Satiric radio commentary for the 90s from the man who drained Lake Michigan and filled it with hot chocolate!!!
STAN FREBERG HERE...


"Silent Spring" Revisited

Stan Freberg here. In 1962, biologist and author Rachel Carson wrote the book that would start the environmental movement in America. Without this book, there probably wouldn't have been any "Earth Day," and certainly no eco-enlightenment. More after this. [:60 SPOT BREAK]

Freberg here. The book I referred to earlier was "Silent Spring." The author, Rachel Carson, was horrified about the escalating use of pesticides. She refers in the first chapter to a town suddenly devoid of the singing of birds. Not science fiction, but science fact. Hence, her devastating title, "Silent Spring."

But here's her own words:

"...On the morning that had once throbbed with the chorus of robins, doves, jays, wrens and other bird voices, only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh. The apple trees were coming into bloom, but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there would be no pollenation, and there would be no fruit.

No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it to themselves." Unquote.

DDT was finally banned in America in 1978, 16 years after Rachel Carson's book was published. And now, at last, pesticides are on the wane. The alternative bio-pesticides that spare bees, birds and workers are now a hundred million dollar business. Bald eagles have staged a comeback.

So there's a happy, upbeat "Earth Day" note to end on.

Stan Freberg here.


Copyright (C)1996, Stan Freberg/Freberg, Ltd. (but not very) Distributed by Dick Brescia Associates and Radio Spirits, Inc.