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Rosalynn Carter, mental health activist, humanitarian and former first lady, dies at 96

Rosalynn Carter, who as first lady worked tirelessly on behalf of mental health reform and professionalized the role of the president’s spouse, died Sunday at the age of 96, according to the Carter Center.

Rosalynn Carter passed away peacefully with family by her side at her home in Plains, Georgia, the center said in a statement.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, said. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

The Carter Center announced Friday that the former first lady had entered hospice care. She was diagnosed with dementia in May. Her husband began home hospice care in February, following a series of hospital stays.

Jimmy Carter was defeated in a landslide by Ronald Reagan four years after being elected. His single term in the White House included forging a rare peace agreement between Israel and Egypt that continues to this day, but it was also marked by soaring inflation and the Iran hostage crisis. Through it all, Rosalynn was by his side, and often whispering in his ear.

The Carters redefined and revolutionized the post-presidency and, through their joint efforts, they worked on world peace and human rights on behalf of the Carter Center, a nongovernmental Atlanta-based organization founded to “wage peace, fight disease and build hope.”

First lady Jill Biden celebrated Rosalynn Carter’s life on Sunday, telling service members and their families at a Naval Station Norfolk holiday event, “The former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has just passed. And she was well known for her efforts on mental health and caregiving and women’s rights.”

“And so I hope that during the holidays you’ll … include the Carter family in your prayers,” Jill Biden said.

After leaving the White House, the couple traveled to hot spots around the world, including visits to Cuba, Sudan and North Korea, monitoring elections and working to eradicate Guinea worm disease and other neglected tropical diseases. Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

“The Carter Center is a shared legacy. She’s been there digging latrines right next to him,” said the Carters’ friend Jill Stuckey, a leader at Maranatha Baptist Church, where both Carters attended and where Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school.

Rosalynn Carter’s most lasting individual legacy will be her efforts to diminish the stigma attached to people with mental illnesses and her fight for parity and access for mental health treatment. She also devoted her time to the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving at her alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University, to help families and professional caregivers living with disabilities and illnesses.

In 1999, then-President Bill Clinton presented both Carters with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. He said they had “done more good things for more people in more places than any other couple on Earth.”

In the White House, Rosalynn would urge her husband to put off controversial decisions until after his reelection. She freely admitted, “I am much more political than Jimmy and was more concerned about popularity and winning reelection.”

She lobbied to have her husband fire Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joe Califano. According to longtime Carter family friend and White House aide Jerry Rafshoon, she was angry at Califano over an anti-smoking campaign, fearing that it would hurt Carter’s standing in tobacco-producing North Carolina.

“I wanted Jimmy to fire Joe Califano long before he ever did,” she wrote in her memoir, “and my reasons were purely political.”

Her biggest regret in life was her husband losing reelection in 1980.

“I’d like people to know that we were right, that what Jimmy Carter was doing was best for our country, and that people made a mistake by not voting for him,” she said in her memoir.

What's the latest on Avdviika please? Last I heard Russia was surrounding it Artyomosk style but that it was taking a while. Are they any closer to routing the Nazis there?

Iceland has ~400k inhabitants. Less than pre invasions Gaza city(~600k).

Does lemmy.world have a soft-block feature? I've been noticing that some posts/comments get basically 0 interaction.

Congrats the the dead dogs who will now lead a country from beyond the grave via an incestuous medium

So, what you folks think will happen to Argentina?

Total economical collapse and eventual return of Peronism. New Dictatorship. Milei realises he's fucked and resigns. Trotskyist Revolution. Milei changed completly and becomes a socdem to win support from China, Brazil, Chile and the Peronists.

Stock market euphoria is at an all time high.

Weekly Update

we're so back

Part 1

China avoids grain drain, reporting record yields despite floods, droughts and import doubts^SCMP^

Interesting article on China's agricultural advances lately.

In keeping with an intensified campaign to ensure China’s food security and self-sufficiency, the country’s agriculture ministry has reported grain output is expected to hit a new high this year. ...It also means an increase in output for the fourth consecutive year, an especially remarkable feat as floods and droughts struck provinces considered national breadbaskets, the ministry was quoted by state broadcaster CCTV as saying.

China’s main wheat producer Henan was lashed by historic rains, and severe flooding in the north combined with drought in the northwest led to a reduction of 1.275 billion kilograms in the country’s summer grain production.

Beijing is ramping up its domestic food production to safeguard against vulnerabilities in global food supply chains as geopolitical threats intensify and extreme weather events grow more frequent. ...This year’s spike largely came about through Beijing’s efforts to boost planting acreage and improve per-unit productivity through technology. Since the beginning of the year, Beijing has taken its experience in ploughing and fertilising experimental farmland and adapted it to the country’s entire agricultural sector, increasing food yields and mitigating climatic uncertainties.

Higher corn and soybean planting areas made a sizeable contribution to this autumn’s harvest, and the country’s soybean acreage has come in above 10 million hectares (27.41 million acres) for two consecutive years, according to the agriculture ministry. This is one-third of the US’ total annual acreage for the crop, according to United States Department of Agriculture estimates from June.

Last year, over 60 per cent of the food China imported was soybeans – mainly from the US and Brazil, according to customs data – as poor returns relative to other choices dampened domestic farmers’ willingness to plant. ...Last year, China adopted a method to symbiotically cultivate soybeans and maize – laying out rows so maize leaves provide shade for soybeans and harnessing the bacteria produced by soybean roots to enhance the maize’s fertility – optimising land utilisation for these crucial crops that remain proportionally heavily imported. The country’s total acreage of soybean-maize hybrid fields reached 1.3 million hectares this year, about 34 per cent more than last year.

Countrywide expansion of similar methods is well under way. The government has designated 200 counties for the use of advanced planting techniques for maize and 100 for soybeans this year, and their yields have contributed 73 per cent to China’s overall grain harvest, the ministry said.