Rachel Carlson

Watching Bill Moyers Journal: Remembering Rachel Carson with Kaiulani Lee...
I started looking into Rachel Carlson after some reading on Sustainable Urban Development stated her book as the beginning of the modern environmental movement. I would just like to quote one beautiful passage from Kaiulani Lee's play, which often directly used Carlson's own words.

"The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. That, I take it, is the aim of literature. My own purpose was always to portray the subject of the sea with fidelity...I never stopped to consider if I was writing scientifically or poetically... The winds, the sea, the moving tides, and what they are. If there is wonder and beauty, majesty in them, science will discover these qualities. If they're not there, science cannot create them... If there is poetry in my books about the sea, it's not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one can write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry."

A Baseball Boy's High School Experience in Japan

One of my graduating high school students wrote this. I have highly edited it, but his earnestness is really admirable, and that's why I'd like to share it with you today.
The deepest memories of my high school days is from my club activities. I entered the baseball club. I wasn't familiar with many teams or teammates in the beginning, but gradually we made friends because I lived at the dormitory. While I spent much time, including bathing, meals, and life, with my friends from the club, we were able to get to know each other and our bonds deepened. The exercise was severely hard. It was hard physically and mentally in comparison with the exercise I had done in junior high school until then. However, we really wanted to go to Koshien (the national high school baseball championship games, which are aired on national television every summer). That desire to win, coupled with my belief in my teachers and my daily practice, made me strong and I became able to exercise hard. Everybody acquired power through expeditions, camps, and practice games. We were not able to win much at the beginning. I talked with all the team-members whenever we lost, and I thought that if we did things differently or thought differently, we could beat the other teams. Then we reached the last game. My team showed the fruits of our daily exercise in our strength and ability. We won and advanced to the finals. We lost at one step in the finals, but satisfactorily, were able to play a game there. We were able to be runners up because there were parents, teachers, supporters, fellow students, and the support of various people including our friends. It is essential that if something is important, that one make an effort. I played baseball for three years, and I have learned that the existence of friends supports that effort, they provide an aim. In addition, I understand that I can receive power if I have the support of a lot of people in my circumference. Therefore, it is very important to make friends. I want to make use of doing the national high school baseball championship league for three years, and use it in life at college.