BARE AND FREE

Volume 15
Number 4, June 2003

In this issue:

We Lost the Small Piece of Land

AANR Considers Reorganization

College Group Forms at Valdosta

Why I became a naturalist - Paul's story

Why I became a naturalist - Jamie's story

THANKS, from Sunny Oaks Haven Nudist Club/RV Park

Announcements

Calendar of Up Coming Events-Pool party at Cal & Jennifer's

The Lake is Available Every Weekend ALL Year


Tallahassee Naturally is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of naturist recreation in north Florida and nearby areas. The club is an affliate member of both the Naturist Society and the American Association for Nude Recreation.

Bare and Free is the official quarterly newletter of Tallahassee Naturally. It is alos available through e-mail by contacting us at tbaredev@tfn.net. Articles appearing in Bare and Free may be reprinted by other naturist publications, provided that credit is given. Photos, however, may only be reprinted with written permission.

Club members are encouraged to submit ariticles, news items, and photos for publication. Please address all submission to: Tallahassee Naturally, P.O. Box 6866, Tallahassee FL, 32314 or To the Editor, 502 Airport Drive, Tallahassee, FL, 32304 or smithj7@yahoo.com.

We Lost the Small Piece of Land

For almost three years, we have been trying to buy two adjoining pieces of land near Lloyd. The smaller one has now been sold, and somebody is building a house on it. It had beautiful home sites with big trees, a small pond, and a building that could have served as a temporary clubhouse.

The remaining piece of 17 acres has a bigger pond, a well, and electricity--but no building. Two lots crowded with smaller trees could possibly serve as home sites, leaving room for eight trailers--one of which would probably be for the caretaker.

The board is now considering whether we are still interested in the 17 acres, with no hope of ever expanding. We have always been aware of a long expensive fence line between the two properties.

The loss is filled with ironies. Three years ago, we had an investor willing to buy the small piece completely, but he got scared off by quarrelsomeness.

A year ago, we were just $2,000 from agreeing on a price to buy that same small piece. But we pulled back when we realized that renewals were not coming in as expected, and we no longer had the membership base to support the mortgage payments.

But we kept working on the project until we figured out a way to bypass the banks and buy land through investors. We needed just one more investor to make an offer on the small piece. So we advertised in The Bulletin. An investor called us--two days after we learned the land had already been sold. We have not heard from enough investors to buy the larger piece.

The board will be re-examining all of our options--including our second, third, and lesser choices of land. Once the board can make some recommendations, there will probably be a membership meeting to decide where we go now.

Time is running short. The offer of $15,000 in matching funds from the Thalheimer estate expires at the end of January.

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AANR Considers Reorganization

The American Association for Nude Recreation is considering the biggest reorganization in fifty years--one that would eliminate the regions (such as FANR). The rationale is that the organization has grown two big for volunteer efforts, and should rely on the full-time people at the AANR office. The AANR president would be downgraded to a one-year chairman limited to two terms. The Board of Trustees would retain ultimate authority--with 4 of the 14 seats reserved for the very biggest clubs that paid $3,000 or more for the privilege.

The plan calls for clubs--as well as members--to pay membership dues. Our current level of involvement would cost $100, and would probably mean higher AANR fees for our club members.

Though a lot of thought went into it, the plan comes without warning, and too late for any friendly amendments before the AANR convention in August. Some clubs around the country are complaining about feeling stampeded.

Details have been hard to come by. Paul has been asking, and so far the answers sound reassuring. We read that the seven regions would be redrawn into seven districts of equal population. That sounded like splitting Florida, and taking Tallahassee out of the state. But we have been assured that Florida will not be split. Though the plan made no mention of student rates (which our club worked for years to establish), we are told that they will remain unchanged.

Some of Paul's other questions have gone unanswered--such as what clout the members will still have, other than waiting two years to vote somebody out of office. He has questioned why any club would pay to send a delegate to a convention where nothing is decided except the winners of sports trophies. And he has questioned the wisdom of limiting candidates to the self-proclaimed, rather than having a nominating committee seek out the most qualified.

Depending on the additional answers we get, we may have to send a delegate to the AANR convention in Tennessee this August. A question-and-answer period is scheduled at the end of the FANR convention in June, but nothing will be decided there. We had not planned to attend that one.

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College Group Forms at Valdosta

We have been contacted by an internet discussion group called Valdosta State University Naturists: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VSUnaturist/. They have about 40 members--most of them students from this area. (Anyone under the age of 30 is invited to join.)

The organizer attended our Greek Athletic Meet last year, and visited our lake again later in the summer. He has been trying to organize a group visit, but so far, the group has been mostly talk and no action. We are inviting them to join us at our next Full-Moon Skinny-Dip.

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Why Am I a Naturist?

--Paul

Reporters frequently ask me why people become naturists. My answer is that few people join a naturist organization for a single reason; it has to make sense for several reasons before they try it.

I have no memory of a traumatic first naturist experience. I didn't become a naturist; I was born naked. I believe most others were too, but somehow the continuity of their lives got broken. In my case, my mother used to set the big wash tubs in the back yard, to heat in the sun on hot summer days. There was a bare-butt photograph of me and my sister getting into the tubs at about ages 3 and 4.

That same pair of tubs served for mixed bathing in the kitchen on Saturday nights. First my little brother and sister, then me and the sister near my age, then my parents. My parents' bedroom had a huge double door that was never closed. The outhouse was a two-seater. My grandparents' wealthier family had a three-seater. So far as I know, that was the way most people lived in the countryside. We got an indoor bathroom just before I reached puberty, so I don't know how much longer the old arrangement would have continued.

Two creeks joined on our farm. Unfortunately, the water dried up to a trickle during the warm months, so real swimming was impossible. I remember a hot day when I was six, and my father sent me and my sister to take off our clothes and lie down in the cool water. For me at least, that cooling-off method worked all the way through high school and college. I also discovered that when the huge cornfields grew tall, I could take off my clothes and go native in my own jungle. There were few spare moments in busy farm life; those moments had to be savored.

At age nine, I discovered the thrill of sleeping nude. But public nudity was an entirely different thing. Once a week during the summer, the school bus would take us to a lake. I remember the changing room. With my shirt hanging down around me, I would face into a corner and slip into or out of my swimsuit with great speed. Then came pubic hair, and I was ready to show the world. The pants came off first, and went on last. At this same age, some boys decided the floor was dirty or wet, and insisted on changing on top of the benches--at eye level. I never went quite that far, but I had successfully passed the age of shyness.

I read Walden at an early age, and realized the importance of living simply in nature. I increasingly felt a near-religious awe of nature--a respect that developed largely through my experience as a Boy Scout. During the 1960s and '70s, no Boy Scout campout seemed complete without a skinny-dip. I worked several summers at a camp where we hustled the kids out Saturday morning, so there would be time for a staff skinny-dip before we also left for the weekend.

One summer, I worked at a camp in Ohio with a separate staff beach. We skinny-dipped nearly every evening. On one Saturday night, most of the younger staff members without cars were stuck in camp--along with me, who lived too far away for a trip home. So we dreamed up an adventure bolder than anything the older staff could brag about. We stripped down, canoed across the lake to the Girl Scout camp, and skinny-dipped in their swimming area. At the Baptist camp down the road, parents came each Sunday morning for a worship service. That morning they found a new camp sign: Body Beautiful Nudist Camp. The cabins had cutsie nursery-rhyme names. The one closest to the road was labeled "The Three Bears." We altered that spelling. Parents enjoyed a good chuckle, but they never could figure out who pulled that prank.

In 1970, I took off traveling around the world. In Belize, the second country on my itinerary, I first experienced skinny-dipping with a group of both sexes. There were several other natural experiences in nature--from Costa Rica, to Greece, to Australia.

Genealogy is today researched mostly by computer. Back then, it meant filling the car with cheap gas and driving across the country from county courthouse, to township clerk's office, to overgrown cemetery. Sometimes I stayed with new-found relatives; sometimes I camped beside a creek in an abandoned woods. An open-air bath in the morning, and I was on my way to another day of research. If I had missed my morning bath, or if the day turned hot and sweaty (without car air-conditioning), I could pull over by nearly any river and bathe undisturbed under the bridge.

I had skinny-dipped in eight countries and a dozen states before ever setting foot in a nudist resort. That came in 1982, when I began doing dissertation research at the American Nudist Research Library on the grounds of Cypress Cove in Florida. My topic was the ancient Gymnosophists, or naked philosophers of India. I was on my way back from Christmas vacation, and it must have been the coldest day of the year. Everyone was bundled up. I did see one nude elderly couple in the dining room. I resolved that my next visit would be during the summer. On that next visit, the librarian invited me to strip down and jump in the pool. It all seemed so natural.

But I still was not an official card-carrying member of any naturist organization. That came in 1986. I was negotiating with The Naturist Society on the publication of some of my research findings, when they received an inquiry from Steve about starting a local naturist group in Tallahassee. They asked me to check him out. Three of us met for our first outing the next weekend, and that's how I became one of the founding members of Tallahassee Naturally.

The rest has been a history of public service. I got to be another founder when the Florida Association for Nude Recreation formed in 1991. (I happened to come up with the name, which has since gone national.) As state Education Chairman and national Youth Chairman, I started the JFANR Camp--the longest-running youth camp in AANR history, and now spreading nationwide.

Then I was prevailed on to serve as local club president. It took me seven years to shake off that job--during which time membership quadrupled from 32 to 131.

A thoughtful person has many interests. I have been free to pursue most of them, but the freedom to live naturally demanded an increasing portion of my time, because the current frontier of individual liberty had been drawn there. My writing turned more and more to nudity-related topics. The newly formed Naturist Education Foundation asked me to direct a national task force that produced Naturists: Upholders of Strong Family Values for distribution to state and local lawmakers nationwide. In 1988, I started the "Art Follows Nature" series on nude art that runs in Travel Naturally. Fifteen years later, I am now writing my fiftieth article in that series.

No, there was no sudden moment when I became a naturist. It has all been a natural continuity.

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Why Am I a Naturualist

As the editor, I requested that folks share why they became a naturalist. Only one person responded. However, since I asked others to share, that I should tell you why I am a naturualist. I was pretty much raised in a very strict fundamentalist home. (Yes, you took your shower with your clothes on.) Plain and simple, nakedness had a direct correlation to sex and therefore “bad” or “tainted”. I hadn’t given much thought to the idea until I had my first child.

At that point, I wanted to be sure that my first born would not feel uncomfortable with his body. I didn’t want him to have the same teaching that I was taught. However, at that point the idea of naturalism had still not entered my mind.

Later, I was blessed with a daughter. Her birth mom drank while she was pregnant with my precious little lady and my daughter ended up with some alcohol related brain damage. The area of the brain dealing with judgment is affected by this prenatal disease. I learned from the internet groups consisting of parents with kids who had similar brain damage that many of these kids grow up and go to jail for inappropriate sexual behavior and behaviors labeled as indecent exposure.

What I saw was that my little lady did not like to wear clothing and enjoyed being natural. She did not seem to know WHEN it was OKAY and WHEN it was NOT OKAY to roap around the house in her birthsuit. On internet list group, I would hear stories in which parents were becoming distraught over situations that appeared to me as perfectly innocent.

For example, one family had a summer home in Michigan. There was a lake behind their house. Their 10 year daughter anxious to go swimming, peeled off her clothes and jumped in the lake. Her parents were outranged and concerned wanting our advice. I asked if there were other people around that were offended. Their response was no, just the family. I secretly wondered if the girl was a boy would they had been so upset. I feared that these parents would teach their child what I had really learned in my home – to hate my body.

Having known Paul for a long time, I decided that I needed to introduce my little lady to naturalism. She would have a place where she could feel comfortable being free and unashamed. She could learn that we live in a society that had people in it that felt uncomfortable with the naked body and learn WHEN and WHERE rather than it is WRONG.

I know I made the correct decision. As time went on and parents had the same issue of their kids not wanting to wear clothes, I periodically brought up naturalism as a lifestyle choice for their kids. I learned that the Europeans who did not seem to have this complaint already took their kids to nude beaches. A couple of Americans e-mailed me privately and said that they had found had come to the same conclusion but were to shy to let others on our list know that they were nudist.

It is so sad, that often in the name of modesty, we can make our kids feel uncomfortable about their bodies. I didn't want to pass on that feeling to my children. So now you know pretty much why I became a naturalist.

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THANKS, from Sunny Oaks Haven Nudist Club/RV Park

We want to thank everyone that came out to enjoy our Memorial Day Weekend Cookout and let the others that were unable to be here with us, know to make your plans for our next event. As many of you already know new additions and improvements have enhanced the park’s attractiveness. The new overnight trailers have come in very handy over the holiday weekend. A single vacant RV site found good use as a walk through from activity to activity and tents doted the available spaces. The canopy pavilion and screen room filled by day and by night. While the pool was crowded from time to time it was constantly in use. Sunday brought the grill out with ribs and chicken sufficient to stuff all. Baked beans, potato salad, and assorted other contributions accented the feast. Florida, Georgia and Alabama were represented. New friends from Tampa, South Florida, Macon, Valdosta and many other locations were here.We are always having a cookout and Karaoke singing/dancing every weekend, so come and PARTY WITH US.We are a LEGAL zoned Private Nudist Club/RV Park here in Suwannee County, in north central Florida close to I-75 & I-10, Live Oak,Fl. Stay abreast of activities from our web page: www.geocities.com/tom695us/nudist_lifestyles.html

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Announcements

The lake will be open on Friday afternoons during June, July, and August.

Small group of members meeting month to make suggestions for our website. Your input would be appreciated. E-mail or call. Contact information on the website.

Needed articles for newsletter. Some suggestions: Still would love to see stories on: Why you became a naturalist (name not neccessary). Also read my story. Their was a little 10 year old female that peeled off her clothes and jumped into the lake. I feel her parents would not have been as concerned if she were a boy - What do you think? Are girls taught earlier that they should be modest?

The AANR park guide, The North American Guide to Nude Recreation is now on sale at the lake. The price is $13. This is a plain-text book without the pictures of earlier editions--available at half the price.

We may have been premature in withdrawing our recommendation of Navarre Beach after it was designated a future parking lot for a state park. (The state parks have been vehement against any nudity.) We are now hearing reports that the park system has been slow to take over, while the sheriff's department has somewhat backed off of land where park rangers should have the authority. It's still a cat-and-mouse game, but the game continues.

The Gator Sink was included in the land St. Joe Paper Company sold to Wakulla Springs.

Female nudists - Check out http://www.keeper.com/. A suggested product that can allow, us females, to participate in nude activities, including swimming and hot tubbing all month long with no hassles and no messes.
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    2003 Calendar of Up Coming Events


    June:
    5-13 Nude U, Lake Como near Tampa
    8 Board meeting
    8-13 JFANR camp, Lake Como
    13 Full-Moon Skinny-Dip. Call Paul at 222-1886.
    13-15 FANR Convention, Lake Como
    28 Pool party at Cal & Jennifer's. Directions came in the e-mail notifying you of this newsletter. Plan to arrive anytime after 3:00. We will eat around 7:00. Bring a dish to share.
    29 Picnic. Grant will host.
    July
    4 The lake is open, starting at noon.
    11 Full-Moon Skinny-Dip
    11-13 National Nude Weekend. Campout
    13 Open House & board meeting
    26 Pool party at Doug's
    27 Picnic & seminar. Doug will host.

    Check calendar updates on our web page: http://www.tallanaturally.org