Aa history Lovers 2006 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page
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IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 3303. . . . . . . . . . . . RE: Are there recordings of Lois Wilson speaking? From: Phillip Waters . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/2/2006 8:52:00 PM
____________________________________ My e-mail address is: (muddy at bham.rr.com) IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 3304. . . . . . . . . . . . Wombley''s Clapboard Factory? From: Joe Adams . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/3/2006 12:54:00 AM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII Can ANYONE give me some background of the big explosion of Wombley's Clapboard Factory? It's April and my home group - and many of the groups around here - will be studying Tradition 4 again. Last year I went to six meetings in a row that were all the same and no one has any idea of the significance of the reference.
the books and we DO get that question every single time.
______________________________ FROM THE MODERATOR (Glenn Chesnut) The "day the boiler burst in Wombley's Clapboard Factory" is referred to in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions pp. 147-149.
"Don't take yourself too damn seriously.") We have a couple of past messages which talked about this, which I give immediately below (Messages 2324 and 1610). Does anyone in the AAHistoryLovers have any additional information? ______________________________
(markm at eauclaire.lib.wi.us) Wombley's clapboard factory Regarding the "explosion in Wombley's Clapboard Factory," there was an Edgar Wombley, Chemist, in Chittenden County, Vermont, before the turn of the century. The Mad River Valley, which housed such early clapboard mills as that of the Ward family first in Duxbury, then in Moretwown, ran through Chittenden county. ______________________________ Message 1610 from Jim Blair (jblair at videotron.ca) I had a discussion with Ozzie Lepper who runs the Wilson House in East Dorset and he claims that the foundations of the clapboard factory can still be seen. Jim ______________________________ The full story, pp. 147-149 from the chapter in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions on the Fourth Tradition ("Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole"). That section says:
were forming. In a town we'll call Middleton, a real crackerjack had started up. The townspeople were as hot as firecrackers about it. Stargazing, the elders dreamed of innovations. They figured the town needed a great big alcoholic center, a kind of pilot plant A.A. groups could duplicate everywhere. Beginning on the ground floor there would be a club; in the second story they would sober up drunks and hand them currency for the back debts; the third deck would house and educational project - quite controversial, of course. In imagination the gleaming center was to go up several stories more, but three would do for a start. This would all take a lot of money - other people's money. Believe it or not, wealthy townsfolk bought the idea.
among the alcoholics. They wrote the Foundation*, A.A.'s headquarters in New York, wanting to know about this sort of streamlining. They understood that the elders, just to nail things down good, were about to apply to the Foundation for a charter. These few were disturbed and skeptical.
was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.] Of course, there was a promoter in the deal - a super-promoter. By his eloquence he allayed all fears, despite advice from the Foundation that it could issue no charter, and that ventures which mixed an A.A. group with medication and education had come to sticky ends elsewhere. To make things safer, the promoter organized three corporations and became president of them all. Freshly painted, the new center shone. The warmth of it all spread through the town. Soon things began to hum. to insure foolproof, continuous operation, sixty-one rules and regulations were adopted. But alas, this bright scene was not long in darkening. Confusion replaced serenity. It was found that some drunks yearned for education, but doubted if they were alcoholics. The personality defects of others could be cured maybe with a loan. Some were club-minded, but it was just a question of taking care of the lonely heart. Sometimes the swarming applicants would go for all three floors. Some would start at the top and come through to the bottom, becoming club members; others started in the club, pitched a binge, were hospitalized, then graduated to education on the third floor. It was a beehive of activity, all right, but unlike a beehive, it was confusion compounded. An A.A. group, as such, simply couldn't handle this sort of project. All too late that was discovered. Then came the inevitable explosion - something like that day the boiler burst in Wombley's Clapboard Factory. A chill chokedamp of fear and frustration fell over the group. When that lifted, a wonderful thing had happened. The head promoter wrote the Foundation office. He said he wished he'd paid attention to A.A. experience. Then he did something else that was to become an A.A. classic. It all went on a little card about golf-score size. The cover read: "Middleton Group #1. Rule #62." Once the card was unfolded, a single pungent sentence leaped to the eye: "Don't take yourself too damn seriously."
group had exercised its right to be wrong. ______________________________
From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/7/2006 5:12:00 PM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII I have been doing research on one of the important Oxford Group books, V. C. Kitchen's "I Was a Pagan," for a book which I am writing.
his book, I have so far been able to find out relatively little about his life. Some of it is a bit frustrating. For example, although I have been able to discover his date of birth (1891), his date of death is unaccountably absent from the normal librarians' reference sources.
that Dick B. and myself are the only two people who seem to have done much research on V. C. Kitchen, unless I am possibly missing something by inadvertence. The standard library reference sources at the Indiana University library (like the "Dictionary of National Biography" and so on) make no mention of Kitchen anywhere. What I have done below is to give all of the information which I have in fact been able to find, written up in the form in which I plan to use it in the book. If any members of the AAHistoryLovers can provide me with any additional information about V. C. Kitchen's life, I would greatly appreciate it.
South Bend, Indiana ______________________________
book called "I Was a Pagan," [1] describing his discovery of the Oxford Group and the way it had changed his life. This is a short but very useful work for understanding the Oxford Group movement and the origins of many of the practices found in Alcoholics Anonymous. One nevertheless has to actually read Kitchen's little book. Attempting to summarize the connections between the Oxford Group and A.A. by giving short lists of tenets and principles does not do adequate justice to the linkage. Anyone however who has a first hand acquaintance with A.A., who then reads through "I Was a Pagan," will find page after page where it sounds in uncanny fashion almost like a description of Alcoholics Anonymous in operation written by a long-time A.A. member. The Oxford Group was not the same as A.A., but we can see the connection between the two movements in the style and the feeling, just as much as in some of the ideas which A.A. borrowed from the parent group. V. C. Kitchen was a New York advertising man, with an office at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. He had a great interest in the Calvary Rescue Mission for down-and-outers at 246 East 23rd Street near Second Avenue, an operation which was supported by Calvary Episcopal Church and run by Oxford Group members.
several blocks away on Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South) at 21st Street. The rector, Father Samuel Shoemaker, had constructed an eight-story parish house called Calvary House next door to the church in 1928. Shoemaker was a devoted follower of Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford Group. Under Shoemaker's leadership, Calvary House became the American headquarters of the movement. Kitchen, with his writing skills, wrote articles for the Rev. Shoemaker's publication, the "Calvary Evangel." [2] In November 1934, Ebby Thacher came to visit Bill Wilson in his kitchen in the second floor apartment at 182 Clinton Street in Brooklyn, [3] and told him about the Oxford Group and its teachings. As a result Bill visited Calvary Rescue Mission, began learning more about the Oxford Group, and eventually (after his vision of the divine light in Towns Hospital) began attending the Oxford Group meetings at Calvary House, where he got to know Father Shoemaker himself. [4]
A.A. history, is that the eye-witness account which he gives of the Oxford Group at work describes the kind of practices which existed in the New York city area at the exact time that Bill Wilson first came into contact with the movement. He and Bill W. were both members of the same Oxford Group businessman's group in New York City during the period around 1935-1936, and became good friends. [5] The two of them were close to the same age, so they could relate to one another easily: in 1934 -- which was the year that Ebby visited Bill in his apartment and told him about the Oxford Group, and the year that Kitchen's book "I Was a Pagan" was published -- Bill turned 39 years old and Kitchen was 43. [6] There was also a connection between Kitchen and Dr. Bob, although it was indirect. In 1933, wealthy rubber baron Harvey Firestone, Sr. (president of the Firestone Rubber and Tire Company) brought sixty Oxford Group members to Akron, Ohio, paying all their expenses, so that they could get a group started in that city. Kitchen was one of the members of that team, [7] which meant that he was one of the founders of the Oxford Group fellowship in that city. Dr. Bob's wife Anne was the one who persuaded the doctor to start attending these new Oxford Group meetings early in 1933, shortly after they were begun. Now it should be noted that Dr. Bob was not able to get sober just by joining the Oxford Group, but it created the link which allowed him to meet Bill W. two years later, in May, 1935. It also gave him enough knowledge of Oxford Group principles to allow him and Bill W. to start talking together productively from the very start, and creating the Alcoholics Anonymous movement by modifying and adapting those Oxford Group principles. [8]
with both of the founders of A.A., with Bill W. directly, but indirectly with Dr. Bob too. This is part of what makes Kitchen's book so important for understanding early A.A.
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1934). There is an edition available on the internet at www.stepstudy.org www dot stepstudy dot org). [2] From Dick B. (Kihei, Hawaii), based on his researches. Dick is the author of a number of books on A.A. and the Oxford Group, including Dick B., "The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous" (Seattle, Washington: Glen Abbey Books, 1992) and Dick B., "The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous" (Seattle, Washington: Glen Abbey Books, 1992).
edit. (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 2001 [1st edit. 1939]), pp. 8-13. "Pass It On: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World" (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1984), pp. 87, 98, 111-115.
the standard bibliographies used by American university libraries. Bill Wilson was born on November 26, 1895. [7] Dick B. (Kihei, Hawaii) was told this by Oxford Group members from the 1930's when he was interviewing them.
"Freeman" From: Jean Cottel . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/10/2006 12:04:00 AM
Again," written under the pen name of "Freeman." It is signed in the front "Clyde Bertram, 'Freeman'". No date on it, it is a story of getting sober in AA. Information? Jean Cottel jcottel@earthlink.net (jcottel at earthlink.net)
Hospital
From: gbaa487 . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/10/2006 10:45:00 AM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII I understand that Bill W.'s first three trips to Towns Hospital were paid for by his brother-in-law, Dr. Strong.
George
++++Message 3308. . . . . . . . . . . . Use of Dash in First Step From: Tom Hickcox . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/10/2006 10:57:00 AM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII When discussing the First Step in meetings, a local pedant insists that Bill W. put the dash, or, as he says, line separator, there on purpose to signify that both phrases of the Step have equal importance.
not that accomplished a writer, at least at this point in his life, and if what he tells us of the origin of the steps in "Twelve Steps in Thirty Minutes" is true, I doubt if the intricacies of English grammar and writing were in the forefront of his mind when these were written down. His formal education in English would have been what he had in secondary school and perhaps the semester of college he spent at Norwich. I am a product of a New England prep school and they weren't teaching those distinctions fifty years ago. I also scanned about fifty contiguous pages of the Big Book counting dashes/hyphens/line separators and semi-colons. I chose semi-colons as one could pick them out without having to read the text. There was an equal amount of each, roughly thirty-five, or one each on every page-and-a-half. This indicates [not proves-indicates] that these dashes, etc., were put in randomly along with semi-colons and perhaps some other devices to avoid using the same thing over and over. Bill has said that he alternated words in several instances towards this same end.
is that I see no indication from the founders and those who helped write the Big Book that it was intended to be studied in this detail. I live in the Bible Belt and there is among some people a mind set that every word sprang off Bill W's pencil at the direct order of God Himself., but that's a different topic.
arguing that the two parts of the First Step are not of equal importance but rather that the argument about the dash/line separator is invalid.
heard this assertion from anyone else nor have I read it in any A.A. book or on any of the many A.A. related sites out there on the internet. I suspect it came from a circuit speaker. I would just like some feedback from those better versed than I as to the substance of the assertion.
From: trixiebellaa . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/2/2006 1:10:00 PM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII Hi history lovers, could you please tell us why this part of Dr. Silkworth's second letter was in the original manuscript of the Big Book, but taken out when the book went to the printers. "Then there are those who are never properly adjusted to life, who are the so-called neurotics. The prognosis of this type is unfavorable."
From: K D Dew . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/7/2006 5:23:00 AM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII A while back I stumbled upon a link that had a series of 9 real audio recordings of Joe and Charlie and the big book study along with a word document transcription of that session. Unfortunately, I had a hard drive crash and I'm unable to locate the backup that I made. If anyone knows the link, please send it to me at my e-mail address: Kddew_md@bardstowncable.net (Kddew_md at bardstowncable.net) Kevin IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 3311. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Are there recordings of Lois Wilson speaking? From: Mike Aycock . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/6/2006 1:19:00 AM
(AA), and Lois W. (Al-anon). On this CD however Lois just has a few words to say. I do know that there are a few recordings by her. If you need more info on this you can probably check with James M. at:
From: Joe Nugent . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/10/2006 1:59:00 PM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII http://www.aaprimarypurpose.org/speakers.htm _____ From: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of K D Dew Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 5:24 AM To: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Joe and Charlie tapes online
series of 9 real audio recordings of Joe and Charlie and the big book study along with a word document transcription of that session. Unfortunately, I had a hard drive crash and I'm unable to locate the backup that I made. If anyone knows the link, please send it to me at my e-mail address: Kddew_md@bardstowncable.net (Kddew_md at bardstowncable.net) Kevin IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 3313. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Joe and Charlie tapes online From: Billy-Bob . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/10/2006 12:51:00 PM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII The Joe and Charlie tapes promote the myth that early AA's had a higher success
rate, and that by returning to the mythical "old way" of working the AA program, AA can reduce the relapse rate and get more people sober.
high.
BiLL W. admits this in his memorial speech at Dr. Bob's funeral and Francis Hartigan points this out in his biography of Bill W. I don't dislike the Joe and Charlie tapes but I do dislike the fact that they
continue to be on a crusade to return AA to a mythical time that never existed
in the first place. Sincerely, Jim F. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 3314. . . . . . . . . . . . RE: Joe and Charlie tapes online From: Jan L. Robinson . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/10/2006 7:44:00 PM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII There is a great Joe and Charlie site. Here is the address http://kischat.com/bigbook/joeandcharlie.html IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 3315. . . . . . . . . . . . V. C. Kitchen''s obituary (Oxford Group author) From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/12/2006 4:23:00 PM
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