April 15th is Tax Day, the day we pay our bills for civilization

April 15th never used to be a big deal to me.

Almost from the first time I had taxable income, the amounts withheld from my paychecks left me with money coming back to me from the government.

And when you've got money due you, the last thing you do is wait still deadline day to file. Most years, my tax returns were finished and in the mail by early February and my refund checks were in hand by March.

In fact, most years we would intentionally have additional money withheld, figuring that an extra $25 a paycheck wasn't as useful as an extra $1,300 on the refund.

That worked well for a long time, but now that I'm retired and collecting Social Security and my wife is on disability, we don't have regular withholding. The last two years, every penny of income tax we have paid -- both federal and state -- has been in checks we have put into the mail on April 15th.

It always amazes me that so many people complain about their taxes. Most of them have no concept of where the money goes. They'll yammer about welfare and foreign aid, but those two categories are an extremely small part of the overall budget.

Busy on tax day.

 Actually by far the biggest items are national defense and homeland security, as well as massive interest on the public debt. Then there are billions and billions of dollars in tax breaks for corporations.

I consider myself fortunate in that I have traveled extensively and in fact lived outside the U.S. for two years in the 1970s. I have seen places where taxes are higher but average citizens get far more for their money than we do here.

Still, rather than go off on a tangent here, I'll just say I agree with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said "I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization."

I can honestly I have never resented dollar one of the taxes I have paid. As someone who believes government has a positive role to play, I can honestly say I'm disappointed that Ronald Reagan and Republicans since Reagan have reduced the percentage of income that the richest Americans pay in taxes.

The irony of it is, the less they pay, the more they complain about how much they still pay.

Part of the problem is that once we had a civic consensus, a basic agreement of at least the fundamental things government should be doing.

We don't really have that anymore. More and more people on the right seem to want nothing more than to live completely independent lives from the rest of society.

Isn't the 21st century wonderful?

It was 372 years ago when America's greatest thinker was born

If he had lived, today would have been Thomas Jefferson's 372nd birthday.

Things have gotten a little rough for TJ the last few decades as revelations of his relationship with Sally Hemings, leaving an entire branch of his family tree with names he could never acknowledge.

Jefferson was, of course, a man of his time. And while the fact he cohabited with at least one slave is unfortunate, it shouldn't detract from what he did and the ideas he passed down.

In 1999, when CNN did a series of shows on the millennium then ending, its historians called Jefferson the greatest mind of the 18th century.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."

Even 239 years after they were written, they are words that stir the soul and get the blood flowing.

John F. Kennedy, who could turn a phrase himself, told a dinner of Nobel Prize winners at the White House that they were a very special group.

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Louisiana Purchase (in green)

Jefferson was a great president if for no other reason than the Louisiana Purchase. With one simple transaction, for just $15 million, he added 828,000 square miles to what had been little more than a coastal nation.

It cost four cents an acre.

The man accomplished amazing things, but when he wrote his own epitaph, he mentioned only three of them. Author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Statutes of Religious Freedom and founder of the University of Virginia.

Not president. Not secretary of state. Not the man who made manifest destiny possible.

He was an idea man, maybe the best our nation ever had.

Happy birthday, Tom.

It may have made sense in 1787, but that was a long long time ago

If there was one thing incredibly stupid about the controversy over President Obama's birth certificate, it was that it mattered at all.

Some of the anachronistic stuff in the U.S. Constitution has been done away with. We no longer count a black person as three-fifths of a white person. We even allow women to vote.

But some things are just silly now.

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

In 1787, there may have been a reason to have such a law. Many people were terrified at the possibility that one of the extraneous crowned heads of Europe might find a way to rule our country. After all, each country over there had a job for only one sovereign, and maybe the less-talented brother could end up over here.

President and Mrs. Windsor

Think Neil Bush, for example. Or without the ban, Prince Andrew. And Fergie as First Lady.

It isn't as if anything like that would ever happen. All this portion of the Constitution does is tell immigrants that no matter how successful they get, they can never be president.

Hey, Donald Trump can't either.

Actually, the restriction seems to have hurt Republicans more than Democrats so far. There were certainly some members of the GOP in the early '70s who would have liked to see Henry Kissinger of the other side of the desk in the Oval Office, and early in this century, Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger became the first Republican in a decade to win a major statewide election in California.

President Gropenfuhrer?

Who knows?

The only Democrat I can think of who might have been an interesting candidate was Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, who had the misfortune -- at least for our purposes here -- of being born north of the border in Vancouver.

The fact is, though, that it's a silly restriction in the modern world. Anyone wanting to be president who would have to run the primary gauntlet and then still get 50-plus percent of the vote in the general election.

What seems silliest to me is that people like Sarah Palin, Shelly Bachman and at some point, even Alana Thompson are eligible to be president and brilliant people like my daughter Pauline Kastner can never even think about running because she was born in France and lived the first seven years of her life there.

That's right. Honey Boo Boo can be president and Pauline can't.

She actually may rise very high in our government.

Honey Boo Boo?

No, Pauline. She has already been in the Foreign Service for more than 10 years, and I'm still betting on ambassadorships or an undersecretary job before she retires. I can't imagine that she would ever run for office, mostly because I think she's too intelligent to put up with the bullshit a successful career in politics requires.

Pauline and a plane

She is finishing her three-year tour in Jamaica this summer, and just last week had the responsibility of handling some of the crucial preparations for President Obama's visit.

We talked about it today, and she told me she had to deliver a few things to the airport before the president left for Panama. They didn't actually let her board Air Force One, although she was thrilled to see it.

Hey, it's their loss.

Looking forward to a long summer watching baseball on MLB.TV

It has been a long long time since I was a sports fan.

I worked as a sportswriter from 1978 through 1995, covering everything from high school wrestling matches to Super Bowl XXVII at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

I suppose it was a little like not wanting to eat sausage once you have seen it made. But more than that, it was training myself to be impartial, never to cheer in the press box.

I was still a fan in some respects. I followed Virginia basketball pretty closely, I cared a lot about the Washington Redskins until Jack Kent Cooke died and I became a Dodger fan during 20 years living in Southern California. I truly believe there is no better place in the world to watch baseball than at Dodger Stadium.

But a couple of things happened the last few years that got me interested again. First, Coach Tony Bennett made Virginia into a basketball power again, with the Cavaliers going 30-7 in 2014 and 30-4 this year. CBS Sports actually has them as an early preseason No. 1 for next year.

Also, baseball came back to Washington and the Nationals got good.

I still wasn't watching much on television, but this year with Nicole ill, I spend a lot more time at home. So this week I signed up for a season subscription to MLB.TV, which gives me access to all the baseball I could ever want to see.

Vin Scully

I bounce around between two or three games at a time and I'm loving it. Best of all, though, is television from Dodger home games and getting to hear Vin Scully. He's 87 years old and in his 66th season broadcasting games. When he started, I was four months old.

The thing that is so wonderful about Scully is that he is so smooth. Add to that the fact that he sounds like everybody's best friend and you have a very enjoyable broadcast.

I've got to figure he's getting pretty close to the end of a wonderful career, though. Eighty-seven years old is impressive still to be as good as he is. Heck, just being alive and working at all is impressive.

And just in case this is the last one, I'm subscribed. Even if it does mean I'll be staying up late some nights for games from Blue Heaven.

Someday I am going to do something difficult and not be scared to try

I wrote recently about all the times in my life I had neglected to do something because of fear, whether I realized it or not.

At 65, I have no idea if there will come times in what's left of my life to make brave choices, but I want to take advantage of those that do come. With my wife's illness, the next few years will be devoted to her. But if there does come a time when I am responsible only for myself, I want to do something that will take me in the right direction toward a good feeling about myself.

PCT in Washington state.

I want to do a months-long hike -- alone.

I read Bill Bryson's wonderful book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, which is the easiest of the three main American hiking trails. Next would be the Continental Divide Trail, which goes mostly through the Rockies, and last would be the Pacific Crest Trail.

The PCT is the biggest and longest, going through the Sierras and the Cascades, all the way north to Canada.

Nine years ago, my son Virgile hiked a good chunk of it, although his effort was cut short by an injury to one of the people hiking with him.

The one time I tried anything like it was hardly a big success. About 10 years ago, Virgile, Nicole and I did a Fourth of July weekend hike to Kearsarge Pass in the Sierras. The climb was to 11,700 feet, and I was not really in shape for it. I weighed about 230 pounds and the only way I made it was for Virgile to carry my pack -- and his -- for at least a third of the hike.

But I saw a lot of what it would take to do it, and if I can get back into the shape I achieved in 2010 -- 168 pounds and walking at least 6-7 miles a day -- I think I could give it a try.

I read Cheryl Strayed's book about her hike on the PCT and I have been watching the movie about it, "Wild" with Reese Witherspoon.

While watching the movie, one thing went through my mind:

"I could do that."

Within seconds of that thought, another one followed:

From the movie "Wild"

"Oh, that wouldn't be safe."

You cannot imagine how angry I was at that second thought.

Well, realistically, if I were ever to be completely free of responsibilities so that I could try something like that, I would probably be 70 years old.

Or older.

I don't know where we go from here when our lives end, whether it's on to an afterlife or maybe just another life like this one. But whichever it is, I think I have to look at it this way. I started strong when I was a little kid, but then found myself off the highway in the ditch for a lot of years that contained both good and bad.

One thing I could do in this lifetime at least is to finish strong. I wouldn't mind if my epitaph for this life was for two people who knew me to say something this:

"Damn, that old bastard hiked 500 miles."

Or more.

"I never thought he had it in him."

I may not do it, but if I don't, it's not going to be because I'm scared to do it.