Environmental Diaries: Julia Sweig on Lady Bird

PALOOLA: Botanical

While listening to her husband's Great Society speech in 1964, Lady Bird Johnson found her mission.

The following year, and during a turbulent time of race riots in America, speaking at the National Council of State Garden Clubs, and the American Forestry Association, Lady Bird said “Beauty cannot be set aside for vacations or special occasions. It cannot be for the occasional privilege of those who come long distances to visit nature. It cannot be reserved, “For nice neighborhoods ONLY.” I am quite sure that ugliness—the grey, dreary unchanging world of crowded, deprived neighborhoods—has contributed to riots, to mental ill health, to crime."

Urban life has improved in some aspects since the 60s, but other problems are getting worse. New York City was less segregated in the 1970s than it is today, mainly due to lack of affordable housing. A direct result of gentrification is more urban forests, which done right have the capacity of creating more equal cities, by reducing air and noise pollution. According to the World Resources Institute, wealthy neighbourhoods in San Francisco have 30% tree canopy cover, compared to 7.5% in lower income neighbourhoods.

Today, I am speaking with Julia Sweig, a scholar of US-Latin American relations and New York Times best selling author of Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight. She is also the producer of the podcast In Plain Sight: Lady Bird Johnson. We will discuss Lady Bird’s advocacy for mental health, her political savvy in a world dominated by men, and the great solace that she found in nature after losing her mother when she was a child.

Lady Bird was married to the American president most associated with power in the 20th century, yet her voice was just as strong as her husband's.

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