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About this recording
- Topic
- Archival Linkage and Outreach Panel
- Speaker
- Unidentified S
- Date
- 2001-09-28
Transcript
Source: Unidentified S – Archival Linkage and Outreach Panel – 2001-09-28.mp3 File: unidentified-s-archival-linkage-and-outreach-panel-2001-09-28.mp3 Duration: 01:14:20
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Yeah, I am too. Thank you, Irv. The next panel. Hi, everybody. Glad that you're here for this session. This is a session on linkage and outreach. And I have to be honest and tell you that when I saw the name of the panel, I was a little quizzed in that I had not heard that expression before. But as I began to do a little preparation for this session, and I began looking at examples of linkage in my experience, I couldn't help but think of the service structure of Alcoholics Anonymous.
That linkage is directly proportional to the service structure of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think you're going to see that with our panel this morning. We talk about districts, we talk about areas, about intergroups, and to some degree about the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then I said, well, what is the linkage? What is the purpose of the linkage? And the linkage, to me as I understand it, is that outreach of reaching out to that still-suffering alcoholic.
Certainly that's the intent and purpose of our service structures in Alcoholics Anonymous, is to reach out and touch and be there for that still-suffering alcoholic when he's ready. I'd also like to thank the— Host areas. You know, there are six delegate areas spanning two regions hosting this workshop today, and I think that's fantastic. One of the delegate areas is my own, Area 20, Northern Illinois.
And a gentleman by the name of Rick T. has been a member of the planning committee for this workshop, and I know a little bit about some of the time and activities that's been required of him to put this together. So I'm grateful to all of you. What I'd like to do is take just a minute and tell you some of my experience and linkage and outreach, and then I'm going to turn it over to our three panel members. Corrine H.
from North Carolina is the Area 51 archivist. She's sitting to my left and your right. Cindy M. is the Southeast Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Area Intergroup archivist. And the young lady to my far left is Nancy H., who's from Area 20, District 73, and our archivist for that district. Those are our panel members. I am a Panel 48, Area 20 delegate, Northern Illinois, and perhaps one of the reasons that I'm here this weekend and helping present this panel is some of my service experience as a Panel 48 delegate.
And I'd like to share a little bit of that with you. Shortly after I was elected to be a Panel 48 delegate from Area 20, I was informed that I was a member of the Finance Conference Committee. And however that selection is made, my first year in 1998, I was in fact a member of the Finance Committee and did, I thought, what was necessary there as a conference member. That same year in 1998, the Policy and Admissions Conference Committee brought to the floor of the conference an advisory action, and I'd like to share that with you. It said, A Conference Archives Committee composed of nine delegates, five from Panel 48 and four from Panel 49, will meet at the General Service Conference as a secondary committee, and that the committee meet jointly with the Trustees Archives Committee.
[00:05:02]
And let me just share with you a little bit about what a secondary conference committee is, in case some of you may not know. There are only two. The International Conventions and Regional Forums is one, and now the Archives Conference Committee is a second. Perhaps because of the agenda before these committees, they're called secondary. And what happens is that the 92 delegates from our delegate areas are assigned a primary service committee.
For example, I was a member of finance. That was my primary conference committee. The secondary committees are staffed by delegates who have also a primary committee responsibility. So in 1999, we did in fact have a conference archives committee, a secondary committee, and I well remember the Wednesday evening of conference week. That conference committee met for the very first time. It was a joint session with the trustees' archives committee, and our own Judith Stanton, our archivist, was secretary for that committee meeting.
Jan Pollock was there. I don't think anyone else that's here today was in that meeting, but Judy and Judith and certainly Jan were. I think as I get older, I think my memory is less and less, or not as good as it used to be, or I remember what I want to remember, or how I think it should have been, whatever fits. But that Wednesday evening of conference week, it was a— Dinner business meeting. And we had all the members of the trustee archives committee, all the nine delegates from the conference committee were there, Judith, and I think Greg Muth was also present.
And what we tried to do during that business meeting and dinner was, number one, to elect a delegate chairperson for the 1999 General Service Conference. And as God does things for me in my life, that person was myself. I was elected the first conference archives chairperson. And as I understand it from others, probably the shortest-term conference chairperson of anyone else, and that my term lasted like three days, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. When the conference week was over, my job was done.
But that was all right. What I was able to do was to help conduct the business portion of that combined meeting. I think one of the only resentments I had by attending that conference was that I didn't get to eat my dinner. But I'm living with that. There were… There was a conference advisory action that came out of that meeting. And then there was an additional committee consideration also that I was able to take to the floor of the conference.
After our meeting adjourned, I took the advisory action and the additional committee consideration to the floor of the conference, and was unanimously approved. The advisory action was unanimously approved, and I'd like to share that with you, that the Trustees Archives Committee review the Archives Handbook and consider the need for any changes and/or a Archives kit. Perhaps one of the outcomes of that conference advisory action is, in fact, the Archives Handbook that Larry has a copy of there, if you'll take a look at that thing,
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that we will be discussing, I guess, what, tomorrow morning, Larry? I think so, yeah. Larry Johnson, the gentleman right in front of me, is the, what, Panel 52, Panel 51 Archives Conference chairperson. So we've kind of walked some of the same paths together, Larry. Glad you're here. The additional committee consideration said the committee reviewed the proposed draft of a composition, scope, and procedure of the Conference Archives Committee and accepted it with changes.
We also at that— Dinner business meeting elected the year 2000 conference archives chairperson, Mitch Savage. So it was a busy, busy time, and I guess I have nothing but gratitude in my heart for that experience, and God continues to do things for me that I could never do for myself. So as we're going, as the panel presenters are going through their respective presentations, I ask that you keep an open mind in terms of linkage and outreach, because I found out early this morning that in my preparation, that without the linkage and without the outreach, I wouldn't be here this morning. So our first panel presenter is Corrine from North Carolina, who is the area archivist from Area 51. Corrine.
If I can do all this without falling on my face, we're all going to be lucky. I am an alcoholic. My name is Corrine Heck, and I serve as the Area 51, which is North Carolina, area archivist. And when I saw my topic, linkage and outreach, now you can tell just by looking how old I am. And, and I'm still not quite into the 21st century. I'm getting there slowly, but I haven't quite made it. And then Rick gave this topic of linkage and outreach.
What the hell is he talking about? What the heck is he talking about? And I prayed about it, and I talked to my delegate, and she said, you know, she's young. And I thought, well, I was told when I came here the very first time and the very last time that all the answers that I ever needed to live were in, between the covers of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, okay. And I found an answer for me.
And I call my little presentation, Trust God and Clean House. Now you're going to wonder how that works. It works just fine. It works just fine. I want to tell you just a bit about how I got to be an archivist. I came up, came downward through the structure, and, you know, I was a GSR and an alternate, all that stuff. And I was the area secretary-treasurer. And by the way, when they split that job, after I was area secretary-treasurer, they split it into three jobs. It took three men.
To do one job. But, you know, I moved down through the structure, and my, of course, my desire and my willingness was to serve as delegate from my area. But that didn't happen. God in His wisdom sent somebody who was not argumentative. Somebody who was not argumentative, who was not a pain in the neck, and
[00:15:03]
it has worked great. But there I was, poor me, with nothing to do. What am I going to do now? And our area chairman came along and said, It's time we started archives, and I'm going to present your name to the area committee and the area assembly. And I said, I don't know how to be an archivist. And she replied, and I'm not going to use her exact words, she replied, Corrine, you're the nosiest old witch in North Carolina.
You qualify. And so I started becoming the nosiest old witch in North Carolina. When I started, we had several boxes, as Kathy talked about yesterday morning, several boxes of stuff. We had some minutes from, oh, not quite back to when our assembly started. Our assembly started in '68. There have been groups in North Carolina since '39. And by the way, we have two groups in North Carolina, one on the east coast and one in the west, and they've got a running thing about who's the oldest. And the GSO records don't quite reflect exactly, at least to satisfy them.
And so they fight it out. It's not up to me to say you're the oldest and you're the youngest. But I started with boxes of minutes from the assemblies and then boxes of cassette tapes. We tape all our meetings, and I got that. And I had no place to put it but in my home. And I had it sort of in a corner. And then I got some more stuff. One group in Henderson, North Carolina, which is a little bit north of us, came to me at an assembly, and the GSR said, I got a bunch of boxes of junk out here that we've cleaned out from our podium.
They had a podium in that group that was raised, and it had a big platform, and that's where they put their stuff. And he said, Do you want it? I said, Sure. And that night, before I ever went to bed, and I'm not really sure I ever went to bed that night, I went through a lot of what was in that box. And the man who'd been the first secretary of that group made a carbon copy of every letter he wrote, and he saved it.
And I have the history of a group that went back to 1947, and these letters go through about 1951. And they're letters to the foundation, and letters to the Grapevine. They're wonderful, just a wonderful, wonderful grassroots history. And you know that after a year, their first meeting place was over the funeral home. So I figured when, you know, if they went back out, they'd just ship them downstairs.
And they finally got a club, and pretty soon—well, they needed to support the club, and so they wrote to a number of slot machine companies, and I have copies of those. And then they began to get letters from the ladies in the town who said, You all are doing such wonderful work. Do you have to have those things in your club? And I really don't know what the outcome was, because I can't find anybody to link it to. But one of the letters, I guess after about a year, they wrote to the foundation and said, We've got trouble.
There's a group of people in this town that want to form another group, and they can't survive. And so what are we going to do? And of course they got this wonderful letter back from the foundation that goes back to 1948, and they're still saying the same thing in 2001. It's been our experience. And you all have gotten these letters. You know all about them. But what's happening today in a lot of groups happened then.
You know, I just split off from a group that was 37 years old, and we're now a year and a half, and we're fussing already, you know. And we've grown, and we've all grown. And I don't have a committee. It's called a group. Our area assembly chose not to call us a committee.
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They chose to call us a group of people who work with archives, and we do not have a chair. And some of this group has kind of, you know, faded away because they're all as old as I am. And I tried to choose them from east and the west and— It was okay for a while, but right now there's me and a number of volunteers, plus a new young man that just walked into the door just a few months ago. And he's there at North Carolina State University.
He said, I was sent here and told to come and help you. And he said, I'm here to get a master's degree at NC State. And I said, Well, what's your degree going to be in? Archival history. And my God, he is just—he's so excited because he hadn't worked with AA history before. And he is just an absolute delight. And when he finishes the degree, I want to sort of send him to Judith, but I sort of don't want to lose him, you know?
We've tried in North Carolina to reach out. We got our archives and we got our repository by a two-thirds majority plus two, and it was touch and go. It was kind of by the skin of our teeth, but two-thirds of the area voted to have a repository. And so on Friday, the 13th of November, 1998, we signed the lease for our repository, and then we moved in on January the 1st. And I think the only thing that diminished our happiness in moving in was that just not too many days later. Our beloved former archivist from GSO, Frank Mauser, died, and he never got to see it.
But he was so encouraging. You know, I'd call him, I'd say, Frank, everything is such a mess. He'd say, That's the way it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be tidy. So I've sort of gone on that principle, that it doesn't have to be tidy. We are working on many projects, trying to get everything, because past delegates are giving us, finally, some of their material. And those that have given us the material have had it very well organized. They've had it in nice notebooks, and I'm looking out here at Larry, and I'm seeing one of our past delegates.
I don't think you ever met Bob Reynolds from North Carolina, did you? Yeah. Larry, it makes me feel so good to be talking to you. It makes me feel like I'm home. It's a linkage. We have a link to each other, and I think that's what we want to do. That's what I want to do in our area, is I want to reach out and I want to link up with all the groups if it's possible. And of course that's not possible. We have 850 groups.
The first year that I was serving as archivist, and by the way, I serve as a non-rotating archivist with a non-voting position, and I am not eligible to stand for any area office. I have a voice. And I use it. I make a promise to myself before every area committee and every area assembly that I will not be the first one in line at the mic. And sometimes I make it. Sometimes I make it. But what we did early on was, with the announcements of our area assembly, which goes to all groups in the area, we sent a copy of a group history form.
And we got a return on that of about 150 within just a few months. And I think that, you know, I was just absolutely amazed that we got that much response. And after every assembly and after every area committee and after every convention, when I put out these group history forms, we get another bundle, you know, kind of all
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at one time, and then it levels off, and I don't get any for a while, and I have to ask again. We also put together a district history form, and I didn't even bring any of those things with me, that goes to the DCM. And that has been marginally successful because we've asked them to go back and see who was their DCM prior to them and prior to that, and as back as far as they can go. And unfortunately, so many of them say, I don't know.
And so in North Carolina, we're missing something. We're missing a link. To pass DCMs. And, you know, we keep working on it. I really thought all at once it would all happen, and of course it didn't. We started in 1991, and in 1999 we moved into our repository, so we're making progress. We have a room, a wonderful square room. It's about 400 square feet, and we pay $350 for that a month. And of course that large amount makes a lot of GSRs and DCMs kind of wiggle, because that's a lot of money.
One of the suggestions we had when we were trying to form a repository was, well, can't you get one of those storage buildings that they sell? I said, no, that won't work. Might get water in it, might get too hot, might get too cold. Well, then someone came and said, Corinne, I've got a great idea. Why don't you get a house trailer? And that way everybody, every group in North Carolina could see what you've got in the archives.
I said, well, that's not a real bad idea, but I wonder what's going to happen if we pull out in traffic and somebody hits us. Don't you think it's better in a permanent place? Well, they didn't really think that, but they were outvoted. But we've had some sort of off-the-wall suggestions for having a repository. I guess the repository was my first dream. And my second dream is a history book. And we haven't gotten started on that yet, outside of collecting group histories and, like, the stuff and this junk that we got from these groups.
As we collect these things and as we begin to catalog these things, the problem that we have, that Tom and I, my special volunteer, is we read everything. We read everything. But we're pretty happy. I'm pretty happy with what we're doing. I'm very grateful for the help that I've gotten from Judith. And now that I'm going to sit down, I'm grateful to Rick, even though I never answer his emails and he's so frustrated with me.
And I keep, I'm, you know, I'm just technologically challenged. I just can't quite get there. And Rick, if you'll hang in there. That's right. He has to call me on the telephone. But I thank you all for listening, and I'm going to turn it over back to Jerry and see what he's got next. Thanks, Corrine. I think, as the previous panel did, perhaps if we could save the questions to the end and then we could have a general sharing.
Our next presenter is Cindy M. from the Philadelphia Intergroup Office. Cindy? Good morning, everybody. My name is Cindy Miller, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, and, you know, I was in real anxiety and trepidation, as Rick knows, about flying here. And I really, you know, I've talked this matter over with some of my sponsors and my spiritual advisor, and… My spiritual advisor, and who helped me
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draw the one conclusion that in these difficult times, we really need to, or I really need to, spread love and not as much contention and fear and argument. And so what better way to spread love than to give service? So, you know, I swallowed my anxiety and I'm here. And, you know, it's kind of scary to me because a lot of people I was talking to said, Oh, I wouldn't fly now if I were you. You know, of course a lot of people said, Oh, go ahead.
You know, it's like, you know, it's kind of like it's either patriotic and brave or it's damn dumb. I don't know which, but anyway, I'm here. Last year I had to give a presentation for our former archivist, Ron Roulay, who many of you know, and I didn't remember how people dressed so nicely when they were presenting, and I got up and I had on like a T-shirt and blue jeans. And so this year I'm really glad that I remembered to dress properly, and I feel much more comfortable. Actually, my presentation, the topic of it is linkage. And I too, like Corinne was saying, when Rick first proposed this topic to me, I was like, you know, what the heck? What?
You know, and, but I have to tell you, either Rick did some research about this. Or it's just a happy accident. But here, where I represent Philadelphia Intergroup, which is now called SEPIA, Southeastern Pennsylvania Intergroup Association, because we envelop five counties in addition to just the Philadelphia County, so it's more all-inclusive now. In addition to, you know, being the archivist for Southeastern Pennsylvania Intergroup, you know, I also have a real close contact with the archivist from Area 59, Eastern Pennsylvania. And so I can give, like, a real—what's the word I want? The opposite—a real positive and happy and, you know, it's really working type of presentation rather than, like, you know, complaining.
Because I have heard, and in fact I just spoke to our area delegate last weekend, how so many different areas, who will be unnamed, have such a difficulty in cooperation between their intergroups and their general service. And it's really wonderful to be able to report that in Eastern Pennsylvania we have a great relationship. And I'm going to give you some of the details of that relationship, even to the fact that my sponsor is the alternate—the Pennsylvania Area 59, the alternate delegate—but my service sponsor is the chairperson of our intergroup association.
So everybody gets along. It's great. Let me see, where am I here? Yeah, I was talking. I was speaking with our area delegate a few nights ago, and he heartily concurred with me that our situation is so different from the feuds and refusals to cooperate that he hears about so frequently at delegate get-togethers. In fact, we held a sharing session mainly for the delegates' benefit prior to the 2000 General Service Conference, and both intergroup and General Service officers were invited to attend and give opinions, especially about the proposed archives workbook. Even though, you know, strictly this was like a General Service-type matter or whatever else, everybody was invited to give their opinions.
As I said before, our area archivist and myself maintain an excellent working relationship. He recently gave our intergroup very many hundreds of group histories that would be of relevance to the five counties that encompass our intergroup area. Some of were duplicates that we already have, but now we have on display in our intergroup archives office six binders about this thick, and each one, I guess, has about 75 to 100 group histories.
So we have, you know, five to 600 group histories on display to anybody that walks into our office. But then the back of that, or the other side of that, is
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that this offers a backup, like a safekeeping for him. Should anything ever happen to those histories in the area that he keeps—I don't believe they have a repository; they just have a storage area—should anything ever happen to them, we have duplicate copies, so, you know, we can back each other up. Another incident was I was real fortunate to interview the widow of our first black area delegate. This was Lil Rhodes Senior, who was on the panel in '66 or '67. Anyway, after our previous archivist and I went through all the materials that she had given me, like a carton of materials, it was pretty much decided that this was area stuff.
This was much more pertinent to the history of the area, and this pretty much—he did all his service, and a lot of this stuff had to do with the area. So we gave it to the area archivist. We saved a few things behind that did pertain to our intergroup, but we gave the bulk of the material, tapes, etc., to our area archivist. And in addition, when our intergroup offices moved, we moved to a larger space, and we now have a whole room for our archives.
Anything that we found in our archives that was related to the area was just passed right along to them. There's no question of this is ours and this is yours, or this is, you know, we should keep this and you can't have it. The flow is very free, and that's, I believe, a really good thing. That's how this thing works. In our part of Pennsylvania, we also have, and this started in 1989, what's called Share-a-Day, and it's when the southeastern Pennsylvania intergroup and Area 59 come together and exchange ideas and share ideas.
Also, at, and in different areas of the country it's called different things, but ours is called Narasa. I, as, you know, Philadelphia-type based intergroup person and the area archivist, always get together and try to put on a little joint presentation, or at least, you know, show our stuff together or tell, you know, tell people from other states what's happening in Pennsylvania and in the Philadelphia area.
And, in fact, my report, you know, on this workshop, I'm here representing Philadelphia, you know, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Intergroup, but a copy of my report is going to be given to the area as well. So I guess I better make it good. We're also having—I'm going to be giving a presentation on Sister Ignatia and the St. Thomas Hospital. We're having a treatment facilities workshop in our intergroup, but Area 59 has a tape of Sister speaking, so we're going to be playing that, and he's going to help me out, like, to get that together.
And the last thing I just wanted to— Together
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a little binder, and I'm going to pass this around. I'll go through it first and tell you all about it, and then we'll pass it around. It's copies of letters from Bill W. down to Philadelphia when he was proposing the start of the first General Service Conference. It's made, I think, really poignant by the fact that the first letter is dated November 10th, 1950, and as we know, Dr. Bob died on November 15th.
And he was real aware that the founders could not last forever and wanted to get this thing on the ball. So he, you know, sent letters of appeal to the different intergroups that had already been established. And then we have the next is a letter that was sent out by what was then called the Philadelphia Intergroup, talking about the General Service Conference. And then they started setting up meetings where Bill Wilson actually came down to Philadelphia and spoke. One thing that I think it's so neat that our area, I mean our intergroup secretary, had proposed that we're also glad that you suggested having a talk with a selected number of old-timers here at our intergroup offices. We have about 50 or so who have been dry at least five years. They were old-timers.
Let me see. The next copy of the letter I have is from Bill's secretary at that time, Helen Brown, you know, detailing the arrangements, the hotel arrangements and such. Of course, a quick correction letter from Bill: Whoops, sorry. The card that you received announcing the two Philadelphia meetings did not make it clear, etc., etc. Sorry for the error. And then we have a couple acceptance cards. He was also asking for money too.
Anyway, this is just copies, and it can be passed around. I kind of prepared this to get people interested in what was going on. I don't know where this one's going to start past that. Okay. And the last thing I wanted to say is, and I had written this, one of the missions between our intergroup and Area 59 is to be as closely connected and helpful to each other as things were back when, you know, this association first began.
Maybe even more so. After all, isn't that the primary purpose, to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers? And I believe that for us, by any sort of dissension or carping or, you know, whatever you wanted to call it, can only be detrimental to carrying that message. And by having such a good, close working relationship, we can carry that message much better. So, yeah, I wanted to thank Rick for asking me to serve on this panel. Like I said, I'm really glad I had a good positive report to make. And also, and this is a little bit of an aside, but now that I have the mic, in kind of relating to what Kathy Smith had spoken about yesterday morning in her presentation, and I believe what I heard in another presentation here this morning, I wanted just to say that we have many, you know, as I've been going back through our archives, we have many newsletters and meeting lists from different areas of the country.
Now, in our archives, since anybody knows this, space is of a premium. It would be really nice if, like, we could keep meeting lists from Boise, Idaho, but we don't. We only keep things that are nimically, you know, important or whatever to the Philadelphia area. So I have a bunch. I'm going to read these out, these names, really. If anybody's from these areas and is interested in this stuff, it's not, I have to tell you, it's not real, real old.
It's like early '80s. It's newsletters and some meeting lists. If you know of anybody or you yourself, Pittsburgh, Suffolk County, Nassau, Rochester, San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Clara, Fresno, Seattle, Indianapolis, Maryville, Indiana, Portland, Maine, Washington. Portland, Maine, Washington. I imagine that's Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Louisiana, Boston, and Atlanta, Georgia. And if anybody is interested in any of that stuff, please feel free to see
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me and, you know, we'll exchange addresses and I'll be glad to mail it off to you. Thank you very much. Thanks very much, Cindy. A few years back, let me first start out by saying I kind of grew up in Alcoholics Anonymous in the group, district, area service structure and had not been a part of any intergroup office or function. And then one of our area members did a study on—we have two intergroup offices in Northern Illinois, one in Rockford and one in Galesburg.
And the results of that study said that the intergroup offices were functioning long before the service structure was in place and began to function. That understanding kind of put it in some good perspective for me, so thank you, Cindy. Our next presenter is a young lady that I met right after I got sober. My sponsor began taking me to district meetings, and we at that time were in District 71 in Dixon, Illinois, and Nancy was our DCM, I believe, at that time.
So I've known her for a long time and think she's a great gal. So, Nancy, please. I'm Nancy Hughes, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Nancy. I remember Jerry's first district meeting. We made him drive. We wanted to see how steady he was. Jerry has been steady through the years, believe me. When I found out that I was asked to be on a panel, and I found out what the topic was and what went through my head was, What am I supposed to say? And for some reason that clicked a little thing in my old brain of, I think I asked one of the old-timers when I first came in, I don't know what to say at meetings. What am I supposed to say?
And he said, Our story's just closed in a general way: what happened, what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like now. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about my archivist history. I'm District 73 archivist. I started out in District 70. It was, I think at that time, six or seven counties in northern Illinois, and the area was huge. So we split off into two districts, 70 and 71. And that went along fine for a while, and that's how Jerry and I met. We were both in District 71.
And then some young hotshot decided he wanted to split the district again, and then we ended up with three that I had started out with. So I'm now in 73. With the archives that we had from District 71, which were pretty extensive, as I recall, and we flipped a coin to see who would get the old number 71 and who, or 72, and who would get—no, there was a 72 in between there. Anyway, we flipped a coin, and the district that I was in got the brand new number. Jerry's district got— New district got the old number, so he got all the archives. And as I recall, I felt, okay, turning over to Jerry because Jerry was stable.
Jerry was responsible. I started out, our new district started out with some of the stuff I had personally when I was, that I had just collected from the split, and those were the things we had. I had a few books of mine that stayed with me, and our archives was pretty small. So when I became the archivist, I started out small. I can remember sitting and I thought, how am I going to get stuff? Well, our Area 20 decided we'd start with group histories, and I started, thought that's a good place to start.
So I got the form, started sending them out. Nothing happened, and I thought, this isn't working. So now I'm coming to outreach, linkage. I had to link with these groups somehow. We had a secretary that, and I don't know if he was passive-aggressive, I don't know if he was dyslexic, I don't know if he was a split personality, but Alan used to send out the strangest
[00:50:05]
minutes. And I don't know if you ever got copies of them, Rick, but we waited every month to get our new minutes of the district meeting because there was always something in there that we would roar our heads off. Either misspelling, misquotes, mis-mis-misquotes. It was a riot. One night, somebody asked me at a district meeting, Well, what, what, what kind of, what do you want for archives? Because I was, I'm sure I was complaining.
And I said, Anything, anything you have that pertains to AA. And I figured if it belongs in the area, I'll send it to the area. If it belongs to GSO, I'll send it to GSO. So I came up with this little quote that had been running around my head, and it goes like this: Stuff is the junk that you keep, and junk is the stuff you get rid of. And I said, I want all of your stuff. Let me decide if it's junk.
I want your stuff. Previous to this, the secretary was giving a report, or typing up my archive report, and he accused me of being the district archive. I'm old, yeah. I didn't think I was the district archive. Anyway, he gets a hold of the stuff, and in his minutes he puts, under the archive report, he puts down, Nancy would wants all of your old stiffs. And all I could think of was, I think my little town has an ordinance against corpses on the porch. I don't think if they start leaving their stiffs on my porch that I'm going to be in trouble.
Anyway, from that funny thing, and my higher power, I don't know about your higher power, my higher power has a very twisted sense of humor. And with these funny minutes, these humorous minutes, with this humorous thing about Nancy wants your stiffs. I started getting some contributions. I got some boxes. I got some folding envelope things. I started really building up the collection because people look forward to the minutes, and they read that. Now, the regular minutes, I don't think they read the archive report.
They don't know what I want. They don't know what my needs are, but because they look forward to those minutes, those GSRs are reading those minutes. Today, well, how I got group histories, and I'm not sure, but I think my district has probably the best record of group histories that the area has received. At least one time it was. I think I have probably 75 percent of the groups, which is very good, because our district meetings, they have like about 10 or 15 people.
First I started with a mailing. My district was supportive and allowed me to make a mailing. I started making phone calls to GSRs, and I started making visits. We get that printout from GSO, and I would take the DCM's printout, and I'd find out who the GSR was, what their address was, and I would start going to their meetings. And I would say, Now, I don't have your group history. Well, we don't know anything about it. I'll help you.
I've been around that district so long that I've seen most of those groups form, so I could tell them who their founders were. I could jog their memories. I could help them with where they first met. So we got an awful lot of group histories, and I'm very proud of that. I feel that was really an accomplishment. Today, I outreach by traveling, and I put this—oh, I also took on the job of secretary. Our secretary moved away from town, and nobody—everybody else had a job.
So I, to me, if AA asks, I don't say no, and I said yes, I'll do it till this fall when we have elections. So I've had the input of, I can put anything in those minutes I want, because I'm secretary, and there's a lot of archive stuff in there. So I can travel with, our stuff is primarily in binders with acid-free, you know, sleeves, and I can make up a notebook, and I can put in things that I think this particular group would like, and I'll go to their open speaker meeting.
And I have a little sign that says, District 73 Archives, here's your history, and I always get people who come and look. And some of the stuff is interesting if they take the time to read. I wish I had some T-shirts and baseball caps and things that I could, you know, really grab their attention. I'll have to work on that.
[00:55:00]
I'm getting a lot of ideas from this workshop. So I travel with the archives. We have a district dinner the Thursday before Thanksgiving every year. It's been going on for, well, at least 25 years since I've been in, because that was one thing, first thing I went to. I take a big display of that. We invite our area archivist, archives to, you know, have a display there. And I guess the outreach is just get out there, become secretary if you have to.
I mean, you can outreach that way. The linkage, I know the archivists in the districts around me, so if I get something of theirs, I can give it to them. Hopefully they know who I am, so if they get something that pertains to my district, I'll get that. It works like any other thing in AA. It's one drunk talking to another. And so that's it. Thanks very much, Nancy. Okay, can we open it up for some questions or general sharing? Yes, please.
Paul, I'm the alternate chair from the California North Coastal Area. Hi, Paul. Two things. One of the things that was interesting with the intergroup in the district, we're putting together a display for the intergroup office, which is also the bookstore, which I think gets tremendous outreach, kind of for display materials for the district. Because there tends to be this sort of a weird truce alliance between the intergroup and service. Sometimes it's friendly, sometimes it's not, depending on what's going on.
But I think it's really important because the bookstore is especially where a lot of the graphic stuff, so people come in to buy books, and then just on a daily basis, to see things that are in our… They're really great promotional opportunity to attract people to our… I really use that. I think that's what we're doing. But the thing that I was most interested to hear was the linkage. It was the linkage for all of this archive is to each other, to get resources and ask questions and refer things, like when you can…
Somebody said, you had stuff with San Francisco that really interested me. You know, it's that kind of stuff. We've come across stuff from all over the country. San Francisco, if people moved there, some of the boxes aren't—there's no problem that says there's a box, and here's this thing from Hawaii. Well, what do we do with this? You know, who do we talk to about this? Do they have an archive? You know, how do I find out about this?
You know, and I was hoping today they would leave, at least, phone numbers or emails from a large majority of the … But it was really important, you know, one of them to really get up. Good. Thank you, Dick. Rick, aren't we going to have something like that? What we adopted in the first workshop, everyone before they leave will have a list of all the … and those will have telephone numbers to those change all the time, and as close addresses of the facility, the trust service center here.
And one of our goals, even in the mission statement, we say communication between archivists is an achievable goal. That was where we started to get the networking going, and it's been very successful. When you look at our … sessions on a couple years ago, the issue was whether there should be a conference archive committee. Most all of the people at that workshop in 1997 went back to their areas and developed a consensus and went through their delegates, when the next year it was …
group. So even the cooperation and coordination, cooperation between archivists, having those names and the … Big plus. It's not always available, but this is not outside of AA service. This is still a [unclear] getting inside of a certain [unclear]. We're still working with each other, and we're making our own history for ourselves. That's one of the goals, to get this network. You're part of the [unclear].
You're part of the… Thanks, Rick. Yes, Donna. Hi, Donna.
[01:00:01]
Question. One, is it possible to get information from the last five workshops for our district? And then the other thing is, this newcomer business is my first archive. And how do you know what to collect? I know someone said flyers, past minutes. I, too, am also the secretary in my district. But anyway, what do I collect? Nancy, you want to address that? I repeat the question because I'm not sure if it was picked up, and I think this is being taped. Your question was, how does a district archivist know what to hang on to?
Is that… In my district, anything that pertains to my district. I have some, an old 24-hour book that belonged to a long-timer. I save all of the flyers. I save all of the district minutes. I save not all of the financial reports. I kind of, you know, skip a few months here and there because you can get an awful lot of the same thing. I mean, our expenses are the same every month. The things that I find that the people are interested in when I take them around to the various groups are their group history.
And to me, I consider this the heart of my collection. These are the things that speak to the average AA member, my group, my home group, the group I go to, the group I don't go to. Why don't I like this group? How did they start? I have some books that, I have a second edition that I, you know, there aren't too many around. Most of the young people don't have a second edition. I'm, you know, this I feel is part of the district archives.
I've donated my book. I also have Daily Reflections, the first printing because I was a contributor, and I have with a letter saying they've accepted my contribution to the meditation book. And I always felt that that belonged in the district, but after coming to this, I feel I would like to put that in the hands of the area because they have a repository and I don't. Mine is, my district stuff is stuck in a closet.
So I'm going home and weed out. Maybe I've got some stuff that doesn't belong in my district. We have old letters. Correspondence is always interesting for people. It's kind of a judgment call on your part. I think, just a suggestion, I haven't tried this, I heard of like a committee of, say, oh, there he is. They have a delegate, past delegates on a—this is an area committee, archive committee—and I'm thinking maybe my district needs one.
I can call Jerry as a past delegate and have him come down into our district once a year and kind of get together and talk about what are our goals, where do we go, do we need this? You know, so it's not just me, because I can't get a committee together. Every time I get somebody, they move away or they drink or they get sucked into some other service job that takes up all their time. So it's usually me. Do you have a computer?
I can give you my email address if you want to communicate. I've, I've—there's a lot of help out there. There's help here. That's how I feel. Thank you, Nancy. On the first question that Donna had, Rick, and that was the history or summary of events for the first five workshops. Is there any documents available to that end? We have a tape. There are tapes available for all the workshops, but there are also the programs from all five camps for this one.
Those are going to be provided to—those are going to the next committee that is having
[01:05:02]
next year's. But it's a good idea to have everyone get a chance to know what we tackled as each workshop progressed and developed into better. That would be a good working. Other than that, there hasn't been a lot of final reports. We're trying to get better at that, but that's not a requirement for us. There's still—we're still in the stages. But the flyers or the programs are available from— Okay, thanks, Rick. His name is Rick Tompkins. He's sitting over there.
Any other sharing that we might have? Larry? Again, Larry Johnson, Panel 51 elder, Area 65, Secretary, General Conference Committee on Archives. One of the requests that the Archives Committee, at its first general service conference, didn't have any recommendations to the conference as far as advisory actions. One of the requests that we made, and I announced this, made this appeal in the last workshop I was in, is one of the requests is that the trustees' committee again look at the possibility of a pamphlet that will be titled, somewhere, a general title that we requested was, How Archives Carry the A.A.
Message. If you have workshops in your districts, areas, or intergroups around that topic, would you please make notes. Some kind of the ideas and suggestions on how archives can carry, and send that to the district committee on archives. And this will develop background material and recommended articles for that. And I think that the strength of the pamphlet would be that when we go out to get so many new archive committees that are popping up all over the country now, and appealing to areas and to cities to form funding and help and support, if a pamphlet like that is developed and we can stand before these groups in district areas and show how AA archives carry the AA message, they are a little quicker to support the effort.
We can show how it can actually be used to carry the message. So I really appreciate you taking that on. This is a personal project of mine. I haven't been asked to do it, but like a lot of things that I do, nobody else can do it. It's just part of that, and I want to make some contribution to that. Good. Thank you, Larry. Barry? Yes. We sent them to Judy. She has agreed to get on the committee, and then we have—I will personally will be at the winter board meeting of the trustees' archives committee.
Hopefully we'll have some of this in there by then that we can actually have something to present to the 52nd Conference to give this. And copying senior delegates too. And the winter board meeting will be the final agenda will be… Thank you, Larry. Barry? I have a question I'd like to ask Larry. What are you doing to make our committee a full committee? That's the question. So what do you talk about to
[01:10:00]
make it make it successful? That's a good idea. I mean, that's something that we also, only the only committee there is. Well, international conventions and regional forums is the other one. Secretary. It would be nice to have all the committees. It's my thoughts exactly, and that's something that we—this is, that's another letter that could go in to put this up as an agenda item. We're all, everybody in this room, we're required emotionally, and we all are familiar with the evolution of an advisory action and how that comes about. It starts in places like this.
It starts in committees, and it starts with a little letter or note. And I'll certainly write to Judy in the trustees' committee that we— Yeah, I know there are people like myself and Rick in recent years, in 2000 and 1999, that have written letters in support of a full archives conference committee. So I think we need to keep that kind of thing up. I can tell you that, like in 1996, the General Service Office sent out a query to all the delegate areas: Do you think that there's a need or a purpose for a Conference Archives Committee?
There was little response in '96. It was sent out again in '97, and a more overwhelming response was received. So in 1998, the Policy and Admissions Committee said, How about an Archive Conference Archives Committee? And I think it's a progression, a process of progression, and I think we just need to keep pumping away. Barry, you had something else. Yes, I believe that we should encourage other archivists to put that up to their delegate at the local area assembly, the delegate. Right.
Right. Sure. Corrine? I'm still Corrine. I'm still alcoholic, and I'm still an archivist, by the grace of God. In our area, when all of these letters were coming and all the propositions were coming along, you know, do you or don't you, or should you or shouldn't you, we had two of our past delegates do a pro and a con presentation at an assembly. No matter how they felt, they made this presentation of pro and con, and I know it's part of our minutes. And if anybody would like to have that, I'll go back and look for it. But it started the area really thinking, and it sort of— Melded area a little bit.
Thanks, Gary. We have about three minutes and 15 seconds of archival tape left before we disappear. I'd like to take just a minute and introduce a young lady that I've known for a number of years, and I think she's a super, super lady and is going to do a great job as our new East Central Regional Trustee, Dorothy. Dorothy M. She's like a hometown girl. She lives just north of here a little bit, I guess.
Thanks for being here. Okay, if nothing else, maybe we can just close this meeting with a moment of silence, huh? If all would want to stand, please. Remember the still suffering alcoholic.