With Charity for All

‘Tis the season for giving, and the giving season—tax season—also is upon us. Writing a check or checks to charities?

More and more I am less inclined to make a donation to a recognized charity that according to the current tax code would allow for a deduction from my income.

An obvious caveat: That explanation defies the labyrinthine complexity of the tax regulations. Please seek help from—oh, what is the phrase—tax specialists. Thank you, The Management

Should my neighbor’s house be damaged by fire, I would gladly help with the cleanup and help out with expenses as best I could. Were I to organize a neighborhood cookout to raise additional funds, I would certainly pay for food out of my pocket.

None of these expenses qualify lawfully as charitable donations. Fine by me.

My check sent to the American Red Cross for South Carolina flood relief efforts, however, does.

The donation sent to Oxfam International to aid in earthquake recovery in Nepal? Check.

By the way—uh oh!—the management and spending of international funds by the Nepalese government—to put it charitably—has been a disaster. Political discord, don’t you know.

Help out a family member? Help out a colleague? Nope and nope.

At issue for me is limited financial resources. Maybe that phrase is an oxymoron since no one has unlimited bucks to distribute charitably or otherwise.

So for the first part of the year my list of charitable deductions to be reported to the IRS is a hodgepodge of local and state and national organizations, but now I am more likely to give to family, friends, and neighbors.

Certainly, I understand in the abstract how the neighbor of my neighbor’s neighbor is my neighbor. And I guess I can understand the economic merit of a charitable tax-deduction as a gift that gives in both directions to a degree. My question—a simple one admittedly—is whether folks manage charity for tax reasons when they would rather give elsewhere regardless of taxable income outcomes. 

Some studies suggest about half of us do factor in the deduction as we donate, although the percentage varies greatly based on family income. The higher the income, the more the tax implications matter. Apparently, the code was designed in 1917 to offset taxes for the wealthy when the top bracket was set at 67% to help fund the war effort.

Yep, 67%. I can nearly hear the grinding of teeth. Some of y’all may be offended by the notion even as you are nowhere near the top income bracket. I had to check, of course—the 4% bracket for me back in the day when adjusted for inflation. As income taxation increased for those earning less—again, to fund a war—the deduction became more valuable to more households.

To me, seems a bit perverse to value a more technically complex type of giving over a simpler gesture, but then to say any more about the tax code is to set my hair on fire. Metaphorically.

Maybe I’ll just go with the maxim to give when you can give. Or, to choose another word, share when you can share.

Spittin' in the Wind

Sometimes you just have to go see for yourself.

To be on the beach at 9:49 this Sunday morning—temperature a little below 50 degrees, light wind from the north—was to have the space pretty much to myself. This particular stretch, which is a flat ribbon of sand immensely popular with locals and visitors, is Beachwalker County Park, located nearly at the end of Kiawah Island in South Carolina.

As I turned southward from the park’s boardwalk to hike along the ocean side of what is known as Captain Sam’s Spit, a few walkers, a few bike riders, and two distinctive sounds were part of the 15-minute stroll. The waves—and the sea was calm today, my friends—which once again surprised me with how loud water could be by gently curling itself into the sand, and a moan—a bit of a whistle too, but really the wheezing of an offshore buoy marking the channel into the North Edisto.

During the mile-long jaunt, I kept my path about 20’ from the first dune line that was rarely more than 4’ high. I also glanced over the dunes to measure the rise and fall of the spit’s terrain, a scalloped landscape sometimes exposed and sometimes covered in grasses or gorse—which it may not be actually, but when should I ever again have the chance to use the word gorse.

None of the sand mounds of the spit, I reckoned, reached more than 12’ above the high tide mark, but of course this survey was by eye and not a laser level.

At the lower end, the Kiawah River gently wraps itself around the back side of the island and joins the Atlantic. To look northward where the parking lot and boardwalk are is too see a thick stand of pines that is a natural visual border between the rest of the island and the spit.

Where the park’s boardwalk and walking mats end, a sandy roadway of sorts veers off to the left and then curves around on the river’s bluff to the parking lot. I thought it a better path for taking a longer view along the disjointed spine of the spit.

In the sand were recent deer tracks and tire marks, and when I stepped up onto a berm a few feet off the road, I could see a construction stake with plastic ribbon flickering out in the middle of what is perhaps 250’ from the dune line to the high water mark of the Kiawah River. Again, my estimates of distance are crude, but close enough to address the larger point.

I gave the landscape a long look. The ocean to my left, the river to my right. My attentiveness spoke to the real why of this trip out to this stretch of sand. Not that a visit to the beach needed to be any great quest, but in the last week of November, the SC Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, voting unanimously, stripped language from a bill that would prevent Kiawah Development Partners II from building 50 houses on Captain Sam’s Spit.

Now the path across dunes, forbidden to beachgoers under threat of severe penalties, may be paved—and that is the crux of the matter, a road that would be a necessary lifeline. And, too, then the encroaching infrastructure of water and sewer lines and utilities. For 50 houses.

How many dollars are up for grabs? Well, the developers have been after this land for 10 years. Over $100 million, less than $200 million? $300 million?

Yes, yes, I know, some local jobs and an expanded tax base.

A mile of sand and gorse and what my grandfather would have called scrub pine. Or coastal forest, more properly. Home to deer and bobcats and birds, and dolphins that beach their catch on the Kiawah’s banks.

And, oh, what a view. Oh, but others might proclaim, “What a cul-de-sac”.

A mile. A mile of the 187 gross miles that are South Carolina’s coast. A mile of 12,500 miles of US coastline.

A year ago, the state Supreme Court ruled against a nearly 40-foot wide, 2700-foot long seawall that developers wanted to erect to stabilize the spit along the river. Last month, the Court reversed its stand.

Well, no great insight that developers and legislators and the judiciary make for interesting dance partners. So, surely, do wind and tide.

I looked down the length of Captain Sam’s Spit and in my mind conjured up images of a 15-foot storm surge and the inlet gouged out of Pawley’s Island during Hugo. Turns out that more than 50 feet of the spit’s neck have been washed away in the last decade by the river. Nature may churn at what we consider a leisurely pace, but Nature decides much.

My only hope is that these 135 acres of shifting sand rising just above the high tide mark remain as they are, a public space. And a little laboratory of how wind and water may shape some small piece of shoreline.

A stroll, a jog, a bike ride. Fishing. Sitting. A breathing in and out, a staring off into the wide expanse that is the sea without being in the shadows of row houses.

Some mourn, and rightfully so, the loss of wild spaces, but I think great wild spaces aplenty exist so hostile to our modern existence that they will remain clear of humanity forever. Rather, for me, the little nooks and crannies where Nature resides among us are the spaces we must remember to treasure.

Like Captain Sam’s Spit. Go see for yourself.

A Timeline

I could not help but feel a deep pang of trepidation as the cameras panned over the student bodies at the Army-Navy game on Saturday. The word bodies cuts like the lash. Those young women and men are among our nation’s best and brightest as the phrase goes, and yet as I signify them women and men, so many of those faces were the faces of kids—college kids. So young.

If we should return to military action in the Middle East next year with much greater numbers of boots on the ground, we may have troops facing war’s violence who were born in 1998.

When we went into Iraq, our 18-year-old soldiers were born in 1985.

Into Afghanistan, our youngest soldiers were born 1983.

The first Gulf War, 1972.

Of course, not only our youngest soldiers will be killed or wounded. And not only soldiers will die.

If we return in force again, I believe we will withdraw again. And afterwards, how will Iraq and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Turkey be so very different as nations? I hear voices calling for the US to go in and settle it—settle? Settle what into what?

Iran will no longer be Shi’a, Saudi Arabia will no longer be Sunni?

I know some young kids—infants even—some relatives, some children of friends. Will they be going back to fight over the same ground in 2033?

Without an existential threat to our nation, I cannot fathom another round of in what to me seems a war without end.

In 1983 during the Lebanese Civil War as part of a multi-national force of peacekeepers, 241 US servicemen were killed in what was referred to as the Beirut barrack bombing. Some key participants in the war included Syria and Iraq and both Christian and Muslim factions. Now over a million Syrian refugees are reported to be in Lebanon, and the situation there may be described fairly as unstable.

Some of those Americans killed in Beirut? Our babies, born in 1965.

Emigrés

Pity the peace-loving Muslims living here in the United States. Can any of them think themselves safe? Each day subjected to the crucible that is fiery rhetoric, heightened surveillance, and now uneasy neighbors—to suspect? To defend?

According to polls, newly arrived Syrian refugees, or those hoping to land here, face a populace a bit over 50% opposed to their arrival. Maybe higher, even. Most recently, a number of media outlets have recalled American attitudes toward Jewish refugees during the WWII era and how roughly 2/3s of those surveyed thought they should not be admitted into this country.

Deep into his deep dive into the history of rock and roll bands in the Twin Cities, Rick Shefchik, author and a friend of mine, provides a little biographical snippet on the Escapades’ Rico Rosenbaum’s parents. Rico’s mom spoke 6 languages fluently, sang Tin Pan Alley songs in cafes, and worked as a seamstress for Sears. On her arm was her concentration camp number. Her husband was also a holocaust survivor. They lost everything, of course, to the Nazis. But, here they were, raising a son who would be part of that most American of scenes, 60s rock’n’roll.

One slice of my family’s heritage pie is French Huguenot and came to Charleston very early on. While I do not know to what extent the family experienced persecution in their homeland, that persecution is well-documented historically. Nearly half-a-million refugees fled France because of religious intolerance turned bloody.

My family’s history also includes Germany. Out of curiosity—thinking of Japanese-American internment camps—I checked the status of German-Americans during WWII. Several sources concurred that there were just too many here of German descent or naturalized as citizens to lock up. And so we didn’t.

Maybe some voices on the national stage might mull over that reality check.

So, American by birth. Descended from immigrants. Descended from refugees. Most likely some scoundrels in the mix, but most overwhelmingly good folks. Like many of us who live here now.

At lunch the other day, I asked a Cuban-American friend if any of her family would return to the island as part of the ongoing normalization between the two countries. Her response: No, we are Americans now.

That the past is no predictor of the future is true enough, but after three hundred years plus of stirring the pot, onward we go.

We are Americans now.