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> Try not to look at the map of Europe as a driver of a vehicle capable of >100mph. So I live in the Hudson Valley, upstate NY. I noticed some local place nam

> Try not to look at the map of Europe as a driver of a vehicle capable of >100mph. So I live in the Hudson Valley, upstate NY. I noticed some local place names that were surprisingly Midwestern: Mount Illinois, Ohioville, etc. Weird, I thought, I wonder how that came to be. Turns out it was groups of settlers traveling from slightly further east -- it's only about 200 miles to Boston, the furthest-away those settlers could be starting from, on land -- hoping to colonize the fertile lands of the newly opened Northwest Territories after the Revolution who just gave up and settled here. Now, the Northwest Territories were another 500-1000 miles west of where I'm at, and where I'm at was colonized in the 17th century, so there was no mistaking one for the other. What must of happened was, one tenth to one fifth of the way in to their journey, these settlers got their wagons stuck in the swamps here, looked around at the rocky, unplowable mountains around them, and said "fuck it, we'll settle here", before naming their town "Ohioville" so when they wrote back to Boston they could pretend they reached their destination.

jakeva 6y ago
That sounds like the basic premise of "Waiting for Guffman". The characters of Blaine Missouri are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the settlement of their town by reenacting it. Basically the original settlers were trying to get to California but their guide managed to convince them that although they couldn't see the ocean because the tide was out, they had arrived. I just watched it the other night, pretty funny. I wonder how often this sort of thing happened. I imagine it was pretty common, knowing how difficult travel was back then.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  It's one of those things that is both baffling from one angle ("Why would you go to all that effort, sell all of your meager belongings you can, pack what you can carry, abandon the rest, outfit yourself, say goodbye to everyone and everything you know, leave them all behind, and then just ... give up?") and simultaneously oh-so-understandable, that process of realizing you're not going to be able to achieve that thing you wanted, that you thought you wanted. Maybe you still do; maybe you have realized there's something else you want more. Maybe you can give up your goal without effort; maybe you spend the rest of your life rationalizing or regretting your decision to give up when you did. Maybe your attempt cost you something that makes having or not having what you wanted irrelevant, and the rest of your life is just ashes, muddling on.

jakeva 6y ago

That sounds like the basic premise of "Waiting for Guffman". The characters of Blaine Missouri are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the settlement of their town by reenacting it. Basically the original settlers were trying to get to California but their guide managed to convince them that although they couldn't see the ocean because the tide was out, they had arrived. I just watched it the other night, pretty funny. I wonder how often this sort of thing happened. I imagine it was pretty common, knowing how difficult travel was back then.

saalweachter 6y ago
It's one of those things that is both baffling from one angle ("Why would you go to all that effort, sell all of your meager belongings you can, pack what you can carry, abandon the rest, outfit yourself, say goodbye to everyone and everything you know, leave them all behind, and then just ... give up?") and simultaneously oh-so-understandable, that process of realizing you're not going to be able to achieve that thing you wanted, that you thought you wanted. Maybe you still do; maybe you have realized there's something else you want more. Maybe you can give up your goal without effort; maybe you spend the rest of your life rationalizing or regretting your decision to give up when you did. Maybe your attempt cost you something that makes having or not having what you wanted irrelevant, and the rest of your life is just ashes, muddling on.