The Kudzu Files

Petit Jean State Park, AR

Nice campsites, good hiking trails, great place to just kick back and hang around. It's about an hour northwest of Little Rock, on top of Petit Jean Mountain - only about 850 feet high, but high enough to get away from the worst of the humidity. More pictures coming.

Gone camping

Kudzu Files is taking a break for a few days while we go camping in Arkansas.

The Current Futility Of Debate

Loren at In A Dark Time has been reading the Chuang Tzu, and has made a connection from a selection there to the state of political debate in the blog arena. He makes an excellent point. I think that debate, as practiced in the contemporary political and social arena (and as opposed to the classical debate form) is akin to weeding a garden. I'm not one of those fastiduous gardeners, who must have a perfectly groomed bed of tidy plants standing at attention. I am generally content to make a limited effort at weeding, pulling or chopping those non-wanted plants (a weed merely being a perennial at a place where it isn't wanted) that are most visible, or are threatening to crowd out a plant that may need some space. This is partly due to a lack of initiative on my part, partly because sometimes I want to see what a particular weed will do if I allow it to grow and flower, and partly to prevent damage to wanted plants. Because invariably, it seems, when I mount a vigorous assault on weeds, I end up inadvertently chopping down a good plant. I did this last night, while I was trying to get the violets out of the big perennial bed in the front. One quick slip of my hoe, and I had cut down half of a purple coneflower. I had gotten too aggressive, and had generalized the target. That's the way too many debates go now. The intensity builds and mutates into vehemence, and in the ensuing rage some of the target audience is pushed away from an idea they might otherwise have supported, or at least tolerated. The extremes become the only debate points, because the middle ground has become a giant chasm of disinterest. The coneflowers have been replaced by the ragweed.

(Beltway Traffic Jam)

What's blooming...

Here's a picture of the perennial bed in the middle of my front yard, taken Saturday morning:

Purple coneflowers are beginning to bloom, rudbeckia "Cherokee Sunset", Hyperion daylily (the yellow in the back), fuchsia phlox, a few other things.

Dawn

In a still moment
Dawn, with a single finger
pulls away the night

Estate taxes

Left Oblique and Jammerblog have both commented on the philosophy of estate taxes. And I've come to realize that my problem with eliminating estate taxes really comes down to untaxed capital gains. Money in a bank account has been taxed at some point. Dividends paid have been taxed. But a stock that was bought and never sold has accumulated capital gains that, if passed on, will simply go untaxed forever, I guess. If the inheriting person later sells that stock, how are the gains calculated? From the value at the time of inheritance? In that case, value gained before that time simply escapes taxation. But it wouldn't seem fair for the heir to pay taxes that the original owner would have owed. The only logical thing to do, it would seem, is to tax the estate for capital gains accumulated at the time of the owner's death.

Meanwhile, here's a quote. 5 points if you tell me who said it:

"By taxing estates heavily at death the state marks it's condemnation of he selfish millionaire's unworthy life."

Monticello

We left Alexandria this morning, headed home, and drove to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Charlottesville, VA. The countryside around Charlottesville is beautiful. It was a surprisingly cold day, rainy and windy. The temperatures at Monticello were in the high 50s, which affected the views from the estate, but it was still a fascinating place.Well worth the extra time it took. I wish I had been able to walk around the gardens, but the combination of cold, wind, rain, shorts and t-shirt which were all I had to wear, and a wife and daughter ready to get on the road made that a quick look. There's one tree, a tulip poplar on the south side of the house, which was planted by Jefferson around 1815. It's still there, and you can buy seedlings from the tree. I wish I'd had a place in my yard for one.

Memorials by night

Tonight, as dark was falling, we drove into the District to see the new World War II Memorial. It is a bold, grand memorial, very moving and very dignified. Situated with the Lincoln Memorial visible from one side, and the Washington Monument from the other, it integrates well into the National Mall. My father, I think, would have liked it. I really liked it. It is, I think, a worthy memorial to an incredibly worthy generation, one that humbles us with it's history. The Mall at night is a very different place - much less active, of course, but more than that, a more personal space. We walked along the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial, lit so that Lincoln seems to be watching over the area. Just south of the Reflecting Pool is the Korean War Memorial. I'd been there a couple of years ago, during the day. In some ways, the Korean War Memorial is my favorite. The Vietnam War Memorial, so powerful and so moving, nonetheless has a tortured stillness about it. The World War II Memorial has the feel of some of the best of the Civil War monuments, but done in a massive style. But the Korean War Memorial has a sense of resigned determination, on a very personal level. Stand across the small hillside where the soldiers are forever trudging upwards, facing the wall on the opposite side. At night, the faces on the wall appear like ghosts, almost luminescent, beyond the shadows of the men. You feel the weariness. The World War II Memorial brings a lump in your throat; the Vietnam War Memorial brings an ache to your heart; the Korean War Memorial brings a chill to your bones.