Aa history Lovers 2004 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page

Richard K.

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++++Message 1906. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Loners International

From: Jim S. . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/12/2004 1:10:00 PM

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From page 7, Box 459, Vol. 50, June-July 2004:

"Staff Report: Loners are A.A.s who are unable to attend meetings

because there are no groups nearby. There are about 210 Loners in 57

countries. Seagoing A.A.s, known as Internationalists, number about

73 as well as 55 Port Contacts. We now have 185 Homers, A. a

.s who are housebound due to illness or physical disability. Homers,

Loners, and Internationalists stay sober by sharing with each other

through letters, tapes, and e-mails. Each new Loner, Homer, and

Internationalist receives a directory of members, a subscription to

Box 459, and the Loners/Internationalists Meeting-By-Mail (LIM), a

confidential bi-monthly bulletin which shares excerpts of letters

received at G. S. O. from LIM members. There are also over 475 Loner

Sponsors, who share

A. A. activities and personal experience."

From LIM, Volume 13, No. 1, January/February 1988:

"...Note: for those who might not know, Capt. Jack is the founder of

A. A. Internationalists. ........"

From LIM, Volume 29, No. 2, March/April 2003:

"OVERVIEW OF LIM HISTORY"

"The first LIM bulletin, printed in 1949 as The Internationalists

Round Robin, was a few pages of excerpts from letters received at G.

S. O. and mailed to a small band of Internationalists determined to

stay sober no matter how isolated they were.

By 1963, the bulletin consisted of 5 or 6 one-sided pages,

mimeographed on blue paper. In 1976, an A. A. Loners meeting merged

with the original Internationalists meeting. Since the March-April

1980 issue, LIM has been printed on the familiar yellow pages.

Lim began through the efforts of Captain Jack S., a sailor who found

sobriety in A. A. and understood that to maintain sobriety he needed

to reach out to other members through correspondence.

Initially, Captain Jack was looking for A. A. contacts in port cities

when he wrote a letter to G. S. O. dated March 28, 1946. Captain Jack

requested information on A. A. contacts because he was "...still at

sea on oil tankers, on which I have served for ten years. I have few

contacts ashore with A. A., and have to rely on the Book and the guy

upstairs." A G. S.O. staff member provided Captain Jack with the names

of A. A. contacts in port cities, and encouraged him to write to other

seagoing members, which he did.

After the publication of a three-part article, "A `Loner' at Sea," by

Captain Jack in the October, November, and December 1948 issues of the

A. A. Grapevine, plans began to take shape to start an

Internationalists meeting-by-mail. Letters responding to that

Grapevine article prompted another G.S.O. staff member to suggest to

Captain Jack that he consider starting a "Round Robin Meeting" via

letters. Captain Jack responded positively and suggested the name be "The

Far East International Group." he said the name `...would leave it

open to members stationed ashore in the Far East and also to men who

sail these waters under flags of different nations."

Captain Jack died in December 1988 at age 91, a few months after

celebrating his 42nd A. A. anniversary. He had remained active in the

Fellowship, seeking newcomers in Portland, Maine, where he had

retired, while continuing to answer the many letters he received.

Some of A. A.'s phenomenal worldwide growth is attributed in part to

Captain Jack and hundreds of Internationalists like him who, sailing

the seven seas, carried the message wherever they dropped anchor."

It's my understanding that the Pacific Group in California has well

over 1000 members, which would make it larger than LIM.

Jim S.

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From: Gary Becktell . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/12/2004 10:41:00 PM

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Does anyone have any info on the early days of AA on the Internet, and

the Bulletin Boards that preceded the Internet? Thank you.

G

gk@kitcarson.net

++++Message 1908. . . . . . . . . . . . Older Grapevine Question

From: rrecovery1984 . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/12/2004 8:08:00 AM

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I am area archivist and we are often donated older Grapevines. The

duplicate ones, I give to the Institution and jail reps to bring to

hospitals and jails but I just can't bring myself to donate thirty or

forty year old ones. Any other people have this problem? I would

rather trade for ones we are missing. Any suggestions?

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++++Message 1909. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Older Grapevine Question

From: Mel Barger . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/13/2004 8:45:00 AM

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Instead of donating the old Grapevines, a better way would be to find the

articles on the new Digital Archive and print them out for institutions.

This will serve the same purpose and will allow you to save your old GVs as

treasures. I understand that there's no problem in making these printouts

as long as it's not for commercial purposes. And it can be done very

cheaply on your printer.

Mel Barger

~~~~~~~~ Mel Barger melb@accesst ~~~~~~~~ Mel Barger melb@accesstoledo.com

----- Original Message -----

From: "rrecovery1984"

To:

Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 9:08 AM

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Older Grapevine Question

> I am area archivist and we are often donated older Grapevines. The

> duplicate ones, I give to the Institution and jail reps to bring to

> hospitals and jails but I just can't bring myself to donate thirty or

> forty year old ones. Any other people have this problem? I would

> rather trade for ones we are missing. Any suggestions?

>

>

>

>

> Yahoo! Groups Links

>

>

>

>

>

>

> __________________________________________________________

> 9:17:42 AM ET - 7/13/2004

>

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From: Martha Brummett . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/13/2004 9:20:00 AM

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Subject: AA on the Internet

> Does anyone have any info on the early days of AA on the Internet, and

the Bulletin Boards that preceded the Internet? Thank you.

G

There was a FidoNet forum called A.A. SiP (for Singleness in Purpose, s/h/b S

P) in the mid to late eighties. I vividly recall the exchange of messages as a

woman in Nashville got sober and got directed to her first meeting. I can't

recall any names really. I participated from around 1986 to 1992 or so.

Supposedly all the FidoNet stuff was archived, but that was a long time ago,

and

Martha Brummett

Denver CO

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++++Message 1911. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Older Grapevine Question

From: ricktompkins . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/13/2004 7:10:00 PM

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You neglected to say what Delegate Area Archives you serve...

I would suggest that after your Grapevines are duplicated into two sets,

place the older extras with your Area's District archives.

Does your Area's largest Intergroup hold an archives collection? There's

another destination!

Make sure you get a stamp that will print "courtesy of Area xx Archives."

From my own past experience, our general service archives grows by giving,

not swapping..

Rick T., Illinois

past Area 20 Archivist

----- Original Message -----

From: "rrecovery1984" <>

To:

Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 8:08 AM

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Older Grapevine Question

> I am area archivist and we are often donated older Grapevines. The

> duplicate ones, I give to the Institution and jail reps to bring to

> hospitals and jails but I just can't bring myself to donate thirty or

> forty year old ones. Any other people have this problem? I would

> rather trade for ones we are missing. Any suggestions?

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++++Message 1912. . . . . . . . . . . . THE A.A. MESSAGE IN PRINT-SUMMARY OF

DISTRIBUTION

From: JOHN REID . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/14/2004 3:48:00 AM

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Below are the literature piece that are updated annually.

Service Material from the General Service Office

THE A.A. MESSAGE IN PRINT-SUMMARY OF DISTRIBUTION

First Printing through December 31, 2003

Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book)

English (First printing - 1939)

Hardcover (B-1) 15,845,956

Softcover (B-30) 6,713,109

Large Print (B-16) 241,712

Pocket/abridged (B-35) 1,163,732

Total: 23,964,509

Spanish (First Printing - 1962)

Hardcover (SB-1) 53,561

Softcover (SB-30) 495,032

Pocket/abridged (SB-35) 68,024

Total: 616,617

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

English (First Printing - 1952)

Hardcover (B-2) 7,842,858

Pocket Size (B-17) 412,778

Softcover (B-15) 2,254,309

Large Print (B-14) 120,208

Gift Edition (B-4) 1,386,176

Total: 12,016,329

Spanish (First Printing - 1985)

Softcover (SB-15) 357,325

Pocket Size (SB-17) 37,440

Total: 394,765

Other Formats

Audio Cassettes: Big Book (MB-1) 79,659

Big Book (MB-1A) 490

Twelve & Twelve (MB-2) 38,937

Big Book CD ROM (M-70) 517

Big Book Audio CD (M-81) 1,235

Spanish Big Book (SMB-1) 6,839

Spanish Twelve & Twelve (SMB-2) 11,320

Braille: Big Book (M-34) 2,766

Twelve & Twelve (M-35) 1,717

ASL Video: Big Book (VS-1) 1,910

Computer Disk: Big Book (M-53) 7,234

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++++Message 1913. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: AA on the Internet

From: Susan Krieger . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/14/2004 1:12:00 PM

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The West Baltimore site went up 6/26/94, about the time the WWW went up.

According to Archives at GSO we are the first and we have sent them a copy

of the first site as it went up and also a copy of the Baltimore Intergroup

as originally published.

Contact Al W. welsch@a-1associates.com

----- Original Message -----

From: "Gary Becktell"

To:

Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 8:41 PM

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] AA on the Internet

> Does anyone have any info on the early days of AA on the Internet, and

> the Bulletin Boards that preceded the Internet? Thank you.

> G

>

gk@kitcarson.net

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

++++Message 1914. . . . . . . . . . . . Beginners'' Meeting Format

From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/14/2004 4:35:00 PM

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For Linda D (Florida Keys),

You wrote in on July 8th asking, "Does anyone have a good meeting format for

Beginners' Meetings?"

Several early pamphlets for newcomers including material designed for

beginners' lessons can be found on the Hindsfoot Foundation website:

http://hindsfoot.org/archives.html

One pamphlet on that website comes from Detroit (1943) and four came from

Akron (the earliest published in late 1939 or early 1940, and the others only

a few years later at most). The four from Akron give us a very good and

detailed picture of what early Akron A.A. people believed and practiced.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Detroit Pamphlet is one which I do know will work very effectively for

beginners. On Monday night, June 14, 1943, the North-West Group at 10216

Plymouth Road in Detroit began holding a set of four beginners' meetings

(which were repeated over and over again for years). There were so many people

coming into A.A. by that point, that the old-timers could no longer give each

newcomer the same kind of individual, one-on-one instruction that they had

used in the beginning. So the most knowledgeable old-timers sat as a panel at

the front of the room, with the beginners gathered in front of them. The

introductory material for that particular class was read, and then the

newcomers were allowed to ask questions of the old-timers.

Like everything else in early A.A., anything that seemed to be working well

was rapidly circulated all over the country, and the first printed version was

actually produced in Washington D.C., so that some A.A. people still associate

these Beginners' Lessons with that city instead of Detroit. But Jack H. in

Scottsdale, Arizona, who has done the most careful study on the whole topic of

Beginners' Lessons and other early A.A. readers, says that Detroit published

its own printed version not long afterwards, probably only a few months later.

Just a few years ago I know, copies of The Detroit Pamphlet were still

obtainable from the Greater Detroit A.A. office Alcoholics Anonymous of

Greater Detroit in Ferndale, Michigan, for a modest cost.

In the early 1990's, The Detroit Pamphlet was used very successfully in

northern Indiana, so it still works just as well today. In Elkhart, they had a

Saturday morning Beginners' Meeting which was structured a little like the

original Detroit meetings. An old-timer would preside over the meeting and

give a short talk at the beginning on one of the steps. Submarine Bill in

particular found that a talk based on The Detroit Pamphlet worked better than

anything he had ever used over the years. Then (in Elkhart) the newcomers were

allowed to speak, going around the table in turn, much like an ordinary A.A.

discussion meeting. It did require a powerful personality like Submarine

Bill's (he was used to giving orders to a whole submarine full of sailors, and

having those orders obeyed!) for a single person to keep control of a group of

newcomers that large (usually thirty or forty people).

In South Bend, Indiana, what was called the Golden Key Group was set up in

1990, where each person was given a copy of the pamphlet, and then they went

around the huge table, with each person reading two or three paragraphs of

that Discussion (The Detroit Pamphlet divides the steps into Four Discussion

sessions). Then each person in turn was allowed to speak on something that had

been read that evening.

(The original Detroit printed version was filled with an awful lot of

typographical errors which made it hard to read, so the South Bend people

completely re-set the type, but without changing a single word, so it's the

same text as the original. The South Bend version is the one which is on the

Hindsfoot Foundation website.)

In its heyday, of the newcomers who went to the Golden Key Group every

Thursday evening without fail for an entire year, 90% remained sober for that

entire year. And even today, 90% of those who made it through that first year

without a slip are still sober. That's around an 80% success rate.

(The idea that only EARLY A.A. could ever have that kind of success rate is a

total myth. There are different kinds of strategies that work -- there is no

one single formula which must be used -- but there are still meetings in

northern Indiana today which achieve that kind of 75% to 80% success rate.

Nobody gets sober who doesn't keep on coming to A.A. meetings, but that is

hardly the program's fault! Modern medicine can control diabetes with insulin

shots and proper diet, but nobody blames the medical doctors when people who

refuse to follow these directions get sick and die horribly.)

But back to the Golden Key Group. It eventually ended up dying because of a

combination of (1) its enormous success and (2) lack of responsibility among

the South Bend people with some time in the program.

(1) Treatment centers and halfway houses began bringing in bus loads of

newcomers, literally, as word spread of how extraordinarily well this

Beginners' Meeting worked, and then (2) in response to these floods of

newcomers, the people with time in the program gradually began to quit coming

in the years that followed. It turned out that, because of its discussion

meeting format, it required at least four or five people with a little bit of

significant time in the program be present to keep the discussion on track. By

the end of the line, it was just me and maybe one other person trying to

manage thirty or forty people from halfway houses and treatment centers, many

of whom only wanted to wallow in self-pity and complain about "how badly" the

place they were in was treating them. And it just doesn't work effectively

that way -- you don't put the inmates in charge of the insane asylum! We were

all crazy people when we first came in, or I was, anyway --

ask anybody who knew me during my first year, and they will start laughing so

hysterically that's it really embarrassing for me even now! -- and when we

were newcomers, we needed the people who had a little bit of time in the

program to help us slowly find our way towards a little greater sanity.

So my advice here is that if you want to set up a Detroit Pamphlet Beginners'

Meeting of that sort, most of your work is going to be getting some of the

people with significant time in the program to show up and participate and

make some real long term commitment. The Twelfth Step says that this should be

a primary responsibility for everyone in the program who has worked through

the first eleven steps. When people shirk this responsibility, A.A. in their

community can no longer flourish and grow. I should say that, in my

experience, every one of the twelve steps is a marvelous learning experience.

And strangely enough, I have found myself that Twelfth Step work (in the sense

of working with newcomers and participating in Beginners' Meetings and things

of that sort) gives more insight and personal growth than any of the other

steps.

Some people also think very highly of The Little Red Book: An Interpretation

of the Twelve Steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous Program for Beginners'

Meetings. In the 1940's, the Nicollet Group in Minneapolis, Minnesota,

required newcomers AND their spouses to attend Twelve Step Study Classes which

were conducted by Ed Webster and Barry Collins along with other members of the

group who had some time in the program. Mimeographed copies of the lecture

notes Ed Webster wrote up for these classes began circulating all around the

United States. Their lesson plans were used in Canada too: in 1946, for

example, the Nicollet Group received a letter from an A.A. group in Edmonton

(in Alberta) telling them how successful the mimeographed version had been

there.

Little Red Book by the "Coll-Webb Company," which meant that Barry Collins and

Ed Webster had it printed themselves. Hazelden took over publishing and

distributing the book later on, and keeps a version of The Little Red Book in

print today.

Jack H. in Scottsdale, Arizona, has a copy of the original 1946 printed

edition, which he puts on display at A.A. conferences. The 50th Anniversary

Edition which Hazelden published in 1996 claims to be a reprint of that

original edition, but Jack says that it was actually a reprint of a slightly

later edition. The reason this is an issue, is because Jack (who has tracked

all the different versions down) says that Ed Webster himself kept on making

revisions in the little book all the way to the end of his life. So the

regular version which you can buy from Hazelden today is different in various

ways from the original printed edition which came out in 1946, and even that

50th Anniversary Edition isn't quite the same as the original 1946 version.

Here in my part of Indiana, I am told that there are groups in Fort Wayne for

example which still use The Little Red Book for meetings on a regular basis

(or this was certainly true only a few years ago), and I understand that it is

also still very much in use in various other places all over the United States

and Canada.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But then A.A. hit a crisis in the late 1980's and early 1990's, where some of

the younger leaders began insisting that no one was allowed to read ANYTHING

except "conference approved" literature. A.A. began being cut off from its

historical roots, and falling into greater and greater triviality, and

achieving lower and lower success rates.

The only opposing force has been the Archival Movement that arose during that

same period: Nancy O. and the AAHistoryLovers Group, and Gail LaC.'s role in

helping set up the first National Archives Workshop in Akron, and other

grassroots archival efforts which arose at that time all over the United

States, fortunately began to play a role as significant counter-forces.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But the understanding back in the early days, as far as I can tell, was that

any piece of printed material WHICH WAS SPONSORED BY AN A.A. GROUP (the

Nicollet Group in Minneapolis for The Little Red Book and the A.A. group in

Daytona Beach, Florida, for Twenty-Four Hours a Day) was automatically assumed