Aquarian Alternatives

The Newsletter of the Aquarian Research Foundation

A Prophet-Making Organization

Dear Friends,

I really feel guilty for not yet sending out a printed newsletter this century, but the sad fact is that we are becoming a society divided into haves and have-nots. Those with computers can get our news daily and others wait months.

The computer- less are missing a lot, and they could get a used 486 for under $100 at a computer fair.

Our listsev which anyone joins with any e-mail to: fr2-subscribe@egroups.com is totally free. You get about one message a day. Some very important information that you cannot get from corporately controlled media comes to you that way

Events Since December

KIDS-FM could have worked out well if parents wanted their kids to have a radio station, but evidently they did not. After running without any real management out of a café in Arlington we had a visit from an FCC man asking us to close it down till we could get a license and promising to help us get one

A local minister who had wanted the station for his church and was angry that we did not go with that had complained.

Well, we found a neat way to get around the license problem. There is a section in the FCC regulations saying if run by an emergency service such as the fire department no license is required. We asked the Arlington fire chief if he’d agree

to that and he liked the idea but said he was unable to actually run it. He suggested that if a school were to do the work with the kids, then he might be the official in charge and use it whenever any emergency arose.

The principal of Arlington High School was interested but said they were too busy with funding problems. I then asked the principal of the alternative high school which is parent-controlled. She was delighted with the idea, but no matter how she tried to get the parents interested, they would not meet to discuss it, and finally there was no way to work with them. before leaving the area to return to Philadelphia.

Aquarian Back in Philadelphia

Before we moved there, we asked if we could live there as helpers and not become part of their religion. They agreed. They wanted each resident to contribute $200/month per person to help them pay for their land. We told them we could not possibly afford that and the answer was "We’ll work something out". Serious Israel also said very clearly that they would not ask us to leave even if we had no money, and that they hardly ever sent anyone away unless they did something terrible like molest the children or something violent.

That sounded good and was the basis on which we decided to buy a yurt and also to donate our 1958 Cessna. Frankly, I was in trouble with the Cessna. You all know I flew it to Cuba a couple times. The U.S. government took a very dim view of that. I knew the ACLU would defend me if I was charged with such a violation but instead FAA looked for every excuse to make difficulties. Actually all they wanted was a $1,000 bribe (of fine) and had I been smarter, I’d have paid that. The alternative was to surrender my license and go for some re-training to get it back.

They seemed friendly, so I did that without realizing they’d never give it back in this area. They then looked at the plane, seeking any reason to ground it, and found that 18 years before when the new engine was installed, my mechanic failed to fill out a certain FAA document. So they said the plane was "unairworthy" even though it had always passed its annual inspection, and the engine never had a problem.

When I learned the Love Israel Family had a flight instructor, it seemed like a leading from God to ask him to come to Philadelphia and fly the plane out to WA. We knew FAA might find that in violation, but that seemed a small matter.

But the Love israel folks were clever. Before he would agree to come here, their flight instructor asked me to send them a letter saying I was donating the plane with "no strings attached" and in trust I did that. I expected to remain there long term and he’d help me get my license again and the plane would be shared by all.

But things did not work that way. I soon began to realize this grpi[ was not communal at all. but run by and for Peter Erdman who calls himself "Love Israel"

After only six months, I was told we were "not fitting in" and should therefore leave. They offered to buy our $12,000 yurt, but insisted that the plane was theirs. I refused and said I’d stay on, A year later Serious called us to his office and said we had to go as we were "not fitting in". In other words we were not joining their religion and becoming totally submissive to "Love israel". Since Judy and Joel were really anxious to leave the place and my hope that other competent folks would join with us had not worked out, we agreed to go even though they now offered us only $5,000 for the yurt instead of the $12,000 we’d invested.

I suggested that we mediate some payment for the plane (which they’d now painted and re-furbished at considerable cost). Serious was open to that but "Love" nixed it. He said that if we wanted mediation we were "adversarial" and had to leave quickly. Otherwise we could stay till June 30. They would not mediate at all.

When I mentioned a possible article in the local paper they got quite angry and told us we’d be taken out by the sheriff within a week. That was a threat and they had the sheriff call us and tell us he’d do it.

I then called the Unitarian fellowship I’d joined earlier and one of their lawyers told me they’d need a judge’s order to get us to leave and then we’d have 20 days. When I told that to Serious, he hung up on me. But after that, there was no further effort to make us leave before we sold the yurt for $8,000. I eventually found that because I had written that the plane was donated "with no strings attached", I had no low cost legal recourse. even though it was "theft by deception". I’ll be working with some of Erdman’s friends and relatives to try to get them to pay us for the plane.

Back to Philadelphia

During 18 months in WA we were preparing for Y2K. Believing it might be severe, we borrowed against future income (no interest) and bought low cost dry food and thrift store items to be well supplied for any eventuality for both ourselves and the 70 others in the community. Most of it was a real bargain. But when things worked out well, we gave some food to the community and homeless, and put 100 lbs of beans into our 4’ x 8’ U-Haul trailer connected to an extra strong hitch on our 1980 VW Diesel Rabbit. I estimated 500 lbs of stuff. total.

The car skidded on the gravel as we took off, but not on paved roads. Stopping was hard. Next day I requested a weight check at a truck weigh station and discov-ered the trailer was 2,400 lbs ! No wonder we had to climb the passes in first gear and had a hard time starting on hills. We could not climb some off-highway hills at all.

The little diesel smoked a lot and got only 24 instead of 42 mpg. I had planned to make 300 + miles per day and travel ten days, so arranged for host homes along the way to fit that schedule, all of which worked out perfectly. I know several folks were praying for us to have a safe trip and though brakes were overt-taxed, we got home just as planned without any serious problems, meeting wonderful people each night. I’m sure proud of that Diesel Rabbit which is a joy to drive sans trailer.

On the way we were hosted by one Hutterite community, one Unitarian 85 years old, a Mennonite, a former medical mission-ary, and an ex-Bruderhof person with whom I found a very good connection. I’d hoped to stay at a Bruderhof near Pittsburgh, but they were not very keen to have me as they know I differ with them especially on sexual issues. They said to call back if we really needed a place to stay and they’d work something out so I felt O.K. about that.

We can’t talk about sexual issues on the Bruderhof so I’m trying to get them to send a team here to talk it over. The Bruderhof has of late done such great work with prisoners and social issues that I feel they are well worth working with.

Free Long Distance

Phone calls are as important to us as the computer but when paying per minute I have so much tension that I can’t really think well, so I need a system that allows us to talk for free or at a flat monthly rate regard-less of how much we use it. For a while we had that in WA but that company went broke. Now we’re signed up for DSL which lets us use one phone line for calls and at the same time have the computer on the Internet all the time. Then we should be able to use the Internet for free long distance without the wait of getting the computer on line each time.

The phone company says it will likely start May 30 or at the latest June 7. I’m hoping for the 30^th. DSL will also give us up to 12 times the speed of our 56K modem.

Re-Imagining Politics & Society

Three days after returning I was off to NYC to volunteer at a conference of 1,000

people sponsored by Politics of Meaning and the New York Open Center. Their declared purpose is "Creating a just, caring sustainable world". Cosponsors included about 40 other groups I’ve heard of.

Though there were really great speakers and attendees there, I felt they did not go far enough towards a true human culture, so I wrote an article which you will find inside this newsletter. I passed out 500 copies and it was well accepted. Margot Adler of NPR was there one day and reported on the conference nationally.

Search For Community

I went to Florida a few years ago looking for a community to join but there were none we could accept. That seems to be changing with some groups just getting started there. I still want to be as close as possible to Cuba and I now know we can go there by boat much easier than by plane as the U.S. gov’t can’t monitor boats on radar. Folks do it from Key West all the time.

But since we want to work towards a community like ZEGG (See insert) we’ll try to form a core group of daring people here first. . We’re also looking for communities open to the ZEGG concept that we can work with rather than go it alone.

Emergency at Aquarian

5620 Morton St.,

Philadelphia, PA 19144

New Phone: (215-848-2292) or 800-254-8291 when far from your phone.

Web: www.ic.org/aq

E-mail: artr@juno.com

Now, with a ton of stuff we took back, we are trying to put things together again and sort it all out which seems like a huge job, especially while taking care of fifty daily e- mails and re-organizing our lives.

So we need all the help we can get and that means now. Don’t hesitate to call from anywhere and we’ll call back free.

Peace and love,

Art & Judy Rosenblum