MSCA - Mid Southern California Area 09 of Alcoholics Anonymous

Delegate's Bulletin Board

First Contact 9 January 2020

My name is Ed, alcoholic. I stopped drinking on 05/30/05 but am not fully recovered, pending the world of things I still need to learn about recovery. But I haven’t drank since then. Service-wise, I’m a product of District 19, mostly in the southern Mojave Desert, from Victorville to Barstow, including Wrightwood, where I live. I’ve served as GSR for two years, District secretary for five years, Area Grapevine representative for two years, Area 09 secretary for two years, most recently Area 09 alternate delegate for two years, and am now your Panel 70 Delegate, for the next two years.

I’m working with our webmaster to re-establish the “Delegate’s Bulletin Board,” which has not been active since 2012. In that venue, I will provide as much information as possible to ensure you remain in contact with New York and other branches of AA service. For the past six years, at the area-level, you’ve gotten 110% of me in isolated bursts, which has steadily increased from Grapevine representative, through to secretary, culminating with alternate delegate duties. For the next two years, I’m committed to giving you 110% on a continuous basis, which if the past few months is any indication, will exceed the past six years combined.

I’m looking forward to PRAASA in Tucson in March, the 70th General Service Conference in New York in April, the International Convention in Detroit in July, and the Pacific Regional Forum in Las Vegas in August, and (except for the New York Conference), hope to see you all there.

Since being “pulled out of the hat” on October 13, 2019, both my schedule and experience levels in AA seem to have doubled. I ended up traveling more (and spending more of my budget) between late October and late December 2020 than I did between January and mid-October 2020. I attended 17 District and Spanish Intergroup elections from September 20 through December 29, three report-backs with Panel 68 delegate, Jesus, and my second Southern California H&I Intergroup meeting on November 24 in Covina. AA speaking engagements have also increased, with six in November and December, including a Secretary’s workshop with District 7 and a Grapevine workshop with District 5. I plan to speak at the Serenity Club in Las Vegas tomorrow evening (January 10). What I’ve learned is that being of service is alive and well at the District-level in Area 09, and that, like AA meetings, we need to be sure that District officers are there when new GSRs arrive so they aren’t experiencing the void of a scheduled-but-empty service meeting or event.

Upon selection, I was presented with a dozen pieces of AA literature to review, which I dutifully studied, only to discover on December 22, 2019 that I was given Panel 70 Conference duties to serve on the Literature Committee, which really opened my world and schedule to intensive study. Since being hat-selected in October as your delegate, I’ve studied 31 different pieces of literature, including some documents that are well over 100 pages long. I’ve discovered that aa.org has links to pdfs of all our literature, so I stopped taking them off the racks and started reading them online.

In November 2020, we received a list of 29 Agenda Items, which as of January 6, 2020 has grown to 78 different Agenda Items, of which 25 (36%) are assigned to the Literature Committee. With 10 Agenda Items, the Public Information Committee is second in line to Literature. We will be making the final version of the Conference Agenda Items available in mid-February, after the General Service Board has finalized them.

I participated in my first Pacific Region conference call with 14 other delegates on November 18, my first PRAASA Delegate’s Advisory Board conference call with five other delegates and our trustee on December 2, and will soon have my first conference call with the trustee chair of the Literature Committee sometime this month before the General Service Board has its quarterly meeting on January 30.

Given my new delegate responsibilities, I’ve resigned from the Editorial Advisory Board of the Grapevine, and am extremely thankful for the three years I did get to serve. I’ve just signed two new copyright permission forms for Grapevine stories to be published in February and March 2020, which will be my 31st and 32nd Grapevine articles. So, I’m still on fire for Grapevine!

I experienced my very first YPAA event on January 4, 2020, which was the WACYPAA event in downtown L.A. with Kathi F, Pacific Trustee from Arizona and Area 05 Delegate, Thomas S, and was blown away by the youthful energy, some of it running around in Pokémon suits.

In Love and service,
Ed.