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From '86 to '88 I lived in Alaska, including Anchorage, Eagle River, Sterling (Soldotna), and North Pole (Badger area - Fairbanks). I spent most of my time in Alaska doing the following:
1. Taking pictures of sunsets.
2. Walking door to door.
3. Mapping streets and highways onto 3x5 cards.
4. Trying to avoid being punched by crazy psychotic companions.
5. Trying to avoid getting shot by reclusive Alaskans.
6. Avoiding masturbation.
7. Confessing to my Mormon leaders about masturbation.
8. Baptizing a few lonely misfits.
9. Learning how to be a salesman when not going door to door (seriously - that's what they teach the nineteen year old pretentious pompous snotty nosed know-it-all kids who go on Mormon missions - professional sales techniques).
I have one sister in hippie town Homer. She first moved there working on the spit in a cannery. Now she has about 7 acres and a small house, and is a small ship captain.
Anyway, so yes there are a few former cult members here.
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/
A bit more:
I don't believe in the new religion Atheism Plus, nor in anything similar (eg: the assumption that an atheist is automatically an ultra-leftist, and that to question that position means a person is not a true atheist).
I particularly appreciate the work of Hitchens, Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, Dawkins, Sagan, and some of Sam Harris's work. I suggest checking them all out if you've not done so thus far. Pinker & Hitchens have been particularly useful in the realm of questing both the left & right's presumptions. I think we need to question all sides, and not just assume that the "exact-extreme-opposite" of a given position is any better than the first one we used to embrace. Anyway...
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Addendum:
Boo fucking hoo. My profile got removed from the "mission alumni" database at
http://www.mission.net/alaska/anchorage
...a place where former missionaries get to tell how things are going in their lives, after I asked the site admins of mission.net to find out why the Alaska mission webmaster wasn't responding to my emails to get my previous profile text approved. Instead of responding themselves (the main site admins) they deleted my profile.
Ok, well, now I'm working to re-add a new profile, with even more honest text inside.
Hey, on the profile setup page is the following text:
"Here is where you can say anything you want about yourself. Tell us about kids, church callings, your testimony, a recent vacation or anything you feel like sharing." (emphasis added)
Anything I want? I don't think so. You can only say "anything you want" if you're still a brainwashed true believing Mormon.
You see my friends, Mormons are NOT very nice. Not kind. Not caring.
They're fucking control freaks, period. That's the bottom line. Cult members, nothing more, dressed up in pretty suits & dresses. Fucking cult members.
This type of thing goes on in Mormonism all the time: Allow you, who you are, to exist among them ONLY if you tow the strict party line!
My previous profile which they removed me for just simply stated my life status. Married. Have a kid. Oh and my personal website linked over to this blog. Perhaps that was the tipping point for them. But the truth is the truth. "You can say anything you want?" Nope. In Mormonism you can't be who you are, deep down, as a normal human being.
Anyway I did submit another add request for my profile on that site. I rather suspect they'll either ignore or delete it again. Well, when you're in a scaredy-cat fearful cult like Mormonism, it's very important to protect yourself & all other Mormons from people & ideas which may free you from the cult.
Fuckers.
Latest profile re-add request screen shot:
[...probably not appearing there anytime soon. But the cult can't stop freedom on the the Internet!]
