I'm just a tough old woman.

Child welfare ought really to cover all sorts of topics, such as better water and sanitation and good roads, and clean streets and public parks and playgrounds.

There must be progress, certainly. But we must ask ourselves what kind of progress we want, and what price we want to pay for it. If, in the name of progress, we want to destroy everything beautiful in our world, and contaminate the air we breathe, and the water we drink, then we are in trouble.

There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth; remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them.

Elizabeth Rothra's excellent biography of Charles Torrey Simpson restates his philosophies about the intrinsic value of natural ecosystems like the Everglades. No one knew better than he the history of the plants and animals of South Florida or conveyed it with more humor and enthusiasm.

The problem of the environment is the extension of good housekeeping of the thinking woman.

Since 1972, Ive been going around making speeches on the Everglades. No matter how poor my eyes are, I can still talk. Ill talk about the Everglades at the drop of a hat. Whoever wants me to talk, Ill come over and tell them about the necessity of preserving the Everglades.