Vocab
To build up slowly.
What is to accumulate?
The illegal dumping caused shrimp, fish, and other wildlife in the bayou to sharply decline, hurting locals who depended on this.
What is fishing?
Midgley added this element to gasoline to stop engine knocking—an invention that later caused global public-health disasters.
What is lead (tetraethyl lead)?
This decade is identified as the turning point when environmentalism shifted from a niche concern to a mass movement in the U.S.
What are the 1960s?
Sandburg writes that the turtles’ eyes are “full of” this, suggesting experience and knowledge.
What is wisdom?
To make unclean or unusable.
What is contaminate?
Ordered by his company, Lee Sherman secretly dumped this into the Louisiana bayou, triggering the story’s central environmental crisis.
What are barrels of toxic chemical waste?
Long-term exposure to airborne lead particles contributed to losses in this cognitive measure across entire populations.
What is IQ?
The rise of environmentalism in the late 1960s occurred alongside other social movements, including this one demanding equal rights for African Americans.
What is the Civil Rights Movement?
The poem repeatedly refers to the turtles’ song rising above this natural sound.
What is the roar of the sea / sound of the waves?
Something released or leaked.
What are emissions?
After being fired and blamed for pollution he was ordered to commit, Sherman eventually did this in front of a public audience.
What is testified / told the truth publicly?
Communities with high environmental lead levels often saw increases in aggression and impulsivity, contributing to higher rates of this societal problem.
What is crime?
First held on April 22, 1970, this nationwide event brought 20 million Americans together in one of the largest public demonstrations in U.S. history.
What is Earth Day?
The poem mentions the turtles’ return to the ocean as a kind of this, reflecting the natural order.
What is a “ritual” or “cycle”?
The way someone makes money.
What is livelihood?
Sherman’s confession revealed that the company had avoided these legal requirements designed to protect land and water.
What are environmental regulations?
In addition to leaded fuel, Midgley invented this class of stable refrigerant chemicals — initially celebrated as safe, but later found to destroy part of Earth’s protective atmosphere.
What are CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), e.g., Freon?
Created in 1970, this federal agency became the central authority for regulating pollution and enforcing national environmental standards.
What is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)?
The poem emphasizes that turtles move slowly and deliberately, suggesting this theme about human life.
What is patience / taking life at a natural pace?
To push something our or take its place.
What is displace?
This once-healthy body of water becomes the central environmental victim of the dumping described in the story.
What is Bayou d’Inde?
When released into the atmosphere, these stable refrigerant gases climb to the stratosphere and — under ultraviolet radiation — release chlorine atoms that break down this vital atmospheric layer.
What is the ozone layer?
In 1969, this river in Ohio caught fire, contributing to the start of the movement.
What is the Cuyahoga River?
The poem’s reverent tone toward sea turtles illustrates this theme about humans’ relationship with the natural world.
What is respect for nature / environmental consciousness?