This is your new weekly-email-reminder-correspondent-and-general-Laundry-person-to-ask-anything, Rachel. I’m taking the hot seat from Jess at the Laundry, not that she has a particularly warm bum, well, actually I wouldn’t know either way, cough…moving on…

Right, Jess has let me know here is the space that is filled with interesting/mildy amusing tit-bits, sheesh the pressure.

Well, seeing as for this week is all about introducing myself - I thought I’d tell you some facinacting facts about other famous Rachels:

Rachel, wife of Jacob - Jacob journeyed to Rachel’s home with the intention of finding a wife. He found Rachel, wanted to marry her but he was tricked by Laban into marrying Leah (mean and cruel). He worked seven years as a shepherd for Laban in exchange for the right to marry Rachel, but on the wedding night, Laban dressed Leah in the wedding dress and veil and brought her to Jacob. When Jacob discovered the deception in the light of day, he was angry, but nevertheless accepted it and offered to work another seven years in order to marry Rachel as well. Along with each daughter, Laban also sent two handmaids. Each of these handmaids later became full wives of Jacob (this guy is just greedy). While Leah gave birth to four sons in quick succession, Rachel was unable to conceive for many years. She offered her handmaid to her husband in marriage, as was the custom, and named the two sons Bilhah bore, indicating they were to be her heirs. Leah, who also desired more children, then offered her handmaid to Jacob, and the latter bore two more sons. Finally, after Leah produced another two sons and a daughter, Rachel herself bore two sons (at last hooray). She died in childbirth on the eleventh day of the Hebrew month of Heshvan and was buried by Jacob just outside Bethlehem. This is some sad story.

Rachel Carson, Biologist Writer Ecologist. Wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time turned her government research into lyric prose. In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us. This book made Rachel famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. Embedded within all of Rachel’s writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly. Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Rachel reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world. Rachel courageously spoke out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem. GO RACH

Rachel Stevens - Rachel’s achievements include: being crowned Glamour magazine’s “Woman of the Year”, a performance at the Olympic bid celebrations in Trafalgar Square and the first female ever to front the Everyman Cancer Trust Campaign, resulting in the most successful viral campaign to date. Well done, Rachel.

Generally - Rachel can mean “Ewe”, also “innocence and gentility of a rose ” and may mean “lovely”.

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