Our Lady of the Lake

Effective today, Austin’s Town Lake will be renamed “Lady Bird Lake” in honor of our recently departed former first lady. Without Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification efforts, it is unlikely Town Lake would be the bucolic, fitness-fostering urban oasis it is today.

Although Lady Bird’s legacy is absolutely worthy of this honor, I remain wary of Austin’s tendency toward knee-jerk veneration via renaming prominent streets and spaces. It is both a budget drain and a source of confusion. How long will it be before our easy-to-understand numbered street grid becomes completely memorialized?

That said, “Lady Bird Lake” is already starting to grow on me.