It's a Disaster

I know! Actually that is something that the site is working on fixing because we all suffer from fumble fingers, or "fingas" as the case might be. Personally I think it is a good idear (not a mistype, just more of that wicked accent).

Thanks Cinnie

Thank you.

Good point about HYMNS, I thought by emphasizing "nature" it would link in, but I went back in and added "and our environment" to the clue.

Yes, there are few you did not have a hand in. You are a good tester because you are fair but unafraid to say, "Tom, that is kind of stupid" (something I have heard before of course). Besides you get my humor which is, for me, a plus (though I am sure you have at times viewed it as a liability )

Took me a while to come up with the silent R and when I hit on the Boston mx. it got to be "how do I do this without completely giving it away. It was wicked hard. Thanks for solving

Well actually better the second time around because now it incorporated a lot of ajk ideas which, no doubt, made it much more palatable. Thanks for testing and (re)solving.

Well if you disregard "An Inconvenient Truth, The Sixth Extinction, The Sea, The End of Nature, etc. then I guess there is only one?

Not sure what you mean? Are you wondering if MEOW's are for Metas or word play? I guess I would have to say yes. The MEOWs, and for that matter all of the Metas, have been around for several years now and focus on wordplay, use of sound, use of symbolism, common knowledge and so on to hide another answer within the puzzle itself, i.e. they are "self-referential" or meta. Some MEOWs will break the "standard" rules of: "no two letter words, no unchecked squares, no Naticks, no unduly specialized jargon, etc." but mine usually do not unless I have come up with an odd grid ("Talk like a Sailor" comes to mind). Hopefully that clears things up.

A "Southie" is fairly well known to be a dyed in the wool Bostonian and has the thick Boston accent. In Boston they do not pronounce R's (this is referred to as non-Rhotic) as in "I'm gonna PAHK the CAH OVA THEA", and is the reason that "Southie" was in the clue.

Got me there, missed the double silent, guess it's good I don't do this for a living.

You are correct, I did not have THE, but then neither did Rachel Carson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring

Yes, in retrospect I should have had it as Planning center. My excuse, and it's a bad one, was that it was late and I was tired and using the clue database, which has that exact clue. No excuse, I should have seen it. Just as I should have used PSYCHE instead of CORPS, but I needed a 5 letter word and the only other was PSALM. Granted that would work but since I knew I was also using HYMNS I was afraid I'd get people who thought the treatise was either the book of Genesis or Exodus

I agree the CORPS one is a problem, but without the H, LIGHT becomes LIT...which I may have been when conceiving this puzzle.But of course, the internet confirmed my error:"In fact, if the 'gh' pair is preceded by an 'i', the 'i' makes a long vowel sound as in the words 'light', 'fight', 'night', and 'sight'." - so yes "align" would have been the much better choice, DAM(N)!