A groundbreaking radio series, "Shifting Ground" http://www.shifting-ground.com, examining the impacts of land policy on people and communities began airing in late February (2008) and continues through the next several months on National Public Radio's acclaimed afternoon news program "All Things Considered." The first episode of the series looks at a community in Nevada that is trying to save its rural character and identity in the face of suburban growth.
The recent passing of Lady Bird Johnson has unleashed a flood of wonderful, well-deserved commentaries, lauding her as one of our nation’s first and foremost environmentalists. Virtually every obituary mentions prominently that she was the driving force behind the Highway Beautification Act, famously passed by a reluctant Congress in 1965 after a bout of her husband’s notorious arm-twisting.
The HBA, known as Lady Bird’s Law even now, was supposed to beautify our rapidly expanding, but visually blighted, federal highway system by removing junkyards and billboards. Mrs. Johnson’s travels across the country had brought her face to face with hundreds of thousands of billboards that had turned the typical family trip into a drive through the Yellow Pages; she knew we could do better. “My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order, and disorder of the flowering earth,” she wrote not long ago. It was that nature-blessed heart that led her to a law rooted in the fundamental understanding that the landscapes and cityscapes hidden behind the wall of billboard ugliness are always more valuable than anything on the signs themselves.
