I’ve posted other videos of Randy Granger playing Native American Flute…today I wanted to share his songs that feature the Hang (pronounced “hung”) drum (it isn’t actually a drum but it’s the easiest way to describe it in lay-terms). It is a relatively new instrument – created in 2000 & introduced to the musical market in 2001 – but it is quickly gaining popularity around the world and it’s really easy to see hear why so many people are diggin’ it.
This is one of Randy’s videos that was filmed here in the Mesilla (muh-see-ya) Valley with the gorgeous Organ Mountains as a backdrop…
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Another funkily-awesome & locally filmed video that showcases many of Randy’s musical talents and features local poet, Wayne Crawford…
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This video gives a really up-close view of how a hang – or halo drum – is played. This one wasn’t filmed in NM…we’d never have anything as cool as a World of Faries Festival and oh yeah…we’d have to put every tree in the state in one area to come up with a woodsy place like this!
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Wiki- The Hang (Plural form: Hanghang) is a musical instrument in the idiophone class created by Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer inBern, Switzerland. The name of their company is PANArt Hangbau AG. The Hang is sometimes referred to as a hang drum, but the inventors consider this a misnomer and strongly discourage its use.
The instrument is constructed from two half-shells of deep drawn, nitrided steel sheet glued together at the rim leaving the inside hollow and creating a distinct ‘UFO shape’. The top (“Ding”) side has a center ‘note’ hammered into it and seven or eight ‘tone fields’ hammered around the center. The bottom (“Gu”) is a plain surface that has a rolled hole in the center with a tuned note that can be created when the rim is struck.
The Hang uses some of the same basic physical principles as a steelpan, but modified in such a way as to act as a Helmholtz resonator. The creation of the Hang was the result of many years of research on the steelpan and other instruments. The inventors of the Hang have continued to refine the shape and materials and have produced several variations over the years.
The name Hang comes from the Bernese German word for hand. It is a registered trademark and property of PANArt Hangbau AG.
The Hang was developed in the year 2000 and introduced at the Musikmesse Frankfurt in 2001. It is 52 cm in diameter and has a height of 24 cm. The two deep drawn steel hemispheres of the Hang are hardened by a process known as gas-nitriding. The side considered the ‘bottom’ has an opening (Gu) in the center which allows the generation of the bass note through Helmholtz resonance. When it is played in a damped way it can change in pitch similar to a talking drum. On the ‘top’ are seven or eight notes arranged in a tone circle in zig-zag fashion from low to high. All are tuned harmonically (with fundamental, octave and the fifth above the octave) around a low note (Ding) at the center of the tone circle. Each creation is numbered and signed.
There are only two people who build Hanghang, the inventors Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer. They have a little workshop in Bern where every Hang has been created. Read More
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This last video features a Buffalo Drum rather than a Hang but it is a stunning piece of work with some interesting history included in it.
From Randy’s Upload on YT - “A video collage and story of the Ghost Dance religious movement and subsequent tragedy. This is told from only my perspective and research. Not meaning to blame or make anyone feel bad. Please research on your own about the Ghost Dance. This song is by me, Randy Granger, and is played on Buffalo Drum, Native American flutes single and double-barrel.”
The past few days here have been a really funtastical trip for me as I miraculously reconnected with a long-lost best friend. Several years ago we lost contact; there had been a brief misunderstanding, no chance to set things to right and then life led us away from one another. I’ve felt the pain of that loss more times than I can’t count. Repeated internet searches kept coming up empty and I’d all but given up when ‘one last’ search found him just a few clicks away on Facebook two days ago.
We’ve been burning up the phone lines for almost 48hrs now, catching up on life events and of course, reminiscing about old times. Danny & I were 12 & 13 when a 3rd mutual friend, Robert, introduced us at the roller rink one night.
Sadly, no longer open. It was here that I met and spent countless hours with the boys who turned out to be life-long friends. Broken hearts, blushes & crushes and cigarettes sneakily smoked in the shadows of the pinball machines…this place holds all of our scandalous teen secrets.
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9pm sharp, every Friday & Saturday night…clear the floor and form a circle. What a way for young girls to learn a hip-wiggle as they giggle and blush and peek to see if the cute boys notice! As often as I could, I’d torture my buddies by dragging them out to the center of the floor with me – much to their teen-male-macho-ego distress and dismay…
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When we were all just out of high school, we took off for a once in a lifetime cross-country road trip…3 of us crammed in a teeny Pontiac LeMans, Metallica blasting…off to explore our world. 3,000 miles in 3 weeks…and a million memories to last a lifetime.
The 3 Amigos outside a Waffle House, somewhere in Mississippi…Danny, tall & spiky in the back, Rob…and short-shit, me.
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Every good road trip needs a theme song & this was ours…
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The years since then have taken us all through broken hearts, broken bones, supporting one another through marriages, divorces and loss of parents. Robert and I have never really been out of contact but it’s been a more sporadic and casual friendship; it was Danny & I who were particularly close until the misunderstanding a few years ago. I was with him the moment his dad died…he was at my side the moment my mother died in my arms. I went to one of his divorce proceedings as moral support…only problem was that I was 8 months pregnant…and the wife he was divorcing was 8 months pregnant and oh my, did the judge cast a doubtful, scowling looks at us all…the scandal of it all! We probably looked like Jerry Springer candidates to outsiders and we laugh about it to this day.
We’ve long given up defending our friendship and/or explaining that no, seriously…boys and girls really can be just friends! A spouse or two has tried to jealously interfere once or twice over the years but they got set straight pretty quickly. Spend 10 minutes with all of us together and it’s obvious we’re just three goofballs who love to give each other hell…the sharper the insults, the more fun we’re having so either join in like you belong or step aside before you get creamed.
To say that I am happy to be back in regular touch with both of my buds, would be a gargantuan understatement. I am over-the-moon, dance-on-a-rainbow and just plain out jumping-for-joy – ecstatic! If the past has held such wonderful times and adventures (like that time we painted Danny’s huge 4×4 blazer Barney Purple just for gits-n-shiggles!), I can only imagine what good times there are to come now that a reunion is eminent? What a long, wonderful…nearly 30 year journey it has been with these guys…I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.
And it feels good to be back home in the comfort of their friendship…
~ Bless these wonderful people for saving this amazing creature! ~
via Wake-Up World “Michael Fishbach, co-founder of The Great Whale Conservancy (GWC), narrates his encounter with a young humpback whale entangled in local fishing nets.
At first, the animal appeared to be dead, yet Fishbach investigated and quickly discovered that the poor creature was tangled in a fishing net.
The humans had to act fast; what began as a tragedy soon became a thrilling rescue as Fishbach and his crew labored to free the young whale.
The entire encounter was caught on videotape and later narrated by Fishbach himself.
Watch as the whale named Valentina by her rescuers goes from near death to freedom, then rewards her saviours with dozens of magnificent full-body breeches and tail flips.” Full Story
Xavier Rudd takes the concept of multitasking to a whole new level…
His incredible talent is absolutely mind blowing…Enjoy!
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via Xavier Rudd. com “When he debuted in 2002 with the album To Let, Xavier Rudd began a journey that would see him become one of the most iconic voices in Australian music, literally and figuratively. With each new album, this journey has wound like a river making its way toward the ocean – twisting and turning, flowing and cascading as it relentlessly pushes forward.
Introducing himself as an artist of both imagination and conscience, To Let was definitive of Rudd’s ability to marry uplifting music with thought-provoking themes and concepts. It was music that, one way or another, made you feel good. With an array of guitars, didgeridoos, stomp boxes and percussion, Xavier Rudd re-introduced a lot of Australians to the sounds and stories of the land’s original owners, while introducing the rest of the world to an entirely new sound altogether.
Solace, Rudd’s sophomore album of 2004, showcased the raw power of his songs by stripping them back to bare essentials. Recorded in Vancouver with friend and producer Todd Simko, Solace – far more than just a singer-songwriter album – captured the essence of Xavier Rudd’s one-man-band dexterity. Rudd’s spirituality permeated the songs on Solace with a masterfully emotional touch. Singles Let Me Be and Shelter captured a sentimental heart in wonderfully warm songs that resonated strongly with fans – the album debuting in the top 20 of the ARIA charts and having three of its songs voted into triple j’s annual Hottest 100.
The next evolutionary step forward came a year later with the ARIA-nominated album, Food In The Belly. Once again recording in Vancouver, Rudd found a perfect middle-ground between the first two albums, but also introduced a more haunting and mournful sound to his repertoire. His ability to weave genres together had strengthened to the point where a once-undefined mixture of blues, reggae, indigenous and folk music was now simply his trademark…” Read more, follow his work and check out the tour dates HERE.
A really unusual and inspiring video from Turkey that I couldn’t resist sharing. For all of the ugly images we’re seeing of the upheaval, there is still much beauty and strength to be found…
“Why do you even bother speaking? Do you not realize how fucking dumb you must sound?”
“You are so pathetic & weak and everyone knows it.”
“Everyone who sees you can see how horribly ugly you are; you think nice clothes and make-up can help hide it? HA!”
“You’re a fake and a fraud and the whole world is laughing at you because you only think you’re hiding it.”
“Just admit it – you are a worthless piece of shit. Look at the way you fail everything & everyone.”
“All you ever do is bring pain to people you love; you’d be doing the world a favor if you just stopped existing.”
“You are a freak! You will never be a real woman…don’t you ever get tired of embarrassing your family?”
“You are such an embarrassment, I can’t believe you allow yourself to go out in public. LOOK AT YOU! FOR SHAME…“
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If that was a mother speaking to a daughter in such a manner she’d be guilty of child abuse. If a husband screamed those phrases at his wife, friends would likely advise her to leave and seek help. No matter how you paint the scenario, if one human spoke to another using these words it would be considered verbal abuse. Advice would be for the abused to disconnect and remove themselves from the abuse(r), right?
But none of those phrases above come from an external source. What you read up there is me…speaking to myself. That form of internal dialogue has been running in a continual non-stop loop in my head for about as long as I can remember. Unlike external abuse, I can’t just up and remove myself from my own head- so I’ve learned to accept and live with it the best that I can…which isn’t always very well.
That damn dialogue grew strong enough to impact my physical world when I was 15 and developed an eating disorder. I received a few months of counseling (hypnotherapy) and I was told that the best I could hope for was to “manage” the disorder…for the rest of my life. I’ve never asked for help again and have managed to keep myself alive and semi-healthy for the past 30+ years. I’ve had a couple of close calls and dropped below 100lbs two different times in my adult life but all-in-all, I’ve not done too badly and I’ve hung in there.
Physically, I may never know the full the damage I’ve done…years of semi-starvation, uppers, laxatives and puking have left me less-than-healthy, I’m sure. I can’t take most sinus meds (ephedrine based) for fear of getting hooked again. I cannot have a bathroom scale & I have to stand backwards on doctor’s scales and beg the nurses to please not say my weight out loud for fear of it tipping me into another downward spiral.
Mentally, it (this battle, this dialogue) has worn me down to exhaustion. It is such an argument to get anything at all done; nothing happens until the doubt can be beaten down enough for me to even hear myself think…and nothing ever happens that escapes the eternal criticism of That Voice. I have to make lots of bargains with myself (Example: If I have ______now I will skip the next 4 meals) and nothing good happens without some form of self-induced penalty later.
Somewhere along the way I just learned to deal with the internal bargaining. I adapted to the screaming demons that generally make sleep impossible without aides…and I came to accept the constant (silent but agonizingly real) verbal punishment as just a part of life. I’m so used to faking my way through social situations and covering-up my breakdowns that by now it just feels dully, automatically…normal. I really believed that I reached a level of “this is as good as it gets” and resigned myself to that sad fact. Whenever that pitiful little “other girl’s” voice dared to whisper up through the darkness, “We should feel loved, safe and happy”, I learned to squash it. After all, we all know that we can’t have everything we want in life and big girls suck it up and deal with it, right? No sissies allowed here, no sir!
But…what if..?
What if this tortured state of existence I’ve come to accept as my life ISN’T as good as it can get? Continue reading →
The full article this is excerpted from is rather lengthy but it is very interesting (& disturbing)…and well worth the time spent reading it in full. Fair warning tho – there are some rather graphic images embedded into the original article that may not be suitable for all audiences. This was reported back in February originally…if I missed it, I am surely not the only one so I thought it was still worth sharing.
Belief in black magic persists in Papua New Guinea, where communities are warping under the pressure of the mining boom’s unfulfilled expectations. Women are blamed, accused of sorcery and branded as witches — with horrific consequences.
Photo: VLAD SOKHIN Rasta was accused of sorcery by people in her village after the death of a young man in 2003. She was set upon by a crowd at his funeral, beaten and strangled until she escaped. She lost her hand in the attack.
Excerpts, GlobalMail - By Jo Chandler February 15, 2013
”ON FEBRUARY 7, Papua New Guineans woke to the headline “Burnt Alive!” and pictures of a large crowd, including school children, watching as flames engulfed the body of a young woman.
It happened in the busy, mercurial hub of Mount Hagen, smack in the heart of the country. A 20-year-old mother of two, Kepari Leniata, had been stripped, tortured, trussed, doused with petrol, thrown on a rubbish tip, covered with tyres and set alight.
The killing was reportedly carried out by relatives of a six-year-old boy who had just died in the local hospital. They seized a couple of women they suspected of causing the death, among them Leniata, and soon determined that she would be the scapegoat of their grief. Witnesses claimed the crowd blocked police officers and firefighters who tried to intervene.
The news provoked a statement of “deep concern” from the UN human rights office and international media coverage. PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill condemned the killing as a “despicable” and “barbaric” act. He said he had instructed police to use all available manpower to bring the killers to justice.
“It is reprehensible that women, the old, and the weak in our society, should be targeted for alleged sorcery or wrongs that they actually have nothing to do with,” said O’Neill. Similar sentiments resounded across PNG’s always animated social media scene, and included a push for a campaign to enlist Leniata’s name and legacy to rally momentum to address endemic, epidemic violence against women.
Leniata’s death and the anguish it provoked reprised a very similar scenario only two years ago, also on a rubbish tip in Mount Hagen, when an unidentified young woman — according to some reports, possibly as young as 16 — was tied at the stake and burned. But this time there were pictures. The horror of the act, and the passivity of the watching crowd, sent shockwaves across the country.
As the Post Courier’s Rheeney editorialised, the failure of witnesses to intervene, “to stop and condemn the murderers’ actions, points to a bigger danger of ordinary Papua New Guineans accepting this callous killing as normal and this methodology of dispensing justice as acceptable.”
My heart goes out to these women & their families…such a tragic story – but one that at least offers a chance for a happy ending…
Excerpts, CBS News - “Three women who went missing separately about a decade ago, when they were in their teens or early 20s, were found alive Monday in a residential area just south of downtown, and three people were arrested.
One of the women told a 911 dispatcher the person who had taken her was gone, and she pleaded for police officers to come and get her, saying, “I’m free now.”
Cheering crowds gathered Monday night on the street near the home where police said Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight were found earlier in the day.
Police didn’t immediately provide any details of how the women were found but said they appeared to be in good health and had been taken to a hospital to be reunited with relatives and to be evaluated. CBS affiliate WOIO reports Berry was found with a 6-year-old girl, her daughter.
On a recorded 911 call Monday, Berry declared, “I’m Amanda Berry. I’ve been on the news for the last 10 years.”
She said she had been taken by someone and begged for police officers to arrive at the home on Cleveland’s west side before he returned.
“I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for 10 years,” she told the dispatcher. “And I’m here. I’m free now…”
Amanda Berry, center, and her 6-year-old daughter reunites with her sister, left, at a Cleveland hospital on Monday, May 6, 2013. / WOIO
“…Berry disappeared at age 16 on April 21, 2003, when she called her sister to say she was getting a ride home from her job at a Burger King. DeJesus went missing at age 14 on her way home from school about a year later. They were found just a few miles from where they had gone missing.
Police said Knight was 20 when she went missing around 2000.
Police said a 52-year-old man was among those arrested. They released no names and gave no details about the others arrested or what charges they might face.
Dozens of police officers and sheriff’s deputies remained at the scene late Monday awaiting a warrant to search the building where the women and the child were found.
”QUEEN OF THE SUN: What Are the Bees Telling Us? is a profound, alternative look at the global bee crisis from Taggart Siegel, director of THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN. Taking us on a journey through the catastrophic disappearance of bees and the mysterious world of the beehive, this engaging and ultimately uplifting film weaves an unusual and dramatic story of the heartfelt struggles of beekeepers, scientists and philosophers from around the world including Michael Pollan, Gunther Hauk and Vandana Shiva. Together they reveal both the problems and the solutions in renewing a culture in balance with nature.”
“Our experience filming honeybees, pollinators and the incredible beings who care for them has led us on a new odyssey to investigate where it all begins: the seed. SEED will be the final film in a trilogy that began with the Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us? and Real Dirt on Farmer John. SEED will investigate the dramatic story of seeds, the basis of life on earth. The film will unveil a David and Goliath battle for the future of our seeds. As many irreplaceable seeds are nearing extinction, SEED follows heroic biodynamic farmers, scientists and seed collectors, who are working tirelessly to preserve agricultural security and seed diversity in an uphill battle against high-tech industrial seed companies and an impending global food crisis.”
“SEED will reveal the awe, wonder and hidden beauty of seeds. We will unearth the resilience and power that all seeds have to sustain, enliven and enrich our humanity. We hope SEED will ignite the imagination of audiences, inspiring them to be part of a new movement to help sustain seed diversity.”
I am not able to find a trailer for SEED that I can embed here so if you’d like to check it out, you can do so Here.
Please go get a room & blow yourselves away already.
Sincerely & Sneezingly,
~Rebecca~
It was 90 degrees here a few days ago…it was muscle shirt & beer weather…eh, look at that…the beginnings of a proper Farmer’s Tan on my arms! Windows have been flung open as we’ve gorged on a feast of fresh air, birdsong & sunny, sunny suuuuunshine! Seeds are sprouted, things are green all over!We’d even unhooked the (hideously ugly) heater and stashed it in the closet just the day before yesterday…because Summer is nearly here…..WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
My chicks HAVE hatched so no one can accuse me of counting them prematurely, right?
Yeah, right.
Yesterday, some jerk came and stole the Sun away and left me stranded in a dreary, windy brown and grey world…that’ll teach me to nap on a Monday, now won’t it? My (newly transplanted) baby cherry tomato plants are pitifully doubled over after 18 straight hours of 45 -60+mph winds. The heater is now standing back in place, uglier and more unwelcome than ever. Windows closed; curtains are drawn because the sky is BROWN…it’s not air out there… it’s like trying to inhale a sandbox!
Since I can’t open my door without risk of getting knocked on my butt by a dust-devil & since dusting or housework is a laughably lost cause today, I thought I’d take the time to upload and share some pics of our efforts to create a mini-farm-oasis here on our funky little patch of city-desert.
“Hey, Steve…I was wondering…can those two sinks out in the backyard be used for planters or something; they’re ugly and we need to use ‘em or donate ‘em…”Steve is the magick man with magickal building hands and so we now have matching sink-planters seeded with edible flowers on either side of the front door!
Free-cycled planters made from scrap lumber and sinks that were to be thrown away.
Nothing in this space had been tended to or cared for in the last decade; everything is covered with inches and inches of sand that has blown in and buried every last weed or sprig of green. We’re lucky the Tree of Heaven is alive, sad little thing that it is. Now though? Both sides of the walkway have been tilled and seeded with both flowers (gotta feed the bees!) and veggies. Cherry tomatoes, purple tomatillos, dill, three varieties of garlic, lavender, larkspur, pansies…if the cherry tomatoes survive this nasty bout of weather, this area will be a mini ‘Garden of Eating’ by mid-summer!
The backyard was in even worse shape than the front area…I’ve not been able to even look out there since we moved here in November it is such a sad little space! But…in the short burst of pre-Spring weather that we had last week, we got new fencing put up and a small area tilled for a garden. The outer perimeter has tons of sunflowers already sprouting and we’re working on the inner area where we’ll have mounds for the ground-vine veggies like cucumbers, melons and gourds to spill down. Other small areas will have bell-peppers, cayenne peppers, green chile, pole and bush beans…and who knows what else we can squeeze in?
Believe it or not, there really IS life beginning to sprout here!
And, in the event that everything goes dastardly wrong outside, we’ve got a back-up garden started indoors. We decided to downsize the furniture and sell the fancy dining table we don’t use very often now that the kids have grown and flown away…so what once was the awkward dining room is now what we call the Garden Room. It has big windows that face south and west which means there is plenty of sunshine all day long – as a bedroom this room would be miserably hot but for plants it is proving to be perfect!
It’s not much and we still have tons of work left to do but it’s been a blast to get all of this started. It’s been too many years since I’ve been this up-close and down-deep with my food…you should see me outside, kneeling over, mounding/propping up the seedlings, assuring them that the weather will be nice again by tomorrow if they’ll please just hang in there!
An ‘oldie but goodie’ video…well worth the watch time for those not already familiar with the ever-expanding laws that restrict our freedom to decide what foods we can put in our bodies.
Joel Salatin speaks on John Stossel’s segment, “Illegal Everything,” about raw milk, farms, and food freedom. Interview is from 2012.
A friend of mine recently mailed me a copy of the book, “Living Downstream” which makes repeated mention of Rachel Carson and her fascinating work in trying to expose the dangers of the toxins we release into the environment by way of pesticides. I must admit that other than occasional short, almost abstract, mentions (even by other bloggers here; see links below) that popped up in my peripheral vision the past few years, nothing fully caught my attention so I had no knowledge of Rachel Carson or just how groundbreaking and important her work really was. I cannot believe I have managed to overlook her for so long…and am even more amazed that Ms. Carson is not a more nationally recognized hero…for a heroic life is most certainly what she lead!
And tho I find myself cringing (again) at just how lousy and lacking my public edumucashion really was and how little I still really know about…everything!…I am also looking forward to delving deeper, exploring more and discovering a whole new piece of history that until now, somehow never made it into my field of vision…
“The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”
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From RachelCarson.org - “Rachel Carson, writer, scientist, and ecologist, grew up simply in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her mother bequeathed to her a life-long love of nature and the living world that Rachel expressed first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.
She was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936 and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
She wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time turned her government research into lyric prose, first as an article “Undersea” (1937, for the Atlantic Monthly), and then in a book,Under the Sea-wind (1941). In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955. These books constituted a biography of the ocean and made Carson famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. Carson resigned from government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing.
She wrote several other articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including “Help Your Child to Wonder,” (1956) and “Our Ever-Changing Shore” (1957), and planned another book on the ecology of life. Embedded within all of Carson’s writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly.
Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.
Carson was attacked by the chemical industry and some in government as an alarmist, but courageously spoke out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem. Testifying before Congress in 1963, Carson called for new policies to protect human health and the environment. Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer. Her witness for the beauty and integrity of life continues to inspire new generations to protect the living world and all its creatures.
“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.”
Excerpt, Living Spoonful – “…It was in 1945 that Carson first encountered DDT, which the scientific community had dubbed the “insect bomb” in reference to the atomic bombs recently dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such was the utter destructiveness of the chemical spray.
Deeply troubled by the use of DDT without further research on its long term effects, Carson was one of only a few voices looking ahead to the “downstream” effects of pesticide use on land, and she was unable to find a publisher willing to take on the issue…
…In 1957, Carson became a champion in the fight against the “fire ant eradication program” – the USDA’s aerial spraying of DDT mixed with other pesticides and fuel oil, which included spraying private as well as public lands. When landowners on Long Island lost a suit to stop the USDA from aerial spraying on their own private lands, Carson was recruited by the Audubon Society to bring public attention to the issue.
It was through the research and connections she made during her work on the “fire ant” campaign that Rachel began to write Silent Spring. Evidence she gathered from her field work and from research at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, as well as from confidential information passed on to her by colleagues and friends still working as government scientists, all painted a picture of ecological damage and human sickness resulting from widespread pesticide use.
It’s a tragic irony that Carson, like so many scientists, suffered personally from her dedicated research. In 1960, Carson was diagnosed with breast cancer, which many have attributed to exposure to the very chemicals she fought to restrict. Although fighting cancer and its complications, Carson found the strength to finish writing her most impactful work.
Silent Spring was published on 27 September 1962, and immediately sparked a controversy among chemical manufacturers, the scientific community, and even the general public. Although much energy was invested into debunking Carson’s research, she was ultimately successful in defending her conclusions. As one of her last acts as a conservationist, Carson testified before President Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee, which, in 1963, issued a report largely supporting the claims she made in Silent Spring.
In January 1964, Rachel Carson died of complications from breast cancer. The legacy of her work, especially the work she completed in her last years, cannot be understated. Her biographer, Mark Hamilton Lytle, credits Carson with “calling into question the paradigm of scientific progress that defined postwar American culture.” Many believe her work is largely responsible for inspiring the grassroots environmental and ecofeminist movements that took hold throughout the 1960s.” Full Article Here
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“Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species — man — acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”
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Acknowledging Critics of Carson’s Work -
I am not sure I agree with the above video but wanted to include it to show differing points of view about Carson’s work. I want to read and learn more before I decide what to fully make of her studies…no matter whether or not I end up agreeing with her assessments, I still admire those who stand up & fight for what they believe in!
“The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
In the beginning, there was the cold and the night. Prophets and angels gave us the fire and the light. Man was triumphant armed with the faith and the will. Even the darkest ages couldn’t kill.
Too many kingdoms, too many flags on the field. So many battles, so many wounds to be healed. Time is relentless. Only true love perseveres. It’s been a long time, and now I’m with you after two thousand years.
This is our moment, here at the crossroads of time. We hope our children carry our dreams down the line. They are the vintage. What kinds of life will they live? Is this a curse or a blessing that we give?
Sometimes I wonder why are we so blind to fate? Without compassion, there can be no end to hate. No end to sorrow caused by the same endless fears. Why can’t we learn from all we’ve been through after two thousand years?
There will be miracles after the last war is won. Science and poetry rule in the new world to come. Prophets and angels gave us the power to see. What an amazing future there will be.
And in the evening, after the fire and the light, one thing is certain: nothing can hold back the night. Time is relentless. And as the past disappears, we’re on the verge of all things new. We are two thousand years.
