NewPray.com - Archive Winter 1989-90

I decided to publicize my prophecy against US wars almost immediately after college, and surprisingly, around the same time I found myself writing poetry, from out of nowhere.   I'd never done any before, and my work showed promise.   I already knew waiting for donations wouldn't support me that early, and I felt compelled to make poetry part of a career, so I decided an abandoned family cottage was the right placed to start.   However, the tiny uninsulated cottage bordered on unlivable, having developed a rotted main beam, and being far from places for solid potential employment, since my car was dead.   I also continued my pamphleting of prophecy, but I knew recipients would need to start a snowball of support quickly, or I'd again be homeless for the winter.

I was broke, so I tried to winterize the cottage with sporadic family contributions for materials.   As my time ran out before the approaching cold, I figured my being homeless would be a one time 'falling through the crack' lapse in support, considering the gravity of the message about war.

In late September I packed a professional backpack I'd received as a gift a year before, and started hitchhiking to escape the winter.   The pack was probably 60 lbs. or more, as I needed to be fully 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, as that was my tentative 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, through my Uncle I believe, so I had safety for the winter.

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 after two months I'd decided to return to my grandmother's cottage in Massachusetts.  To save money, I hitchhiked directly south 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 an ultra-religious Chabad follower, with a family, who temporarily let me crash on a cot.

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

I tried to use my 'bargaining voice', on an over-crowded text box, 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 again returned to Miami, and I retyped the handout shown below, as the only copy with me had become unreadable.   Before I began my planned distribution on Miami Beach, I called the Miami police station for the laws, and started around residential neighborhoods.   Unfortunately, I missed a prohibition sign they had informed me about in certain areas, and 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.