I had a little sudden luck amd just had to share a bit of it! And happy holidays to you too!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, I got your card and i just wanted to thank you. Thanks for the help and hopefully I can return the favor sometime.

Happy Holidays

Hm – I knew Sugg left Creative Loafing in 2008, but forgot he was still an owner…!

And thank you, but I don’t deserve any thanks. My little part is nothing compared to what others have done. I’ve sacrificed nothing, except maybe some lunch hours at the library before there was a Google. 😀

WOW. Holy shit. That counts as living dangerously, back in that day. Thank you for not just talking the talk, but walking the walk. THANK YOU FOR BEING A MERCHANT OF CHAOS.

… and yeah, John Sugg may as well be In. He never did a damn thing about the huge story all those years it was in his backyard — left all that heavy lifting to the SP Times. And now it’s not merely in his backyard — now it’s his landlord. He likes to make such a scene about being a stubbornly independent contrarian, but he knows who his Master is.

I didn’t go to the Kisser talk, and I don’t think I knew about it until you mentioned it! I looked up when it was and it pre-dates my first post to a.r.s. by some months. I’d read both Dianetics and Paulette Cooper’s “Scandal of Scientology” before I was twenty, thanks to my literate family.

I was a part-time process server and had to go to the courthouse in Clearwater in the morning to get paperwork and I’d seen the toy navy with the little metal briefcases — this was before the kinder, gentler pastel Sea Org uniforms.

Among those who at the time thought Scn wasn’t for me but perhaps it was helping someone somewhere and although they acted kind of victim-y and persecuted when I really didn’t see anyone getting in their way, maybe they *were* doing some good.

I thought a good way to find out might be a social impact assessment. Designing one would make a good school project, too. It didn’t take long to notice that the information Scn provided about itself in its own collateral wasn’t aligning with information I was getting in more neutral sources. It just seemed like everything was distorted.

I posted some critical questions on a.r.s. It was early 94 I think. I’d been reading it for awhile. I wanted to be all anthropological about it. I tried to be respectful to everyone’s feelings, but I thought it was important to get past that and see what it was about Scientology that really bothered people. And if it was just people who weren’t comfortable with something different, or what.

I took up a Flag FSM on his a.r.s.-posted offer to tour Flag. That’s a story I’ve told before.

Around this time I also heard about a young man who had died at Flag. The person who told me thought there seemed to be unanswered questions about the death. This was before Lisa McPherson died.

But when I saw for myself –before my tour of Flag, when I and another critic were driving along after brazenly walking into the Fort Harrison to pick up whatever in-house printed material we could to ponder later, a line of mostly young people walking fast single file from one building downtown Clearwater, dressed in black, seemingly herded by two guards…and the one girl with bruises on her face. I could not forget. I will not forget. I hope she is out. That was when I decided I didn’t want to try to do the anthropology project. Especially when the Flag FSM threatened me all tone-40 with a private investigation to dig up my crimes during my lovely tour, when I asked about the running people in black who looked like they hadn’t slept in days.

Yes, I picketed. That first Internet Picket downtown Clearwater, with Jeff Jacobsen and Dennis Erlich and Arnie Lerma and some others, not sure how they feel about being named out loud. A handful of us on the street, and hundreds of uniforms hiding inside the buildings. You could see them trying not to peek through all the closed window blinds.

Yes, I got a Kobringram. It’s probably printed out somewhere in a box. It occurred to me that Scn, Inc. is a bubble and I didn’t exist inside of it.

Then Jeff J. found the Clearwater police web page asking for information about Lisa McPherson. A.r.s. blew up.

I got a phone call on my office phone from Bennetta Slaughter. That was disconcerting as hell.

I had lunch with Gabe Cazares a few times. That was enlightening as hell.

But I was also a single mom. My kids are grown now, but at the time, I had priorities.

I visited Jeff and Mark Bunker and Stacy and Bob at the LMT a few times, and supported their important work, and worked with others to try to construct a timeline of Scn, Inc’s activities in Clearwater, and wrote a piece for Clambake when Marty Rathbun was being scrubbed from Scn official history in 2005. Because I’m one of those merchants of chaos. 😀

I also wrote a piece about Scn for the-then Weekly Planet and submitted it to…John Sugg. I do not remember the year, but probably before 2000. He wanted to run it but only if I would give my byline. I didn’t want to – at the time I’d been having weird credit things happen and had other reasons to worry about my kids. I think I told him there was nothing in it that wasn’t true, but he never ran it. I just yesterday saw the new issue of Freedom. Sugg’s name is on the masthead. *facepalm*

No, I didn’t have a dog in the race other than just being human with concerns about my community and what was happening to some people in it.

I do remember the joking on a.r.s. when Scns were being told critics were being paid by Big Pharma to post negatively about Scn, Inc., and the a.r.s.c.c.(wdne) were all complaining about their checks being late.

Hahahaha hey homie! You didn’t go to this thing, did you? I’ve always been sorry I didn’t save the Oracle follow-up.

…but seriously, I just got a chill down my spine re-reading your comments in this thread…

I don’t have to hope you will understand my tentativeness here – I *know* you will because of what you have experienced according to the story you shared here.

You and I were at USF at the same time 😀

I’m sure you’ll understand why I am asking: If you were never in, why do you use so much Scientology-speak?

Yeah, my mom got it for me for college. A beige Toshiba, with good ol’ Windows 3.11, After Dark flying toasters screensaver and detachable trackball! Which my cat was constantly dislodging while I typed term papers, causing me to have to reboot to re-attach it and lose any unsaved work. By god that cat taught me to Ctrl-S.

It was not exactly what we’d call advanced today, which is why I was futzing around with Usenet and Gopher. There was not much World Wide Web to futz around with yet. Really it’s amazing they managed to disseminate as much data as they did given the primitive computing conditions available. Karin Spaink really was a trailblazer.

wow, you had a laptop in ’93/4?