NewPray.com - Archive Winter 1989-'90

I'd made the decision to publicize my prophecy against US wars almost immediately after collage, and around the same time found myself writing poetry, surprising myself, because I'd never done much creative writing before, and because my work showed promise.   I wanted to continue both those activities, so I decided an abandoned family cottage was the right placed to start, although the small home bordered on unlivable because of a rotted main beam, and also far from places for potential employment.   I knew those I reached would need to start a snowball of support fairly quickly, or I'd be homeless for the winter, as I was broke, and my car needed a transmission.

Just in case, I tried to winterize the cottage.   When that failed, I figured my being homeless was a one time lapse in support, considering the gravity of the message I was delivering.

In late September I packed a professional backpack, and started hitchhiking south to escape the winter.   The pack was probably 60 lbs. or more, as I'd prepared for both summer and winter   When I got to Tennessee, several charitable members at a synagogue I visited, bought me a bus ticket all the way to California, since I said that was my intended destination.   I stopped in Arizona, to visit a great uncle, and family.   Then my basically estranged mother offered to temporarily pay for an apartment there anyway.

Once settled, I used the last of the bus ticket to visit my oldest friend.   After a week, I returned to Tucson, but I only found small jobs, so I decided after two months, I'd be better off to return to my grandmother's cottage in Massachusetts.  To save money, I hitchhiked to Mexico, and took buses across the width, re-entering the U.S. at the tip of Texas.

I found myself making much better time than I'd expected, and still in danger of getting into the cold weather, so I hitchhiked south, to Miami Beach.   There, I made friends with a ultra-religious man, a Chabad follower with a family, who let me crash on a cot he had, until I was safe.

I got back to Plymouth, and again began to work hard to successfully winterize the cottage, but eventually I saw I was losing that race.   In a last ditch attempt to prevent another trek with a heavy backpack to the south, I retyped a pamphlet I'd written two years earlier, as part of my first wave of canvassing, the same as the one shown below, except I changed the last line to say I "might be homeless."

I again tried to use my 'bargaining voice', on an over-stuffed pamphlet, to propose some military isolationism (I should have used the word "toward"), trying to counteract Europe's over-reliance on U.S. deterrence.   This pamphlet went out to hundreds of homes in my neighborhood on summer Sundays.  I got some donations, but nothing substantial.

After I returned to Miami, I retyped the handout shown below, as the only copy with me had become unreadable, and began distribution on famous Miami Beach.   I called the Miami police station for the laws, and started around residential neighborhoods, but I missed a prohibition sign they had informed me about in certain areas.   I was arrested for illegal solicitation.   The charge was eventually dismissed, and I ended up acquiring a permit after some heavy handed wrangling.   I took this retyped pamphlet, and shuffled it with "American Public" (Archive 1988), and probably gave out a couple of hundred in total.   After that second homeless winter, I returned to Plymouth, and successfully winterized the cottage.   I spent over five years there year-round, writing most of the remaining subjects of this archive, and much of my creative writing.

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