RANSVESTIA

mail order campaigns, etc. that he could help build Chevalier up by using some of this knowledge. The upshot was that we agreed that while I would edit and publish the magazine he would handle all the sales, advertising, etc. and for this I would give him 15 percent off the top and we started to operate on this basis.

For Christmas 1961 we brought out the first issue-and sent it to all subscribers for free-of an alternate monthly newsletter named the Femme Mirror (the original of our current Sorority newsletter). This publication lasted for 44 issues or about 7 years. Its first editor was Bob-Barbara and he did an excellent job on it. It was short, bright and humorous and was composed of a short editorial by me, letters from readers and answers thereto, and comments and contributions from readers. Over the years it had a succession of editors and finally expired with No. 44 because no one else was available to keep it going but myself and I just couldn't do it on top of everything else.

I also started something else about the same time and this was the Clipsheet. Since a scrapbook had been part of my own life and I found that it was in a lot of others as well, I decided, that we could in effect, all share in each other's scrapbooks if we had a central clearing house for the items. People sent in clippings of what they found in newspapers and magazines and I trimmed them down (in size, not in content), organized them on large cardboard sheets and then photo reduced them to an 81⁄2 x 17 sheet. Thus, everybody could see everything. This publication appeared 37 times about four times a year. That worked out to about nine years. During this time the interest and subscriptions that were high in the beginning, gradually lessened so that it was discontinued about four or five years ago. The reason, I am persuaded, was that fewer and fewer of today's TVs bother with scrap books. The world being more open and their opportunities for personal expression being greater, this vicarious outlet was no longer needed.

One day I got a call from my wife at the office. She had an amazing idea. It seemed that the minister (I'll call him Lynn) had to go to San Diego on business. His wife, therefore suggested to my wife that it would be interesting if I, as Virginia, were to accompany Lynn to San Diego as his wife and she wanted to know if I would like to do so. I was sort of knocked out by the fact that this was a job put together by two wives but on longer thought I figured why not, so I agreed to go. I

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