Florida Stories: Why do we want to get out of Florida so badly?

To answer that question, I must explain how we came to be here in the first place. Since Clearwater, Florida is definitely not a place we would have chosen to live, what in the world would make us move here? Well, brainwashing is the simplest answer. We were "good" members of $cientology and we did what was expected of us -- and we didn't think about it. We sold our house in San Diego and moved to Florida. We didn't like it much at first and we hoped that it would get better. It didn't.

Here's what we didn't like:
The heat.
The humidity.
The bugs.
The mold and mildew.
The humidity combined with the heat.
The rats.
The really stupid people.
The ugliness of the town of Clearwater.
The deadness of the town.
The humidity.
There are no freeways.
There's nothing pretty or beautiful to look at (okay, there must be something.)

Once we woke up and knew that we were not $cientologists any more, all that was left was selling this house and getting out of here. The waking up was in the summer of 2006; the selling of the house was last week.

So, of course, one of the reasons we want to leave is that Clearwater is buried in $cientology. The biggest of their organizations is here and attracts people from all over the world. They've bought and renovated several of the historical buildings in Clearwater. And of course, there's the Super Power Building, which they've been working on for ten years. They hit up $cientologists for the money to build this monstrosity to the tune of $142 million. The building is not finished and the thing that it was built for isn't finished and the city of Clearwater has been fining them for being so overdue on finishing, but they don't care. They can't finish the building because they have nothing and no one to put in it.

There are also many businesses owned by $cientologists -- I worked for one until we were declared "suppressive persons," at which time I was fired. Our tax preparer was a $cieno and now she won't do our taxes. The contractor who did all the major projects on our house is a $cieno. I ran into him at the market, he wouldn't look at me. The $cieno friends we had likewise won't acknowledge that they know us. They are very weird.

$cientology casts a pall over this part of Florida. Clearwater is a dying town and many long-time residents believe it is directly because of the presence of $cientology. You can look up all the awful things this "church" did when they arrived here. Just Google Gabe Cazeres.

But the really good news is $cientology itself is dying. There have been outspoken critics for years and they've chipped away at the cult while being targets of harassment and worse. Now comes Anonymous. I'm so happy they're here. They're like the calvary arriving in the old westerns. They've put together an excellent video. It's only 14 minutes but will show you why they're involved. We didn't join in the protest on February 10, but we will tomorrow.

We haven't enjoyed living in Florida, and it's possible that we came here just so we could wake up from our nightmare. We are so happy to be out of the cult of greed and power. We are so happy to be moving on.

Florida stories: Our neighborhood, some things we saw

We went for a long, long walk on Sunday -- the day after the humongous rainstorm. The drainage ditches had enough water for the ducks. It's not a big deal because there are so many lakes and ponds all over the place anyway. (Just in case there's not enough humidity in the summer.) click on photos for larger images

Very few of the small creeks have bridges this nice. I love this one, love the rust, the shape, the boards. And I particularly love that it's overkill. It's right beside the road and not close to anything important, on a street with no sidewalks or bike lanes. So very Florida.


Oh, and this. Coles guns and ammo store. The owner just fixed up the outside with this great new paint job. We almost missed it, it blends so perfectly into the jungle of foliage around it. There's such a weird mix of stuff around where we live -- see the blue dome, that's the Greek Orthodox Church across the street from Coles. What's even weirder about Coles is that usually on a Sunday the parking lot is jammed with trucks and SUVs, all of them with gun racks, of course.


There aren't a lot of things that are fun or inspirational or particularly aesthetic around Clearwater, but we found this just a few blocks from our house. I adore it. It's splendid in its simplicity.


Here's Stevens Creek, looking at it from the east and then from the west, the tide obviously way far out. This is a wonderful place to watch birds. Speaking of which...

As you can see, we don't quite have the hang of the new camera's auto focus ability. Hmmm. I imagine we'll figure out what we need to do so this doesn't happen again. Sadly, I don't know what kind of bird this is. I'm pretty sure it's a heron of some sort. Lovely, even if his head is out of focus. (Please don't be all up in my face about not putting it here, taking another one, etc. I like the photo.)

When I put this shirt on there were a couple of things I thought: 1) I like that the biology teacher in Upstream wears brighter and brighter Hawaiian print shirts as the winter in Homer, Alaska gets colder and darker; and 2) I like wearing this because it was my brother's -- the brother I hadn't spoken to in over 20 years; my sister asked me to pick something from his things that she'd brought home after he died.

This is what Spanish moss looks like before it attaches itself to something else, like an oak tree. Spanish-moss, also called Florida moss, long moss, or graybeard, is not a true moss. It is an epiphytic plant, which grows on another plant, but does not rely on the host plant for nutrients; epiphytes make their own food. Orchids are epiphytes.

And here's the way you most often see it. There are trees in our neighborhood that are almost completely covered with this stuff. Some people love the way it looks, associating it with romantic notions of the South. Bah! Even though it isn't a parasite, it looks like a parasite and can appear to take over a tree.

After we'd been walking about an hour we were both whining and complaining about aches and pains and the need to rest. We tried to book it home but took a wrong turn down a dead-end street and had to double back. So. We hopped into a Comfort Suites motel that was deserted and helped ourselves to hot chocolate and coffee. We had a nice rest.

And this is the Pinellas Trail. The very famous Pinellas Trail. It stretches from the southern tip of Pinellas County (where St. Petersburg is) north into Tarpon Springs, about 34 miles and is a testament to what hard-headed people can accomplish. This path was railroad tracks. The train stopped running and some clever citizens organized and fought for this as a solution to abandoned tracks. Nice, huh? Anyway, our house is just up there about 100', right off the trail. We're going home now.