A Florida story told by flowers: Every cloud has a silver lining

I guess it makes sense that as we're about to leave Florida forever that I would think of things that I like about it. I'm also thinking of reasons to be glad we came here. I'm not sure I would go so far as to say that moving to Florida was a good thing, but good things have come out of being here:

We completely and totally removed ourselves from $cientology, not as a result of moving here, but nevertheless, while we were here. And I think it helped being here when the decision was made. This is, after all, the "mecca of the Church of $cientology." That made it much easier to witness the wrongness of this "church."

We learned a great deal about home renovation, building trades, permits (or not), building codes and how to ensure that people doing work for you do it right. We have lots of new skills and we've picked up some really nice tools (yes, we could have acquired them anywhere, but oh well).

We met Stephanie. And, believe me, Stephanie has pretty much saved my life. I won't bore you with the gruesome stories of all the injuries I've had, but suffice it to say, I was in some pain. That pain is gone and I feel better than I have for many years.

We learned to laugh again.

We went to the Kennedy Space Center.

I got to live in another place (like San Diego) that has beautiful flowers all year 'round.

Stories told by flowers: New digital camera

I'm sure you've figured out that Kim is a gadget geek, a lover of all things techno. Which is good. It means he keeps up on stuff that, if it were up to me, we'd be in the way back. He reads Popular Science and Wired and he gets feeds (what the %#$^??) of things moderne. So. He's owned a great Pentax 35mm camera for years and he's bought great lenses for it at no small cost. But who in the world is shooting film these days? It's just not right. I bought a Nikon Coolpix some years back and was mostly liking it. Recently we bought a little nothing digital camera, the kind you see people pull out of a pocket while sightseeing. It works -- it's good for the web, email, etc. You take pics with this camera, not images (see Photography sidebar).

Ta-da! We got a new digital Pentax that will accept the lenses from the old Pentax!! Yay! What a great idea. But this sucker is complicated, at least for me it is, Kim is patient and studies manuals. Well, naturally we needed to go try it out, right? Naturally. But where? We decided, after a brief foray on the web, to go to the West Tampa Historical District. That sounds good, doesn't it?

Here it is. I'm not kidding. And we were lucky to find this. We debated buying a Tampa map and NOT buying one won. Oh well. We drove around, trying to remember the streets that bordered the Historical District. What we didn't know is that West Tampa is primarily a very old, rundown area and the Historical District designation is an attempt to clean it up. Oh well again. We figured there were probably lots of old, getting-ready-to-be-renovated buildings like this one, if we could just find them.

But there was a small problem -- we hadn't eaten in hours and we were both starving. Plus, we didn't have a map. Plus, what passed for restaurants in this area were not places we could actually eat. We got back on the only freeway we recognized and headed back toward Clearwater, thinking we'd go to one of the places we were familiar with. Nope, you can't get there from here. Not without a map.
This is where we ended up -- a resort hotel restaurant on Tampa Bay. Works for me. I was so hungry and really needed a restroom. I do love a fancy, full-of-itself eatery with a chef. And this chef makes his own potato chips! Oh. My. God. They were marvelous. So was the rest of the food. It was lovely lounging on the deck, nice umbrella, being waited on. Maybe you think I'm going to say that something happened to wreck the idyllic scene, but no, nothing like that. It just stayed wonderful.

The first thing that came to the table was the usual bread and butter, but this time it included a special dish of salt. Salt. I don't know. Of course, the people waiting on us think we're completely bonkers, we're snapping pictures of the bread, the dishes, the chips. We probably did look sort of silly, but do you think I care?

Not me, I've got this little bit of paradise -- gorgeous day in January, nobody else on the patio (I hate perfume, even when I'm outside), tasty food, happy husband with his new toy. Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I could sit here all day, sip my iced tea, watch the birds and the clouds. Mmmmm.

This was the best desert I've had in ages and ages. It was just this tiny glass of key lime pie with some graham cracker crust bits scattered around in it, topped with really sugary meringue. Yummy, yummy, yummy. Kim liked it too, darn it. It's probably better that we shared it. I would have moaned and groaned and whined about it if I'd eaten all of it myself. Isn't it so cute, with the little berries and the sauce kind of raked like that? Yes, this place thinks a lot of itself.
We admired this wall decor -- a fabulous sculpture of different kinds of birds, made just from different thicknesses of wire. I could do that. Just as soon as I get my new shop up and running. Heh, heh.

So, instead of the West Tampa Hysterical District photography day-trip, we took the let's-eat-at-the-
most-pretentious-restaurant-on-Tampa-Bay photography day-trip. And it was lovely. Just lovely.

We had a good time, a delicious, if overpriced, lunch and learned lots of cool stuff about the new camera. Next time, we'll take you along with us, okay? Don't worry, we'll go dutch.

Stories told by flowers: Lorelei

These are Lorelei's orchids. Lorelei doesn't garden particularly, but she's always liked having some greenery in her house. Some friends gave her this beautiful orchid plant as a house-warming gift when she and Roland moved into their place in Dublin. She told me she was worried about taking care of it and did I know what it needed. Ooo sorry, orchids don't tell me anything about what they want. So she did her best. And would you please just look at this incredible, fantastic display of gorgeous, outrageous blooms!?


I've known Lorelei since she was in high school -- that would make it about 14 years. She was one of my students and what a joy! Every teacher's dream -- a fun, excited, laughing out loud, full of life-type person. I don't think I've ever met anyone quite so out-going. She makes friends easy as pie and stays with that friend forever. I can't believe how many people she knows and how long she's known them.

This is Marsood and he is her godson. He's the child of one of Lorelei's very, very good friends. Marsood's parents are amazing people. They have six kids -- some are his from an earlier relationship, some are hers, some are theirs that they've adopted. And these guys were willing to take crack babies and give them love and a home and an education. They truly are remarkable.

Earlier this year, Lorelei decided to make one of her life-long dreams come true: she was moving to Ireland. She'd talked about it for years. And then, out of nowhere, she met this lovely Irish man. And Lorelei doesn't fall easily in love. In fact, in all the years I've known her, I don't think she ever had a boyfriend. She liked guys okay, but maybe there wasn't a lot of trust there. Her friends must have given her about a dozen different going away parties.

Probably the hardest person to say good-bye to was Marsood.


Roland is the lovely Irish man that Lorelei met, fell in love with, and moved to Ireland to live with. I haven't met him yet but from everything she's said, he's a sweetheart. I'm really, really, really happy for both of them. They go about Ireland pretty regularly, finding interesting hikes, walks, farms, pubs and....

That was quite a hike that day. They climbed Croagh Patrick Mountain. I think Croagh means Saint. Nice view, eh?


People make pilgrimages to Saint Patrick Church at the top of the mountain.

It makes me very happy to think of Lorelei dancing through the woods with her young man. That's the thing about caring for someone: you really want them to be happy in their life. I think she looks happy, don't you?



Lovely spot. I'll ask Lorelei where they were that day. When you go to Ireland, you can take this walk too and see this view.

Recently, Lorelei and Roland traveled to Belgium, where Lorelei's mom was born and where her maternal grandmother lives. As long as I've known Lorelei, she's told me wonderful stories about her bonnemammy. And of course she wanted Roland to meet her.

Naturally you don't travel all that way and skip seeing the sights. When Allison and I went to Europe after she graduated high school, we visited Mont St. Michel too.

I need to ask her about this one. What the hell is an anchor doing in the front yard of a castle, for crying out loud? Oh well.

So that brings us up to the present -- okay, this is a few weeks ago. Roland cooked Thanksgiving dinner while Lorelei

trimmed their tree. Isn't it beautiful?

It's kind of hard for me to really "get" that Lorelei lives in Dublin, in Ireland. That's weird, you know? It'll be more understandable when I go visit her. I do miss her, a lot.

Stories told by flowers: A walk in the park

Delicate. Lovely. Soft-looking. Always surprising. Flowers, wherever you find them, are wonderful. They fill the world with every color and the most delicious smells.

This is the quintessential Florida scene -- wet, wet, wet and green, with some Spanish moss thrown in for good measure, of course. Although Florida is not a great place for hiking, we decided to "hike" through this park. It's called John Chesnut Sr. County Park and it's located in Palm Harbor, Florida.

It covers about 255 acres and was built in cooperation with the Army Corps of Engineers. The reason Florida isn't a great place for hiking is because 7 months out of the year it's too hot and humid to move with any speed and there are no hills or mountains in Florida, so there's just these flat, boring stretches of path through the humidity.

And truly, in the months of June to October, the bugs will eat you alive in a close environment like this. The air barely moves at all. It's really amazing -- people who've lived here for years don't seem to notice that you can't actually get any air when you're outside. On our walk through Chesnut Park we were warned about the dangers of messing with the wildlife. We've heard stories, like everyone has, but we haven't seen anything scarier than a medium sized spider.
The park is built beside the rather large Tarpon Lake and is full of swamps, so the Army Corps of Engineers built these cool raised boardwalks. The boardwalks do two things: keep your feet dry and keep humans out of the marshy, swampy, somewhat delicate terrain.

Walking through the Florida jungle on these boardwalks in late October was almost pleasant. There was a tiny breeze, it was cloudy and the temperature wasn't much higher than 79 degrees. What kept it from actually being pleasant was, of course, the humidity, which was probably in 90% range. Yuck. But the marsh is full of wondrous life.

This is what fall looks like here. Pretty much that's it, the one leaf. We saw some orangish-brown needles on the pine trees. It was just some old dead branches.

It's really a lovely place and easy to enjoy. There are plenty of benches for relaxing, watching the wildlife and listening to the sounds of the water creatures. There's even a swing.


It's truly unfortunate that I still associate relaxing outside with smoking. I'm happy to say that the urges passed quickly and Kim helped me by talking through it with me. He's very understanding -- he quit smoking more than 30 years ago.

Stories told by flowers: Escaping $cientology

No one wants to admit they were sucked in by a slimy, mind-controlling cult. Well, here I am admitting it. Yup. Got sucked right in. Hook, line and sinker. It's an awful thing, waking up one day and realizing you've been had. Really had.

Actually it doesn't quite work that way. The waking up takes a little while. There are clues and hints as you go along that all is not right. But, being the good cultist, you ignore these and keep your head firmly in the ground (or up your butt, peeking out your bellybutton, depending on your "in-ness"). The indoctrination is slow and subtle. At each step of the way, what you're being told about the cult and what you're doing in the cult seem reasonable. Seem reasonable. That's important. You see, if you were really thinking like your usual self, you would clearly see that nothing of what you are told or what you are doing is logical. Big difference.

Think for moment: what would your reaction be if someone said, "We can totally and completely solve all your personal problems. All you need to do is take this free course." Sound too good to be true? That's because it is. But if you're in some emotional pain, or you're young and 'searching' or you like the idea of having THE answers or maybe you just want to be led around by your nose, a free course that claims to be the SOLUTION sounds really wonderful. Let's go, where do I sign? There are many reasons people walk into the clutches of cults like the Moonies or Scientology or Amway Quixtar. And there are very good, well written books on the subject of mind-control as practiced by these cults. I recently read Steve Hassan's Combatting Cult Mind Control and, although his experience was with the Moonies, his description of the techniques used to 'trap' people applied perfectly to Scientology. I highly recommend this well-written book to anyone who has been in a cult, knows someone who's fallen prey, or just wants to understand how a cult works.

Well, this isn't a story about $cientology exactly. It's about a visit to a Caribbean island, I think it was Barbados. And the connection to $cientology is that they have a lovely ship that sails the Caribbean and is used as a 'religious retreat.' What that means is that $cientologists can go live on this ship for a few days or a few months and take courses and get other services. It's very expensive, but it's fun being there. The food is outrageously good. The side trips are wonderful, when you can get 'permission' to go. The ship is called the Freewinds and I made two trips, both at the request of my local $cientology organization.

I was really fortunate on one of these trips to have an opportunity to ride around the island and see lots of different things -- caverns, cafes, beautiful architecture, and incredible views. I'm not big on tourist-type shopping, but I really love the natural things and the people.


The coolest place we went was an orchid garden. A BIG orchid garden. I thought I'd gone to heaven:



My husband Kimball and I are very lucky -- we woke up. Even if it took us a little long to realize how ridiculous $cientology is, the important thing is we got the hell out. We've been 'declared suppressive' because we've spoken out against the cult and none of the people who were our friends are allowed to speak to us. It's such a bizarre experience to walk into a store and see someone you know and like and they won't even look at you. Weird. $cientology cannot allow the 'innies' to have conversations with the folks who have left. The bubble might burst.