Dette A ene ONG bale ly ley Lal N 59 
Miss Carson is described as a 
very shy person, which led some 
to think of her as a relatively 
austere person. Not so, according 
to her associates during the fifteen 
years she spent as biologist, public 
relations representative, and finally 
editor of publications for the Fish 
and Wildlife Service. Shirley 
Briggs whose desk adjoined Ra- 
chel’s is quoted: “Her qualities of 
zest and humor made even the dull 
stretches of bureaucratic procedure 
a mater of quiet fun and she could 
instill a sense of adventure into 
the editorial routine of a govern- 
mental department Intransi- 
gent official ways, small stupidities 
and inept pronouncements were 
changed from annoyances _ into 
sources of merriment.” 
Her skill as a propogandist sur- 
faced preeminently in ‘Silent 
Spring” as evidenced by this quote: 
“This is an era of specialists, each 
of whom sees his own problem and 
is unaware of or intolerant of the 
larger frame into which it fits. It 
is also an era dominated by in- 
dustry, in which the right to make 
a dollar is seldom challenged. When 
the public protests, confronted with 
some obvious evidence of damaging 
results of pesticide applications, 
it is fed little tranquilizing pills of 
halftruth. We urgently need an 
end to these false assurances, to the 
sugar coating of unpalatable facts.” 
Brooks makes a great deal of the 
extremely fortunate circumstances 
that Miss Carson’s life and work 
were able to combine her two 
youthful ambitions — to be a writ- 
er and to be a natural scientist. In 
her earlier days she wrote many 
poems and sent them to magazines, 
but with acceptance of none by 
any prominent national magazine. 
Although her published works 
furnished incontrovertible evidence 
of how well she mastered her 
scientific arsenal, they also include 
writing that is truly poetic. In a 
Holiday magazine article she de- 
scribed a beautiful and rugged sea- 
shore scene: “We stood quietly, 
speaking few words. There was 
nothing, really, for human words 
to say in the presence of something 
so vast, mysterious, and immensely 
powerful. Perhaps only in music of 
deep inspiration and _ grandeur 
could the message of that morning 
be translated by the human spirit, 
as in the opening bars of Beetho- 
ven’s Ninth Symphony — music 
that echoes across vast distances 
and down long corridors of time, 
bringing the sense of what was 
and of what is to come — music 
of swelling power that swirls and 
explodes even as the sea surged 
against the rocks below us.” 
—Ray M. Barron 
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