In the mountains

Asheville. Wedding at the Biltmore.  It's hard to imagine anything much more incongruous than this house being built in backwater Appalachia late in the 19th century as lavish as the Biltmore House, though mom's husband David assures me that tourism and leisure have been core to the regional economy since around then anyway so maybe it's not that wierd.  The Biltmore now has 1800 employees managing 8000 acres.

At the wedding itself I got seated next to a nurse from Charlotte in sparkling Jimmy Chu shoes who asked me what I did for a living. When I told her what I did, she said something like "it would be better with a different president."  Whatever my misgivings about Obama's success in his first two years, there's no doubt he's the best option we had and, indeed, have had for some time.  So I arranged a new orifice for her.  I said it didn't matter who was president, taxes need to rise because of where we've got ourselves, and that the Bush tax cuts were the worst fiscal decision of our lifetime.

On the way back from the mountains we drove through the Craggy Gardens area of the Blue Ridge Parkway, where we probably drove as high as 5600-5700 feet, and where you're so high up that the plants are like those in Quebec.  It was awe-inspiring (though the kids were bored). I think Mary was finally convinced that North Carolina is indeed really cool.