Vacation To Paradise

I revised this based on comments from my sister, Robin, and my husband, Joe, who witnessed all this and corrected my faulty memory.

I was looking for something to read at Morgantown's downtown library on June 1. I've been reading novels from The Washington Post' s "50 Notable Works of Fiction" in the November 20th edition of the paper, plus "The 10 Standouts of 2022 ." I've read three of the fiction standouts, one of the non-fiction standouts, and I had read three of the other "50 Notable Works of Fiction." I found Hanya Yanagihara's To Paradise on the shelf.  I was put off by its 704 page length, but I had three weeks, with a renewal for another three, so why not? 

Joe and I were planning on a vacation in June. We planned for the 11th and 12th with my sister in Greenbelt, Maryland, the 13th in Baltimore County where we planned a lunch and dinner with long-time friends, and then a week in New York City visiting with friends and family. The original plan was to come back tomorrow, Thursday, June 22.

Yanagihara's book is in three parts: 1893, 1993 and 2093. They all take place in a house on Washington Square in Manhattan, with connections in the second and third parts to Hawaii, and all the people seem to be related, in fact, there is a character named David Bingham in each section of the book, sometimes more than one character with that name. Most of the men are gay, and even in 1893, in accepted same-gender marriages. This kept my interest, but as I went along, the plots got darker and more involved.

We met Seema and Chris for lunch Monday in Howard County, not far from my sister, in a vast development that didn't exist when I lived in Maryland. Seema and I dated in high school, and just when things were looking serious in college, I couldn't handle it. Chris lived with me and six other men in a house near Hopkins our sophomore year, and we shared an apartment junior year. He lives in Howard County with his wife. They have two grown children. Seema lives where my mother lived in suburban Baltimore after my father died; her boyfriend of many years lives in a restored old neighborhood near downtown Baltimore. It was great seeing both of them. Joe has met them both. Robin and Seema were friends and Robin knows Chris from way back.

Tuesday I thought we would take it easy. We were driving up to Baltimore and meeting my friends for lunch and other friends for dinner on Wednesday. I thought we would have time to stop at the cemetery to see where my parents are buried. I try to go every year. We were all a little restless, and since we were in Prince George's County, we thought to visit the county seat, Upper Marlboro, still a kind of sleepy southern town when most of the county is just an extension of Washington, D.C. 

We visited Darnall's Chance, a house museum dating from 1742. It was closed, but Robin knocked on the door and the people who worked for the Park Service offered us a brief tour for two dollars each. Robin gave them ten dollars and the three of us looked over the house. The guides also recommended a restaurant up the hill, a few blocks out of the center of town. I had a mushroom and Swiss cheese burger and a bag of Utz's potato chips, food I normally don't eat. We napped back home, had a light dinner and watched Jeopardy and ABC News, which Robin has on DVR. 

I continued reading my book, although as I got into the last part, it became more and more disturbing. Charles, one of the characters, writes letters to James in "New Britain" between 2043 and 2089. There are a series of pandemics, with ever harsher rules set out by the government. In Manhattan, the East and Hudson Rivers periodically flood the city; it's so hot by April that one must wear a "cooling suit" to go out in the air. 

I tried to sleep, but I felt edgy and nervous, then chilled, although it wasn't cold in the house. About 1:30, I started throwing up-a lot, and frequently, going on for hours. I looked up 24-hour walk-in clinics, but I couldn't find one nearby. Robin and Joe were fast asleep. Joe woke up about 6:30, and I was explaining to him what had happened, when I felt another wave coming on and ran to the bathroom. I didn't make it. Joe found me sprawled on the floor in the hallway. I had passed out. Robin woke up, made a few calls and told us which emergency room to go to. 

The hospital was what seems to be the typical nightmarish American hospital - long waits, dingy looking, unhelpful staff. The did a bunch of tests, pumped me with fluids and sent me back after 1 P.M., six hours after we arrived. By then, the waiting room was standing room only. Robin and Joe were sure the problem was that I ate an eight-ounce burger, something I just about never do. Robin cancelled the meals Wednesday with my friends online, and I canceled the hotel later. I was a wreck. We ended up canceling New York, involving a series of phone calls. We stayed at Robin's until Friday the 16th, when we were strong enough to eat regularly and drive home. By then, Robin was feeling dizzy and Joe wasn't feeling too well either. I drove all the way home Friday, while Joe mostly slept. He later took one of the anti-nausea pills I had gotten from the local pharmacy in Greenbelt.

In To Paradise, there are a series of illnesses that kill off large numbers of people. The first David is raised by his grandfather because his parents died in the 1870s of some widespread disease. In the second part, the gay men are coping with AIDS, although I don't think they call it that. And in the third part, there are a series of pandemics (like the one from 2020, although that is not mentioned) throughout the rest of the twenty-first century. People lose their freedom because they are quarantined and the regime cracks down harshly on any dissent. Life becomes gradually more and more miserable.

Being sick last week, (better now, but still tired and with some of the post-COVID symptoms I had in the fall and winter) I think about the warnings, not just from fiction, but from scientists about where the human race is heading, and how we will deal with it. It's scary.

Meanwhile, we are hoping to reschedule New York for early August, and I've picked up another dystopian novel from the Best Fiction list, where tourists in New York in 2079 see The Statue of Liberty, now underwater, from a boat.

To Paradise is much more complicated than I described and the writing is beautiful. I don't want to scare anyone away from it.

Greene County, Ohio and Greenup County Kentucky, Part 2: Greenup County, Kentucky

 For the second part of this trip, I stayed in Wheelersburg, Ohio, just upstream from Portsmouth, about 14 miles downstream and across the Ohio River from Greenup, the city that has the courthouse from the county of the same name. The next county upriver is Boyd, which is where Ashland is located, so much of Greenup County is a suburb of the Huntington-Ashland Metropolitan Area, a "tri-state" area including parts of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. Greenup County is 98% White and voted 72% for Donald Trump in 2020. The total population of the county is about 35,400.

There are twenty places on the National Register of Historic Places in the county. Wednesday afternoon, May 17. I found the courthouse and a few other places in the small town of Greenup, along the Ohio River, before heading back to the motel and dinner. After dinner, I headed up to Portsmouth, about fifteen miles north of the hotel, and looked at the murals along the flood wall, which dates from 1937, built after a devastating flood on the Ohio River. The mural extends nearly a half-mile, covers the history of Portsmouth, and was painted by a Louisiana artist from 1993-2002. 

By late afternoon Thursday, I thought I had found seventeen of the twenty places on the National Register, but two of them had been torn down. My picture of one of them is now the pic on Wikipedia. Three of the places were Native burial grounds or former settlements. They were unsigned, so I may have gone past them. 

Here are the pics:

                                                      Greenup County Courthouse, Greenup

                                                   Front Street Historic District, Greenup

                                             Methodist Episcopal Church South, Greenup, 1845

Former Greenup Masonic Lodge, 1867. I met the owner who is building a restaurant on the first floor

                                                     Flood Wall Mural, Portsmouth, Ohio

                                                       Flood Wall Mural, Portsmouth

                                            Bridge over the Ohio River near Portsmouth, Ohio

                                                     Another Ohio River Bridge

                                                 Kouns-Hoffman House, Greenup, about 1850

                                                 Warnock House, Greenup, about 1880

                                                         West Main Street District, Greenup

                                               Octagon House, South Greenup District

                                                     Church in South Greenup District

                                                       McKee House, Greenup, 1880

               Lunch at Golden Corral near Ashland, KY: Fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, Mac and cheese

                                                        Wurtland Union Church, 1921

      McConnell House, Wurtland, 1833, a law office and slave quarters are included in the listing

                                                           Oldtown Covered Bridge

               Jesse Stuart House, 1939, near Greenup. Stuart was a poet and novelist, poet laureate of            Kentucky, and lived from 1906-1984

                                                Worthington House, about 1840,near Greenup

After that heavy-duty lunch at Golden Corral and a nap in the late afternoon, I visited a supermarket  near my hotel and got a "healthy" microwaveable dinner, which I ate in the room. Unfortunately, there was a Dairy Queen across the parking lot from the motel, so I had a chocolate sundae later.

I drove home Friday on U.S. 23 through Ashland, Kentucky  to I-64 through Charleston, and then on I-79 to Morgantown. I was home in time to make dinner and go out to services at Tree of Life. 

One could comment here with a Google account, on "Barry Wendell" on Facebook, @BarryLeeWendell on Twitter, or by email to doveliezer2001@yahoo.com. 

Greene County, Ohio and Greenup County, Kentucky, Part 1: Greene County, Ohio

 I was gone from May 15-19 to explore two more counties within 500 kilometers of Morgantown.It's 264 miles from Morgantown to Xenia, the county seat of Greene County, and 243 miles from Greenup, the town that is the county seat of Greenup County, Kentucky to Morgantown. Xenia to Greenup is 125 miles.  Xenia is just east of Dayton; Greenup is along the Ohio River downstream from Huntington, West Virginia and Ashland, Kentucky. I had some light rain in Xenia, but otherwise, the weather was good, cool in the morning and warmer in the afternoon. 

I rode out of Morgantown north on I-79, took a left at Washington, Pennsylvania, bypassed Wheeling, West Virginia and had lunch in Zanesville, Ohio at the "Oriental Super Buffet," the first Chinese buffet I ever patronized. I drove on to Columbus, which I bypassed to the south, then traveled I-71, to U.S. 35 to Xenia. I stayed in Fairborn, a suburb of Dayton. The neighborhood was a park-like setting of office buildings, motels and restaurants. Beavercreek, another suburban town, was nearby, and I decided to check that out. I heard a few years ago, when I was in Springfield, Ohio, that Beavercreek Mall was where everyone in southwest Ohio went to shop. It's doing better than most malls, but I'm sure the pandemic hurt. I ate a slice of pizza and a tomato-cucumber salad for dinner at the mall.

Tuesday was my day to explore in Greene County. I spent most of the morning in Xenia, looking for historic places to photograph. I also noticed a lot of old American cars, which I like to view. I'll take my 2015 Honda Civic to drive. It's cleaner, smoother and gets better gas mileage than old American cars. I met Amy Cook, a lieutenant in Xenia's police force. She asked if I needed help. I probably looked distracted. I told her what I was doing. I said that downtown didn't look especially lively (I didn't say that it was mostly thrift shops and drug rehab centers), but the residential neighborhoods looked great. She said that people had been fixing up the downtown neighborhoods. I imagine there are gentrifiers who work in the office parks around Fairborn and Beavercreek who appreciate the older buildings in Xenia. 

                                                     Greene County Courthouse, Xenia, completed 1902

                                                     Downtown Xenia Historic District

                                                          Former Bank of Xenia, 1835

                                                      Downtown Xenia Historic District

                                            Alexander Conner House, 1836, part of a row of 6

                                                      House in East Second Street Historic District

                                                 House in East Second Street Historic District

                                                  East Second Street Historic District

                                                Hollencamp House, 1871 East Second Street

                                                          Shawnee Creek Rail Trail

                                                                     Mural in Xenia

                                                            Waterstreet Historic District

                                                            Waterstreet Historic District

                 

                                                      Millen-Schmidt House, N. King St., Xenia,late 19th century

                                                     Samuel N. Patterson House, N. King St., Xenia, 1860s

                                                                         Shawnee Park

                                     Xenia Carnegie Library. There is a new library that replaced this one.

                                                     Older American cars seen in Xenia

I also visited Wilberforce University, a few miles east of Xenia, the first college for Black people in the country, now under the auspices of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church. They are in a new, modern-looking campus from the 1980s. The old Wilberforce is now Central State University. 

                                                     On the campus at Wilberforce University

                                                        Mural at Wilberforce University

Tower from Galloway Hall at Central State University, the old Wilberforce University. The rest of the building was destroyed by The Xenia Tornado in 1974

For the afternoon, I thought I would visit the northern part of Greene County, including Yellow Springs, a hipster hangout and the home of Antioch University. First, I went back to the original downtown Fairborn, where I had a decent meal at Lefty's Eats and Espresso on Main St. I walked around Main St., then drove up to Yellow Springs. 

                                                  Fairborn Theater, 1948, still being restored

                    Mercer Log House, 1799, Fairborn, now Greene County Historical Society

                            Bath Township Consolidated School, Fairborn, 1924, now senior housing

                                                           Lefty's Eats and Espresso, Fairborn

I thought I would hike in nearby John Bryan State Park, but, even thought the rain had stopped, the trails in the park were thick mush. I walked up and down the main street (Xenia Avenue, U.S. 68) in Yellow Springs. At Dark Star Books and Comics, I bought Maia Kobabe's memoir, Gender Queer, supposedly the most banned book in America, about a girl who is uncomfortable as she becomes a woman. Next door was a bakery, which had homemade chocolate chip cookies in the window, and also books for sale. Books and cookies (not necessarily in that order) are two of my biggest addictions. I bought a used copy of Carl Hiaasen's Basket Case, as well as a yummy cookie. 

                                                  John Bryan State Park, near Yellow Springs

                                                                     John Bryan State Park

                                                Xenia Avenue, Yellow Springs Historic District

                                                            Pride display, Yellow Springs

 I never made it to Antioch University, as it was getting to be nap time. There were police cars at the Interstate exit. I didn't know why. I napped at the motel, then walked to dinner at Bob Evans, just down the street from the motel. The parking lot was jammed, but the restaurant was nearly empty. I asked the hostess if something was going on. She said they had asked people not to park in their lot, but Kevin Hart was appearing at Nutter Center at Wright State University, across the street from the restaurant. I just said "Oh," then looked up Kevin Hart on my phone. He's a famous comedian who was in trouble over some homophobic remarks he once made. I don't know modern comedians after Ellen DeGeneres, and I'm mostly comfortable with the first cast of Saturday Night Live: Chevy Case, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, that crowd. I'm a "codger." 

Back at the room, I planned for my trip to Greenup County, about two hours away.