Taconic Style

Franklin Delano Roosevelt still matters in New York State, as anyone who hits the road on an Indian Summer weekend north of the city certainly knows. Yesterday, we took the Taconic State Parkway, created by a commission chaired by FDR as his first foray back into politics after his paralyzing illness and a clear sign of the big shoulders government Roosevelt was to later create.

The Taconic was an extension of the Bronx River Parkway, built by Robert Moses to connect the city to Bear Mountain, and that's where we ended up yesterday, with the temperature in the mid-80s. We hiked down to the zoo and the historic sites by the Bear Mountain Bridge, and on the way back stopped at the surviving redoubt of Fort Clinton, where the British put American soldiers to the bayonet in the hundreds in 1777.

You can see the four-pointed star formation, some the stones laid as walls, and the mounded grass. The mid-Hudson actions of 1777 were a series of failed land battles by the Americans, but they held up the British long enough to prevent the reinforcement of Burgoyne's men at Saratoga and the Crown's effort to split the mutinous colonies along the line of the Hudson failed.

Later, we climbed Perkins Drive (via Honda, not foot) to the summit and once again marveled at the views, and at the hawks circling below us. Bear Mountain is one of those incredible New York State parks - like Jones Beach - that amaze in their very existence as public accommodations. Only liberals create what  lower New York State has in public beauty.

Driving up the Taconic, slicing over toward the Hudson at Peekskill and up and over the Bear Mountain Bridge to the park - then on to West Point or back over to Cold Spring (or in our case, down the Palisades Parkway to the mall, dinner at Johnny Rockets and an hour in the Lego Store with the two boys) is a brilliant reminder of the existence of what I call Taconic Style, that blend of rustic architecture, roadways and parkland that is unique to the Hudson Valley.

The artist and I had our wedding reception on old ferry chugging through the highlands two decades ago, and we sipped champagne will watching the lights twinkle above us at West Point. We return to the highlands at least once a year, and always bring out-of-town visitors to the peaks and vistas of those hills. Today, we were once again the in the Taconic region, but east on Lake Mahopac. For the boys, it was still warm enough to swim and I took a turn in the kayak. Tomorrow's an early one, so we didn't stay late - just long enough for the day to wane, and the lights to glimmer across the lake.

Comments

[Tony Alva]

Wow, now I'm officially home sick. The Hudson Highlands is like Pebble Beach for me. I WILL return to live out my days there.

Re: "Only liberals create what lower New York State has in public beauty."

I suppose SOME of that statement is true, but I think the railroad and other sort of Barron's had a little something to do with it as well. Liberals have certainly done a good job in the latter 20th century keeping it from being ruined, but big money bought that park in Bear Mountain and Storm King Mtn as well.

I really enjoyed "Hudson River Highlands" by Frances F. Dunwell for a chronological telling of the region and would highly recommend it. For deeper cuts, try "Images of America: Highlands" by Ronnie Coffey. I blogged about it here. If your looking something that captures the people and place in contemporary times, try " A Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, A Town, and the Search for What Matters Most" by Gwendolyn Bounds. A great book that captures what makes life there so great that I dream about the place at least twice a week.

[Tom K]

*Only liberals create what lower New York State has in public beauty.*

Tony:

None of that statement is true. Tom really means it, though.

If you want the "logic" behind it, it goes something like this, I believe: 1. Tom is a liberal; 2. Tom is God; 3. God created natural beauty; ERGO liberals create natural beauty.

QED

[Tom W.]

Sure, big money Tony - but liberal big money: Harriman, Rockefeller et al. I realize some conservatives think big money is the polar opposite of big liberalism, but in this country that's never been true.

[Tom W.]

TK - without liberals, that public beauty - note, I said public not "natural" of "God-given" - would simply not exist. Just a fact.

[Tony Alva]

I propose we meet at Guinine's Pub at the Garrison Landing on Irish music night and discuss the finer points of Tom Watson's Godliness. It's only a few stops past you stations, right?

What say you guys?

[blue girl]

I propose we meet at Guinine's Pub at the Garrison Landing on Irish music night and discuss the finer points of Tom Watson's Godliness.

Can I come? I owe him a judo chop! Godly or not.

[Tom K]

*I said public not "natural" . . .*

You also said "create", not "preserve". The statement was arrogant and silly. Also, not true, even if corrected to "preserve" or "protect".

As you well know, Teddy Roosevelt is the best-known politican/conservationist in US history. He did far more than his more liberal kin in this regard.

If you wanted to argue that "conservatives" are not being true to their name when they fail to "conserve", I would tend to agree. But you take the tack that only liberals can do justice to the cause, which is almost the opposite approach.

Anyway, whenever a member of any group claims that "only [that group] can [do some specific good thing]", I'm inclined to suspect some smelly mud is about to come rolling my way. This proved no exception.

[Tony Alva]

You're more than welcome to join us Blue Girl, but if you really want to hurt the guy just start talking about the Mets post season play this season.

Wait a minute, where were the Mets this post season? Hitting strip clubs in Vegas with the Atlanta Braves no doubt:-)

[Tom W.]

Yes, but the trust-busting, regulating, progressive, conservationist TR was a liberal - certainly by the standards of his day, and (on the basis of this current Republican Party) in this day too!

[Tom K]

TR as progressive, I have no problem accepting. TR as liberal? I guess it's all a matter of definition, but I don't see it.

[Tom W.]

Yeah but that's what we liberals refer to ourselves as these days, per Frank Luntz's instructions!

Seriously, TR believed in the might of the Federal government, and not just overseas but at home as well...and he split the GOP over it. There's a direct line from TR to the Clinton-Webb wing of the Democratic party.

[Tom K]

Yeah, to the extent the D party stands for "ending welfare as we know it" (Clinton) and appreciating the white "Warrior Class" in U.S. society (Webb), it is a party TR could be OK with. Him and Nancy Pelosi, I don't really see hitting it off.

[Tom W.]

A simplistic analysis, I think. TR wouldn't like Pelosi because she is, at heart, a legislator - whereas the other two crave executive power. Policywise, Pelosi is much closer to TR than, say, Mitch McConnell. They both believ(ed) in big shoulders government.

[Tom W.]

Though come to think of it, Pelosi's probably more loathe to increase taxes than Roosevelt was...

[Tom K]

Yes, she is. Of course, the tax scheme TR supported was far "flatter" than anything we have today.

TR generally seems to have called for things that he believed to have been right, even taxation that, by the standards of his day, left him open to charges of class treason. Madame Speaker, on the other hand, appears to specialize in political calculation. Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .

[Tom W.]

Actually, it was a graduated, unflat tax with the richest Americans paying more. Said TR:

"The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. Not only should he recognize this obligation in the way he leads his daily life and in the way he earns and spends his money, but it should also be recognized by the way in which he pays for the protection the State gives him."

What conservative Republican would say that today?

And with respect to Pelosi, compared to whom? What legislative leader do you know of who's not calculating?

[Tom K]

I would agree that TR was the first Republican president (aside from Lincoln, who faced special circumstances) to really approve of vigorous federal action, and in that sense he makes a better model for Clinton, say, than for Reagan or Paul.

But if you sprinkled magic dust on his grave and got the Rough Rider going again, I think he'd want a balanced budget and less spending, and wouldn't be too sympathetic to social programs that rewarded anything other than hard work.

Would he favor the pro-war candidates (Hillary, Rudy, et al.) over the non-interventionists (Ron Paul, Kucinich and, to some extent, Richardson)? Hard to say where he'd be on the war -- he was very pro- Sp-Am war, of course, and eager to see the US assume its place as a major world power. But he relished his role as peacemaker in the Russo-Japanese war, and was intially a little more nuanced on WWI; I suspect he was guilty of waiting to see what Wilson would do, and then criticizing that, which left him as an interventionist. (Though that's where he probably felt most comfortable anyway.)

He seems to have had a major rethink when the casualties came home to roost: but should that last be regarded as his most relevant opinion (because that's where he ended up), or as his least (because he was politically irrelevant then, and perhaps overly influence by personal considerations)? I dunno.

I love Teddy Roosevelt, but part of why I love him is because he so suited the US at the time he came to lead it. Now, we may not need the same things. On foreign policy, at least, I see Teddy as analogous to a great college friend, who you love no less now, but wouldn't want banging at your door on a Wednesday midnight to drag you out drinking when you're pushing 50.

[Tom K]

I think what he advocated was flatter than what he now have (there's a difference between "flat" and "flatter"). But maybe not; I haven't looked at the particulars.

He would, however, surely favor a Steve Forbes-like flat tax reform, if his views when alive could be taken as any guide to what he would say today.

Even while advocating for the income tax, he admitted:

"it is a difficult tax to administer in its practical working, and great care would have to be exercised to see that it was not evaded by the very men whom it was most desirable to have taxed, for if so evaded it would, of course, be worse than no tax at all; as the least desirable of all taxes is the tax which bears heavily upon the honest as compared with the dishonest man."

That, of course, is exactly what we now have, and what a flat tax starting at a middle-class income level and with few (ideally no) exemptions would provide for.

[Tom K]

*And with respect to Pelosi, compared to whom?*

I thought I was pretty clear about that: compared to Teddy Roosevelt.