(Photography) Why you love the place you live

[aihfl]

Well the rainy season is upon us in La Florida. I'll miss the sunsets off my patio until about October or so.

 

[herbavore]

That's gorgeous. I need to post something. It's that time of year for this thread and for me. I love that my son saw the beauty of the world. I remember once driving out of the neighborhood on the way to school (pretty mundane compared with the beach, the redwoods, etc) and my other son, who had just started kindergarten said, "We live on a beautiful planet." Those things made me so happy as a mom. Caleb was always the kind of kid to call attention to beauty wherever he saw it. He also had a desire to see other parts of the world but he got so discouraged after getting the felony possession charge because he assumed he would never be able to do it. I really don't honestly know how it would have impacted his life travel-wise but it makes me sad to think about it. What a way to kick an 18 year old in the gut. OK, enough re-living the despair; time to honor his love of beauty with a good photo. Post some good ones in his honor, it'll do my heart good.

 

[aihfl]

I'd love to go back to Japan, but I don't know if I should risk it. The two things on my criminal record are alcohol-related misdemeanors. The Japanese disembarkation card asks if you've been convicted of a crime. The unofficial word from the US Dept. of State is checking yes will invite further scrutiny and almost certainly will cause you to to be denied entry and that Japan does not have access to US criminal record databases (unless you are a fugitive and Interpol has been notified). But no one seems to know (or will admit to) what happens if you check no. I can't even go to Canada with the DUI. Isn't that ridiculous? And the Canadians do have access to US Databases.

 

[herbavore]

I'd love to go back to Japan, but I don't know if I should risk it. The two things on my criminal record are alcohol-related misdemeanors. The Japanese disembarkation card asks if you've been convicted of a crime. The unofficial word from the US Dept. of State is checking yes will invite further scrutiny and almost certainly will cause you to to be denied entry and that Japan does not have access to US criminal record databases (unless you are a fugitive and Interpol has been notified). But no one seems to know (or will admit to) what happens if you check no. I can't even go to Canada with the DUI. Isn't that ridiculous? And the Canadians do have access to US Databases.

Yes, it's ridiculous! I have a friend whose son is a very well known surf photographer. He has traveled all over the world in his career but when he went to cross into Canada from Seattle he was denied entry for a Minor in Possession charge for weed when he was in high school! Canada can be surprisingly crazy sometimes.

 

[FLA]

I'd love to go back to Japan, but I don't know if I should risk it. The two things on my criminal record are alcohol-related misdemeanors. The Japanese disembarkation card asks if you've been convicted of a crime. The unofficial word from the US Dept. of State is checking yes will invite further scrutiny and almost certainly will cause you to to be denied entry and that Japan does not have access to US criminal record databases (unless you are a fugitive and Interpol has been notified). But no one seems to know (or will admit to) what happens if you check no. I can't even go to Canada with the DUI. Isn't that ridiculous? And the Canadians do have access to US Databases.

Wow, is that exclusive to certain countries like Japan? Also, is this something new with Canada? I have 3 DUI'S and a '74 misdemeanor conviction for cannabis. I was charged with a felony for 3 grams of pot in '74, but got a plea deal. We just went to Canada a couple years ago and they didn't say anything. Also the Netherlands 3 times without incident.

 

[aihfl]

What is that big yellow thing in the sky? Why I believe it is actually the sun!

FLA, I think the thing with Canada is post 9-11. Also, if you're convictions are 10+ years old, I believe you are deemed "rehabilitated" by Canadian law. I still have quite a while to go on that one. And I think this is hardly unique to Japan. The Chinese also ask these sorts of questions but I haven't been to mainland China and have only been to Hong Kong pre-reversion. The conundrum with Japan, though, is apparently there is no "expiration" like there is in Canada, so do you risk checking "no," potentially being barred from entry for life? I can't really remember about the EU. I do remember the guy in Italy didn't even look at the page with my picture on it, just flipped to a blank page stamped it and returned it hardly even looking up. Don't remember in Prague or the UK either, as it wasn't a concern at the time. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't a question in Peru. Anyway, there's plenty of shit I haven't seen in this country, so I guess I'll just bide my time and worry about that later.

 

[aihfl]

Well that was short-lived. Pouring again. Shouldn't complain because it's going to be that way for months...

 

[herbavore]

Well that was short-lived. Pouring again. Shouldn't complain because it's going to be that way for months...

We need rain exchanges. We will be in severe drought now for months to come. Crazy.

 

[aihfl]

We have received as much rain in the past ten days as we have in the entire year up to that point. We are constantly in a water shortage situation because of unchecked growth. When I got here in the 1990s, Orlando was a big small town. I remember about 20 years ago, a dairy farmer in the tiny hamlet of Oxford, Florida sued unsuccessfully to stop a retirement community from being developed, one that now has a population well over 100k and sprawls over parts of three counties and lo and behold, look what's happening now:

 

[Xorkoth]

Big rocks are moving in? Damn, I hate it when that happens!

Where I live, in a popular town in Appalachia, shit tons of retirees from Florida are moving here and fucking the place up with their yuppieness. And driving terribly and bringing all their suburban big box stores and shit and gentrifying the fuck out of this place. I own my home so in that sense it benefits me but the population has swelled like 30% since I moved here 10 years ago and the growth is accelerating.

 

[aihfl]

Those aren't big rocks, they're sinkholes because the aquifer is being sucked dry. I'll probably end up in Appalachia too, after retirement, but I'm not looking for gentrification, I'm looking for solitude. Ergo I'm thinking Eastern Kentucky or West Virginia. No thank you to that Highlands-Cashiers crowd, or even worse, Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge (I grew up in TN), which is way gaudier than anything in Florida. I'll probably stay a Florida resident though, because this is a great place to be a geezer. If you're over 65 and have lived in your home at least 20 years, you pay no property tax. And it's not a bad place to spend the winter.

 

[Xorkoth]

Oh damn, that sucks. Yeah I love Appalachia, I'm a transplant myself so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. But it's the only place I've ever felt truly at home.

 

[aihfl]

It sucks for the people living there. Me? I don't give a rats ass because A. I was smart enough to look at geologic maps and determine that I wasn't buying in a sinkhole zone and B. that retirement community called "The Villages" and the people who live there embody everything that's wrong with Florida as a whole, IMO. In fact, I wouldn't mind if the whole damn place and everyone in it (especially the golf carts they use to get around) got sucked down into the bowels of the earth. To paraphrase one of my favorite writers, Carl Hiaasen, they are getting an eviction notice from God.

EDIT: I wish I knew how to post a sound file. I live on a lake and the sound of the frogs at night are deafening. I love the rainy season night sounds here. It feels like being in the middle of the Everglades, as far away from a city as can be imagined. I'd open my windows if it wasn't so humid it would cause everything inside to mildew, just to better hear all those night sounds. A reminder that Mother Nature is the landlord here, not me.

 

[Xorkoth]

Haha, my good friend's parents moved to The Villages a few years ago to retire. I had no idea it was so massive.

There are amazing night forest frog sounds in the summer where I live, too. By July/August it's a massive wall of sound that has a rhythm to it. It's really loud but I find it incredibly soothing to fall asleep to. My house is in the forest on a mountainside, I've got a nice spring at the top of my driveway and a creek at the edge of my property. There are a lot of birds here, some migratory/seasonal and some year-round. I have a really nice audio recorder and I am building a collection of sounds of the area.

I don't have air conditioning, I'm at 2500 feet and a lot of people don't have it up here. Fortunately I live in a nice sheltered cove which tends to be about 5 degrees or so cooler than town. Basically from April through October I have all my doors and windows open all the time, day and night. I have a couple of ceiling fans that rotate in reverse which pulls air in on the first floor and pushes it up and out constantly. Before I did that, everything would be moldy/mildewy every summer because it's really humid here too.

 

[aihfl]

Cool about the elevation. I have very specific criteria, the most important being that the July-August average high cannot be above 85. Otherwise WTF is the point of going north for the summer? My ex and I were going to retire to southern Vermont, but the house had to be sold when we split. That house didn't have AC either, though there was an ancient window unit on the ground floor we never turned on, lest it cause the entire New England power grid to collapse. There'd be at least one heat wave every summer where the daytime highs were over 90 and I just retreated into the basement where we turned the partially finished side into a den/my home office and that's where the TV was. Anyway, my ex was from New England but I grew up in Tennessee, and while the natural beauty of northern New England is something to behold, the people aren't. The people in Stephen King novels? That isn't a caricature.

 

[Xorkoth]

The average high here is smack dab on 85 in July, nighttime lows average 63. Of course if you're up in elevation at all it's a little cooler. Also the air just feels nice, it's humid but not stuffy or suffocating at all, the air feels really fresh. My house fluctuates pretty reliably down to 70 at nights and up to 75-78 depending on the temperature. Since the doors and windows are always open, it basically feels like I'm half living outside. It took a little getting used to but I don't even like air conditioning anymore... unless it's a place that needs it, then I'm into it.

 

[aihfl]

Closer to a sunset than we've had in over a week. Looks like the cypress trees are about to catch on fire.

 

[Xorkoth]

Nice. Don't you wish cameras could actually capture the colors of sunset? I've never been able to get very close even. One time back in like 2002 or 2003, I captured it actually really well, with an old camera too, but I think that picture was lost with my old computer. It was an amazing sky full of mammary clouds that was just absolutely on fire with oranges and reds. The color in the photo was about 80% there, I sure wish I still had it.

 

[mal3volent]

Here's a couple of sky pics

 

[Tubbs]