Thursday, July 26, 2007

Shouldn't Austin respect Lady Bird Johnson's wishes about renaming Town Lake?

Burnt Orange Report and most Austin Democrats appear to support renaming Town Lake after the late Lady Bird Johnson, who by any measure was an icon who deserves recognition. As I wrote in the comments at BOR, though:

This would be great and the honor well deserved except for one thing: As I understand it the deceased opposed the idea for this eponymous honor for many years, including fairly recently if memory serves; this has been proposed several times.. I think they should honor Lady Bird's wishes and leave it "Town Lake" unless it turns out she specifically changed her mind and somebody can document it (allegedly whispering it into Will Wynn's ear on hear deathbed, e.g., doesn't count). Otherwise to me it feels a little creepy and opportunistic to use her name in a fashion with which she disapproved.

I really don't like that, at sort of a gut level. Maybe it's because I've lost quite a few beloved family members over the years, so I feel pretty strongly you should respect the deceased wishes to the greatest extent possible if you want to truly honor their memory. I wish they'd do what she wanted, not just whatever the two-bit wannabes on the Austin city council feel like doing.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Gâteau au yaourt

Kathy has just harvested a bunch of beautiful, ripe fresh figs from one of the two fig trees in our backyard, and I'm going to use them to make a "gâteau au yaourt," which "is a traditional French home-baker-friendly cake that is really easy to make," according to the wonderful culinary blog we discovered this morning, She Who Eats. I'll let you know how it comes out.