Towns Named Etna

There are said to be 20 towns in America with this name. Several of them began life as towns called Aetna, the Italian name for this volcano, but the majority of them were named after the famous erupter in Italy that has caused sleepless nights many times disastrously over the years. Its most explosive eruption on the island of Sicily occurred in 1669, but it has been erupting off and on since 2022. It’s still active in other words, but experts say that it has stopped its volcanic activity for now. That there are 20 towns in this nation with this name is kind of amazing to me and a tribute to its claim to be the most active volcano in Europe even though Iceland is part of Europe and has more active volcanoes as does Alaska.

None of the towns named Etna or Aetna in the United States are now very important. Most of them are identified mainly by their counties. Some have become ghost towns. There are really only 4 of them of an consequence. They are the Etnas in Maine, California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The largest town with this name is the Etna that has been incorporated into the city of Pittsburgh. The Etna in Maine is near the city of Bangor and began life as Crosbytown. The Etna in California has fewer than 1,000 people living in it and is in the northern part of the state not too far from Yreka that might have become the capital of Jefferson had it happened as a state. The total population of towns named Etna is about 5,600 people.

There is an Etna in my county in Washington called Clark. It must be very small and is unmapped. The Etna in New Hampshire has been absorbed into the town of Hanover. The Etna in Illinois is near the city of Mattoon in Coles County. It’s too bad that this name is not very important now. It would be an original idea to have a lot of towns named after a volcano.

You would think that a lot of people would name their new town Vesuvius or Etna, but this is not so. I can’t find a single town named Vesuvius in the world. Maybe this is because there was so much destruction from the first volcano that people are reluctant to use this name. The word Vesuvius is of uncertain origin, but it clearly means volcano in Italian. Vesuvius first erupted in 79 AD. This was so bad that it affected 3 cities. The other 2 were Herculaneum and Stabiae. Vesuvius is still an active volcano. It erupted in 1944, for example, during World War II.

Vesuvius is not used as the name for a town, but there is a Herculaneum in Missouri. It’s in the area of Saint Louis but about 30 miles south of this city in Jefferson County.

Hank

Towns Named Lakeview

There are 9 towns named Lakeview in the United States. Almost 20,000 people live in a town with this name. The largest Lakeview among the 9 is the one in New York State. The smallest Lakeview measured is the one in Arkansas. It has 741 people living in it. It is indeed on a lake. It’s called Bull Shoals Lake and is a very popular spot for vacations and fishing in this area. There is also a town called Bull Shoals. It is not too far from Lakeview. The Lakeview in California is near San Bernardino. There are lots of towns with Lake in their names. They have names like Lakeside and Lakewood, which are popular names for. towns too.

But towns named Lakeview are not as popular as counties named Lake. There are 12 Lake Counties in the United States. They are in states like Michigan and Montana. Ohio has both a town named Lakeview and a county named Lake, which is not too uncommon for a state on a Great Lake like Erie.

The Lakeview in Iowa is in the western half of this Midwestern state and its name is separated, making Lake View 2 words. The Lakeview in Georgia is home to almost 5,000 people and is actually near Chattanooga, TN, a town actually named Lakesite, and is hard to find on the map. The Lakeview in New York that is the largest Lakeview is not too far from John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The only Lakeview I have actually been to is the one in Oregon. It is an interesting town in the southwestern part of the state, is the largest town in its area, and Ruth and I woke up in the motel with snow on our car and no lake in view, but Goose Lake was not too far from it and partially in California. The Lakeview in Washington is near Ephrata in the central part of the state, is actually called Lakeview Park, and is not too far from a town I have already written about twice called Quincy. I have never been to Ephrata, WA.

Hank

AIDS

The COVID debacle reminds me of AIDS. It does so much that I got out the definitive book about the AIDS crisis and am reading it again. Called And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts, this definitive book reported on the early research into the virus that eventually erupted and killed millions. They were mostly gay Americans. COVID early on killed a lot of the elderly. Now COVID is more widespread but is still present and keeps coming back. The vaccines have proved mostly and basically ineffective so the situation keeps requiring additional boosters. This is what happened during the AIDS era when the media reported even more deaths from AIDS almost daily.

I found page 233 of this book especially relevant. It reported on the massive research that had gone on up to that point that had resulted in neither an arrest of the virus nor a cure. Many so called experts like Selma Dritz had done massive research and thought they understood what was happening, but on February 2nd of an early 1983 date “the number of AIDS cases in the United States exceeded 1,000″, the epidemic was only 19 months old and had stricken 1, 025 nationally. It had affected 501 in New York State alone and 221 in California. It had killed 394 Americans and nearly one in four cases had been reported to federal officials over the past two months alone. More than 100 had died in the past eight weeks. Since December, two more foreign countries had reported their first AIDS cases, putting the epidemic officially in 16 nations worldwide.” The man who started this virus was Patient Zero, a flight attendant by the name of Gaetan Dugas. He was still under no restrictions. Now 40 million people have died from AIDS globally.

We still do not know who started COVID definitely. The Chinese are suspected but are in denial and deaths are way down there. The situation changes hourly, it seems. Overall, the USA has reported 79 million cases of COVID and deaths have topped 960,000 although new cases are dropping. However, there has been an 82% increase in cases of COVID in Washington State as of today and there are currently 12, 737 cases of it here. The number of new cases changes daily, so no one knows for sure what will happen in the future. This has reportedly been a bad year for flu and respiratory infections so no one knows what will happen tomorrow. Meanwhile, AIDS continues to kill globally and some people are reluctant to travel due to both viruses that impact our lives.

Hank

Towns Named Grant

There are at least 20 towns named Grant in the United States. Its hard to tell exactly how many towns there are with this name because of geographic oddities. The Grant in New York, for example, is just a hill in Oneida County in the central part of the state. It would be far easier to name the Grant Counties that exist. There are at least 11 of them in the United States. There are Grant Counties in Indiana and Washington, for example. Most of them are named for Ulysses S. Grant. He traveled widely, was a general in the Civil War, and was a controversial President of the US.

Most of the Grant towns that exist are very small. The Grant in Missouri, my home state, for example, is called Grant City and has a population of only 859 even though Grant lived in Missouri for a while. Grant’s Farm is still a big tourist attraction in my home state, and Grant also traveled to Washington State. There is a Grant House in Officer’s Row at Fort Vancouver, Vancouver’s biggest tourist attraction, that used to contain a popular restaurant. Grant City, for sure, was named for Ulysses, who was born in Ohio, not Missouri. The Grant in his home state is an unincorporated community east of Lima, is on my Ohio map, and this town was named for him too.

There are reportedly large town named Grant in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. One of them is certainly the largest town named after this illustrious man. The Grant in Minnesota is a suburb of St. Paul. There is a Grants in New Mexico that is fairly large, but it was said to be named for railroad people, not a former President. It is said to be a carrot capital.

Towns named Grant are common but confusing. There is a Grant in Inyo County, CA. The Grant in Florida has a Valkaria after it. The Grant in Michigan is north of Grand Rapids and was named for Ulysses S. The Grant in Iowa was named for Ulysses but only 86 people or so live there. There is a Grant Parish in Louisiana. After Grant retired he and his wife traveled the world with their children.

There are said to be Grants in such far away places as New Zealand, Slovenia, and Australia but I can’t imagine why.

Hank

Towns in Shakespeare

Shakespeare wrote 37 plays. He must have struggled with where to set them. There is genuine diversity in his choices. He even set one play in the new world. The Tempest is largely set in America. But what about his other choices? Did you realize that he set 4 of his plays in Rome including Julius Caesar? But Rome isn’t his most frequent choice. He set many of his plays in Italy. That is not so surprising when you consider that its cities were well-known to all at Shakespeare’s time. Below are 10 of his setting choices.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona is set in Italy. Milan is mentioned. He set another play in Verona, the far more famous Romeo and Juliet is partially set there too. Verona today is a city of 258,000 people in the Venice region, also a Shakespeare city choice He caused his Merchant to reside there. One of the best preserved Roman ampitheaters like The Coliseum is in this city.

The Greek World was also known in Shakespeare’s time and he set his Timon of Athens there. This lesser known work is set in Greece. It has a reputation as being a problem play.

Macbeth is set famously in Scotland, a place probably well known to the Bard. His shortest play, Macbeth introduces one of Shakespeare’s most vivid female characters and some witches.

Hamlet, one of his best plays, is set in a castle in Denmark named Elsinore.

His comedy Measure for Measure is partially set in Vienna. It is one of Shakespeare’s 17 comedies and contains a vivid character called Mistress Overdone, who is described as a Bawd. This character points to another great Shakespeare ability, the creation of appropriate names for his characters. It is classified as a comedy despite its serious nature because it has a happy ending,

Alls Well That Ends Well also has an unusual setting. It is set in Paris and Marseilles. Some of it is set in Italy, however, like Florence. The King of France is a real character in this play, but so is the Duke of Florence. At this time, Paris was probably a larger city than a town Shakespeare was far more familiar with, London. This is another of this writer’s comedies.

The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare’s first play and a comedy had an unusual setting, Ephesus. This was one of the most important cities of the ancient world. It was in modern day Turkey.

Antony and Cleopatra was definitely not a comedy, It was, in fact, a tragedy set in many places around the Roman Empire.

This brings us to Shakespeare’s play about the new world. The Tempest is largely about the still undiscovered part of the Western Hemisphere. It opens on an uninhabited island largely thought to be Bermuda and proceeds to the Colony of Virginia. It presents one of The Bard’s most interesting characters called Caliban. It’s classified as a comedy, but it’s a serious play.

Hank