What can be said about Rachel Carson that hasn’t already been said? All I can do is post this article; anything else would be superfluous.  Here’s an article listing commemorative events in the area.

Rachel Carson’s Persistence and Pain In Focus 100 Years After Her Birth

Here, in a study that faces the garden, is where Rachel Carson would sit and write on days when she felt well. Here, in a bedroom with a dogwood outside the window, is where she would lie down and write on days when she felt worse.

On her sickest days, as Carson struggled with cancer and radiation therapy, she came back to her brick house on Berwick Road in Silver Spring and couldn’t write at all. Instead, an assistant read her words back to her, allowing her to edit even when she couldn’t sit up.

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In 1935, with a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University, the Pennsylvania native was hired as a government contractor to write scripts for a radio nature show, “Romance Under the Waters.” She made $6.50 a day. In 1936, Carson became a full-time science writer, and she stayed with the government for 16 more years. Carson also raised a grand-nephew, Roger Christie, whom she adopted as a son.These were less cautious times in wildlife management: Government officials were still handing out recipes for eating the animals they studied. Still, in 1945, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was conducting research on a widely used pesticide.

“DDT may have undesirable and even dangerous effects unless its use is properly controlled,” [my emphasis] said a news release, which Carson helped write.

“It stuck in the back of her mind, apparently,” said Mark Madison, a historian for the Fish and Wildlife Service, Carson’s employer for much of her career.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051702627.html?hpid=artslot