Re: Southern Belle or anybody- What's the status now? Wilma/Katrina

I think the loneliness projecting from the people I meet here in Florida is what gets to me the most. There are just so many older people who move to Florida, to get away from the cold or to experience one long "last summer of their life" but they get here and their spouse dies and or they beome isolted from family and friends. The only contact that many have with other people is with their butcher drug pushing doctors who feed them drugs as they wait for the next medical procedure they hope will prolong their life. It is such an unhealthy way to live.

I think a lot of the older Floridians don't want to bother their offspring or they don't like them so they come here to either hide from their families or they come here to die. I think that spirit began rubbing off on me but I am getting better now. I know elephants in their last dying daysm, get a cue to leave the herd and travel to a place to die...an elephant boneyard. Isolated and alone, with their homes damaged by two or three or four hurricanes, many Floridians in these years of multiple hurricanes, never get the rest they came for. They often seem so desperate to get their lives back in order. I tend to empathize with those around me and I believe this spirit had infected me. It may be some kind of instinct for some to get away from theor offspring so they don't contaminate those they love and their children with that spirit of death. Maybe it was just a lesson I needed to learn. In any case,I don't feel that way any more. I don't feel a blanket of darkness draped over my soul now. It has been replaced by a dream. I learned my lesson but somehow now I need to find a healthier me.

Sometimes I have magical converations with delightful older people and it makes my day but I wish there were healthy salad bars.I have not seen a single dedicaed Salad bar since I have been in Florida. I may be moving to New Orleans next or some other place but wherever I go, I heed to find a better way to eat right. My diet has returned to almost being as bad as my pre-curezone days. It is hard to appreciate good food until you have access to healthy food for years and then you can't afford to eat good food or dom't have access to healthy food any more. I don't think most floridians eat much salad. I have been eating so poorly since arriving here. That has to change.

I have traveled quite a bit through the devastaion in the South for my new job. Working along the Gulf, I don't see the way we now live in communities of isolation as a healthy thing. When I lived in Mexico the people were poor but their lives were very rich with family and friends. I wish there was a way to rebuild the South into more healthy communities then the way they are now. New Orleans is like the Night of the LIving dead after dark. Broken lives and broken down flooded cars everywhere. Why build it back if we can't make communities into something more healthy and sustainable.

There must be a way to build communities that encourage families and friends to have a reason to see each other more often than just on hollidays. This is something that has been on my mind. I dream of a new kind of community with the best of what rural and city life has to offer in small communities of like minded souls. Communities of people surrounding a gathering place where there are community gardens, farmers markets, affordable energy efficient housing, clean water and a place where doctors are replaced with herb bars and salad bars so we will not need those doctors any more. I dream about such a place in South and all over the world. The gathering places might bring back a sense of community and help dispell the loneliness built into the city way of life. There must be a way to design communities in some more healthy way. I can see it but it would take a whole new way of doing business. I hope to start a community like that...turn that dream a reality...

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