Introduction
W
hen I was fifteen years old, I spent a week with family friends who owned a vegetable farm. It was a backbreaking introduction to farm life. What stands out most, however, is an incident with their son, who was a couple years older than I. We were in the barn one day, and he was showing me how he could turn himself into a ghost by throwing handfuls of a white powder into the air and letting it float down over himself like a shroud. This was the same white powder we had been spreading on cabbage plants that morning. The way he laughed gave me the impression that he often played ghost. He urged me to join in, but I declined. It wasn’t like me to pass up mischief, but something didn’t seem right. My guardian angel was working overtime that day. Years later I learned that the young man developed dementia in his thirties and died in his forties. Rachel Carson’s
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