Sunday, December 31, 2006
One of My Heroes - And I Only Just Now Realized It
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December 31, 2006
Back in View, a First Lady With Her Own Legacy
PALM DESERT, Calif., Dec. 30 - It has been a while since America drew its face close to Betty Ford. But what the nation saw this week here in Southern California - an impossibly tiny face, lips pinched in grief and eyes blinking in the harsh midday sun - served as a poignant reminder of the woman whose reign as first lady, while brief and wholly unexpected, was among the most remarkable in modern history.
Former President Gerald R. Ford's death on Tuesday at the age of 93 thrust Mrs. Ford back into a public spotlight that she had largely avoided in recent years.
On Friday, with her children and other family members clustered about her, Mrs. Ford watched as her husband's coffin was carried by a military honor guard into St. Margaret's Episcopal Church here for a private prayer service. It was the beginning of six days of national mourning.
Mrs. Ford has taken pains to keep her husband's death as private an affair as possible for a former president - limiting the prayer service here to only the immediate family, followed by a visitation from a small group of invited friends and then a public viewing.
She has spent the last three decades living in a golf community and tending to her treatment center for alcohol and drugs. But her husband's death has served as a catalyst for an American trip back through the 1970s.
Thrown into the role of first lady during a period of deep distrust in government, she fulfilled the role of honest arbiter of American family life and of the modern woman, speaking candidly on just about any subject she was asked about, both shocking and delighting the country.
She was a product and a symbol of the cultural and political times - doing the Bump along the corridors of the White House, donning a mood ring, chatting on her CB radio with the handle First Mama - a housewife who argued passionately for equal rights for women, a mother of four who mused about drugs, abortion and premarital sex aloud and without regret.
Her candor about her battle with breast cancer, which led to unprecedented awareness among American women about detecting the disease, and her later commitment to alcohol and substance abuse treatment, stemming from her own abuse history, set the stage for widespread acknowledgment and advocacy that is commonplace today.
Given her impact on these crucial health issues and her influence over the modern East Wing, Mrs. Ford's effect on American culture may be far wider and more lasting than that of her husband, who served a mere 896 days, much of it spent trying to restore the dignity of the office of the president.
"I think that's true," said Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a presidential family historian and expert on first ladies. "The impact of her influence on the general public extended beyond her tenure in the White House. It was a situation of somebody coming along in history who, in simply being themselves, ends up crystallizing something that the nation at large is feeling."
Born Elizabeth Anne Bloomer in Chicago in 1918 and raised in Grand Rapids, Mich., Mrs. Ford was passionate about dance. Not long after she graduated from high school, she studied with Martha Graham in New York City, becoming a member of the Martha Graham Auxiliary Group. In 1941, back in Grand Rapids, she became a fashion coordinator for a department store and formed her own dance group.
After a brief marriage to a furniture salesman, she met Mr. Ford in 1947 and married him the next year, two weeks before he was elected to his first term in Congress. Together they raised four children: Michael Gerald, John Gardner, Steven Meigs and Susan Elizabeth. Her husband's political career, including eight years as House minority leader, and its attending absences often left her lonely and depressed, and she looked forward to private life.
But instead of becoming the wife of a retired congressman, as she expected, in 1974 she found herself first lady when Mr. Ford was sworn in as the 38th president, after the resignation of Richard M. Nixon.
"I went to their house in Virginia," said Sheila Weidenfeld, who served as Mrs. Ford's press secretary. "She came down in her robe. I think it was such a shock when you find out your husband is president, and the next day you had to have a dinner for King Hussein."
There was no learning curve, Ms. Weidenfeld said, nor preparation. "I remember saying to Betty Ford, 'Well, what would you like me to do?' And she said, 'I don't know, what am I supposed to do?'"
Her role was defined in part less than two months into Mr. Ford’s presidency, when she discovered that she had breast cancer and then discussed her mastectomy openly in hopes of giving other women the tools to detect the disease early and treat it courageously. According to a 1987 article in The Journal of the National Archives, Mrs. Ford received 55,800 cards, or "92 cubic feet of material," in response to her openness.
The next year, Mrs. Ford took it upon herself to champion the Equal Rights Amendment. She personally phoned legislators, held a slide show in the White House for staff members and gave speeches across the country about women's rights.
She talked about her support of abortion rights and mulled the idea that her children might have smoked marijuana.
Perhaps most infamously, she told Morley Safer in a "60 Minutes" interview that she would provide "counsel" to her daughter, Susan, then 18, if Susan were involved in a sexual relationship, or, in Mr. Safer's words, "having an affair."
"Her husband threw a pillow at her, jokingly, and said, 'You just lost me 10,000 votes,'" Ms. Weidenfeld said. "And Donald Rumsfeld said, 'No, 20,000.' Susan asked her later, 'What's an affair?'"
Ms. Weidenfeld said the times called for candor, and Mrs. Ford was able to provide it. "When Ford said this will be an open presidency, we thought, 'O.K., let's let the first lady open up.'"
While Mrs. Ford drew hundreds of angry letters, public opinion ended up on her side, with "Betty's Husband for President" buttons decorating the campaign trail.
"One day we had finished an event on the floor and we were going back upstairs," recalled Maria Downs, her social secretary at the time. "And I said, 'You don't seem yourself,' and she said, 'I'm all right. I would give my life to have Jerry have my poll numbers.'"
Mrs. Ford remained an accessible first lady, even as her days became consumed with details like choosing centerpieces for state dinners. She consulted with her aides while sitting at the edge of the bathtub, dabbing on her makeup; gave a twist to the scarves of staff members to give them a fashionable edge; and chatted about their furniture choices and children.
Her staff was also forced to tiptoe around late appointments and to scramble schedules stemming from Mrs. Ford's addiction to pain killers, which began when she was prescribed medication in 1964 for a pinched nerve. "She had to cancel events or couldn't leave the house sometimes," said Ms. Weidenfeld, who said she once asked the first lady's doctor to "lay off the pills."
In 1978, Mrs. Ford's family intervened in her drug and alcohol abuse, opening a new chapter in her life as a founder of a clinic in California. She described her recovery process in a 1987 book, "Betty: A Glad Awakening."
Until recently, Mrs. Ford, who is 88, continued to be in charge of her center in Rancho Mirage, and she has remained on the board after handing the helm to her daughter in 2005.
She continues to support treatment centers, attend charity events and speak about substance abuse and breast cancer awareness. Most of all, she enjoyed her expansive and close family, and her time with her husband, whom she remained enamored with through 58 years of marriage.
"Gerald Ford's father abused his mother, and she was a very strong woman and he was unthreatened by strong women," Mr. Anthony, the historian, said of the first couple. "You take that kind of a husband and you look at Betty Ford and you see part of what made her an unusual first lady was the context of her marriage."
Mrs. Ford's expressions of personal opinions, which several people who worked in the White House at the time say were never discouraged by the president, "were personally held opinions not suited for a political agenda," Mr. Anthony said.
"Even Eleanor Roosevelt, who did speak her mind, was much more politically savvy in terms of knowing what buttons would be pushed," he said. "Betty Ford inherited that role, and she already knew that it was not right for her to say things she didn't mean. In that act, she shattered a precedent and set up a new paradigm for first ladies."
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Friday, December 29, 2006
NYT: Farmers and Conservationists Form a Rare Alliance
http://preview.tinyurl.com/y8dnnx
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December 27, 2006
Farmers and Conservationists Form a Rare Alliance
By JESSICA KOWAL
MOUNT VERNON, Wash. - The standoff here between farmers and environmentalists was familiar in the modern West.
With salmon and wildlife dwindling in the Skagit River Delta, some environmentalists had argued since the 1980s that local farms should be turned back into wetlands. Farmers here feared that preachy outsiders would strip them of their land and heritage.
This year, though, the standoff ended - at least for three longtime farmers in this fertile valley, who began collaborating with their former enemies to preserve wildlife and their livelihoods.
The Nature Conservancy, which usually buys land to shield it from development, is renting land from the three farmers on behalf of migrating Western sandpipers, black-bellied plovers, dunlins, marbled godwits and other shorebirds.
From private and public funds, including a grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the farmers, David Hedlin, Gail Thulen and Alan Mesman, will together receive up to $350,000 for three years of labor, expenses and the use of 210 acres, said Kevin Morse, the Skagit Delta project manager for the conservancy.
Each man has committed about 70 acres to this project, which is called Farming for Wildlife. A third of that land will be flooded with a few inches of fresh water in the spring, fall and winter. This will create shallow ponds to entice thousands of birds, some of them on their way to and from the Arctic, to stop and snack on tiny invertebrates and worms as they travel along the Pacific flyway.
More than a dozen shorebird species have declined primarily because of the loss of local wetlands, said Gary Slater, research director at the Ecostudies Institute here and a consultant for the Nature Conservancy.
The farmers see the Nature Conservancy's willingness to pay them as an acknowledgment that they should not be expected to sacrifice their land or their living for wildlife. This approach effectively turns shorebirds into another crop to manage, instead of grounds for a lawsuit.
"The stewardship ethic in this valley is incredibly strong, but it doesn't trump the bank," said Mr. Hedlin, 56, who, with his wife, Serena Campbell, grows farmer's market produce, vegetable seeds, pumpkins, winter wheat and pickling cucumbers on their 400-acre farm.
Mr. Hedlin's 70-acre Farming for Wildlife parcel has been under water since a heavy November rain breached a dike and flooded the field, in a preview of what environmentalists hope will happen. Edged with wild roses and blackberry bushes, this accidental lake quickly attracted wintering waterfowl like trumpeter swans, coots, and mallard, teal and wigeon ducks.
An hour north of Seattle and an hour south of Vancouver, British Columbia, this region's glorious tulip farms attract hundreds of thousands of tourists each April. Skagit farmers also produce about 80 crops of commercial significance, including seeds used to grow beets, spinach and cabbage around the world, many of the red potatoes eaten in the United States, and vegetables and dairy products sent to farmer's markets and restaurants in the Pacific Northwest.
Thousands of years of flooding on the Skagit River deposited a rich layer of topsoil in the "magic Skagit," as Mr. Hedlin calls the valley. European immigrants flocked here starting in the 1860s and built Victorian houses for their families on the board-flat green fields.
They also constructed an elaborate network of earthen dikes to capture land from the saltwater delta and prevent the rivers from flooding their farms. On this managed agricultural landscape, tens of thousand of acres of farmland were once tidal wetlands, Mr. Hedlin said.
Since the mid-1990s, residents have tried to slow development as strip malls and housing subdivisions marched northward from Seattle. Skagit County residents pay extra taxes to buy development rights from farmers, and a charitable group, Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland, warns that "Pavement is forever."
Many conservationists have also decided that farms are better than pavement, and say they are willing to balance preservation with profitable land use.
Mr. Morse lives here and even volunteered to spend two days last spring selling Mr. Hedlin's produce at a farmer's market.
"We don't know anything about farming," Mr. Morse told the farmers recently over coffee and sandwiches at the Rexville Grocery. "You guys are the stewards of the land. You tell me what to do."
For this experiment, each farmer's 70-acre parcel has been planted with a mixture of clover and grass to enrich the soil. While a third of the land will be periodically flooded for birds, a third will be fenced as pasture for dairy cows, and the rest will be mowed and otherwise left alone.
Farms here are gradually shifting toward organic production because consumers willingly pay much more for organic food. As another incentive to join Farming for Wildlife, the 210 acres will be available for organic use after three years.
Mr. Mesman will start producing organic milk with his 225 Holstein cows next spring. Mr. Thulen sees a big market for organic potatoes.
"In my time, I can see our little valley was farmed very hard," said Mr. Thulen, whose 2,000-acre farm was begun by his grandfather in 1867. "That pendulum has swung to get the ground healthy again."
In an ideal world, the Nature Conservancy would love to persuade farmers to add wetlands to their regular crop rotation. To that end, the group's scientists will analyze soil samples to assess whether shallow flooding might improve soil fertility as much as cow manure and mowed grass do.
In a similar project on the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Northern California, farmers reported better potato yields and fewer nematodes, a harmful worm, on land that had been purposefully flooded. But scientists say this may not apply in the Skagit Valley, where the soil has a higher clay content.
Whether or not they end up with more productive land, the three farmers seem pleased to try something new without financial risk.
"If 100 years from now," Mr. Hedlin said, "there are healthy viable family farms in this valley and waterfowl and wildlife and salmon in the river, then everyone wins."
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
