Grapevine Archives: Jackie B. & Roger W. (Part 2)

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0:00

Moderator Welcome to the Tuesday night recovery speakers history workshop. Thanks for joining us. My name is Mike. Tonight's presentation will be led by Jackie B. and Roger W.

0:10

Moderator We meet here every Tuesday at the same time using this same Zoom ID. Next week, we have Sam Shoemaker and the principles he passed on to us. That's part two on January 26th, PM Pacific. This meeting is recorded and all past audio presentations are available at recovery speakers.com. We are not affiliated with any 12 step organization.

0:32

Jackie Though our focus is the history of AA and other 12 step fellowships. Recovery speakers.com is a 501C3 non-profit dedicated to preserving and sharing the audio history of AA and the 12 step movement today and for future generations. We'll also send a daily email featuring a speaker talk from our archive, recordings from these meetings and information on upcoming presentations. To subscribe, use the link in the chat or email at info at recovery speakers.com. If you're able to support our work, contributions are appreciated.

1:04

Moderator There'll be a donation link in the chat or you can use the QR code on the screen. We'll have Q&A with Roger and Jackie at the end of tonight's presentation. So please jot down some questions now so that we can be respectful of their time. The chat is now closed, but you can still message me directly. I'll reopen it after the presentation.

1:29

Jackie And now Roger and Jackie, please go ahead and unmute and take it away. Okay. Hi, I'm Roger, grateful alcoholic. And I'm coming to you from Northern Kentucky. My sobriety dates August the 15th, 1983.

1:42

Jackie And there's nobody more surprised about that than me. So I got my turn to share some rabbit holes if you were here last week. And now it's Jackie's turn. And I met Jackie, as she said, at the History Subbosium some years ago in Sedona. Third, second, we don't know.

2:02

Jackie Way out in the desert, a very long dirt road. But I already knew of Jackie. I feel like I've seen one of her plays in San Antonio, but for sure in Atlanta. During the International Convention, but offsite in town. And so Jackie has written some historical fiction.

2:21

Jackie It's always well researched, entertaining, insightful. There's always a lesson in there. So, you know, I think she's a pretty terrific person, but also very talented. And she mentioned, you know, the History Symposium, and she was presenting with Glenn Chestnut, another great historian and mentor and a friend that he and I, he helped co-author the Sergeant Bill Swiggan biography. And so Bill, I connected with Bill Swiggan.

2:47

Jackie And so we had that in common. And we would often debate, discuss lovingly what the lessons were out of his experience in AA and the military in the 1950s. And we didn't always agree. And that was fun. That's really fun to do with other history lovers.

3:05

Jackie But anyway, because she was presenting with Glenn, she had, like, to me, instant credibility, I guess. So, and now today, it's really great to get to serve on the Great Vine Editorial Advisory Board with Jackie and a bunch of other great people. That editorial advisory board is, as it sounds, it's advisory. And we share our regional experience with the editorial staff and the senior editor about basically content of the magazine, the podcast, the website. And sort of, I see us as a bit of a focus group about those products and about those kind of things.

3:42

Jackie But we get to provide input through this committee. And so if you have praise or criticism, loving suggestions or resentments about Great Vine content, feel free to share that with myself or Jackie, because we have an ability to make that, share that with others. Except for don't do it tonight during the presentation, because we have bigger things to do. So the idea of this presentation, we sort of was born, I think, in the lobby of the National A&E Technology Workshop because of our connection with the Great Vine Editorial Board. And our experience using this tool as historians.

4:20

Jackie So I'm very familiar with Jackie's research and I'm excited to see how she uses this tool. And I don't know how, what kind of rabbit holes we can get down tonight. So I'm going to turn it over to Jackie B from San Francisco. Hi, everyone. My name is Jackie.

4:40

Jackie I am an alcoholic. And it's really good to be here tonight. So nervous. But yeah, I'm really excited. And I'm just going to jump into it.

4:51

Jackie And yeah, so this is, yes, this presentation has many names, one of which is now like into the rabbit hole. Another one is my favorite Great Vine, which you will be sharing some of my favorite Great Vines. Of them I have many. But I am going to go ahead and screen share. And yeah, you should see.

5:12

Moderator That is a picture of me on stage because as Roger mentioned, my introduction into AA history and the digital archives was in researching history, AA history, because I was putting on plays for my local intergroup. And after doing a stage reading of Bill W and Dr. Bob kind of ran out of history plays and decided I wanted to write one. And I wanted to write one about the stories about early young people and women and people of color. And a lot of it had to do with the stories that I was hearing a few old timers tell me about the third tradition.

5:51

Jackie And I was very curious and I couldn't find these stories in like, you know, not that many in Pats-a-Don or A Comes of Age. So I was like, well, I'm going to research this and lo and behold, where I found a lot of these stories was in the Great Vine. And that's where my love for the Great Vine and the Great Vine Digital Archives came was from researching one of my first plays called In Our Own Words, which 2009. And Roger was right, we performed it. See, I maybe took some liberties by putting the A Great Vine presents, but technically we were one of the Great Vine plays.

6:33

Jackie So the A Great Vine did present it in San Antonio. And then we did kind of do a preview. So I think this is accurate, but I was very excited. So we did do it inside San Antonio, and that was a wild experience. But this was one of the plays.

6:52

Moderator So that's my introduction. So I'm going to talk about my research techniques, which have changed, because back when I was using the Digital Archives for the first time, we didn't have the app. And the app has actually, I learned a lot over the last week about how to use the app in my research using the Digital Archives. And this is really interesting, Roger. You're going to find this really interesting, because this came up last week, when we kind of were playing like, hey, throw out an idea of something you want to research, and let's try it out.

7:31

Jackie So as you can see, you've got the Great Vine LaVenia app, which is a free app. But if you want to access The Collection and the current issue and some of the past issues, you do need a subscription. And then you've got the online access. And if you have an online subscription, you get both access to the app and the online web exclusives and the Digital Archives. And if you have the app, and let's say you have the subscription, you would on the homepage scroll down, and you will see under the current latest issue button, you're going to see search The Collection.

8:11

Jackie And when you click on that, it's going to open The Collection page. And at the very top, you're going to have a search bar. And this is going to be your keyword search. And so like, unlike, you know, this is not like your university level, you know, Digital Archives, it's simple. You have one search bar that you can use for all your research purposes.

8:36

Moderator So you can do titles, keyword searches, authors, author initials, to the, you know, places of interest, all that sort of stuff as well. And so and what I discovered, which we'll talk about in a moment, but I'll do that during my strategies, I'll move on. And then once you put in the search and your keywords, you're going to have a number of these options show up. So I put in one, Eda, and here's some examples of what come up. Sometimes the word will be inside the article.

9:11

Moderator So you'll have to click on the article and see what's in it. Sometimes you'll see that it's the name of the person. And for example, if when I click on OKP, turns out to be OKPosey, who was essential office manager in San Francisco, I shared about Juanita last week and, you know, this particular story about her, I was very excited to find because we didn't have any stories about early women in San Francisco until I found this story in the San Francisco before in the Great Fine. So anyway, that's an example of how you use the Great Fine app to search. And then this would be how it looks like when you use the, excuse me one moment, it's got to move some stuff around.

10:01

Jackie I don't know why I can't do that. Okay, there we go. And this is how you would access the archive if you're on the website, right? You may need to log in. It'll prompt you if you need to log in, but I don't know homepage archive.

10:20

Jackie It'll open you up. You have a search bar as well. Same idea, keyword search, whether it's author, title, etc. And then you can sort. The sort on the app is kind of similar.

10:33

Jackie You have four options, new to old, old to new, which of course is my favorite as a history person. Show me the old stuff first. Show me that 1940s stuff first. And then you've also got A to Z and Z to A. And then, you know, you can see where the authors are.

10:53

Moderator Sometimes that's how I look for a lot of stuff to, if I'm looking for a particular author, like I said, sometimes it's tricky. Sometimes someone will write something and it doesn't always show up again because, you know, God bless whoever did this work. It must have been an immense amount of work. So the AA, the Great Fine website started in 1998. I believe the AA.org came online in 1996.

11:21

Moderator I did this research if you want to look up on the Wayback Machine, which is the Internet archive. There's some really fun pictures. But 1998 was the Great Fine. And so I think sometime in the early 2000s is when the digital archives came online. It must have been an immense labor of love.

11:41

Moderator But yeah, sometimes the author is visible. Sometimes the author is inside. So it's an immense amount of work. And, you know, it's not perfect because again, the Great Fine is a publisher. It's not a university level archives department.

11:56

Jackie And I think it's pretty amazing what we have access to. You also have options to the topics. And some of the topics are really comprehensive. And some of the topics, I think, you know, probably could have some more stuff. So just, you know, make sure like, you know, that you leave no stone unturned.

12:17

Jackie But like, for example, I did a technology, a history of technology in AA. And I was the technology one, I was like, wow, the diversity one, I was like, okay, the diversity one, I might send them some articles to throw under there, right, which I'm sure they'd be open to. But like, you know, so I'm like, you have to, you know, leave no stone unturned, as we say. So also, so what I love, this was something new. This wasn't here when I was researching in 2009.

12:51

Jackie You can actually look at specific magazine issues, which I love. Because that way you can see everything in a particular issue, which I think is really phenomenal. But also, if you're like, looking for something, you're like, I'm pretty sure this is in 1967, 68, you know, then you can actually look at years, you can look in multiple years, which can be really handy if you're kind of like, really looking to narrow down, but you're not really sure what, what issue something is. Okay, so here's my research strategies overall. This is what I learned based on last week.

13:29

Jackie Start with that app. So we were talking about Tom P last week. And I had looked up when Roger was talking, I looked up on my phone and the app, Hankins, and a bunch of stuff came up. But then when you looked in the computer, not that much stuff came up, maybe one thing. And then when I went home, I noticed when I looked up Hankins in the search bar on the computer, like one thing came up.

13:58

Jackie But then when you so if you do it now, you'll see a bunch of stuff comes up on the app. I don't know why it's probably some magical thing to do with technology and the difference between the app and the computer search options. But this is the new something I highly it's exciting because I really think so now what I now realize and I did this preparing for this is so now there's a real good reason to get the app more than anything is that the search on the app is phenomenal. So use the app for searching for that keyword search for the search of names. And again, you're just it's not going to be like you're going to perfectly going to get Tom P.

14:48

Jackie You're going to get a bunch of Tom's. And you're just going to have to do the best you can. Right. So it is a little bit of a needle because we're an anonymous organization. But I was really, really pleasantly surprised.

15:05

Jackie And something like Hankins, that's really obvious. Because that's where he lived in upstate New York, you're going to get a lot of stuff that's really specific and wonderful. And maybe I'll share some stuff later. Sort for me all this to newest. Take note of authors and names.

15:25

Jackie Once you have some links, one of the things if you're if you're very technologically inclined, I was actually able to share from the app to my computer directly. So I was able to find things in the app and then do something called the air drop into my computer. And so it opened up in my computer. And then I was able to like really, you know, make, you know, print it or do various things, save a PDF. You can also email yourself.

15:56

Moderator I do a lot of emailing myself stuff or uploading, you know, things like that. So I do recommend that a lot, especially something that you come across that's interesting, but not related to what you're researching. Never bypass something that's interesting. Because believe me, in a year, you're going to be like, what was that article I read about that lady, you know, it's going to be something you're, it's going to be impossible to find again for a long time. So always hang on to things that you find interesting.

16:32

Jackie And in the app and in your account, you can save articles, which is amazing. So that's a perfect feature for you. You can save an article that you found interesting, even if it's not related to what you're currently researching. So that's another thing. Okay, so that's my general research techniques for how to use the digital archives.

16:55

Jackie Let's talk some more, follow up on the online archives. I talked about that. Oh, so then explore other archives articles on the same issue. If you found a really great article, check out that, open up that part in the online version on the website version. And you can look at the whole magazine article, because it might be part of a special feature, right?

17:20

Jackie It might be and usually it'll introduce the editor section will say, this is part of a special section, right? And then suddenly you have a topic and you have a whole bunch of articles on the same topic, especially if you're like me, who is researching specific topics or specific groups of people or things like that. When I find out something was actually a special feature on get very excited. I also really, really love to find check a couple of months in and see if there were any letters to the editor, especially if there were any angry letters to the editor, because I'm a little dramatic. And it's very comforting.

18:02

Moderator Sometimes I get very comforted to be remembered that actually today I will show you some very messy drama from back in the day. And sometimes it just comforts me to remember that as much as that there's always been, we're not all here. What is it? We're not all here, because we're not all there. It's still true today.

18:26

Jackie And that we all survived and we have these traditions and I don't know why that comforts me, but it comforts me to remember that the people who preceded us were not saints, as Bill said. And yes, so I love to look for the responses from the fellowship. That to me is always really, really exciting. Yeah. And then go to your local central office.

18:50

Jackie I think they're usually easier to access than your area archives if you're near central office. See if they have the grapefines. Most central offices are pretty good about keeping the stack of grapefines, maybe not, but hopefully so, because there's just nothing like looking at the old illustrations. And maybe if they get enough subscriptions and there's a little bit of a surplus, they can scan the actual grapevine issues and then maybe that'll be a part of the future digital archives. But we've got a way to go, people.

19:25

Jackie But that would be incredible, because the actual artwork itself is such a rich part of our cultural history. But in order for that to be a part of it, we really have to show up and subscribe. But yeah, I love it. So I get a lot out of the actual looking at the print editions and the physical artwork as well, and particularly the vintage ones. Okay.

19:50

Jackie So and you can also get a PDF scanner. So that's a really handy research tool in general, because then you're especially if you're not worrying about damaging something by laying a flat on a scanner. Just remember, I'm sure John will appreciate this, it is copyright. So, you know, if you scan anything from central office, don't pop it up on a website, you know, like, you know, even the illustrations from way back, like, you know, let's be considerate. And if you are going to reprint something for AA purposes, check out your service manual, because there is a trademark and, you know, like there's stuff you can write for trademarks and stuff.

20:35

Jackie So I'm not just saying that because John is here. But I actually care a lot about this kind of stuff too, because, all right, because I'm a playwright. Actually, you care about this stuff, as do you probably Gary and a bunch of people who, you know, work really hard to produce these things. And, and, and, you know, I told Mike, it would actually be really fascinating to deal a special, it'd be fascinating to me, maybe not to anyone else. But I think talking about archives and history and copyright laws and, and things like that, like there's a lot of misunderstanding about that kind of stuff and why it's important.

21:18

Jackie And there's just this feeling of like, it's my history and I'm an AA and why can't I have access to everything when I want it and how I want it and how I want to share it when I want to share it. And I think there's something to be said for like understanding those nuances. So maybe, you know, Mike can, we can think about doing that, inviting some of the folks from Stepping Stones and Dr. Bob's House and all those folks. Okay, so here are some examples of talks that I've given after, you know, since, you know, people enjoy my roundabout way of talking and, or not.

22:01

Jackie And so this is like, I just really am very interested in special history of special composition groups and remote communities, a remote community in AA is any group that faces any kind of additional either barrier to either receiving or difficulty for us to carry the message of AA. So there's no special alcoholics, but there are alcoholics who face additional or special barriers. And those barriers can be linguistic, they can be cultural, and they can be geographic. So I think of a lot of these groups, whether you want to call them unrep, underrepresented groups or marginalized groups, I just think of them as remote communities, right? So at various points in our history, these groups have been remote in some way.

22:47

Moderator So one of the groups that I've spent a lot of time researching and thinking about is women in AA. So examples of the way that I research women in the digital grapevine articles, keyword searches, and this is just the beginning, but things like women, women, girl, girls, like fat little s at the end of girl can make the difference in what you're looking for. Gals, gals, ladies, ladies, you can look up, you know, there's different like colloquialisms. So I actually have a book that has like slang language from like 1920s to later. So I can even look up like some of the slang referring to different groups of people from different points of view of time, because language, and especially in terms of how different communities talk about themselves or how we talk about different communities changes.

23:39

Moderator And so because I'm dealing with that, I will also use that. I'm not going to show every single case of that, because sometimes that also can tie into certain sensitivities as well for the different groups I tie into. But in this case, or with young people, I will show examples of the keyword searches I use. And here are some examples of, you know, the names that started coming up regularly, because it turns out there were certain like contributors that were regular contributors to the grapevine, especially in their early days. And I tend, these are the people, because I do history talks, and this is what we're talking about is history talks, there are certain names that kind of had some historical significance, because of their later contributions.

24:28

Jackie And in these cases, they were also frequent contributors to the grapevine early on, not just as women writers, but also frequently wrote about women in AA. And some of these names, you'll recognize Felicia G, who's story was in the big book, stars, stars don't, don't fall stars. Yeah, don't fall count as Felicia. And then Marty M, Marty Mann, women suffer too. Marty was also one of the founders of the grapevine with her partner, Priscilla P, who designed the very first banner of the grapevine.

25:02

Jackie Lois K was one of the founders of the grapevine as well. And then Grace O wrote, Grace O is one of the very, she, she was very spicy, as we will see, she was a very, she did not hold back her opinions at all. So we'll read it. But this is, I'm going to share, this is a classic, early women's, I always share this when I do special composition group stories. So this is an example of what, what the early grapevine looks like.

25:35

Jackie That's the banner that Marty's partner, Priscilla P, who, she was a fashion editor for Vogue, Priscilla. And this is, she designed that initial banner. And so the initial grapevine was like a nice big one. You can go to the grapevine store at AAgrapevine.org, and you can actually get a reproduction of the very first grapevine. And it's really lovely and charming and I highly recommend getting it.

26:01

Jackie But what's really interesting about this, I wanted to show what the original looked like, because you can see that it's the title, it says women in AA face special problems. But when you look at what's on The Collection, it's called women's meetings, because one of the later subtitles of one of the headings is women's meetings. So this is an example of why it's kind of interesting if you can get your hands and look at a printed copy, the differences that may appear between what is in the digital archive versus what's in the physical. And it's okay, because again, it's not the grapevine university, right? It's the grapevine, you know, is the modern day publishing house.

26:49

Jackie It has a very specific mission to be the contemporary voice of AA, and we're just so lucky that it just happens to also have this wonderful archive and has done a wonderful job of preserving it and making it accessible and available to us. So what's really fascinating about this article, and it's one of my very favorite articles is, I'm sorry if it's pixelated, I did not mean it. This is not what it looks like on the website. This is one of the PDFs that I just keep and it does not look great. But Grace O is talking about the problem that women pose, and I'll just read it to you, and she's talking about in 1946.

27:35

Jackie Now that women form an increasing membership in Alcoholics Anonymous, there seems to be a general feeling that they not only have a specialized problem, but like the purple cow, we'd rather see they are one, right? Not only do women have special problems, women are a special problem. And once every blessed so often a woman comes in, works on the program, learns to tolerate, and even like all her fellow men and women, and in general makes herself an admirable member, but for every dozen who do that, there is a basketball who become a combination, nuisance, headache, and problem. So now she's going to talk about the special problems that women face. Now the problems that women face according to Grace is the frailties of the female sex, which include they drop out because the novelty of AA wears off on women, and you know women and novelty, they just get so bored so easily of things like sobriety.

28:34

Moderator Women form attachments that are too intense, women are too emotional, this comes up a lot. For Grace, women are very bossy, women don't like women, women talk too much, women gossip, so you can get the sense, right? You can get the sense of, and this is a woman, this is Grace talking about this. So you can kind of imagine if this is a woman talking about the problem that women pose, like what kind of environment women faced in this time period. So now this is possibly one of my very favorite articles ever.

29:10

Jackie This is a very different counterpoint, and what I love about this article from the Grey Fine, and this is what the cover looks like, but you see this is actually what The Collection look like. This is what it looks like on the website when you read it, so you can see it's nice and pretty and clear. So I wish I had made the previous one look like this, but that's what your digital archives look like when you read it. This is one of my favorite articles ever, and when I think about in special composition groups, I'm going to read a lot of this because in my research and just my personal view of why special composition groups, I call them special composition groups, people call them special focus groups, why women's groups are important, why dual diagnosis groups, why LGBT groups, why men's groups, why all these groups serve a function, why they might be necessary today and what necessary before. This is what really resonates to me, and I just think it's a really great example, and I think it's just wonderful to show how the Grey Fine had Grace's article and it had this article, right?

30:26

Jackie And that's how the Grey Fine is, and that's why the Grey Fine is so wonderful. It's not just one, it is that you get to see all these sides of AA, and so it's so wonderful for historians because it's not a history with an agenda. It's just history is told by the members from all these different perspectives, and so to me it's such a great resource, especially because it's not the story of the, it's not exceptionalism. So in history, we are obsessed with exceptionalism, especially in AA. We love the stories of the Marty Mans and the Sylvias, especially for women, right?

31:08

Jackie We love those stories of the people who just like endure it against all odds and stuck to it, right? But the truth is there were a ton of women who showed up, faced a lot of hostility and just left, right? And that doesn't make them any less valid their experiences than someone like a Marty Man and a Sylvia Kaufman who did stick around, and we should also point out that Marty Man and Sylvia Kaufman were also wealthy debitants, so it was much harder to kick them out than it would have been to kick them out if they had been lower class, lower educated women. So those are things we don't always talk about. So what I love about the Grey Fine is that it is the story of people from all classes, all types of backgrounds.

32:00

Jackie I'm not saying it's not perfect, but to me it gives a sense of history from all kinds of different perspectives, not just the history that ends up in our books. Okay? So, I mean, it's still a curated history. I'm not saying it's perfect. There's still someone who decides here's a story, we're going to put it in.

32:24

Jackie So, but remarkably, a lot of the stuff that even ended up back then, a lot of it, I think they did a pretty good job of choosing things that reflected a lot of different kinds of experiences. Okay, are women the orphans of AA? And I like to ask myself, who is the orphan of AA today? Because I do think that this is a really good question. Are there any orphans today?

32:51

Jackie Who is an orphan today? Okay, so are women the orphans of AA? Women are only tolerated in AA. They are the orphans of AA. This fact may account in part for the ridiculously small percentage of women members who've achieved stability and rolled up some years of sobriety.

33:09

Moderator So, this is amazing to me. I never dreamed there existed so much hostility toward women alcoholics until I started to attend AA meetings. She never realized there was so much hostility until she went to AA because based on how she was treated within AA. That is amazing, right? So, I bless the women member who stood me towards a women's discussion group in the first hard months of my sobriety because without its guidance and intimate group therapy, I might have dropped out as countless other women do.

33:42

Moderator Don't worry about the word therapy. I love being able to tell people this. It meant something different back then. So funny. People say that to me all the time.

33:53

Jackie And then there's a lot of other wonderful things. It's too easy to lay blame on the individual and say she just didn't have a sincere desire to get sobriety. This is a second paragraph. And to say she'll come back when she's ready is another fallacy that tends to make us smug and self-righteous about what may be our own shortcoming. Isn't, I mean, it's just amazing to me that this was written in 53 and there's so much about this that feels so resonant to today, right?

34:28

Moderator I mean, I hear this all the time still too. AA meetings as they stand now are geared for male member, especially the closed meetings. At an open meeting, a women's speaker is usually sandwiched in between two other speakers, even though as in a sandwich, the very meat may be there. And so closed meetings are very rarely conducted by women speakers. Why?

34:52

Jackie I don't know. There's no tradition that makes this a rule. And so they go on and then then talk about women's groups. These discussion groups in no way needs to plant the mixed groups, but rather may serve as a stepping stone to larger meetings. They can also serve as a reservoir for 12-step work.

35:13

Moderator As some groups do not have any women members to send out to help other women, they may also acquaint few women members in their respective groups with others in similar circumstances. So that's one of my favorite stories. And every time I read it, I'm just always astounded by it. So let's talk about some young people in AA stories. Again, keyword searches, I love young, youth, teen, teenager.

35:40

Jackie 2040 is a really cool one because there were a lot of meetings called the 2040 meetings. They were called 2040 meetings because they couldn't imagine anyone younger than 20. So they thought it was like it's for people between 20 and 40. So the idea is that you would go to this meeting if you were between 20 and 40 because they couldn't imagine anyone getting sober under 20. And if you were over 40, you either didn't speak at these meetings or whatever.

36:08

Jackie It was just a kind of meeting who knows how they came up with the name. But and then of course, WIPA and some here's common some names I've stood out BL Manhattan, New York. That is Barry Leach who wrote Living Sober, very popular contributor and actually wrote about a lot of special focus groups. I wrote about a lot of them also wrote the traditions checklist that we know of today. Early gay member as well.

36:37

Jackie Interesting enough, never wrote about gay members or meetings as far as I can tell, but wrote about a lot of other groups, especially young people's groups, wrote a lot of young people's. So one of the first articles is the what do you think about the youth group in Philadelphia? And so a lot of talks about this about it being a response as Roger Paul Lee knows to the veterans coming home and also the draft age had been reduced for the war. And so from 21 to 18. And so that also was causing a lot more younger people coming back with PTSD, but also with drinking problems.

37:17

Moderator And so that was also causing a lot more younger people seeking help for a drinking problem. Then San Diego started. So this is a really the great finds really great for helping to construct like, if you're interested in timelines of seeing where like special focus groups kind of move around the country. And then also sizes, it can be really nice to get a sense of like how big some of these groups were. I love this, like for me again, I'd love to read about how people talk about like the purpose that these groups served back then.

37:55

Jackie And so, and this one's talking about so it talks about the inspiration for women's groups. So we really see how like women's groups as the first special specialized groups and then young people seeing that the women were able to kind of identify and help each other deal with certain barriers, and that young people to faced certain barriers and AA and felt like that they would be able to address them by gathering together. And then this is talking about it. The vast majority of our members are combat veterans with some horrible memories and their minds. And then he's talking about prohibition and the drinking that they did.

38:37

Moderator And it talks about the first meeting of the young men's group, I believe this is San Diego held October 31, 1946 with six young men and 20 of the older men in attendance. Oh, I like this part a lot. The second meeting saw 15 young fellows and 23 old goats attending. The old goats stayed with us for three months by which time we had such a large attendance, it was necessary to form a new meeting. Left on our own, we changed to roundtable type meetings and outlawed any applause for the speakers.

39:10

Jackie The newer men seem found it was quite easy to speak since it was no longer necessary to stand in front of an audience. See, now we get a little idea of the change in like customs like, are we going suddenly the young people, they're no longer standing with a podium and people are applauding, they're standing around in a roundtable. See, to me, this is interesting. I don't know if anyone else finds it interesting, but I just find this kind of cultural stuff fascinating. And it made people feel more comfortable to speak.

39:46

Jackie That was the other thing, right? Like newer people, younger people felt more comfortable speaking if it wasn't in like a more formal podium setting. Some of the quieter men found it easier to question the speaker since it wasn't necessary to address the chair. That's really cool. I just, that stuff just popped out and stood up to, so there's just all this new stuff to see.

40:12

Jackie I've read a lot of these articles over and over again and some stuff. This is cool, 1958, youth group disband. So this talks about a group ending, right? So it's not even just all about like groups standing and aren't young people's groups and these special groups all wonderful. Again, like I'm choosing a lot of them, but there are plenty of articles about like, I don't like these special groups and we're going to start seeing more and more articles like that.

40:45

Jackie But especially in the 40s and the 50s, like these things, you know, a lot, these were all new things. So people were like, oh, what do you think about this new group? Right? And people were just like trying to figure out how, still how to stay sober, what would work, how to grow. They were still trying to figure out how do we help women, how do we help young people?

41:11

Jackie So there was a lot of these kind of conversations happening, but this is interesting about, yeah, I love Boston was like, well, young people seem to be saying sober, so we don't need it anymore. We're done. Of course, Iki Pah started in 1958. Those are the first young people's conference. There's a nice little picture of it.

41:33

Jackie And so in 1961, Barry Leach wrote BL Manhattan, wrote a very comprehensive article about the, there he is, about the 1961 Iki Pah, where you find, so I do a history of YPah. This is the one that took place there. And like this article, I see, look at these, I don't know why I just love these illustrations so much, so much. And this article talks so much into specific about the creation of the advisory council, which for most people don't care about that. But as Roger will tell you, as a former YPah, or as an oldie Pah, there is no former YPah, we just graduate to oldie Pahs.

42:14

Jackie Like to actually find out how the structure of the YPah conference and how advisory created, like that's a big deal to us, right? Like, so for us to actually understand how this structure kind of built, like now we know because Barry actually talked about like how like the initial advisory council was created and the bid system. And it was because Barry wrote about it in a grapevine, and that was not something I expected to find. I really love this part from this article. It talks about the value of special young people's group as a central office secretary from a large city, quoted the young people are the lifesavers of AA in our area.

42:58

Jackie They talk about like the role that young people played in service jobs. So like just having like a central office person is sharing what the about how young people are serving at their central office, which I think is really interesting too. This is just some fun stuff from 1969. Oh God, I just imagine it's like the grapevine tried to publish anything that even pretended to have like any kind of rewriting of the steps today. I don't know if people could handle it, but there you go.

43:31

Jackie This is just so fun. Anyway, the cool dozen. I think this will be recorded. So I'm sorry for the people listening to this, but I guess I'll read step one out loud. One copped out that we were the least with the lush capital L and comma like everything we were putting down was nowhere.

43:52

Jackie Maybe someone who was, you know, does anyone just do people remember is anyone here actually remember what any of that means? Okay, so delightful, lovely, just humorous, came on with the big daddio could free us from the hammer Rillo. I don't even know. So I think of all the special focus groups, the grapevine loves young people like there have probably been so many special features and additions on young people from very, very early on. And I think that's wonderful.

44:23

Jackie So yeah, a lot of the young people love from the grapevine. So the role of the grapevine because the grapevine has had this be a topic of conversation and been involved in this conversation and reflected this conversation, I think you could say more like a reflected and was a platform and a place for the conversation over special focus groups to take place. This really came to head in the 70s and a part of the reason why was in the 1974 General Service Conference. There was an agenda topic. Should groups for homosexual alcoholics be included in the AA's world directory?

45:01

Moderator Because, you know, the conference can't make a decision that affects anyone, any intergroup or anything, but the directories that at the time the General Service Office produced. So this came up because there was a group in San Francisco and then later in Los Angeles that wanted to be listed as gay. There were women's groups, there were black groups, there were young people's groups and no one had a problem listing them as young people's meetings, women's meetings, but when the gay meetings wanted to be listed as gay, then, you know, they're starting, then there and there were also issues around, I mean, I do a whole presentation on this. There were places where it was illegal for gay people to even be gathered together in public. So, you know, they could be arrested.

45:52

Jackie So this was a really big topic and that year it actually, the whole story of how it actually failed. Oh no, it passed, it passed. They, let me see, they were included and not only were included, but the conference passed that all AA groups can be listed in the world directory. That didn't settle anything, by the way, but it actually is kind of amazing because it was a minority opinion that turned everything around and they stayed up for hours talking about it. You can read all about this in this book called A Hipstery of Gay People in AA and you can also probably find recordings about this story.

46:34

Jackie There's also recordings, I think, by Barry Leach has his talks that you can find on recovery speakers. He talks about this story about, about this conference because he was there, but they were still talks about this and this whole question came up like, well, can you, a women's group be a women's group or is it a women's meeting? Can you have a special focus, is a special focus group an AA group or is it just a meeting? Because, you know, and so this is what came up and so in 1977, there was a edition of the Great Fine that came out October 1977, 13 pages, which was about primary purpose and special purpose groups and Dr. Jack Norris, who was a class A trustee, a very cool guy who was also the chair of that particular conference where that, that motion passed, that advisory action passed.

47:29

Moderator He wrote the introduction and some really interesting article and he too kind of talked about the proliferation of all these special groups, the concern being, you know, Catholic groups, will there be protesting groups, Jewish groups? He talked about like, we know this started with women's group, is that an example of sometimes the good is the enemy of the best, you know. So, you know, he, this concern and, and he talks about that. So it's a really fascinating thing, article and so I'm inviting all of you to get the Great Fine subscription and then you can read about it and you can read all these articles because they're really good. And in the fact, I love this part in the final analysis, perhaps what we were really dealing with is special purpose groups is communication among a members and how to improve it so that we can do a better job of carrying the a message to help the hallmarks of all kinds.

48:31

Jackie So you can really think about the Great Fine's role as this method of communication. And then of course in a all what we do is communication, right? And Great Fine is a communication tool, but it has this really special way of dealing with this, this form of barrier and then the ability to communicate, especially amongst these different remote communities. So in this article, these were some of the in this one edition, October 1977, these were some of the articles that were published. I want to belong inclusive, exclusive or more inclusive.

49:05

Moderator So in about a gay member, a black member, this is a very sassy article. It's a really funny article too, but very sassy and they're basically saying, well, they can't do that. And he's just talking about this conversation he had with his sponsor and his sponsor, he's getting all red faced and they're like, and he they won't say what they're talking about, but they're clearly talking about like what happened at the conference and gay meetings and they'll say, but a will survive just like me. And these titles just like resonate with so many, I mean, there are, you know, recent editions that have still similar titles to articles. And I think they're, these are very common themes that seem to be coming up over time.

49:56

Jackie So I just kind of wanted to talk a little bit about the role of the Great Fine with remote communities, as I mentioned, and kind of tie it up with that. So, you know, starting with the 1948 Captain Jack Sparrow, as he, you know, the General Service Office, one of the services they provide is, you know, connecting loaners and internationalists with correspondence and the Great Fine, that was like one of the things they realized early on, especially when Captain Jack S, who was a merchant Marine, who was staying sober with basically writing letters to New York and reading the Great Fine. That was it. And so he was a character in a couple of my plays, because he was really cool. And he was the one kind of came up with the title, you know, they came up with the title loner.

50:49

Moderator And he wrote these articles, like so, you know, he talks about visiting the Boston group, and he would drink like he would just write to the Great Fine, so I got drunk on this day. And just these little, I've been doing a little reading tonight. It's been helpful reaching port. I'm beginning to see how much better it is to hold your head up and say no thanks, whatever AA does, never let them take away the idea of helping the other fellow. I am now gaining confidence all the time.

51:24

Jackie I hope that someday I will be able to pass the good work along to somebody else. And there is one of these articles is so sweet about like the letters, the book and your letters really helped me. I don't think I could have done it without the letters. This may prove interesting to you and others in AA because in my position, I am unable to attend meetings and live day in and day out with others who drink. So Captain Jacks, and he wrote a number of articles and letters to the Great Fine.

52:00

Jackie So he was a regular contributor in the early days. And so the Great Fine, I don't know if they do it. I think they do it every December. Is it every December? Remote communities and sober holidays?

52:14

Jackie So every year they do remote communities. So very tied in with the purpose of the Great Fine. And you know, in 2020, we were all a remote community. And so that is again, an example of like when people in the future like go back and people want to write about what was the experience of AA's in 2020 during the pandemic, they're going to be able to go to the Great Fine. And there's going to be a number of examples, including I think there were even some like blurred out photos and screenshots that got like posted and things like that.

52:52

Jackie So, you know, that is just I think a classic example as well. I do want to point out one more thing about the Great Fine and then pass it on to Roger to kind of explain to those who weren't here last week, again, how you can subscribe and get access to these tools. But one of the other things in terms of accessibility and as a remote community, what's really exciting is that the Great Fine in its many years of history, I think has published only about five articles about deaf alcoholics, the earliest being in 1963, because you know, the challenging thing with deaf folks is that for free-lingual deaf alcoholics, English is a second language because English is phonetically based. It's sound-based language, which means that for people who grew up language deprived in particular, it's a very difficult language for a deaf person to acquire. And so the ASL Big Book also is an abridged Big Book, meaning that deaf AA members have only had access to Bill and Bob's story and maybe two other stories in ASL from the Special Barriers DVD.

54:02

Jackie So you have to imagine what your life would be like, your recovery would be like if you didn't have acceptance as the key, if you didn't have keys to the kingdom, if you didn't have access to the stories of other AA members. I mean, to me, it just seems devastating. I'm using this as an example because I'm a neurodivergent alcoholic and the Great Fine has published, you know, had a special feature on neurodivergence in AA. Oh, I'm getting emotional. So like, having a collection of stories and my home group actually is a women's neurodivergent meeting.

54:41

Jackie So we have a Great Fine story meeting once a month now because like we can find stories in the Great Fine, either women's stories or dual diagnosis stories that we can read and share. So, you know, it means a lot to me that, you know, I know that when I meet other neurodivergent women that I have something I can share with them. But one of the things that the Great Fine has done, and this is free and please share it, is so in its many years of history, they published six English language stories. And then in 2024, last, no, 2025, when did this start? 2024?

55:20

Jackie I can't remember. I think in the last two years, they have published nine ASL stories. And these are stories shared by deaf alcoholics created in collaboration with non-alcoholic certified deaf interpreters. So these are stories in ASL by deaf members who told their story in ASL to a deaf interpreter who they chose, created them, and shared them in a video format for other deaf alcoholics on the Great Fine YouTube channel. And so what took decades to have five stories in a language that's not accessible to deaf people in two years, the Great Fine produced twice that many in the actual language that deaf alcoholics could actually achieve.

56:01

Jackie So there's a team that works to produce and provide them. They're not with the Great Fine, they're a service committee that produces these and then sends them to the Great Fine. But the Great Fine is Patricia Lee Christsy, who's the publisher, has been working really hard to make this happen. And we're really grateful for them. We also want you folks to know that if this is something that there's resources for deaf alcoholics and that there's a forum this Saturday and the Great Fine will be participating in this Saturday's forum as well.

56:39

Jackie I'll put all this stuff in the chat. There's two minutes. I'm sorry, Roger. So if you want to know about Tom P. from last week, get the Great Fine app and in the search bar, put Hankins and have fun because you're going to find 10 or 12 articles written by Tom P.

56:59

Jackie and his son and a woman who wrote a story about the big book who moved to Hankins, New York to live in Tom P's commune. And that's all I'm going to say about Tom P. But there's actually a bunch of articles about Tom P. in his realm in the Great Fine, in the Great Fine, and his actual stories in the Great Fine too. He wrote one story in the Great Fine that he wrote himself.

57:29

Jackie So it's in there. Sorry that I didn't get to it. Okay, Roger, back to you. And then I'll wrap up. Thank you.

57:38

Jackie Thank you, Jackie. That was good information. I learned so much. And I'm going to try searching with the app. That's terrific.

57:47

Jackie I love that I recognize that stage that you started with too. I will only take... Am I going to... Want to share this? Can I stop it?

57:57

Jackie Yeah. Did it work? Am I still screen sharing? Yes, you are. How do I stop it?

58:03

Jackie So you don't see mine? Maybe if you click on that other tab, Roger. RWM on the top there. Oh, oh, oh. Okay.

58:12

Jackie I stopped. Okay. So do you see the purpose in the Great Fine banner? Yeah, there you go. Okay, good.

58:19

Jackie All right, because that will only take a few minutes. A lot of it is redundant from last week. So by week two, you probably have a pretty good understanding of that the Great Fine's the collection of voices. And Jackie did an amazing job of sharing those voices. And it really serves as like a mirror.

58:40

Jackie So we see our own reflection. What I love about these stories is today we're looking for them as if they're history. But much like the talks on recovery speakers, they weren't writing history. They were just sharing their stories when they were written and then published. So they didn't intend this to be history.

59:02

Moderator They just intended to share their experience, strength and hope. So it's really from a historical perspective. It allows people like you and I that are interested to see what was worthy of publication at that point in time. And that's one of the things about them is, you know, it wasn't, I'm going to be, someday somebody's going to discover this great article that I wrote. They were just sharing their stories.

59:30

Jackie Jackie alluded to this and I did the research. The Digital Archives have been available since 2004 when the project was finished. I don't know when it started. There was a recommendation from the conference Great Fine Committee that year to became an advisory action to add this statement to the AA service manual. It's one of those things that was written by a committee with the best of intentions, but it took 250 words plus to describe the Great Fine because we wanted to be perfect and leave nothing out.

60:03

Moderator Over time, the same message became more succinct and on page 83 of the service manual, you can see it basically the same thing in less than 100 words that includes LaVenia. So as history lovers, you might want to know that the Great Fine Archives were successfully established and then the Great Fine LaVenia Board began to digitize them LaVenia back in 2010 and by 2012, those are all available too in the Spanish language. So today we can get both of them and Jackie in a mobile friendly format. So as a researcher, I want to point out just the incredible value. If you search newspaper articles for A History, you're going to get a subscription for between eight and 20 bucks.

60:46

Moderator And you're going to have to look for alcoholics anonymous and all the keywords. If you want to access the certain journals, you're going to have to be a part of a university or you're going to have to pay a good bit of money for each one of them. Sometimes 30, 50, I've even seen them in the hundreds of dollars. But as a history lover, enthusiast research, whatever you consider yourself, you can get access to over 30,000 articles about alcoholics anonymous for about three bucks a month. So compared to other research tools, it's by far the best value if you ask me.

61:26

Jackie So last week, Jackie showed you this and she went over it again. So I'm just going to skip through it very quickly. You know, once you're logged in, I'm excited to try the app and use the same feature to save into my favorites, those things that I find and then get them onto my computer. So I'm going to skip through the things that she's already talked about. You know, Jackie shared this example last week and then again this week.

61:57

Jackie But I often hear group, great point reps say it's our meeting in print. And that's true, but it's really not the whole story. With all the other media grapevines available and just, you know, to be able to do the American Sign Language and to do the Zoom bombing videos that were on YouTube in 2000, quickly imagine if we had to get all that conference approved before we posted it. And that's what the editorial freedom of the grapevine allows us to carry the message in such a way where that's out there and available to the deaf community quickly and already. But, you know, AA grapevines recognized as international journal of AA.

62:41

Jackie And when I hear journal, I think about scientific journals or maybe taking a user writing my personal journal. But as I was talking about this with somebody between this week and last, you know, the Wall Street Journal is read by somebody, for example, that cares about business news or finances. And likewise, if you're an AA member and you want to stay current with what's going on in now called synonymous, the 12th step experience, beyond your group and beyond your little city or Hamlet or whatever, this is the international journal where you can get to hear all those voices. And it's, to me, it's broadened me. And I just learned about a bunch of articles that I'm now excited to go back and look up myself.

63:30

Jackie So as a history lover, I just want to just point out that, you know, you can get grapevine complete, $130 for three years, that's $3.61 a month, or 12 cents a day, you know, if I wanted to be a commercial about it. But if you want a digital subscription, 30,000 articles for $3 a month is an AA history lover. Man, that's like gold to me. So if you get the print, you can't really do the research as we've been talking about, but you have the hard copy. I think that the grapevine complete is the best value.

64:06

Jackie Obviously, I think they designed it that way. But you can do all this and you can have the paper copy to, I love the artwork, I like what Jackie was talking about that. I got a question after last Tuesday about the if walls could talk section and when did that start? And I wished that the cartoons, I wish the images were available in our archives. It's just that's not what we're able to provide today, or grapevine's not able to provide that today, but there is culturally a ton of value in that research.

64:42

Moderator But I think that's it. And then I'm going to shut up and leave time for Q&A again. Let me see if I can take this down. So we were talking before the meeting and I looked up Bronze Machasins was May in 1975. When I tried to do that search, I'm going to try the Tom Power search on the app and see what happens.

65:08

Moderator That's interesting. Sometimes I can't reproduce my results when we do this. And I just found that, I don't know. Sometimes I think it's me. Sometimes I think it's a glitch in the matrix.

65:22

Jackie Jackie already talked about this over here. You can look up your sobriety date and you can find regions, articles from various regions, your own state. And then a variety of topics that they they've picked out that are popular, diversity in AA, Dr. Bob. Somebody asked last week about crosstalk.

65:41

Jackie And Jackie made a great point because I tried to find crosstalk and you'll get different results if you use it, if you say it as all one word or say it as cross and talk, or if you put a hyphen in it, you'll get totally different results, which you know, and then what does it say about crosstalk? You know, you'll have to read the 70s so articles and dig into it to find out, which can be your rabbit hole. So that's all I am going to stop sharing and turn it back over. Thank you, Jackie. Thank you, Roger.

66:20

Jackie That was incredible. I think what I learned the most is just how much I take everything for granted. So thank you for bringing this presentation. And I want to remind people this was part two of a special two part presentation, AA Great Find Digital Archives, accessing the AA story. So part one and part two will both be up on recoveryspeakers.com.

66:43

Jackie If you'd like to ask a question, please put up your digital hand and we'll go ahead and call on you as you show up on the screen. I see Penny P. Penny P. Please unmute. Thanks.

66:57

Jackie Hi, Penny P. and alcoholic. And I just want to thank Roger and Jackie for their presentation. It was just it was fabulous. You all did just a great job.

67:08

Moderator And but I also want to share with you that the same thing happens on recovery speakers. If you're one of the examples that I use is because I do the meeting conversation with a long timer, you're going to get different results if you put in long timer with a space, long timer with a dash or long timer is one word. And so it's sometimes it's the nature of the search engine that's being used. And they don't always convert to do the whole search. I also really want to thank Jackie for mentioning the October 1977 Great Find.

67:46

Jackie I got sober in October of 1977. And for my 30th AA birthday, one of my sister Sponsies gave me a copy of the October 1977 Great Find. And it's in a frame on a table over here in my dining room. And I have to tell you that I'm looking forward to getting off the meeting going over pulling it out of the frame and reading the October 1977 Great Find. So thank you for pointing out that it had to do with with special interest groups and the LGBTQ questions.

68:19

Jackie So thank you. Thank you, Penny. Chilly, Charlie. Why don't you go ahead and unmute. Thank you.

68:26

Jackie Fascinating. My mind is blown. Thank you so much, Jackie and Roger. And my question is not about your presentation so much as you both mentioned having associations with Glenn C. And he's my hero.

68:39

Jackie The reason I'm interested in history at all is I stumbled upon the Heinz-Foot Foundation website at one point and started reading about AA history and just became fascinated with that. And I was wondering if either of you know what happened to the website and all the information that was available there because it's like it's disappeared. And man, it was so helpful early on for me. Thank you. In terms of Heinz-Foot.org and what happened to the information, you know, he's survived by his wife and his children, his daughter.

69:14

Jackie I don't know if anything was left in terms of being able to pay for the domain. But I do believe that the person to contact like I think Tom, why with AA history lovers backed everything up. And then so that Tom was helping with that. And then all of his archival records are at South Bend University where he was a professor. But what I would do is the AA history lovers Facebook reach out to the admin Tom, not why Tom are.

69:45

Moderator And Tom, I believe backed up a lot of the Heinz-Foot.org. But it's just maintaining the domain once the, you know, the person passes is without, is just tough. Yeah. Thank you. I think the last time Tom and I talked about that it was in it.

70:03

Jackie There was an effort on going to try to restore like put that information back available on the internet under a different domain or something. But it was most of it went over my head. But people are aware. I think there are people that care enough to try to restore that. I just don't know if or when.

70:25

Jackie Okay. Thank you. I don't see any new hands. Do we have any more questions? Okay, here comes John W.

70:32

Jackie John, could you go ahead and unmute please? Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Roger and Jackie, good grief. I love that.

70:39

Moderator Oh my God, I learned so much. I've been at the grapevine for a long time and I didn't know tons of that stuff. And I just, I can't wait to dive in more. It's kind of funny like doing what I do is like I'm going forward with like I work at four and with four issues at a time and I'm going forward so I don't get a chance to look back. So this was a real treat.

71:11

Moderator And also it's frustrating for me to go searching in The Collection too because there have been quite a few different editors since we started putting it all in and different people loaded it in different ways because it was a new staff because we have a tiny little staff and it changes all the time. So it's different people entering it and entering it differently. And then over the years, the way we say things like we took the hyphen out of old timer along like quite a few years ago because hyphens are going away a lot of them and in English in words and so the way that the words are done are different. So you have to kind of search all of them. And it's yeah, so it's really frustrating.

72:01

Moderator And then the way it was entered like the different topics and stuff, some people entered it as a topic and sometimes it's three different topics. And so you don't know where to put it. And I don't know. It's it's an imperfect science. But wow, this was a great presentation, you guys.

72:22

Jackie I can't wait to listen to Rogers from last week. So thank you very much. That was great. The way I look at it is, thank you, John. Thank you for all your hard work and amazing job for people.

72:37

Jackie Can I blow your cover? Because John is the editor, senior editor at the grapevine. So and just so kind that he came tonight. So big round of applause. Thank you, John, for all your hard work for the grapevine.

72:51

Jackie And just so available and wonderful. And yeah, if you go to service assemblies or forums and hopefully anyone who's ever done in a chance, he's so friendly and warm and awesome. So the way I look at it is yes. But these things, they lead to happy accidents. So because I can't tell you the number of things that I've come across, because I've had to like look through random things.

73:19

Moderator So that's the thing, like the grapevine is fun to look through. So like, you know, to me, I've never like regretted having to like search for things. Me personally, like, I don't know. Like to me, it's not a it's not been a big thing. It's time consuming.

73:39

Moderator But it's again, like, I come across really wonderful little tidbits. So, you know, sometimes happy these, it causes happy accidents. And again, it's we're not talking about a university level archives department. So you can get yourself maybe some interns. I don't know that the concepts allows to have interns, but

The following is an AI-generated transcript. Minor errors may occur. The audio is the authoritative source.

Grapevine Archives: Jackie B. & Roger W. (Part 2)

Grapevine Archives: Jackie B. & Roger W. (Part 2)

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