Lyndon B. Johnson

July 5, Michael Davis, economics professor at the Cox School of Business, SMU Dallas, for an op-ed about how tariffs become taxes and can jack up the price of products like pickup trucks. Published in the Houston Chronicle under the heading Why pickups cost so much in the U.S.: https://tinyurl.com/s7uhyvxr

It’s OK to talk politics with your family. I know this because my two brothers and I like to talk about pickup trucks, which is really just another way of talking politics.

I should explain. The brothers are both engineers. But not the kind of engineers who sit in front of a computer writing code and collecting stock options. They’re the kind of engineers who go to remote work sites full of heavy equipment and hazardous chemicals. They know about pickup trucks.

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Nov. 14, Rhonda Garelick, distinguished professor of English and journalism at SMU Dallas, for a column about the newly released Hulu documentary on the late Lady Bird Johnson, “The Lady Bird Diaries,” which focuses on her White House years. Published in the New York Times ‘Face Forward’ column under the heading Listening to Lady Bird Johnson, in Her Own Words: https://tinyurl.com/yx52wdv8

Lady Bird Johnson embodied contradiction, cloaking her gravitas in Southern charm. Even her name made that clear. From infancy onward, Claudia Alta Taylor (born in 1912) was known to everyone as Lady Bird, a lighthearted, whimsical nickname — invented by her nursemaid — that belied her grit, intellect and ambition. Now, a new documentary on Hulu, “The Lady Bird Diaries,” focuses on her White House years and captures the surprising influence and power that this gentle, smiling woman wielded over her husband.

Based on 123 hours of private audio diaries recorded by Mrs. Johnson (and embargoed until her death, in 2007, at 94), the film is told from the first lady’s point of view, and largely in her own recorded voice — a honeyed Texas drawl — interspersed with contemporaneous news footage. There are, however, virtually no outside perspectives or critiques offered. The film takes us inside Mrs. Johnson’s mind and keeps us firmly there.

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