Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Pennsylvania (19 page)

“Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good.”

“Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.”

“Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy.”

“When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.”

“You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That's the mark of a true professional.”

“Act like you expect to get into the end zone.”

“You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.”

“Success is never final. Failure is never fatal.”

A lover of the natural world, a published writer at the age of 10, and an ardent opponent of pollution and pesticide use, Pennsylvania-born Rachel Carson became one of the world's first and most influential conservationists
.

I
n 1900, Robert and Maria Carson bought a 64-acre farm in Springdale, Pennsylvania, about 14 miles from Pittsburgh. The property included a small clapboard farmhouse—lilacs and honeysuckle grew near its front porch—two outhouses, a barn, a springhouse (for fresh water), and a chicken coop. A pear and apple orchard grew on a hill behind the house. Maria kept a large vegetable garden, and Robert tended a rose garden.

Rachel, the youngest of the Carsons' three children, was born on May 27, 1907. From the time she was a toddler, she explored the woods near the farm. Her mother was college-educated and well-read in botany and natural history. She introduced her daughter to the animals, insects, and plants that thrived on their property and instilled in her children the belief that nature should be respected and disturbed as little as possible.

Rachel's brother and sister were almost 10 years older, so she relied on her dogs for playmates. When she started school, she developed a talent for writing, and animals became central characters in her stories. She also looked to her family for inspiration. At just 10 years old, Rachel published her first story: “Battle in the Clouds” was about U.S. pilots in World War I and was inspired by her brother's experiences. The piece appeared in a
popular children's literary magazine of the day:
St. Nicholas
, which focused on work created by children. (F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and e. e. cummings all had stories published in
St. Nicholas
as kids.)

It was the first of several stories young Rachel wrote that made it into print. In 1922,
St. Nicholas
published another piece of hers: “My Favorite Recreation,” describing a day spent with her dog. In the story, the pair walks through the Pennsylvania hills, where Rachel takes photographs of birds and their nests. It was her first published nature story and was a forerunner to her later best-selling books.

According to Carson biographer Linda Lear, neighbors remembered young Rachel as exceptionally bright and curious about her environment. One oft-repeated story told of her finding a large fossilized shell in a rocky hillside on her family's farm. She read voraciously to find out about the animal that had lived inside it and to discover why a seashell would end up among the rocks near the Allegheny River. She was fascinated to learn that an ocean had once covered the area.

Years later, Carson's interest in evolution and marine science led her to write several books about the ocean. One in particular—
The Sea Around Us
—brought her nationwide attention in 1952 when it won the National Book Award.

Rachel Carson lived in Springdale for 18 years. During that time, the town grew ever more industrialized, and Carson developed a strong dislike for the noise and pollution that came with progress.

In 1925, she left home to attend the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) in Pittsburgh. But city life was an adjustment. In those days, Pittsburgh's factories so polluted the area that people often were covered in smoky soot. Living there, Carson appreciated even more the benefits of her rural childhood and became increasingly aware of how fragile the natural world was.

After four years in Pittsburgh, Carson left Pennsylvania for graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, where she studied zoology. Over the next three decades, she worked as a professor, scientist, and researcher, always studying the impact of humans on the natural world. It wasn't until 1962, however, that she published the book that made her famous.

Carson was inspired to write
Silent Spring
after receiving a letter from friends in Massachusetts who were struggling with the effects of aerial pesticide spraying on their rural property.

As Carson investigated the use of pesticides in farming, she discovered that they were polluting rivers and threatening wildlife, including the endangered bald eagle. In
Silent Spring
, Carson argued that pesticides could poison the environment, and she called for them to be regulated, particularly DDT, which had come into widespread use on U.S. farms after World War II.

Rachel Carson wasn't the first scientist to notice the harmful effects of DDT and other pesticides, but she was the first to write about them in a way that inspired people to do something about it. In
Silent Spring
, she wrote about a “strange stillness” that fell over an American town after farmers used pesticides:

The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On
the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of scores of bird voices, there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

The chemical and pesticide industry immediately tried to suppress and discredit
Silent Spring
. But by then, Carson was respected enough as a scientist that all attempts to cover up her findings failed. Instead, the book sparked nationwide interest in pesticide use and prompted President John F. Kennedy to set up a commission to study its consequences.

Rachel Carson died of cancer in 1964, but her book encouraged the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the growth of a movement in the United States that worked both to preserve wildlife and habitats, and to change politicians' attitudes about the environment. Her efforts were also, in large part, responsible for DDT finally being banned in the United States in 1972.

 

 

If it weren't for the Quakers, there would be no Pennsylvania. Read on to get to know the religious group that founded the commonwealth
.

“Quaker” is not the official term for the sect: its formal name is The Society of Friends (from John 15:14, in which Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you”).

The origin of the nickname “Quaker” is ambiguous: Some people say it comes from the fact that church members have been known to tremble (or quake) when contemplating God. Others say it comes from a remark by George Fox, the group's founder, who in 1650 told a judge to tremble before the name of God.

Quakers believe that individuals can have personal relationships with God without priests or ministers. Many Quakers consider the Bible to be an inspirational work, but they don't believe any book is specifically the “word of God.” Quakers are generally pacifists, and most are Christian, though some subscribe to other religions or to no specific religion at all.

Quakers are often associated with Pennsylvania—mostly because William Penn, the state's founder, was a member of the Society of
Friends. But the sect was actually founded in the mid-1600s in England, where just being a Quaker was illegal. Early life in the American colonies was no better: Quakers were put to death in Boston in 1659 and 1661. But eventually Quakers became part of colonial life, most notably in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, before Penn founded his colony in 1682.

Quakers formed the colony of Pennsylvania, but they were also present at the creation of the United States of America. Pennsylvania Quaker George Clymer signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States; fellow Pennsylvanian and Quaker Thomas Mifflin followed suit. Clymer was also a representative to the first U.S. Congress.

Early Quakers didn't see any problem with slavery, and many of them (William Penn included) owned slaves. But by the early 1700s, as indentured servants made up more of the population immigrating to Pennsylvania, the attitude toward slavery began to change. It was cheaper for farmers to use indentured servants, but the thinking among Northern whites was also shifting from pro-slavery to abolition. Young Quakers in particular had begun to see slavery as contradictory to their religion's belief that every person contained the “light of God.” As a result, American Quakers were at the forefront of the struggle to end slavery, and between about 1750 and 1800, nearly all Quakers in America voluntarily freed their slaves.

Quakers founded many prestigious Pennsylvania colleges, including
Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford.

Although Quakers are usually pacifists, there have been some Friends soldiers in history, most notably Marine Major General Smedley Butler of West Chester, who was nicknamed “the Fighting Quaker.” Butler is the last person to have won two medals of honor for separate actions: the first in 1914 during the occupation of Veracruz, and the second in 1915 while fighting in Haiti. Later in life, though, he decried the use of the military for what he considered to be “corporate ends.”

 

 

Odd numbers, we mean. (Evens are on
page 63
.)

Pennsylvania has 1 . . .
Ivy League university (Penn) and one college that belongs to the Seven Sisters (Bryn Mawr).

Pennsylvania has 3 . . .
major rivers: the Delaware, the Susquehanna, and the Ohio.

Pennsylvania has 17 . . .
threatened or endangered native plant and animal species, including the bald eagle, the Indiana bat, and the leafy northeastern bulrush (a tall, leafy plant with brown flowers).