About a half-century after the run of Nature Notes, I published privately, for family members, a compilation of what would be called “blogs” today, introductory opinion columns written by the Nature Notes editor and publisher, my Grandfather James H Sedgwick. Now, another three decades later, it strikes me how much of the material in those columns still resonates.

While the modern environmental movement is usually traced to the publication of Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, the advocacy in these columns makes it clear that environmentalism was alive and well in the Great Depression and that (perhaps sadly) many of the same issues still need attention. The public’s lack of understanding and the venal motives of politicians are but two of the issues discussed here that are yet problematic.

So it goes.