Wish List

Things I would like to get:


  1. Information about whether only 2% of alcoholics possess a gene that appears to modulate the risk of alcohol abuse, like a reader wrote to me.

  2. This quote is attributed to Bill Wilson:

    "We AA's have never called alcoholism a disease because, technically speaking it is not a disease entity."
    == Bill Wilson, speaking to the National Catholic Clergy Conference On Alcoholism.

    Can someone give me a date and a place?

    DONE!
    "eMac User" reported that the date was April 21, 1960, in New York.
    A transcript of the speech is available here:
    http://www.silkworth.net/religion_clergy/01052.html

  3. Liberty Magazine [New York, N.Y. : Macfadden Publications, published from 1924 to 1951.] — (Note that there are now other magazines that use the name "Liberty", including ones published by the 7th Day Adventists and the Libertarians. The one we want is the Mcfadden publication that contains the following articles.)
    1. August 6, 1938 article by Emily Newell Blair — "How Honest Is The Oxford Group?"
      DONE! Got it. Thank you Michael.
    2. There was also an earlier issue, 1937, that had an article praising the Oxford Groups, which I would like to see — "What I Found Out About the Oxford Movement" by Emily Newell Blair.
      DONE! Got this one, too.
    3. Sept 1939, "Alcoholics and God" by Morris Markey was an article about Alcoholics Anonymous.

    Very, very few libraries archive this obscure magazine, and have those issues. It appears that the following libraries do:

    • UNIV OF ARKANSAS, FAYETTEVILLE,
    • LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY,
    • FLORIDA STATE UNIV,
    • MIAMI-DADE PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM,
    • CALVIN COLLEGE & THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, MI,
    • MICHIGAN STATE UNIV,
    • SAINT LOUIS PUBLIC LIBRARY, MO,
    • TRUMAN STATE UNIV, MO,
    • BUFFALO & ERIE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY, NY,
    • SUNY COLLEGE AT BROCKPORT, NY,
    • OREGON STATE LIBRARY, CORVALLIS,
    • SHIPPENSBURG UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA,
    • HOUSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, TX,
    • UNIV OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
    If somebody is at one of those libraries, would they like to please poke into the archives and see if they can find those articles? Thanks.
    Again, done. And thank you all.

  4. Bill Wilson's alleged test results when he took supposedly Thomas Edison's aptitude test. Did Bill really score high on that test, or was Bill just fabricating more tall tales, yet again? Considering how bad Wilson was at math and science, Wilson's claim that he aced Edison's aptitude test is highly questionable. Has anybody seen the results? Is there any record in Edison's papers? Do we have any evidence at all, other than Bill's bragging, that Bill even took the test, never mind scored very high, and was invited to join Thomas Edison's staff? Or is this Revisionist History 101 again?

  5. Records of Bill Wilson's spook sessions, where he allegedly talked with numerous ghosts and spirits. The records at the A.A. headquarters are locked and sealed and they don't want to talk about it.

  6. Information about Tom Powers, who co-authored Bill Wilson's second book, "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions", and then quit A.A. because he was digusted by Bill Wilson's behavior. Is Tom Powers still alive? Did he leave us any choice tidbits about Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous?
    A little is known. He has died, apparently at his compound in upstate New York. A surviving assistant may be able to answer some questions, but I don't know his name.

    I have received a few letters about this. See:

    1. http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters211.html#Tom_Powers
    2. http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters207.html#Sean_W
    3. http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters219.html#Tom_Powers
    4. http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters229.html#Tom_Powers
    5. http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters331.html#John_L

  7. Any old documents from the earliest days of Alcoholics Anonymous. Especially, any of the documents that are kept hidden in the sealed A.A. archives. What are they hiding?

  8. Financial records of Alcoholics Anonymous, any and all years.
    Partially done. I got the Form 990 from many years.
    Look here: http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters248.html#finances

    I would appreciate any other secret documents that somebody finds.

  9. References to the Westbrook Pegler column that criticized Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous. Westbrook Pegler was a popular syndicated columnist in the 1930s and 40s who was notorious for his sharp tongue and acidic put-downs. In 1947, Westbrook Pegler referred to the A.A. founder Bill Wilson as "wet-brained", and his followers as "effectively deluded". This was documented in the book of collected letters between Father Edward Dowling and Bill Wilson, The Soul of Sponsorship: The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J. and Bill Wilson in Letters, edited by Robert Fitzgerald, S.J., page 45.
    So, the question is, in what newspapers did that column appear? What was the exact date? Does anybody have a URL that points to a reprint of the column? Or, best of all, does anybody have a copy of that column?
    DONE! Thanks to Todd L.
    See this letter.

  10. I hear that around 1990, the A.A. headquarters sent out a memo telling the sponsors to stop instructing the newcomers and sponsees not to take their doctor-prescribed medications. Does anyone have a copy of that?

    Some A.A. members have denied that such a thing exists, on the grounds that "every group is independent", and the A.A. headquarters cannot tell the groups what to do. If that is true, then that is also bad, because no one will stop the bad behavior.

    July, 2011: We are getting close. Someone sent in a document that is the first official A.A. headquarters admission that I've seen that says that sponsors raping under-age girls in 12-Step groups is a big problem. Look here.
    Now isn't that telling groups what to do? If the A.A. headquarters can tell groups to stop raping underage girls, then headquarters can also tell the A.A. members to quit telling newcomers not to take their medications.

  11. I would really love to see Heinrich Himmler's "Dear Abby" letters to English Oxford Group members. (I speak German, so language is not a problem.)

  12. More photographs of Bill Wilson, Doctor Bob, and other early A.A. members.

    (I don't need the original photographs for these or any of the following pictures; just high-quality computer image scans, like at 600 DPI or greater, will be fine. That gives me some extra resolution to use in cleaning up the images, or zooming, or enlarging and cropping, or whatever. The extra resolution is especially needed when scanning photographs from books or newspapers, where the image has been screened. The screened images will moiré if you don't scan them at the highest possible resolution, and then you have to burn some resolution (blur the image) to get rid of the moiré patterns and the dot patterns.)

  13. Photos of early Oxford Group members: Rowland Hazard, Cebra Graves and Shep Cornell, and Judge Graves.

  14. Photographs of Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman:

    • Photos of Frank Buchman and Heinrich Himmler together, probably at a Nuremberg Nazi Party rally, or at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

    • Photos of Frank Buchman with any other high-ranking Nazis.

    • Photos of Frank Buchman with Putzi Hanfstaengl, or Putzi's mother, Frau Katherine von Hanfstaengl.

    • Photos of Frank Buchman at a Nuremberg Nazi party rally, with anybody.

    • Photos of Frank Buchman at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, with anybody.

    • Photos of Frank Buchman with the Mitford sisters, or with Lady Diana Mosley, or with Sir Oswald Mosley.

    • And obviously, the grand prize would be a photograph of Dr. Frank Buchman with Adolf Hitler.

      (Please, only genuine photographs; no computer-generated composites. I'm interested in real history.)

  15. Photograph of Peter Howard with Lady Diana Mosley and/or Sir Oswald Mosley, or any leading Nazis.

  16. Particularly would like photographic (not computer-scanned) copies of photographs of the audience behind Hitler at the 1935 Nuremberg Nazi Party Day Rally, where we can zoom in with a microscope and identify Frank Buchman's face, and also the Mitford sisters.

  17. Question: Where was Peter Howard during the 1933 to 1938 Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies, and the 1936 Berlin Olympics? Did he go? Did he meet Frank Buchman or the Mitford sisters there? At one of the Nuremberg rallies, Unity Mitford went as a representative of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, and she gave a short speech of praise of the Nazis. What was Peter Howard doing then?

  18. Copies of the Gestapo reports on the Oxford Group (in German, of course):
    1. Sicherheitshauptambt (1936) Die Oxford- oder Gruppenbewegung, November 1936; Geheim, Numeriertes Exemplar No. 1
    2. Sicherheitshauptambt (1942) Die Oxfordgruppenbewegung 1939.

  19. I'd like to see a copy of the Cannonball issue that allegedly threatened Dr. Hibben of Princeton University. The Buchmanites told a story that some students prepared an issue of the Cannonball in February of 1924 that attacked Buchman, and they supposedly threatened to publish it unless Dr. Hibben banned the Buchmanites from Princeton University. (See details here.) That is a very strange story. Why should Dr. Hibben feel threated by someone threatening to criticize Frank Buchman's cult?

  20. Out of curiosity: what happened to Arthur James Russell? He wrote two books of praise of Frank Buchman and the Oxford Groups, and was the first Oxford Group archivist, and then he suddenly just vanished from history and the Groupers never mentioned him again. Did he get become disillusioned with Frank Buchman and commit the unforgiveable sin of quitting the cult?

  21. Did Herbert Spencer really ever write the quote that Bill Wilson reproduced in the Appendix to the second edition of the Big Book? It originally was printed in the first edition in the story AN ARTIST'S CONCEPT, by Ray Campbell:

    "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

    Can anyone find it anywhere in the writings of Sir Herbert Spencer? One person thought it was printed in Principles of Biology, London, 1864-1867, but we haven't found it yet.

    DONE!
    Now we get two new pieces of information:

    1. Michael has done a lot of research on that quote, and he found that it actually came from William Paley, not Herbert Spencer. See Michael's paper here:
      http://www.geocities.com/fitquotation/ (Dead Link.)
      There is a local copy here: Survival_of_a_Fitting_Quotation.pdf

    2. And still, now I'm hearing that somebody else is saying that it is from "The Pathology of Trauma" by Herbert Spencer, 2nd edition, Edited by J.K.Mason, page 192. Can somebody check that?
      DONE! Michael checked that out, and it turns out that it was a completely bogus reference. Herbert Spencer never wrote any such book. Somebody else did, and it doesn't contain that quote.

  22. Any old Oxford Group or Moral Re-Armament books, pamphlets, or literature that somebody might have laying around, just cluttering up the place.

  23. Likewise, old Alcoholics Anonymous books or pamphlets. I don't need any more 3rd or 4th edition Big Books, but a first or second edition would be nice, if somebody wants to get rid of one :-) .
    Partially DONE! Got a second edition. Thanks, Terri.

  24. A copy of the original 1939 multilith (like mimeograph) edition of the Big Book. That's pre-First-Edition.
    I don't expect somebody to actually send me an actual original copy, but color computer scans of the pages would be good. —Color to show the age of the paper and color of ink of any markings or stamps placed therein. Remember that Bill Wilson claimed that each copy was stamped with a message that said that it was a "preliminary pre-press loaner review copy", and not a real printing. Mitchell K. says that is not true at all. He says that he has seen about twenty of the multilith copies, and none of them was stamped that way.

  25. The Al-Anon speaker's tape where Doctor Bob's son "Smitty", Robert Smith Jr., tells of the suicide of his own son. — Or an MP3 file of same.

    DONE! "Just Me" sent 5 boxes of treasures — she decided to get rid of her whole collection of stuff from many years in the cult — old tapes, pamphlets, books, papers, including that tape. Thank you and Merry Christmas to you too.
    Note that I can always use more — there are a zillion more. Thanks.

  26. Somebody did a study that found that they could pay alcoholics not to drink. They also found that they could pay alcoholics in programs with tokens that would buy a drink. The alcoholics were allowed to cash in their chips and drink any evening that they chose. Some of the alcoholics chose to save up their tokens so that they could really party hearty on Saturday night.
    If alcoholics were really powerless over alcohol, then that should not have happened. The alcoholics showed a lot of control over their drinking habits.
    So the question is, what was that study? When, where, who?
    DONE! It was in Herbert Fingarette's book Heavy Drinking. Thanks, Graham.

  27. Somebody did a study that found that upscale, richer, alcoholics were more successful in quitting drinking. They were more motivated to succeed at getting their lives back together because they had more to lose than the down-and-out street drunks who had lost everything (except their lives, which was next).
    So what was that study?

  28. In what publication(s) was the Patty-Cake Treatment Program described? I thought that I read about it in a magazine that was published around 1987 or 1988, but can't find the magazine again. Does anybody know about it?

    Then again, I have a suspicion that I might have heard about it on National Public Radio in 1990 or 1991, in a program about addiction and cures. Does anybody remember that?

  29. I would like to get information about the new sub-sects of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the super-star leaders and tape sellers. They were described to me as:

    • Mickey Bush (A.A., N.A., C.A.) whose tapes and speeches are adding a cure-all aspect to the 12 steps;

    • Wayne B. (Emotional Recovery) This is a sub-sect within A.A., started by Mr B. & makes A.A.'s even more slavishly consider the 12 steps 24-7.

    • The Road to Recovery: Another Sub-sect. Allegedly homophobic and anti-medication

    • Vision For You: Another Sub-sect. The original sect that the above broke away from.

    • Joys of Recovery: Again a sect within a cult...

    • And then of course there are the really criminal subsects: Mike Q.'s group in Washington DC, Clancy's Pacific Group, and the similar exploitative groups in Phoenix, AZ, and Miami, FL. The Pacific Group of "Clancy I." has a reputation for being just as bad as Mike Q.'s Midtown Group.

    Also any of their tapes or books that somebody feels like discarding.

    (Speaking of which, this "Back To The Basics" subsect is interesting too: 'Return to the Good Old Days of the Oxford Group cult':
    http://www.aabacktobasics.org/wallybio.html )

  30. I want a word: What is the exact opposite of 'panacea'? (Panamal?) Where a panacea is a cure-all, something that will fix all of your problems, what is its opposite, "the one big cause of all your problems"?
    I decided on "panmalefic". See the story here.

  31. That question leads into the next one — another word: What do you call this phenomenon that I called "seeing through tinted lenses"? I want a better word for it:

    1. Fundamentalist Christians see Satan as the cause of all of our problems, and every bad event on the evening news is seen as further evidence of the truth of that belief.
    2. Communists see those rich capitalists waging class warfare as the cause of all of our problems, and the news 'proves' their viewpoint right.
    3. Other people see it all as conspiracies of the Trilateral Commission and the Illuminati and the New World Order...
    4. The X-Files crowd sees everything in terms of Roswell crashes and government cover-ups and alien abductions and secret organizations and interplanetary plots...
    5. Neo-Nazis see everything as the Jewish Conspiracy to take over the world...

    Once somebody buys into one of those models of reality, a perceptual filter kicks in where they notice more and more "facts" that appear to reinforce their chosen beliefs, and they ignore any conflicting information that comes along, so they become more and more convinced of the correctness of their beliefs — "It's all so obvious to anyone who learns the real truth!"

    So what is a good name for that phenomenon?

    DONE!
    It's apophenia. Thanks to UndeRnetJunKie. Look here.

    I also put apophenia in the Propaganda Techniques web page, here: Induce and Exploit Apophenia.

  32. Why did Ann Landers promote Alcoholics Anonymous so much? Why did she parrot the A.A. party line so much?
    Did she have a relative who was a member?
    Was she secretly a member?
    Does anyone have any information on that?
    Something popped up here: Roger Ebert outed himself and Ann Landers, here, but the story is still incomplete.

  33. Documentation on the A.A. suicide rate. I have a lot of stories and anecdotal evidence of excessive suicides in A.A., but no good documentation and hard facts.

  34. The full German text of Mein Kampf. That is, the book in German. (I read German.) This is for historical research, and seeing what the original words were before translators added their interpretation. The copyright on the book is owned by the State of Bavaria, and they use ownership of the copyright to prevent anyone from publishing the book. Still, someone must have an electronic copy somewhere. I am not interested in redistributing it or helping out Neo-Nazis; I just want to do some historical sleuthing.

  35. Past issues of The Grapevine. Any and all. They are all interesting. And even things like the Australian equivalent of the Grapevine, AA Around Australia, especially the Spring Edition, No 90., October 1994, issue, where the Chairman Dr. Ron Whittington declared that A.A. had a 95% dropout rate in the first year. (Or a Xerox or computer scan of that issue, would be nice too.)

  36. Triennial Survey forms for all of the years that AAWS conducted the A.A. triennial surveys.

    We now have blank Triennial Survey forms from two years. That leaves many more to get.

    1. 1989_Membership_Survey_Form_Blank.pdf ; Size: 244 k
    2. 2007_Membership_Survey_Form_Blank.pdf ; Size: 58 k




  37. Donations:

    Donations to support the web site are always welcome, anything from one penny on up. Just 25 cents from a hundred people will pay for bandwidth usage for a few months.

    There are a multitude of small (and large) expenses involved in doing a project like this, like web site hosting, bandwidth, Internet access, xeroxing, books, more books, magazines, inter-library loan charges, postage, blank CDs for backups and archiving and give-aways, more disk drives for more archiving and back-ups, maintaining and replacing computer equipment as it gets old and dies and burns up, you name it.

    Just postage stamps to send one letter to all members of Congress (which I'd like to do), costs about $214, and then there is the printing, and those darned grossly over-priced inkjet print-heads that are always going dry, and paper and envelopes, and on and on.

    Worse yet, Hostmonster has turned out to be an impossibly bad web host — a deceitful overseller — and I need to move the entire web site to a new and better and probably more expensive hosting system. What I would really like to do is co-locate my own server box in someone else's data center, so that I won't have to deal with incompetent technicians and misconfigured systems and arbitrary rules that are intended to limit what the customer can do (like Hostmonster imposes). I can manage systems better myself. I have the empty server box, but it needs lots of insides, and I don't have a location for it yet. That remains to be seen.

    orange-p@orange-papers.info, here:

    http://www.paypal.com/

    Thank you, and have a good day.






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Last updated 10 November 2014.
The most recent version of this file can be found at http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-wishlist.html