Bars are shunned like the plague they are. From here on my own feverish brain works. House parties are fine if they are clean-so there must be a nucleus that sees that that's the way it is. The thing would naturally have to be built on trust and honesty. With a large enough group of friends, many "babies" could be spared the pain of ever having to enter life through a swinging door. As for the ones who will forever keep stumbling in through this door, something should be done. All that can be done, I suppose, is going to them occasionally with. eyes and ears open and straining them through a sieve-catching those who want what we want and leaving those who don't.

Alcoholics Anonymous could teach us a lot I'm sure, and in a funny way I think we have a lot in common with them namely the need to find inner

security via our social life to strengthen us against a hostile society.

As for standards and morals, that is a problem. I think maybe this needn't be worried about unduly if the leadership (or nucleus) simply keep their own vows of decency and honor and judiciously pick people to join them who want the same things and who seem able to attain them, given a chance.

One tragedy of the bar wasteland is to see creative genius be made impotent. Bars are nice, sometimes, for diversion: but, they do not have the prerequisites of a home. They may be, for some, better than no home at all, but for me they are just slightly removed from Hell. I would like to see a better meeting place for those who wish more from life than a nightmare of whiskey and sex, brutality and vanity, self-pity and despair. STEN RUSSELL

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