Maine's #NuclearBan banner's next stop is at MileMarker 19, to recognize Rachel Carson and the National Wildlife Refuge there. Rachel Carson, perhaps the greatest, and certainly the best known, environmentalist of the twentieth century, was deeply opposed to nuclear testing and nuclear war. On July 7, the same date when the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was born, Carson was on the cover of the Saturday Review for when The Sea Around Us was published (in 1951 vs. 2017). In this book she writes: "The stark problem that faces him is whether he can dispose of these lethal substances without rendering the earth uninhabitable." It was at a time when nuclear waste was placed in concrete lined barrels and dumped overboard. She dedicated Silent Spring to Albert Schweitzer who said "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth."
"For many of us, Silent Spring, Carson’s breakout 1962 masterpiece, was a work of seminal importance. And it was to honor Carson .... that Marian McPartland composed what became her symphony, A Portrait of Rachel Carson,"writes Linda Pentz Gunter. Link to concert. For PAM too, Silent Spring is a MILESTONE, which is why our TPNW #BanTreaty caravan to celebrate the MILESTONE treaty visited the Rachel Carson Reserve.