When I first start reading this book I was not sure what to expect the title was different and the way that Stephen described it intrigued me. From the beginning the reader can tell that Estrella is the one that holds the family together. The only way for the family to survive is to live out of labor camps, which keeps their lives on the move as different crops need picking. Although she is only 13, she is wise in many ways.

She picks crops like everyone else and started at the young age of 5. She knows that there is something different about the way that she lives.  However, she learned this lesson from her teachers of all people, who asked her why her mother never bathes her. Before this point in Estrella’s life she had not realized that her life was as different due to being in poverty. The class distinctions found in the book seems unreal. At times when Estrella is in the field I think that this must be sent in the 1800’s but then she mentions watching the children play baseball. Something that she has never been able to do.

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After reading silent spring sections for tuesdays class and I was curious about what peoples response was to her books. After doing a little research I found out that Rachel Carson was highly criticize. “The weekly Human Events gave Silent Spring an “honorable mention” in its list of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.” along with just this one quote I found many more things that she ended being criticized even though they did not have the technology yet to find out those things. The book did point to problems that had not been adequately addressed, such as the effects of DDT on some wildlife. However, she did not realize that DDT helped keep Malaria down by killing the mosquitos.

She was also supported, According to a TIME magazine article in 1999, a year or two after it was out,  ”all but the most self-serving of Carson’s attackers were backing rapidly toward safer ground. In their ugly campaign to reduce a brave scientist’s protest to a matter of public relations, the chemical interests had only increased public awareness.”

I feel that Silent Springs did what Carson wanted it to do. Although Carson may have not realized how important her book would become I think that by Silent Spring being so controversial has helped bring out the issue of pesticides, making it a prominent issue that is discussed from both sides. Although, Carson did not have the scientific methods that we now use, she still spent her last days finalizing her book to bring the issue to the public eye. She utilized every discourse that should could so that her book could be read from a scientific view to be read by the everyday citizen.

After reading Thoreau I could not shake this feeling that things would be so much easier if the world was simpler like Thoreau lived for those two years. The simplicity kind of life that he lives and little amount of money he uses is astounding. The sense of community that Thoreau is surrounded with helping him start out, is where I feel that in “Economy” he is expressing the need to get back to nature. Thoreau being able to draw off of his own experience, freely using “I” and describing nature so brilliantly.

“We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes.” (10)

I really like this little quote because it shows the world works together. How everything is all connected and if we remembered that our lives would be a lot easier just like Thoreau’s life was simple when he was connected and surrounded by nature. Everything in his life was simpler. He had to work harder to get what he needed but he didn’t use more than what he needed to survive from nature.

When we watched the tv commercials about the pruis and how it was supposed to make us want to buy them because it world be helping the world is an oxymoron. I feel this way because you still have to use all the bad things that electric car does not do to make the car. it also made me think about what other car brand names are starting to go electric.

In my search, I found the Tesla Roadster, which is the sports car version of electric cars. The point of this vehicle is to get rid of tailpipes and live greener however to make this vehicle we know that they have to use petroleum.

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