I sent this to PBS after viewing an exceptional Bill Moyers Journal about Rachael Carson, one of the first environmentalists who made environmentalism a household word with the publication of her 1964 best seller Silent Spring. It was a wonderful broadcast. If you want to know more about it go to the PBS web site or look to see when PBS will rebroadcast the show.

Yet again Bill Moyers presents a riveting documentary about Rachael Carson a gentle woman who, in her gentleness in the 1960's, hit mankind over the head with a wondrous truth illuminated in her book Silent Spring. Man is slowly, through his technological and chemical genius, destroying the most genius creation of all -- earth itself. Man through his unbridled conspicuous consumption and desire to eliminate his perceived enemies is upsetting the evolutionary balance of nature through the endless toxins, pesticides and insecticides he produces.

I am a child of the 50's and live in the same home on the same street at 58 years old that I did at 9 years old. I have seen things and people come and go. I have seen at 9 years old a dump located close to my house which spewed and belched its poison for decades. It was silenced not that long ago and has recently given way to the most modern recycling center. I have Rachel Carson, I think, in part, to thank for that.

Many of the people who occupied my street when I was young have died. Too many, I think, (including my own father) of cancer. I wonder in my uneasy sleep at night if, perhaps, that smoke which coughed so many years ago was the unobtrusive murderer of them all and will ultimately work its biological dark magic and be responsible for my death too. Time, I suppose, will tell. Thank you, Bill Moyers, for bringing this phenomenal woman and her contribution to life again.