27 May 2018 - Happy Birthday Rachel Carson!

It's Rachel Carson's Birthday.

Use Pesticides Sparingly

"A the end of May, with the air full of bird song, it's fitting to remember that today is the birth date of the late Rachel Carson, born May 27, 1907."

Rachel Louise Carson was a marine biologist, author, and conservationist.

Her most popular book, Silent Spring, detailed the harmful effects of pesticides on our environment.

She accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation to the public and public officials of accepting their claims without question.

She really sounds like an awesome person.

I'd like to think we could have been friends.

It was her poetic style of writing and well researched facts that made her books so attractive to wider audiences.

“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.” 
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Silent Spring was published in 1962.

Rachel Carson died from breast cancer in 1964.

It was this book that sparked a need for information on chemicals we would use everyday.

Not just for our own health, but for the health of the environment.

In 1962, Silent Spring referred to the lack of singing birds in the spring time.

Today we are on a real threat to loosing bees.

An important pollinator.

Colony collapse disorder is not new to the 21st century. 

It has been documented since the 1800's.

The difference in today is that the number of bees suddenly disappearing has increased to about 40% in a season when it is normal to loose almost 17% of a hive due to natural causes.

As our Almanac title says, we should use pesticides sparingly.

Over exposure to pesticides can be dangerous to the environment. 

From the small bee to the flying bird.

Rachel Carson never advocated for the eradication of pesticides.

She only wanted companies to be more transparent about the dangers of their products.

Because of her work in the 1960's, a lot has been done to investigate chemicals and ban certain types that would cause too much harm.

Thank you Rachel

and 

Happy Birthday