Music and the Skillful Listener: American Women Compose the Natural World

Part Three: Beyond the EPA and Earth Day: Victoria Bond, Libby Larsen, Emily Doolittle

Part three Beyond the EPA and Earth Day Victoria Bond, LiBBy Larsen, emiLy dooLittLe � The final group of composers includes two women born in the years closely following World War II, Victoria Bond (b. 1945) and Libby Larsen (b. 1950), and one woman born two years after the celebration of the first Earth Day, Emily Doolittle (b. 1972).1 Tumultuous changes that swept through American society beginning in the mid-1960s divide these women into subgenerations popularly known as “baby boomers,” a term used to describe people born roughly between 1945 and 1964, and Gen Xers, those born from the mid-1960s through 1981 or 1982.2 While just twenty-seven years separate the births of Bond and Doolittle, the range and reach of economic, political, and social transformations that occurred during that time upended traditional assumptions and attitudes regarding sexual behavior, racial (in)equality, religious beliefs, gender roles, and the relationship of humans and an ever-expanding environment to a degree unmatched in recent history. The number of government agencies, acts, and initiatives that were created between the 1940s and the 1970s and dedicated to some aspect of national and/or environmental health speaks to one aspect of a paradigm shift in public thinking. In 1950, Congress created the National Science Foundation (nsF) “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense.”3 Its formation was, in part, the 208 Beyond the EPA and Earth Day government’s response to the barely won armaments race of World War II. And then another race, this one conducted in space, consumed part of the nation’s attention for the latter part of the 1950s and 1960s as the United States found itself behind the Soviet Union in space technology. The Soviet’s Sputnik 1, launched October 4, 1957, begat America’s Explorer 1, which was launched on January 31, 1958. When, eleven years later, Apollo 11 landed on the moon (July 20, 1969) and Neil Armstrong took his first bouncing steps on its surface, the United States had won that race too. But other scientific initiatives were not as successful, despite their enthusiastic application. Suburban baby boomers were sprayed with ddt as they enjoyed their summer barbecues, compliments of mosquito-eradication programs. Children from Houston to the Hamptons danced in the fine white mist assured by their parents, who had been assured by the government, that there was nothing to fear. The long-term dangers of chemical-sprayed hot dogs and hamburgers, and the impact of ddt on biodiversity would eventually convince Washington, D.C., to find alternative methods of controlling the disease-carrying insect. ddt would be banned from general use in 1972 by the Environmental Protection Agency, which had been formed in December of 1970.4 The ePa came into being just eight months after the first Earth Day in April 1970. The Environmental Quality Improvement Act was passed in 1970, and noaa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was created that same year as well. It brought together three of the oldest agencies dedicated to the nation’s physical health: the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (founded in 1807), the Weather Bureau (founded in 1870), and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (founded in 1871). But not everyone waited for government reports or group protests to sound the alarm about the nation’s toxic ways. Gen Xers were born into a world informed by Rachel Carson (1907– 1964). The marine biologist, author, and environmental champion became a one-woman CR (consciousness-raising) group determined to change people’s thinking about their place in the world.5 A series of books starting with Under the Sea-World in 1941, followed by The Sea around Us in 1952 and The Edge of the Sea in 1955, won Carson an audience of believers. When Silent Spring appeared in 1962, the soft-spoken call to action changed the way large numbers of Americans thought about the environment and their relation to it. With civil and social unrest roiling all around, who could not respond to: “There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.”6 Although numerous attempts were made to discredit 209 Beyond the EPA and Earth Day Carson as a dilettante and an alarmist, increasing regard for her careful work brought the scientist face-to-face...