had been diagnosed with cancer, and was thus denied
her detractors opportunity to call her non-objective, or, in the terms of the
times, a complaining woman.
Steingraber quotes in her
article from Carson's final speech (Oct. 1963, in San Francisco)
"Underlying
all of these problems of introducing contamination into our world is the
question of moral responsibility. . . . [T]he threat is infinitely greater to
the generations unborn; to those who have no voice in the decisions of today,
and that fact alone makes our responsibility a heavy one."
I have a new realization of
the truth of this.
Last week I had the joy of
holding a new baby, just four days old.
She was so tiny. She is
perfect. She yawned and wriggled in my
arms and I was completely overwhelmed by the energy in her stretch and the
strength concentrated in her tightened fist.
She's not my child. She's not a
relative. She's the first child of an
intelligent, caring woman I know and her equally good husband. And I loved this child in my arms with the
resolve I felt when I met my goddaughter for the first time over twenty-one
years ago.
Babies are good for us. They renew us to our most deep and passionate
connection to others, to nurture, and protect.
I encourage you to read
Sandra Steingraber's article, and read or reread Silent Spring at its 50th
anniversary.
Much love to all of you,
Why's Woman
The Fracking of Rachel Carson: Silent Spring’s lost legacy,
told in fifty parts
Sandra Steingraber. Orior Magazine, September/October 2012,
www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7005
Sandra Steingraber narrates a
slide show about the fracking of Rachel Carson’s homeground at http://www.orionmagazine.org/fracking.
This article was made possible by generous support from the Park Foundation
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