in the late 1960s-just in time to become an activist. Before finishing my doctorate, I taught American history at independent schools, and fortunately ended up teaching at one in Washington, D.C. I was educated at womens schools until my graduate work at Columbia University. I became adept at rescuing stray kittens and baby rabbits, and finally got a healthy kitten of my own. I always loved woodland flowers and animals. From my grandparents and from my mother, I absorbed the pleasures of gardening, herbaceous and perennial, learning the names of plants, and later of making a garden of my own. He introduced me to the nonsense rhymes of Edward Lear, and to illustrators such as Beswick, Walter Crane, and Beatrix Potter. We loved Aesop, B're Rabbit, Uncle Wiggly, and of course, Peter Rabbit. Our favorites were fairy tales, Grimms and Andersons, Lewis Carroll, and any sort of animal fable.
My grandfather loved books and loved to read to me when I was little. For generations my family had been involved in the natural world and from them I learned to appreciate and nurture it. We talked about why the city was dirty, the river polluted, and what we could do about it. The smell of dead animals mixed with the stench of sulfur from the smelting operations further down river. There were animal parts visible in the yard, and debris strewn along the river's edge. Whenever my parents drove over the Allegheny River into downtown Pittsburgh from the rural community of Glenshaw where I was born, I begged my father not to go over the bridge that crossed the river above the stock yards.
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