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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – WORKSHOP GRAPEVINE – RS 06311.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-workshop-grapevine-rs-06311.mp3 Duration: 01:30:14
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My name is Ken Dunphy, and I'm an alcoholic. I can. The reason I'm here, I guess, is I'm trustee for Eastern Canada, regional trustee, Class B, and I just rotated off the Grapevine corporate board, the two-year term on the corporate board, in April. So welcome to this Grapevine workshop, and I hope that this workshop is as informative and is as much fun as the convention has been so far. I hope you're having as good a time as I am.
I'll ask you to observe a moment of silence in gratitude for AA's first 50 years and all of the sobriety that has been achieved in that 50 years. Could we have that moment now, please? In serenity prayer, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Anonymity. There may be some here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level.
Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films. Thus, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or indeed any AA member be identified by full name or photograph in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us.
And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. And also, in accordance with the municipal bylaw, the security service of this facility, this building, I would like to draw your attention to the evacuation procedures for this hall. Staircases marked with the word sortie are located at the end of the corridors outside each conference hall. Thank you for your attention.
Now, before we hear from our panelists, and by the way, each of whom is going to speak to us for 10 or 12 minutes, giving his or her experiences with the grapevine. And there are experiences here amongst these people with, I think, all aspects of the grapevine. Before I introduce them, I would like you to meet some other people that are here. And the first person is our managing editor of the grapevine, Rita Gresham.
Rita. And the editor, Ann Warner. And another person who I'm sure you are interested in meeting, his name is Jack Morley, and he's a past editor of the grapevine, and he's the creator of Victor Ease. Jack, please, would you stand up? Now, as I said, each of our four panelists is going to come up here to the podium and for a few minutes talk about their experiences with the grapevine. And the first person that I'm going to ask is Chico C.
I hope my remarks don't cause you to look for the evacuation exit. My name is Chico Cortez, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. Hi, Chico. I tried to think of what I was going to say about the grapevine that could be said in 10 minutes, and Rita says you might tell them how you were the area grapevine chairman at one time. And I was a reluctant area grapevine chairman.
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In our area in South Florida, the alternate delegate has been the area grapevine chairman. When I took on this task as alternate delegate, I was a bit reluctant to do it because it didn't seem like anyone was really very interested in starting a grapevine representative program in the area. And so we started it, and it sort of floundered. I wrote Rita a letter, told her I didn't think we should have it, and explained to her about the lack of interest.
And at the next meeting that we had, I got a real nice letter from Rita I might mention, at the next meeting, I brought up on the floor of our assembly that perhaps if there was no interest and none had been shown, that we should do away with the grapevine representative idea at our assembly. Well, you know how we are as alcoholics. That's all it took. All of a sudden, all these people stood up and said, what do you mean do away with it?
We need this thing. And so that's how the area of grapevine representative movement began in our particular assembly. Because until a need was shown by the people at the assembly, by the AA members of the grassroots, there really can't be anything that can happen. And I guess the reason that I wanted to start out with that is that that's really what the grapevine is about as I see it. I've had the opportunity to contribute some articles to the grapevine for which I'm grateful to have been able to share.
And what has, I guess, become uppermost in my mind as a result of being able to share through the grapevine in other areas in AA is that everything that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous happens from the group. We go to conventions and we come here and we think about the grapevine articles or we think about some of the meetings that are going on and some of the people that speak and everything. But you see, all of the articles and all of the sharing and everything comes from you, from people like yourselves.
And I think that's what's important because the grapevine often conveys feelings and emotions and identification that sometimes a lot of us are reluctant to pass on at the meetings. You know how it is that a lot of the meetings, I know that some of the meetings that you go to have to be like some of the meetings that I've gone to where everybody in the room knows the AA password, right? You go into the room and people say, how are you doing?
And you say, fine. And nothing much is said beyond the obvious things. And I think the grapevine is a medium of exchange for AA feelings of depth because as you read the articles, I think you'll see that a lot of people really put their heart and soul into the articles that are written, express their experience, strength, and hope. And I think it's that expression of experience, strength, and hope that keeps us coming back.
I can come to Alcoholics Anonymous and I can hear the drunkologues and I can hear you tell all the funny stories and all the times you went to jail and the times that you were locked up and the bottoms that you hit and all of this. But what keeps me coming back and what had me coming back to Alcoholics Anonymous all the years from the very beginning was what you shared from the inside, from the heart.
I think that's really what is the important sharing that we do. And I think that the grapevine is a good medium for that because a lot of us share from the heart in the grapevine. We bring out the feelings and the emotions that we might not necessarily bring at a meeting. I want to tell a little story and then I'm going to sit down and I'm anxious to hear what the others have to say. I think it says perhaps what I would like to convey to you today.
Some years ago there was a man that was a doctor. And while he was a doctor he had gotten the call to become a missionary and he went to school and he went to be a missionary. He decided he'd be a missionary in Africa. And he went to Africa to an area where no white man had ever been. He wanted to be a missionary in an area where no one had ever been before. And he went to this area, he and his wife, and they built a little home next to a village there.
And they visited with the people and they had a little church and they had a little chapel. Along the way they had a son. He, being a doctor, delivered his own son. And the people came to the chapel, but in all these years they never really got to know these people. They always maintained their distance from the missionary and his wife,
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never came to visit them as friends. And when his son was four or five years old he passed away. He got some jungle illness and he died. And the father took his son, he was a grieving man, he took his son and he dug a grave at the foot of a tree in the jungle and he laid his son in the grave. And he got the village blacksmith to go with him to help him dig the grave. They laid the boy to rest in the grave and they covered the grave up with their hands.
And this is about as far as he could go. And he threw himself on the ground and he started to sob and cry at the tremendous loss in his life. And as he did, the African village blacksmith looked at him and he turned his head from one side and turned his head from the other and looked at him. And he jumped up and he ran. And he ran to the village as fast as he could and he shouted, the white man, the white man!
He cried. He cried. Because you see, he had shared all the superficial things with them, but he had never shared from the heart. But when he cried, they knew he was just like them. And that evening, everyone from the village stood in the yard of the missionary waiting to share his sorrow with them. Because you see, it's until we can share our tears as well as our joy that we share our experience, strength and hope with each other fully.
And I can't think of any better way to do this on a fellowship-wide basis than to do it through the grapevine, reading it, sharing your experiences, your strength and your hope. Because you and I are the grapevine. You and I are the contributors. You and I are the people that share our love through the grapevine with each other when we can't be by each other's side. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chico.
Now, number two on our list is Elizabeth E. Elizabeth, please. My name is Elizabeth Hughes Earhart and I am an alcoholic. I am thankful that today I only have to qualify myself as a grapevine writer and not as an alcoholic. And you should be thankful too. I was the dullest drunk who ever drank. Nothing exciting ever happened to me. In fact, I use my very dreary drinking history as a starting point for a grapevine article and surprisingly enough it turned out to be a little bit funny.
I started writing for the grapevine in the summer of 1978 after I returned from my last general service conference as a delegate from Oklahoma. Now, in case you hadn't noticed it, past and outgoing delegates sometimes have a bit of a problem. There we are, just stuck to the gills with experience and knowledge and wisdom even and a burning desire to share it with anyone who will hold still and listen and not a soul will hold still and listen.
So obviously I had to find something else to do with myself and I started writing for the grapevine. Since that summer of 1978 I have submitted 23 articles to the grapevine. Of these, 20 have been accepted, 18 already published, and two held for future use and three have been rejected. In addition to my need for a new direction in my AA life, there was a reason why turning to grapevine writing was a natural one for me.
I have been a professional writer all my adult life. I have been a newspaper reporter, editor, columnist, feature writer, and then I went into advertising and public relations. I mention this with some reluctance for I do not want anyone to think that professional writing experience is necessary in order to have articles accepted by the grapevine. It most definitely is not. The grapevine publishes about 170 original articles.
About 170 original articles every year. I'm talking only of full-length articles, not letters or little fillers and jokes.
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Only a small percentage of these come from people who write for a living. Professional writing experience is no more necessary for writing for the grapevine than being a professional lecturer is necessary for making an AA talk. Now that is not to say that my writing experience hasn't been helpful. Of course it has. It has given me, I hope, some measure of skill in expressing myself. But I discovered very quickly that while experience might show me how to write, it didn't show me what to write.
Another advantage I had was a long and loving acquaintance with the grapevine itself. The dear woman who made the 12-step call on me in 1958 waited about six weeks to make sure I was going to stick around a while, and then satisfied that I was not immediately going to take off drinking again, she gave me a grapevine subscription as a gift. And it was love at first sight. I absolutely adored it. I never, never, never wanted to do without the grapevine again, and I never have.
Last week I mailed in a check to start my 28th year as a grapevine subscriber. I'm just winding up trying to reach 27 years with God's help. And as my one dear friend, an AA, once said to her brother, I'll be sober over Christmas if God's willing. And he said, Oh, Mary Jo, he's willing. So I feel pretty sure God is willing for me to make it till the second of September. You might be wondering why, since I was a writer by trade and dearly loved the grapevine, I've waited nearly 20 years to start writing for it. And I can't tell you, I don't know.
It seemed as though something was holding me back, as if I thought that I wasn't quite ready or needed more time to develop my own AA program. That's just the way it was, and I don't know why. It's amazing how many people can read a publication for years without actually noticing what it's doing until someone tells us or we have an urgent reason to analyze it and find out for ourselves. I had been reading the grapevine for years, but I'd only read it as a reader.
Now I had to look at it as a writer to learn just what kind of article it used, and perhaps more importantly, did not use. Early in my grapevine writing career, I lucked into a situation which focused my attention on what the grapevine would and would not publish. And it cleared up a lot of confusion before me, before it got well started. An AA friend had encountered something at an AA open meeting that made him absolutely furious.
It was totally contrary to everything he thought AA ought to be. So in a blaze of indignation, he wrote an article for the grapevine about it and sent me a copy. I was in complete agreement with his point of view, and so, I'm sure, are thousands of other AA members. And yet, when I read that article, I felt absolutely sure that it was not going to appear in the grapevine, but I didn't know why I felt that way.
The letter he received from the editor, however, and which he shared with me, explained exactly why. They could not use it, he was told, because the anger shows through. Well, my busy little squirrel of a brain has snatched up that kernel and tore off the back of the nest to chew on it a while. So the grapevine did not use angry articles, at least not just angry articles. Well, in that case, I figured it wouldn't, neither would it use articles that were impatient or self-pitying or contemptuous and not much else.
Now that I had some idea of what the grapevine did not want, how could I find out what it did want? I didn't have to look very far. It's on page one of every issue of the grapevine, staring at you when you turn back the front cover. And it says this, Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experiences, strength, and hope with each other, and here's the important part, that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
And a little farther down on the page it says, The AA Grapevine presents the experiences and opinions of AAs and others interested in alcoholism. So that was that.
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Share our experiences, but in a way that might help others and ourselves to solve our common problem and recover from alcoholism. My friend had shared the experience that angered him, but he had not related it to his recovery or anyone's recovery. Anger does not promote recovery. Love does. Condemnation helps no one stop drinking. But understanding and kindness do. We call the grapevine a meeting in print.
So wouldn't a man be seeking articles that shared experience in terms of the compassion and acceptance that have worked such miracles when we meet in person? You see, there was no compassion in my friend's article. He was just angry. I understand the grapevine now makes available a leaflet telling how to write for the grapevine, and perhaps it contains all the information I painstakingly dug out for myself.
I don't know because I've never seen one. To tell you the truth, I've been afraid to. Things were going along pretty well with the grapevine, taking most of what I sent them, and if I suddenly find out how to do what I'm doing, I might not be able to do it anymore. Let me close with a few observations about the rejection of manuscripts. Now, none of us likes to have an article rejected. It is our precious brainchild that we've labored over and loved.
How can they fail to see how terrific it is? Well, when this happens, I try to remember two things. First, I am a writer, not an editor. There is no way that I can grasp all the reasons why a single piece might not be suitable for the grapevine. But the editors can. That's their job. That's what they're there to do. And second, it is almost impossible for any writer to be objective about our own work.
And that includes those of us with professional experience just as much as anyone without it. We are too close to our own work, too personally involved in it. But the editors can be objective about it in a way that we never can. Again, it's their job to do that. I told you earlier that I've had three articles rejected. The most recent was because the subject matter would not have been of sufficient interest to a large enough proportion of grapevine readers, and I had already rather suspected that, so this one came as no particular surprise.
But the other two did. One, written soon after I started writing for the grapevine, was refused because I had used a rather dogmatic style, telling readers what to do rather than sharing experience with them. The second rejection was because of the subject matter, which might give the impression I was proposing AA as a substitute for religion. Now, the thing that interests me here is that in neither one of these cases did I myself have the slightest idea that the articles would come across to anyone the way they obviously did to the editors.
The minute that they pointed it out to me, I could see it perfectly, but I had not been able to see it until someone told me these things. I was just too close to it, too involved. I could not be objective. The grapevine does provide this invaluable service to writers, one that no other publication to my knowledge gives. It tells us the reason, or at least the chief reason, why the piece is not considered usable.
Most magazines send a printed rejection slip saying something like, this does not meet our present needs, and that's no help at all, of course. But from the grapevine editors, we get a personal letter telling us where we got off the track. A lot of time, thought, and love surely goes into providing this kind of help to their writers. If we make use of this help to improve our later writing for the grapevine, we can greatly increase our chances of seeing ourselves in print.
Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth. Elizabeth talked a great deal about writers, and that gives me an opportunity to make an announcement, if you wish, on behalf of the editor of the grapevine. Up here on the front desk is a stack of flyers, and it says, Victory is telling us to tell all your friends the October Grapevine needs you
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for saving space in the October issue for an article about A.A.'s 50th birthday celebration, written by the celebrators. Share your convention story with the fellowship. Miraculous coincidences, favorite events, all the heartwarming and humorous stories that will bring this convention alive for grapevine readers. And then you can write on the back of this flyer, or any paper that's handy, and place your contribution in the box at the grapevine booth before you leave.
That's downstairs, I guess, on the exhibition floor. Please write legibly and be brief. Space is limited, and we hope to present a worldwide cross-section of A.A. in a very few pages. Please give your full name and address. If we use your contribution, we want to send a complimentary copy of the issue. And if we run out of space, we will still want to write and say thanks. Only initials and place of origin will appear in print, of course.
And you can read all that for yourself when you pick up your copy of the flyer. And one further announcement is that tapes of this meeting will be available from the tape sales booth in the convention center here. Now, the third panelist, a man that I've had the pleasure of working with over the last couple of years, has a lot of experience in various phases of the grapevine. That's Jim S. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jim Shannon. I'm an alcoholic.
And I am a member of the Dykeman Group in New York City. I am not a foreigner today. And I'm very happy to say that I am a member of the grapevine board at the moment, and I'm enjoying it very much. But I was asked to give you my experience as a grapevine representative at the group level and the area grapevine chairman level, and also as a director of the grapevine board. Rita gave me ten or twelve minutes to do this, and I think it would take me about four hours if I was to go into it completely.
But I will give it to you as I can remember it. I think I have to go back to the very beginning when I talk about being a grapevine representative at the group level. I was one of those people who was sentenced to Alcoholics Anonymous when I came out from the other side. I was working in Manhattan, and my boss decided it was better I go to AA. And I had very little choice because I had no money, and I needed money very badly to drink.
And it was necessary for me to go to AA, so I went to my first meeting in New York City very much against my own will. I did not want to go. As a matter of fact, I prayed on the way in that I would fall and break my leg and that I wouldn't have to go in. But God didn't answer my prayers, and in I got. Well, I didn't stop drinking that night because I didn't think I needed to stop drinking the way they were talking about it.
And I kept coming to their meetings, and the guy who brought me worked in the same place as I worked, and he thought it was necessary to have people get busy and active in the group to help them stop drinking, let me put it that way. So he gave me the job of selling the grapevine every month in my group. I was still drinking. I didn't want anybody to know I was drinking, but yet I was drinking. And he told me to give him the money when I would sell them, and I guess he had a good reason for that.
But I got up, and I sold the grapevine when they came in every month. As a matter of fact, another thing he did ask me to do was to go down to the grapevine office and to pick up this packet of grapevines every month. And I hated going in there. I was drinking, and when I would go in, I had been drinking, and I didn't want to talk to these people because they all had the pledge, and I didn't want this, and I would turn away from them, and I was really…
I hated it. But anyhow, it was necessary to do all this thing because I really needed a job, and that was why I was doing it. I didn't want to stop drinking that badly. And things got worse for me, but I did sell the grapevine, and I had no problem selling that grapevine. I could do a better job selling the grapevine then than I could now because I think people were afraid of me when I asked them to buy the grapevine.
I got up, and I went around the group, all the members, everyone that was at that meeting, whether they were our members or not. I sold the 30 issues that we got, and when I sold them, that was it, and I just gave them the money. I don't believe I ever kept one for myself. I don't remember ever having one for myself because I was… I don't remember ever having one for myself because I was afraid to take it home, but I do remember now reading 1963 issues, and I must have read them then because I can remember the articles that I did read them before, so I must have read them, but I hid them, I guess, and I forgot, but two years later I became very ill from alcoholism, and I became paralyzed, and I surrendered to AA, and I came back into Alcoholics Anonymous, and I didn't go to any hospital or anything because
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I didn't have any money to go, but I knew it was necessary that the grapevine should be sold, and I asked that question when I was a couple of months sober, I guess, where was the grapevine, and they told me, well, that's your job, you go and do it, and I took up the job, I was glad of it, I was very happy with it, really, so I became active in selling the grapevine until 1977, I guess, I was elected delegate, and then I had to give the job of selling the grapevine to somebody else, and they never did as good a job as I did, that's what I always thought, I had always pushed them to get up and get out and let the people know that we had the grapevine, I still have to do that now and again too, but anyhow, I enjoyed myself as delegate very, very much, I really enjoyed it, it was a great experience, it was something I never would have wanted to miss, it was really, really, well, I don't think I have words that can describe it in my vocabulary what I think about it, as being delegate, it was marvelous, but anyhow, at the 1927 conference, or the 1977 conference, the delegates suggested that all the delegates go back to their areas and set up a grapevine structure on the same basis as the AA structure, with having a grapevine representative in each group, and then have one at the district level and an area chairman, and I thought, well, to myself, this is one thing I'm going to do, when I get back here, I was full of enthusiasm, when I would get back to New York, I would get all this going, I'd have a GSR in every group and a GVR in every group, and we'd have a GVR chairman, and I thought, well, this would be great, it would be easily done, but let you try to do something in AA, and it doesn't seem to be that easily done, it's very hard to achieve it, at least I found that. Some people did listen to me and some people got GVRs in their group, but we still don't have every group have any GVR, I think we have over 1,200 groups now in the area, but we don't have 1,200 GVRs, I know that. However, I took the job from the chairman of being the grapevine chairman for the area, and that was a job I loved really, because we have a lot of get-togethers in our area, county get-togethers and all types of things like that, as well as our conventions, and I would go out there and ask the people if I could bring out a table out there and let them see what the grapevine had for sale, so I was always accepted, and people asked me to come out later on when they got to know me and set up a grapevine table at every function that we had, and we had plenty of functions, so I brought them out and showed them the special items that we have in the grapevine.
Some people never seen them before, and I can agree with that, because I hadn't seen them before either, and I think it's very rewarding, and it's absolutely wonderful, I think, for any area chairman to go out and set up a table and let the people, the GVRs and the GSRs and all the members of the group see what the grapevine has. It's just a little bit more than the magazine, but I think a very important item there is to bring some order forms, which is that they can order some things for their group with, and also order forms for the magazine. Since then, of course, we have some tapes which are extremely nice, and I'm sure you all have heard of the tapes, and outside on the table or down in the lobby, they are selling the best of the grapevine this time, and I think that's absolutely terrific, and I'm sure that everybody will have a copy or two of that going home. I think it is a lovely gift to people who are really new in AA, and who really would appreciate what AA does for you, and to give one of those gifts to somebody who is celebrating their first or second anniversary is something I'm sure that you'll be always proud of, because it will put them on the proper path, and I believe that. Because I believe the grapevine put me on the proper path when I began selling it at the group level, because when I got sober, I used to take the grapevine and go out under the trees in the park and sit down and read the articles in the grapevine, and it soothed my mind. I also took it on the subway with me, and the subway sometimes can be a frightening experience, but I would get myself involved in the grapevine and forget where I was, and it was really very, very good. The meeting in print is a good example of really what it is, because that is what it is, it's a meeting in print. And anyhow, at the end of my term of two years, or before
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the end of it, I used to go out with a delegate. Our delegate in our area goes out to the different groups and gives a lot of talks about service, and they used to invite me out to these groups, and I would go out and give a service talk on the grapevine. And that was rewarding to me, too. I don't know if anybody ever got anything from it, but I think they have, but I got a lot from it, and that helped me. And I think anything we do in AA, no matter what we do, really helps us. And that is what we are here for. We are here to carry this message in whatever way we can to the still-suffering alcoholics.
Now, two years later I was elected to the board of the Grapevine Corporate Board. I was absolutely thrilled when I was asked would I like to serve on the Grapevine Corporate Board, because it was something that was completely above me, that I never had any real feeling of ever doing this type of work. I never thought that I was really worthy of ever being asked to do any such thing, because it was, I understood or I thought that everybody there would have to be very well educated and have a degree in writing and whatever else that goes along with doing the grapevine, as you all know, and I didn't have any of those things. And when I was invited down there, really, I was thrilled. And I went to my first board meeting. And my first board meeting wasn't what I thought it should be.
And I was, you know alcoholics are alcoholics. And alcoholics get terribly upset when they talk about money. And at that particular time we were, the grapevine was kind of short of money and it was difficult to get to know where to get the money from. But some people had their own ideas and they really created an awful scene that night. And we were there from 6.30 to 1 o'clock in the morning. And I said to myself, well what in the name of heavens brought me in here? I don't want to be here. And there was another man with me and he's not here, he's sick as a matter of fact. And we looked at each other and we looked, we didn't know what to say or what to think. And we had nobody to ask because we couldn't ask. We had a marvelous chairman who is here today with us too. And only for him I don't know what we would have done. We would have probably come to blows I guess or something.
But he was really marvelous. And he kept everything so low. But it's like the same as when you're in a group. If you talk about money at a group meeting, my God, everybody has something to say. And if it's the same thing there, everybody has something to say. But thank goodness it changed. And you know we have a great system there, the same as there's in AA all the time. You rotate after four years, so all people who want to make trouble, whether you make trouble, whether you're good or whether you're bad, you will rotate out whether you like it or not. So everybody rotated out. So now we have new people in and we really have a beautiful committee. It is really, I love going to it, I love listening to the people, I love sharing with whatever I can. And it is something to be desired really. And it's not at all like what I thought it was when I came in. It is completely different. The more you get into it, it's like doing anything else in Alcoholics Anonymous. The more you get into it, the more you love it. And that is what it really is. And I'm very grateful to the grapevine and Alcoholics Anonymous and all you people to give me this opportunity to serve you. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jim. Now our last presenter is a past general service trustee and past chairman of the Grapevine Corporate Board. And would you welcome Don D. please? Thank you, Ken. My name is Don Daly and I'm an alcoholic. I was thinking we all, all of us on the panel here have had experience with the grapevine and it's been very experienced. And like everything else in AA, I think every member of AA has available to him just what he needs. Occurred to me, I guess during the meeting last night, that I had my first drink 40 years ago, I guess last month. I had my first public drink in a sense with my parents.
I come from a family with a lot of trouble with alcohol. And the first time I was allowed
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to have a drink in front of my parents was when I had just turned 21 and it was in the city of Montreal. I had just come back from France where I was a student. And so Montreal connects in various ways with my story. I'm not going to qualify, but the reason I'm telling you that is to say that I had my last drink on November 21st, 1961. I got sober in the North Port group on Long Island. And the reason I mentioned that is that on Long Island in those days, it was considered somewhat subversive to show any interest in any activity above the group level. You could go to meetings with other groups, but if you were showed any interest in inner group or general service, people began to think you were a communist or something. And God knows, anybody who would actually go to a meeting in New York City would know telling what he would do. That fact coupled with the fact that I don't think I really did much for the first nine years that I was sober sort of kept me out of service except at the group level. We were very active there. We had a very strong group and the grapevine was part of it. I don't know how we thought the grapevine was produced.
I think sort of like manna. The 12 and 12 and the big book and the grapevine appeared at the meeting and people bought them. As a matter of fact, I thought you were required to buy the grapevine. We got our supply in once a month. There was always a grapevine chairman. The job was rotated and you were handed the book and you were expected to give your back your 35 cents, I guess it was at that time. In any event, I had no concept of service whatsoever outside of the group. In 1973, I moved into New York City and got to know some people. I was involved with people at the General Service Board and at that office.
And I was asked if I would consider being involved with the grapevine corporate board. I can remember it was pointed out to me that there were two boards if I was going to be involved with GSO committees. One was the grapevine and the other was AAWS. And when it was sort of indicated that maybe I ought to be involved with the grapevine, I wondered if that was right. I wondered if the grapevine would be challenging enough for somebody like me. As Jim said, the challenge was considerable. It almost killed me. But again, as is true in AA, you get what you need. I was interviewed, I guess, for the board by Paula and Jack.
I didn't know that at the time, but I had, I guess, before I had my first drink, been an admirer of Jack when I used to read his comic strip, which was actually nationally known at that time. But I did not connect him with that at the moment. But Paula and Jack seemed to have everything in perfect control at the grapevine. I figured I was going to have a long yawn for the next four years. It was going to be sort of interesting to show up at these meetings and hear what people talked about. And with that, I went to my first corporate board meeting, I guess, in the fall of 1976. Somehow or another, there was a fast shuffle. The guy who was treasurer of the grapevine on the board was actually an English teacher, and he got to be treasurer because nobody else would take the job, and he was the junior guy on the board. When I showed up, he knew he had a live one on his hands. And before the meeting was over, I was treasurer of the grapevine. This was just before the grapevine went into its great financial decline that Jim alluded to. And I hope I wasn't too much part of the problem. We really did have challenging days on the grapevine, and they started about two years after that. I can remember, I was also on the finance committee of the General Service Office, and I can remember one of the first meetings I went to in which there was considerable concern that the grapevine would have too much money.
As Jim said, you know how we alcoholics are about money, and there's always that strong tradition that no body in AA should have too much money because of the problems that it brings. Well, the problems that came were not from having too much money, I can tell you. It turned out that we were caught. We went from a fairly large base for the circulation base, say, of 80,000 to well over 100,000 at a time when the greatest inflation in the history of the world, I think, was in the 1980s.
caught cost, and with particular impact on printing costs. Paper went right through the roof, printing expense went right through the roof,
[00:45:04]
salaries went up, rent went up, all of these things hit us at a time when people, including the readers of The Grapevine, were feeling the effects of inflation and subscriptions sort of leveled off. So we were caught with that classic business crisis, rising costs and fairly stable sales. All the time that that happened, and it turned out, like so many things in life, and certainly in AA, it was a real blessing in disguise, because while there was no question we eventually had to have a price increase, this kind of stringency we were placed under really caused us to examine how we were doing things. We went to a new printing system. When I say we, please let me make it clear that the people on the board, the people like myself, are there periodically to help the staff. It was the staff, Rethan and Anne and the other members of the staff, who actually did the work, found out how to buy paper, find out how to get better printing contracts.
We, in effect, did all those things that should have been done in any business when circumstances have changed as much as they did, and we came together and then went back to the Finance Committee and got an appropriate price increase. About that time, in the normal process of rotation, I had served four years as treasurer, and I, at that point, was elected as trustee to the General Service Board and simultaneously made chairman of the grapevine. So I served four years as treasurer and four years of the grapevine during a period that I think was very challenging indeed. I'm happy to report, as a result of all of the things I've just touched on, we were back in the black by the time I did rotate off the board in 1984, in April.
One of the things that is peculiar about the grapevine as a business, and that essentially was the part that I was involved in, is that you don't want to make money, but on the other hand, you don't want to lose money. The grapevine, ideally, would break even right down to the penny. Now, that's very difficult to do when you're talking about a budget of a million dollars, and we usually budget for a tiny surplus, and when I say tiny, I'm talking about $10,000 or so, which is a very small fraction of a million dollars, and it has come in that way, in a very financially healthy way, the last couple of years, and I think that's just the way it should be. I think the grapevine, again, from a business, and it is never thought of purely as a business, but you have to apply business standards to any enterprise, because one of the things that we felt when I was on the board, and I still feel, is that all of the entities of AA should be self-supporting. I feel that way about each group. I feel that way about, for example, something like the International Convention. I think this should be financed as it was, with registration, so that we don't operate at a deficit, and I felt very strongly that way about the grapevine, that it should not be subsidized. It should be paid for by the people who want the magazine, and that is the happy position that the grapevine has been in the last couple of years. Now, lest you think that my interest in the grapevine stopped at income statements and balance sheets, it was not that.
As Jim said, we had some very interesting and very long board meetings. I mean, we used to practically have to schedule the weekend for board meetings, which normally should take place in two hours. Those board meetings, I'm happy to report, as Jim did, got shorter and shorter as we went along, and as the problems resolved themselves. But the marvelous thing about my exposure to the grapevine and the General Service Board has been the involvement that I've had with people, such as Jim and all of the other people here on the panel, and Retha, and members of the staff, and Jack, and Paula.
Despite that slogan that we have an AA of Principles Before Personalities, I think in my life and in my heart, it has always been Personalities Before Principles when I have been involved in AA activity. The people I've been privileged to meet and work with as a result of this stewardship have made a very significant contribution to my life and to my sobriety. Finally, it gave me exposure to that separate entity, which is created by all these people, the grapevine. I have always read the grapevine, ever since I first came into the Northport Group on Long Island,
[00:50:02]
and I continue to read it to this day. And every once in a while, I figured that the grapevine has said everything it can say. I mean, after all, there are only so many experiences about alcoholism, and there are only so many ways you can present these experiences, and to my utter amazement, each issue does the trick and does it in a new way. I was fascinated, for example, by the current cover of the grapevine showing that street in Montreal with the key words of the Serenity Prayer in French on that bistro sign.
I'm intrigued with the fact that there's going to be a new way of presenting once over lightly in the future in the magazine. The magazine has changed continuously, but I think the message has always been the same, and that is that the grapevine brings us a meeting in print. Thanks very much. Well, I want to thank these four panelists for this wonderful insight into our magazine, which we, I'm sure a lot of us, take for granted. And you have heard a bit about how it comes together, about writing, about the problems that come up with financing it and getting it out to you.
And now it's your turn to take part in this meeting. We have 35 minutes, because we will end promptly at 3.30. I want to ask Rita first, is this microphone here connected to the tape? If it's to get on tape, does that one have to use that? If you have a question for anybody that's here, the panelists or the editors that are here or anyone else, please identify yourself, come to the microphone and identify yourself or else you're going to make more work for me. She tells me I have to repeat the question.
And please address the question or let us know who you would like to answer your question. Yes, would you go to the microphone? Hi, my name is Lino and I'm a Spanish alcoholic. Hi. I got a question for anyone on the panel there which to answer. When did the grape wine print some of the valuable, very valuable information for the Spanish speaking alcoholic of the world? You can grab a microphone, Rita.
Ann said that I should answer this, but she may have to tell me the names of two other publications. Our own grape wine is printed in English only because it would be a complete double production to print it and the audience for a foreign language is very small which means it would be extremely expensive. We do know of the two Spanish publications El Mensaje and Plenitude that are published down in South America somewhere.
El Mensaje is Columbia Plenitude is Mexico and you know that you have your own French Levine. We don't anticipate that the grape wine will do the magazine in other languages. If you want the names and addresses just give me a note later and we can send them to you. My name is Lino. I'm sorry, I forgot. El Mensaje is printed in Columbia, not in Mexico. But it's not very popular among the alcoholics, Spanish alcoholics in the United States. But that's besides the point.
I think the information available to the
[00:55:01]
English speaking alcoholics is so valuable. It can help so much the Spanish alcoholics all over the world and this is the reason why I asked the question. Thank you very much. My name is Doug and I'm an alcoholic. It's my privilege to be the grape wine chairman for the area of Colorado. Out our way there seems to be a lot of apathy about service work in general which I guess is the case in many places.
There seems to be almost a custom or tradition of apathy when it comes to the grape wine and I guess my job is to do what I can to change that and I was wondering if any members of the panel could share either their own experience or experiences they've heard of what seems to work in changing that attitude and getting people interested in subscribing and also getting groups interested in having a GBR.
Thank you. That was Doug. My name is Chico and I'm an alcoholic. I don't know if you have grape wine workshops at your assemblies or not but that's certainly a way to do it. Another thing that you can do is that at these workshops you try to get the grape wine representatives to go back to their districts and to form districts. Do you have that too? Okay. There's a gal here from our area that's been heavily involved in grape wine and I think she might be able to share something with you if that would be alright. Pat, would you be glad to share with them? Sure.
Or you can use this one here, Pat. Okay. The thing that I did was to, I was the district grape vine rep and every month I gave a report. It was largely a manufactured report. I mean I blew up the most insignificant thing into some sort of a story that might perhaps get a laugh or just a rather tiny bit of response to the report. So I made those monthly reports. I beat the bushes truly, asked each time, are you a grape vine rep? I would send out periodic mailings.
I don't believe I ever got a response to one but I would send little notes. Do you know that as the alternate grape vine rep, this was a little stick that we used in our district and that was to appoint the alternate general service representative automatically became the deputy grape vine representative for their group and in many cases they did not know this so I would inform them of this and try to get them kind of fired up. Hey, you're really an important person.
I used to send out, I have a word processor computer type thing and I used to send out these little things with coupons on the bottom and stamped self-addressed envelopes. I don't think I ever got a response. I did. One grape vine rep wrote me a response because he felt that somebody should reply to this but no one else did. Anyway, it was just a case of trying to generate interest and the most important thing I did and I was delighted to hear my friend from New York, my fellow big appler, Jim, talk about attending the functions and bringing the grape vine material not only the grape vine but all those marvelous, I used to call them grape vine artifacts, the wonderful things that the grape vine publishes which make great gift materials and so forth. I would go to every intergroup picnic, gratitude dinner, within my district of course I didn't trample on other grape vine rep's territories. I brought them to the area conference meetings when they were held in our district and the convention the last convention that we had was in a hotel that I frequent frequently and I was not eager to let everyone there know that I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous but I felt my duty so strongly that I did stay there day after day and every bellhop and cabana steward in the place knows that I'm in AA now but it was worth it. We had our little grape vine booth and first I went down to the beach and hacked up all these sea grapes and we decorated a little bit and this sort of thing but all I ever did in the
[01:00:05]
Thank you. Thank you, Paul. I'm Jim Alcoholic. Hi Jim. Thank you. Our group buys Falk's Subscription, the grapevine, and we make it a point to give it to newcomers and anyone else who wants it. And I want to say that the response is underwhelming. The feedback is the policy of recovery only stories. Has that ever been challenged or any thought of giving to changing the policy of recovery only? Ann.
Hi, I'm Ann Warner, the editor of the grapevine. Yes, I don't know whether really changing the policy of recovery only because that's what the program is all about. But we've been trying, particularly in the past few years, to get more articles about group problems, more articles about things like drug addicts coming to meetings, you know, the problems with their primary purpose that are problems throughout the fellowship.
And I will make this a little plug because we do want these articles, we do need these articles. Elizabeth talked a bit about what kind of articles we need and about one that I think it was you that talked about one that was rejected because it was just angry and not much more. We're not too hot on articles, you know, why are drug addicts coming to our meetings? That's the problem. And we all know that it is a problem. What we're looking for is here is what our group did about it.
One person who is here today has written a couple of articles about what one district has done about it. So what we need is articles about the solution. And if any of you can write those things or have experiences to share or know people who do, that would be just superb. While I'm up here, as long as I have the mic, that little flyer which Ken read, the October grapevine needs you. We're not just kidding. The October grapevine is partly in page proof and we saved ten pages for the convention and so far have no copies. So we really do need you.
I understand also that the grapevine booth won't be open much this afternoon, so if you want to send things in, just mail them in, but do it real fast. Thank you. Like Monday. Thank you, Ann. Yes. Yes, good afternoon. My name is Annie. I'm an alcoholic and I'm coming from France. Hi. I want to come to this meeting because I wanted to hear how you did. Because we also have, we have a booklet named Partage. Partage means share. And I took the name, I say I, but I was part of a team from the magazine printed in England called Share.
I want to say that we get a lot of help from the grapevine because I read the grapevine. I got permission five years ago when I was in New York to translate articles and I also always put, taken from, translated from the grapevine such and such number with their permission. And I must say that these articles help us a lot because it helps us to know that the problems are always the same in France as well as in the big United States.
And all I've heard since I was in this room, these problems, we have, we have difficulty in getting articles regularly. I mean, I never have more than one number in advance. We have, I know that myself at the beginning I wrote a lot. Now I don't anymore. Not even to the grapevine. I did send articles years before, but I never do anymore. I don't know how it comes, but I never find the time. But what I wanted to say is keep on giving us ideas, keep on changing your things, but we change also the forms of our printing. The printing is better, it's clearer.
We haven't got, our magazine is much smaller than yours, but it's growing as the groups are growing in our country. And I think it's great to think that like in other, any other field, the problems are the same and we are here to share our experience, strength and hope that things get better. Thank you.
[01:05:24]
Hi, I'm Tad. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Tad. When I was young and beautiful, I knew I was going to write great literature and become rich and famous, but God had other plans for me. And I think they were good plans. I wind up being TSC's Templeton, Massachusetts. It's no payment in the grapevine. The letter I got from them helped me tremendously on my job. I was in an awful lot of trouble. They didn't want me and so on. And one of the criticisms was that I couldn't write. And I referred them to the letter which was hanging over my desk.
And it was very effusive. It was very beautiful. I suspect sincere too. I became acquainted with the grapevine. I've been a reporter, editor, publicist, New England, New York newspapers. And I wound up on the bowery. I wound up washing dishes and so on. There came a time when they wouldn't even accept me for that. And the lady down at the employment agency said, I'm going to do you a favor. And she sent me to Brooklyn State Hospital.
I didn't know they had hospitals for alcoholism. And I got rejected the first time there because they asked me if I had any medical problems. And I said, yeah, I'm sweating a lot and I go into chills and so on. She said, come back in two weeks. Somehow I managed to survive for two weeks. I came back. I was accepted. It turned out the fellow on the desk, the admin desk, was an AA member. And I walked around and I spotted my first grapevines. They were all lined up there in the library, little alcohol closet space that they turned over.
And the first issue I picked up had an article about night sweats. I'd never heard about that, but that's what I had been going through. I was in the chronic late stages or late middle stages of alcoholism at that time. I find the grapevine the best tool that I can pass on in AA. People will tell you to read Chapter 5 of the big book or go into the steps and so on. I give them a copy of the grapevine because it's such a broad range.
Some of our literature, I think, might overwhelm people, particularly if they're new. It might be too much for them and so on. The grapevine is, as I say, a great tool. In the beginning, I couldn't read it. I had no concept of God or spirituality or a high power, so I looked at the jokes. I looked at Victory. It took me three years to figure out that Victory was a play on words and so on. We have a Founders' Day breakfast usually in June in East Templeton, and facsimiles of the grapevine are given away or raffled off, and it plays a great part in our event.
This time, it's going to be held last week in July. We want to hold off. We're going to have a speaker from the convention, an old timer. So I have no question, obviously, but this is just my way of saying thank you to the grapevine. It's been a great part of my life, a very positive part. I'm Alberta, and I'm an alcoholic from St. Louis, Missouri. Hi, Alberta. Hi, everyone. The little blurb in the grapevine about suggestions for topics for closed meetings has made me think about starting a grapevine meeting that would each week talk about one of the articles in the grapevine.
I wondered if anybody has done this, or what the mechanics of it would be, or any suggestions anybody might have on that. Can you come up to the microphone? My name is Frederick, and I'm an alcoholic. Oh, God, am I standing up here? We have a grapevine discussion meeting every Friday night. What we do in that group, we have a lot of people who come to that group from halfway houses, and then there are some elder statesmen in the group.
We read an article from the grapevine where it has a suggested topic, and we discuss the topic of that.
[01:10:03]
It's amazing. One of the things for me that happened was to watch some of these new people get in touch with what the steps are and what they really mean, and what our program of recovery is. It works very well. If you need any more information, I'd be happy to share it with you after the meeting. Yes, sir. My name is Festus, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm from Holyoke, Mass. I'm a member of the South Hadley group of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm a grapevine rep for that group.
It's kind of incidental how I got into grapevine work. My sponsor, when I was four months into the program, pushed me into service work, and that got me into the institution. Just as the institution was finishing up, South Hadley's rep had to back out because of one reason or another. It was about two more months before it was time for elections to get new officers for the next year. I volunteered, and some election time I was elected to be a group rep for grapevine.
We have a great guy that's chairperson for grapevine, Ralph W. We have a lot of fun in service work, and we accomplish quite a bit in our area. I'm just proud to be a grapevine rep in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. Thank you. Hi, my name is Willie. I'm an alcoholic. Presently in California. I kind of see myself as, this is my opportunity to say thank you to the grapevine. You were so much a part of my recovery.
You explained the steps. You made it simple. You even had pictures. It was a meeting in my purse at all times. Sometimes in the bathtub at three in the morning would be the best meeting in town. When I sponsor somebody now, and I think they got a chance, I give them a year. A subscription in the grapevine. One of my smart, sobering ones sent me one for Al-Anon. I haven't figured out which one it is yet, but it's working.
I have been a lot of things in AA, but one of the things that the grapevine did for me is it gave me some courage. I remember being so broke in Colorado Springs, it was 35 cents. They had a can there, and I put in an IOU for 35 cents. I was able to pay it off, thank God. As prosperity grew, I was able to get it for a whole year. I kept that up, and I kept it up. It was 15 years before I ever got enough courage to take a two-year subscription.
Lord, I didn't know if I'd make it tomorrow. Now I've had it for quite a few two years at a time, and I really feel good about it. I'm with the Sunday morning group in Oxnard, California. That is a place, not a condition. I took on the literature, because I've been out of service work for a little bit, and I had better get my feet wet again. I said, but where's the grapevine? We've got all these wonderful books, but where's the grapevine?
We give away at least six of the AA books every week. I said, but where's the grapevine? That's the most valuable thing we've got next to our big book. They said, well, what's the grapevine? I said, you've got to be kidding. So I sent out, and I got some things about it. I really feel privileged. They said, well, we don't have a representative. Would you do it? I said, you've got it made. I'm so pleased to be representing you, because I've given you to doctor's office.
You're in high schools. You're in treatment centers. It is a meeting in your pocket all the time. Thank you for being here. My name is John Hammond. I come from Coburg, Ontario, Canada. I happen to have the privilege of being the grapevine chairman for the eastern Ontario area. Our area consists of 23 districts and approximately 500 groups. I travel quite a bit throughout our area. My goal for the next year and a half left in my term is to see if I can do it.
A year and a half left in my term is to see if I can establish a GVR in each and every group in the Eastern Ontario area. But my question that I have today, along with the suggestion, first of all, one of the most asked questions of me throughout my travels,
[01:15:02]
and I have given a grapevine presentation now to approximately, I believe, about six districts out of the 20th Street, and I have taken part in a few workshops. But one of the most questions asked of me is, this GVR of my group, what am I supposed to do? And my answer is, to them, you're a salesman for the grapevine. But I think maybe, as a suggestion, when the grapevine is mailing out to the GVRs their bimonthly letter, if they could not insert in that letter maybe the GVR flyer, because I do notice that I can receive these flyers at any time at all.
All I do is phone New York, and I ask for 100 to 200, and they send them to me. And if they are that readily available to me, why cannot they be put into the mail for the GVRs? And maybe if the GVR reads the flyer, you can pass it on to the next one in this group, or hopefully somebody else might be able to read it. The other question I have concerns the computer printouts. I received my computer printouts last month, and my first reaction to it was that it was an exercise in futility.
And I phoned the grapevine the next day and told them so. However, I will do the best that I can to make the corrections on this sheet, but I realize that money makes the world go around, and I also realize, too, that there is a lot of money, I believe, being wasted in alcoholics and others, not only in my own area, but in all areas. And I can only think of the duplication and mailing that must take place in New York, the letters that are being mailed out to people that are on these sheets that no longer are GVRs of groups.
Some of them are dead. Some of them have moved to different areas or different districts. And I think that myself, from the Eastern Ontario area, with the number of GVRs that we have in our area already, and the sheets that I received, nothing is in order. None of the districts are in order. Nothing is in alphabetical order. It's probably going to take me, and I told Dale on the telephone, it's going to take me until September to get this thing corrected.
Anyway, it was the help of a few other people. My question concerns the computer printouts. Is it possible that these could be sent out in order of district or in an alphabetical order or some better order than what they are being sent out right now? Because it's going to make the job really, really difficult. And if the job can be made easier for me as the area chairman, then it can be made easier at the district level, and it can keep the records maybe a little better in the general service office in New York and avoid some of the duplication that I'm sure takes place as far as mailing is concerned.
Thank you. I hope I can remember to respond to all of the things you brought up. My name is Risa Gresham. I'm an alcoholic. For those things that I don't touch on, John, please write me a letter specifically with the things you just said. For starters, I really keep hoping that we alcoholics do all get better because in the first place, the sign-up for being a GVR of a group is on a flyer that says, what does a GVR do?
When we get that into our office, we send a packet of material, and enclosed in that packet to the new GVR is a flyer that says, what does a GVR do? Now, maybe they forget that after a while. But in addition to that, we send a number. I think maybe it's 50 flyers to every new area grapevine chairperson, and we ask them to either duplicate them or if they want more to let us know. So that's my response to that.
The information that we have in our computer printout is the information we get from the fellowship. GVRs come to us many ways. Sometimes they walk through the office on a tour, and they'll take it on as a temporary measure with the idea they go back to their group and get approval. And they'll go to the area person. The area person will send the name in. What we don't get, I think, a lot of times are the deletions or the changes.
And we're not going to know how to do that if you don't tell us. So for that part, our information is only as good as the information we get. And I was involved in service too, and I know how people move around and how difficult it is at the area service level to keep up with the addresses. Now where am I? The what?
[01:20:02]
The order? The order that it is in right now was the order we were advised to put it in by the computer consultants that we have, and it's in zip code order. Now I don't know how that affects Canada. You know, it may not work that way. But where we are right now is the best we can be for the short time of being on the computer, I think. So in that respect, give me your suggestions, and maybe we can treat Canada differently somehow.
I want to say while I'm here, if I may take just a minute longer, Anna, when you shared at the mic, I was really impressed with that. And I think one of the greatest compliments the Grapevine has had are all those magazines that have been developed after its format. And when I first came to the Grapevine, Jack Morley was there. He was planning on retiring. And I remember that he told me all these magazines, countries, that wanted their own Grapevine, he had suggested to them that they develop their own format, but I think everyone has chosen to follow ours, and this also includes OA magazines and other self-help groups.
But he also encouraged all of those people who made the request to develop their own material where possible and the sharing was immediate within their own country, but freely gave the permission to reprint our Grapevine articles. Now, interesting here at the convention, Levine has its own booth. They have duplicated our brochures, questions and answers, Grapevine history, except it's Levine history, I guess, because I don't read French, but there they have those brochures.
They've developed our GVR idea, and I don't know how soon they think they're going to print the best of the Grapevine, but pass the word on, they need to ask us first. I'm Conrad Seagroves, I'm from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm the Brown Bag Grapevine representative and I'm an alcoholic. I was attending a group conscience meeting about two years ago and our GSR said that they needed a GVR and nobody said anything and I suggested that they make an announcement at every meeting and they said, you're the GVR.
I have been making those announcements and trying to encourage people and I thank you to find out I've been doing it the right way for birthdays and also for any raffles, we do raffle them off. And I just want to thank you all for being there, thank you very much. Thank you. I'm Ed, I'm an alcoholic. I'm a Grapevine rep for the Washington area and I also received a printout from the Grapevine staff and when I first looked at it I said, boy, what a mess, you know, because most of the entries in there hadn't been updated since 1983.
So what I did, I went through this list and I tried to pick out as well as I could, having a map of the Washington area and all the different districts and everything and the cities and the zip codes were listed and I separated them as well as I could onto separate sheets, the Grapevine reps for each district. These are still sitting on my desk at home. When I get back I'm going to have them duplicated and at our next district committee meeting I'm going to hand out one to every DCM there and ask him to help me to update this list because they know the groups that are in their district and so forth.
So that's the way I'm handling that problem. It's going to take some time, but eventually I'll get it done if you're not in too big a hurry to get them back. Another thing I'd just like to share with you here, when Chief started talking there this morning, he's from the most southeast area in the state and I'm from the most northwest in the United States and I'm from the most northwest area in the United States and we had identically the same problem.
At our assembly last year the motion came on the floor that we should abandon the job of the area Grapevine rep and of course it was defeated just like it was in your area. And I guess they reached in the bottom of the barrel and they picked me out to be the Grapevine rep for the area there. But I like what Jim did. I had no idea what I was going to do when I took over this job. There were no guidelines to follow, nothing like that, and in the Washington area we do have a…
we carry an inventory of all AA literature
[01:25:03]
and previous Grapevine reps, Grapevine literature reps, we call them in the Washington area, as far as I can see they kept this literature all year long and put it on the literature display at the annual assembly. So I didn't know what to do. I went through this first thing I did, I went through the literature and I made an inventory to see what we had on hand. We had very, very little Grapevine literature.
I didn't know very much about Grapevine literature myself until I started this. But I started, and Jim said this, and other people, Pat I think too, I made myself available. And I go around to all the functions I can now, little assemblies, workshops, and I've got a display there and I set that display up and to me it's been amazing how many people don't know what literature the Grapevine has. I love my job today.
Just like Jim was saying, I love this job, even if I was picked out of the bottom of the barrel. Applause We have two and a half minutes to our time. We certainly have time for one more question, yes? My name is Jack Genfby. I'm Oregon area Grapevine chairman. Hi Jack. I was on panel 30 and I would have been here earlier but I was over at the delegate luncheon and I just walked in to hear part of what the man from Canada was asking.
Now when I was delegate we got printouts from all the groups and they did not have districts on them at that time and it was very time consuming to sit down in the living room and put these piles of groups on the floor in order and try to do it. So I wrote a letter to the general service office and because of this letter they now put districts on the printouts. And I also wondered, and I wrote a letter to the Grapevine quite some time ago about this, and to my knowledge I think it said they didn't have the capability at that time to put districts on the computer printout.
But by district, or I mean by zip code, really to me doesn't make much sense. Could that be changed? I know it, I know it, I know it. I think it would make it so much simpler by district. In Oregon we have 27 districts. Doug, an alcoholic. What I did when I got my computer listing was I looked at the town that the GVR came from and then I used some scissors and cut the whole thing up into little strips like this and sorted them by district mentally but then sometimes I had to go to the map and then put them in envelopes and went to the area meeting and if the district had a district GVR then I would give them to him and if they didn't I gave them to the DCM and I too feel that if the situation could be set up so that it could be done by district it would be very helpful.
Can I make one half minute just to answer this? Very recently Emma I made a promise to all the groups we detected the group service number. Our GVRs that they're sending on to deliver all the time have no group service number at all. So we didn't have the capability because we were looking for the group service number so what you're talking about is possible once you get them more than it has with the group.
Okay? Thank you. Thank you and thank you all for attending and thanks especially to our panel for their presentations and those of you who took part in the meeting and helped us with answers and suggestions from your own group and your own area. This is the way we got sober, the sharing and this is the way we can best carry the message is sharing no matter whether it's sobriety or through what medium we're sharing sobriety.
Our time has elapsed. It is now 3.30. Can I ask you to rise and help me close the meeting with the Lord's Prayer. Amen. Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
[01:30:08]
You take some of these sheets with you. There must be lots of writers here.