Paradise Lost- Where Was Yours?

Huntn · Oct 18, 2014

citizenzen said:
That's a value judgement. Your "developmental morass" is someone's paradise.

I understand how you see it that way, but I simply see it as primarily a reaction against change, against things as you once knew them. But at no point before you experienced your paradise or after was there a condition that was set, and optimal. It's always been changing, humans have always been encroaching and developing, and yet despite that constant interference, people have been able to experience paradise.

It's not lost. It just changed. And it's still available to anyone open to seeing it.

I'll respectlfully disagree. For my case the quality attributed to paradise equals
lack of or minimal development. The more the development, the more the conjestion, the farther from the paradise standard you get although I'm sure other people might attribute the quality of paradise to relative conjestion.

localoid said:
Are there really that many people who see urban sprawl, congestion, traffic jams, and unplanned growth as "paradise?"

Good question.

Melrose · Oct 19, 2014

Mine is the street I grew up on. My family moved south out of Rochester, NY to a small town, buying an old house on a quiet street lined on both sides with old maples.

A couple of them across the street came down when I was maybe eight or ten or so because they were older than the ones on our side, so the street still had a stately row of large maples that lined it all the way up and over a small rise, shading the front lawns, shading the road, providing ample piles of leaves that got raked in the fall, beautiful scenes with snowfalls in the winter, and they shaded half the house from the midday sun so it kept things cooler in midsummer.

The old guy who planted those trees died not much later, and his two houses (directly up the street from us) were bought at auction by a contractor... yeah... he "fixed them up" (completely gutted them) and sold one and rented the other out. The utterly nitwitted pea-brained alcoholic who-lives-on-the-government moron who bought the house decided he hated trees, and so one summer he talked his two neighbors into joining him in cutting down every tree out from their houses even though there was nothing at all wrong with them. He left his wife and moved away less than six months later, and neighbors who joined him in his foolishness were moved out within five years.

The tree out front of our house had to come down like ten years ago due to broken limbs from heavy snowfalls (well, after also the idiotic town workers came by and "pruned" half the branches off so it was lopsided), and so now the street is devoid of those old big trees and lined with these skimpy, Auschwitz-victim trees that are like ten feet tall and thin as rails. An elderly woman who lived on the corner just died a couple weeks ago, and after a not-quite-as old older couple at the other end of the street my family is the last of the 'old neighbourhood' residents. Plus a herd of overweight funeral directors bought the estate across the street, leveled half their trees, and turned their beautiful, parklike, enormous yard into a parking lot.

I still live home (which works out okay I guess) and we're looking into possibly moving also; things just aren't what they were. At all. but I s'pose it's like that everywhere...

olup · Oct 21, 2014

satcomer said:
Fire up your maps and you will see the newer MD County Connector.

Not sure, if this is good or bad, that's crazy!

satcomer · Oct 21, 2014

olup said:
Not sure, if this is good or bad, that's crazy!

Well it is now on the VA side of the Beltway and from DC to Stafford VA using the old HOV lanes. The good thing is if you have 3 people it is free but you still have to use EasyPay to get into it.

Yea it sound crazy but I have used it and works so much better then the old HOV system. Plus by law they keep the lanes in better shape then the public lanes, paid by private company. You can read about at the site ExpressLanes.com.

Plus VA did this because MD was making buckets of money on the new Connector. The only draw back those lanes are patrolled heavily looking for non-payers and speeders. Paid by the company but have to be trained police. My old police neighbor said he gets better paid do this duty part time.

orestes1984 · Oct 21, 2014

The Sunshine Coast in Australia, it's become a glorified tinsel town for yuppies and the aspiring rich. Once was paradise for surfers and those who wanted a get away.

Scepticalscribe · Oct 21, 2014

Reading this thread (and it is a fascinating idea for a thread - well done, OP - with some extraordinarily interesting responses), I am very struck by the fact that, for most of those who have taken the trouble to post so far, the ideal of a 'Paradise Lost' is some rural - or countryside - memory from childhood.

I don't know whether this is some romantic retrospective on a rural life or a life in the countryside (real or imagined), or whether this sort of midst only comes after the real rural areas have long been transformed into some sort of suburban or urban landscape.

In other words, I suspect that the notion of 'Paradise Lost' would not take such a uniformly rural expression in countries, or economies, or worlds, where most of the national - or personal - income came from agricultural or related pursuits. Life earned from the tilling the soil - or herding flocks of animals - is hard, difficult, demanding, sometimes back-breaking, often unrewarding, tedious, unending, and is often at the mercy of the vagaries of both the weather and the market, (national, international and local) and sometimes disease, as well

I have long suspected that the idealised attraction of the romanticised countryside is in direct proportion to the distance obtained (generationally and economically) from that same countryside.

Anyway, my own sense of a Paradise Lost is rigorously urbanI like cities, safe urban spaces, old centres, where ancient buildings jostle with tamed history and a comfortable distance from where the past meets the present, where the sometimes brutal and crude reality of enforced and chosen exchanges of ideas, monies, goods, peoples have all been softened by the passage of time and the fallacy and flaws of selective and imperfect memory.

63dot · Oct 26, 2014

Too many homes near me were bought from out of towners who never come here and our drought of people caused us to lose some schools. Once common, families moved out of the area and now it's 60% percent vacant.

Just up north, the once placid countryside became Silicon Valley and gave ugly architecture a whole new definition.

Huntn · Jul 15, 2018

This post is so out of character with the Exercise Thread I replied to, I moved it here. I really hate it when development goes unchecked. I may be repeating some things I’ve previously expressed, as in are we destined to become Coruscant (a paved over Star Wars Universe planet)?

Anyway, do you have a special place unmolested by over development, or on it’s way to being a parking lot? This is where to whine about it.

Zenithal said:
Glad you enjoyed it. I thought I replied to @Huntn the other morning but I guess I never hit enter. I've only been to Florida a few times in my life, most for work and years ago, but there was about an 8 year time period in between visits to Cape Coral, and while I was impressed the first time, I was blown away the second time. I'm sure it's even better now. Then again, it's a really nice part of Florida, sort of like Jupiter. Though the nicer portions of Florida standout more than the lowly areas.

I do enjoy the subtropical weather, though. Reminds me of the islands of Hawaii. It's very comfortable most of the year.

Here is the thing about Florida, it’s flat and hot... I did not mean to say that, it just popped in.

What I meant to say is that development has always turned me off. It’s the way that many of the best parts of the Nation are irretrievably destroyed as far as my context goes, uncontrolled development. Yeah, the bigger the tax base, the more revenue for the city, the more roads, more infastructure, which draws more people, etc, etc. Hawaii is another place as beautiful as it is, on it’s way to developmental Hell.

I’ve sung this lament before. I grew up in one such paradise lost, Northern Virginia and Maryland, the suburbs of Washington DC, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. My brother lives in Centreville, Va. where people used to move for retirement, to be out in the country. Ha-ha, the joke was on them.

So no intent to single out Florida.

What really turns me off is mile after mile of traditional subdivisions. Bleh. Because Florida is flat and hot, it’s extra challenged. However there are special places. Besides spending 3 semesters there at the University of Miami, in Coral Gable, my Grandmother lived in Fort Lauderdale, development central, and my Dad lives in Winterhaven, a smaller town in the process of being swallowed. The Everglades is special., but not many people could or would want to live in it, maybe on the edge.

One of my treats of late has been visiting a Park near Winterhaven that once used to be a private ranch, meadows of mature oaks, intermingled with lakes and streams, teaming with wild life. It was a special place in the sea of development. Orlando... what a developmental nightmare. Yeah, employment is good, but a price is paid.

63dot said:
Too many homes near me were bought from out of towners who never come here and our drought of people caused us to lose some schools. Once common, families moved out of the area and now it's 60% percent vacant.

Just up north, the once placid countryside became Silicon Valley and gave ugly architecture a whole new definition.

California especially reminds me of Paradise Lost. I would have loved to seen it in the 1950s.

Gutwrench · Jul 15, 2018

Paradise? I haven’t found it yet. I’m thinking it’s in Indonesia or Central America. Paradise, California is not paradise.

Huntn · Jul 15, 2018

Gutwrench said:
Paradise? I haven’t found it yet. I’m thinking it’s in Indonesia or Central America. Paradise, California is not paradise.

What did you think of it in the 50s?

Scepticalscribe · Jul 19, 2018

Actually, - quite seriously - I don't believe that I have ever "Found Paradise". Not yet.

There are places that I have loved, and places I found extraordinary and awe-inspiring, some that I am glad to have seen but never wish to re-vist - but none - yet - can be classed as something approximating to "Paradise".

arkitect · Jul 19, 2018

Alas, Paradise on Earth does not exist.

I have been to some close approximations here and there, but…

Though I suppose I have fond memories of childhood vacations that now on reflection seem like paradise (lost). So innocent back then…

Gutwrench · Jul 19, 2018

Huntn said:
What did you think of it in the 50s?

I wasn’t alive in the 50’s.

Huntn · Jul 19, 2018

Scepticalscribe said:
Actually, - quite seriously - I don't believe that I have ever "Found Paradise". Not yet.

There are places that I have loved, and places I found extraordinary and awe-inspiring, some that I am glad to have seen but never wish to re-vist - but none - yet - can be classed as something approximating to "Paradise".

arkitect said:
Alas, Paradise on Earth does not exist.

I have been to some close approximations here and there, but…

Though I suppose I have fond memories of childhood vacations that now on reflection seem like paradise (lost). So innocent back then…

Dear friends, I’m using the term liberally, not literally, with a direct reference to the song as applied to the most personally desirable locations on Earth a person might want to live.

Gutwrench said:
I wasn’t alive in the 50’s.

So maybe it was better before you were around. Although highly congested in the early 1980s, I thought it was a terrific place with great weather. And with my dislike of unfettered, runaway development, I imagine it was once a super place to live. This is not a statement of fact, but an impression.

Scepticalscribe · Jul 19, 2018

Huntn said:
Dear friends, I’m using the term liberally, not literally, with a direct reference to the song as applied to the most personally desirable locations on Earth a person might want to live.

...

Life commitments (or money) or other constraints - personal or professional - no object, well, then the closest to some sort of notional "Paradise" I have come to are some of the places one can find in northern Italy. Or, perhaps, southern France, let us say Provence, or regions such as Burgundy, or Bordeaux.

Split (and, to a lesser extent, Dubrovnik) also left me spellbound.

Gutwrench · Jul 19, 2018

Huntn said:
So maybe it was better before you were around. Although highly congested in the early 1980s, I thought it was a terrific place with great weather. And with my dislike of unfettered, runaway development, I imagine it was once a super place to live. This is not a statement of fact, but an impression.

I liked living in Northern California very much. In Southern California I like a particular destination which isn’t terribly congested. We used to go there once a month or so, but now I get there about once a quarter. I don’t want to sell it but it makes sense.

Scepticalscribe · Jul 19, 2018

Huntn said:
Dear friends, I’m using the term liberally, not literally, with a direct reference to the song as applied to the most personally desirable locations on Earth a person might want to live.

Alright, I loved Kenya.

That, too, could be classed as a sort of Paradise.

Huntn · Jul 19, 2018

Scepticalscribe said:
Life commitments (or money) or other constraints - personal or professional - no object, well, then the closest to some sort of notional "Paradise" I have come to are some of the places one can find in northern Italy. Or, perhaps, southern France, let us say Provence, or regions such as Burgundy, or Bordeaux.

Split (and, to a lesser extent, Dubrovnik) also left me spellbound.

There are many super places. Outside the US, I love Northern Italy, Southern France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK, including Ireland. I’ve not been to Scotland. Also Japan, the Philippines, and the Hawaiian Islands. . I imagine New Zealand would qualify. No offense intended if I failed to mention your country, I’ve either forgotten or have not been there.

Inside the US, Virginia, West Virginia, New Hamoshire, Montana, most of the North East although much of it including the entire East Coast qualifies as paradise lost. California, Washington State, Oregon, Colorado and others I’ve failed to remember at the moment.

Scepticalscribe · Jul 19, 2018

Huntn said:
There are many super places. Outside the US, I love Northern Italy, Southern France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK, including Ireland. I’ve not been to Scotland. Also Japan, the Philippines, and the Hawaiian Islands. . I imagine New Zealand would qualify. No offense intended if I failed to mention your country, I’ve either forgotten or have not been there.
Inside the US, Virginia, West Virginia, New Hamoshire, Montana, most of the North East although much of it including the entire East Coast qualifies as paradise lost. California, Washington State, Oregon, Colorado and others I’ve failed to remember at the moment.

You have been there - it is on your list......

arkitect · Jul 19, 2018

Huntn said:
Dear friends, I’m using the term liberally, not literally, with a direct reference to the song as applied to the most personally desirable locations on Earth a person might want to live.

I understand what you meant…

But I genuinely stand by what I wrote: There is no Paradise on earth. There is no perfection.
We have to "make do" with what and where we find ourselves.

Besides, there are always mosquitos (and not always of the insect kind!).

Scepticalscribe · Jul 19, 2018

arkitect said:
I understand what you meant…

But I genuinely stand by what I wrote: There is no Paradise on earth. There is no perfection.
We have to "make do" with what and where we find ourselves.

Besides, there are always mosquitos (and not always of the insect kind!).

While I agree with you in general (especially about mosquitoes whether in insect or human form - pests, both, and the very definition of what can be understood by an asymmetrical relationship - the sort of asymmetrical relationship where they like me and I cannot abide them but that does little to reduce the intensity of their attentions) - and I don't think that Paradise, per se, exists, I do think that there are moments - say a day, an evening, - where everything seems to fall into place on so many planes that you sigh, and think, "yes, this is......perfection or as close to it as I have experienced."

Matz · Jul 19, 2018

Huntn said:
I grew up in the DC area, back here visiting family and historic sites. Went to the Chancellorville Battleground today location of Lee's greatest Confederate victory, and where Stonewall Jackson got shot by his own men... :-/

Anyway, my lost paradise is Northern Virginia. Massive over development, masses of humanity, traffic jams 24/7. It's been transformed into a aweful place as compared to what was here in the 50s-70s. It's so sad.

If I was to pick another place as a paradise lost, even though I did not grow up there, it would be it either San Diego or San Francisco area...

I feel your pain. We moved to Springfield (North Springfield, to be exact) long ago after returning to the States from Germany.

Rural areas back then were an easy 10 minute drive, or less. There was an undeveloped woodland behind our house, and I spent a lot of time there. DC was only 20 minutes or so, up 95.

But traffic around the city was sometimes intense, even then. The Beltway was a new thing, and made getting around easier, for the most part. I learned to drive there, and doing so has served me well.

I left in ‘75 to go school in northern Arizona, and stayed out west until 2011. I swore I’d never move back east. But here I am. And the summertime weather still sucks. But I digress.

Earlier this year I attended a two-day training session in Tyson’s Corner. Driving from rural southern Virginia up to and into northern Virginia was a trip into the Heart of the Beast.

In short, NOVA has become an anthill. I will only go there again if absolutely necessary.

The other place I miss is Flagstaff, Arizona. While not yet an anthill, it is far more populated than it was when I attended school, and has become more like many other towns. Sameness is spreading, it seems.

Fortunately one can still get outside of town and be truly alone amongst the Ponderosas in less than an hour.

Mefisto · Jul 19, 2018

I've always moved around a lot, so it could be said that I haven't really "rooted" in any one place, not in a significant way, anyway. Sure there are people who I am most honored to call friends that have stuck with me along the way, but a special place? Not so much.

I remember many places fondly, some more so than others, but when asked I still reply that I, at any given time, have about four favorite hometowns. None of which I would call paradise. Then again, when it comes to the concept of "paradise", a quote that has always very strongly resonated with me comes from Jean Paul (born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter).

"Die Erinnerung ist das einzige Paradies, aus welchem wir nicht getrieben werden können.", or in English "Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be driven."

eyoungren · Jul 19, 2018

I would say for me, it's more paradise gained. Or at least as close to it as I can get.

Such consternation for lost rural living and the encroaching suffocation of development.

I am not one that feels this.

I grew up rural. We were rural because my father moved us out far enough from the main city to qualify for a home loan.

I am not one who romanticizes an unincorporated town of 2000 people which has no signal lights, no major chain stores of any type to speak of and nothing to offer youth except whatever it is they can find to amuse themselves.

For any of that I had to go south to an actual incorporated city that had sidewalks, traffic lights and ONE chain grocery store that does not operate outside of Southern California. And Beaumont, California was no prize from 1980 to 1999.

I developed a deep hatred for rural living and an absolute disgust for small town politics. Sure, you always got the friendly rural attitude - except when politics gets involved. Corruption is common, graft is the process by which things get done - at least until the town gets big enough to start being noticed by regulators.

I lived in Cherry Valley, and the one thing it had for it was cherries. But, you want to talk traffic jams? Try two lane roads with no cutouts and clueless tourists looking for all the cherry orchards driving stupidly and parking any damn place they please.

The second house we lived at in the area was directly across the street from a cherry orchard. Try getting out of your driveway when the street is clogged with all the people there to pick.

I live in Phoenix now. We (my wife and I) left in 2000. And what do you know? The area I grew up in blew up and is actually nice to visit now. No longer do I have to drive 30-45 minutes to Walmart, Starbucks or Lowes. They all moved in.

Credit that with the retirement folks in Sun Lakes, south of the I-10. I guess they got tired of having to drive to Redlands or Palm Springs to get anything done.

Cabazon has a casino now and it's done a lot for development in that area and for the Morongo Indian tribe.

At home now, here in Phoenix, work is 10-12 minutes away down surface streets. Compare to 50 minutes by freeway to get to my job in Indio.

Oh sure, there's jams and congestion. But that's usually because of construction or events. That can be worked around. I like the fact that Starbucks and Walmart are 5 mins from home. My kids go to schools that are close. The schools I attended were 30 minutes away down the freeway.

So, rural was my hell as a teen and young adult, while "paradise" was entered by the simple act of moving to a major metro city.

Huntn · Jul 19, 2018

eyoungren said:
I would say for me, it's more paradise gained. Or at least as close to it as I can get.

Such consternation for lost rural living and the encroaching suffocation of development.

I am not one that feels this.

I grew up rural. We were rural because my father moved us out far enough from the main city to qualify for a home loan.

I am not one who romanticizes an unincorporated town of 2000 people which has no signal lights, no major chain stores of any type to speak of and nothing to offer youth except whatever it is they can find to amuse themselves.

For any of that I had to go south to an actual incorporated city that had sidewalks, traffic lights and ONE chain grocery store that does not operate outside of Southern California. And Beaumont, California was no prize from 1980 to 1999.

I developed a deep hatred for rural living and an absolute disgust for small town politics. Sure, you always got the friendly rural attitude - except when politics gets involved. Corruption is common, graft is the process by which things get done - at least until the town gets big enough to start being noticed by regulators.

I lived in Cherry Valley, and the one thing it had for it was cherries. But, you want to talk traffic jams? Try two lane roads with no cutouts and clueless tourists looking for all the cherry orchards driving stupidly and parking any damn place they please.

The second house we lived at in the area was directly across the street from a cherry orchard. Try getting out of your driveway when the street is clogged with all the people there to pick.

I live in Phoenix now. We (my wife and I) left in 2000. And what do you know? The area I grew up in blew up and is actually nice to visit now. No longer do I have to drive 30-45 minutes to Walmart, Starbucks or Lowes. They all moved in.

Credit that with the retirement folks in Sun Lakes, south of the I-10. I guess they got tired of having to drive to Redlands or Palm Springs to get anything done.

Cabazon has a casino now and it's down a lot for development in that area and for the Morongo Indian tribe.

At home now, here in Phoenix, work is 10-12 minutes away down surface streets. Compare to 50 minutes by freeway to get to my job in Indio.

Oh sure, there's jams and congestion. But that's usually because of construction or events. That can be worked around. I like the fact that Starbucks and Walmart are 5 mins from home. My kids go to schools that are close. The schools I attended were 30 minutes away down the freeway.

So, rural was my hell as a teen and young adult, while "paradise" was entered by the simple act of moving to a major metro city.

Thanks for telling the other side.

i’m not anti-city, I’m anti- over development and our system, encourages, seems to depend on developing every square foot. The quality of a place that makes it feel special, is ultimately destroyed in this process, because of overcrowding, with wholesale degradation of the environment.

Paradise Lost- Where Was Yours?

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