Paper, Paper Everywhere

Having some time at home this weekend has given me a chance to start getting organized. I admit that I am probably a bit more paper intensive and get ahead of the curve than many people. Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it is probably not so good. But it seems like the pile of information that comes in to a Grand Line officer that has to be processed back out into something recognizable can be a bit daunting. Enter the Binder! (Well, actually four binders at the moment.) I have them labeled Issues, for keeping track of issues that have come up and which may last a while, generating much paper, Session, for stuff on the 2013 Grand Chapter session, Calendar and Budget, for calendar items and things I learn about the Grand Chapter budget process as I go through these learning years, and one labeled Committees, which I really should re-label Appointments, for keeping track of appointments I am supposed to make in the years to come. Some of this stuff may seem early, like the Appointments, and mostly I made up the binder because I was making binders. I don't really need that one until next year, but I do have some paper for it so I thought, what the heck, let's get organized. While most of my appointments will be asked after and accepted only after I am Associate Grand Matron, there are a few appointments that are supposed to be chosen next year, when I am Grand Conductress. Those are for the committees where there is a Chair and a Co-Chair. I am supposed to pick who I want for a Chair in my year and then ask my predecessor to appoint that person as Co-Chair for her year so that my pick gets a year's experience in the duties of the committee and job before they have to be in charge. But again, I don't ask anyone to do anything until after being installed in the appropriate office. I also needed the Appointments binder because I am starting to get member resumes. These are a form that members can fill out to let the Grand Line Officers know what their skills are and if they are interested in serving on a committee. I wanted a place to put those and voila, le binder is ready. I have the feeling that there are a lot of differing opinions on the member resume thing. On the one hand, we do not encourage our members to put themselves forward, so some people feel that if a person asks to be a Deputy or Grand Representative, they should not get picked. On the other hand, especially with committee appointments, I don't know how you find out who wants to serve or who can serve without getting a member resume because some committees need specific skills and you need to know what skills our members have to appoint them, like finding legally trained people for Jurisprudence or those who can sew and do needle arts for Courtesies to Dignitaries. Perhaps we need to work on balancing these conflicting views, maybe with a resume that asks for the member to list their skills and experience that they feel would be helpful to the Grand Chapter without asking them to specifically recommend themselves for a particular position. Maybe that is something that deserves some thought and attention. I thought the Calendar binder was early too, but then I found out that Chapters with anniversaries sometimes want to start getting dates two or three years early so they can look for halls and such, so there is already some stuff to go in there. Issues was actually the first binder I made and that one wasn't early at all because, of course, there seems to always be at least one issue sitting around somewhere. In my experience, four people can't decide what to have for dinner quickly or easily, so it should be expected that in an order of 30,000, someone is having an issue somewhere. But hopefully those can be resolved quickly and with mutual satisfaction to the parties, so I hope to have a fast turnover in that binder. I am learning all about our Grand Chapter Session this year and am attending some meetings for that because I have never been involved with that before and I hope that going to a year's worth of meetings will give me the overview to understand my part in choosing Chairmen for my session activities and fine tuning what we will do when it is my turn to decide. Since I have never served on any Grand Chapter Week Committees, the groups that make everything at the session happen, going to the meetings and exchanging long e-mails with my awesome session chairs has been a great learning process. I don't say anything at the meetings, because I am just there to learn, but I am very happy that I put these on my calendar because I am finding out so much I never knew before. All my notes and the hand outs I have gotten are in that binder. Of course, I also have one more binder, bigger than all the others, which is my binder for my girls, the 2013 Worthy Matrons. That binder has dividers labeled by District and a sheet of all the ladies who have been elected to serve as Associate Conductress in that district. As I hand out my packets at the Instructionals and Transitionals, I have been handing out an information sheet and asking each of the ladies to send it back to me. I have already gotten some and they are tucked into that binder. That one will keep growing, and changing a bit, each year, but it is really the most important one of all because it is how I learn about the people who will serve with me and start gathering information on what they would like to see in the future, so I hope I get all the questionnaires back. I have also started an e-mail list, to which I add each person as I get their information sheet back. I hope that most of my girls will have e-mail because it is a great way to communicate with a large group of people over a very large distance. Next week I am still at home before we set out for four full weekends of lots of events and travel.

I Gotta Get Me a Man

With a couple of weeks off the road, I have some time to think about what I need to get done this year and plan out some goals and tasks. (I also got to clean out my closet yesterday - Hurrah! - That's a hundred or so wire hangers doomed to the recyle bin!) One of the most burning tasks for any Associate Grand Conductress is to start making a list of eligible men from the other side of the state that one might consider asking to join in the journey to the East. You are not allowed to ask anyone to actually serve with you until you have been installed as Grand Conductress, but you need to start making a list of possible men so that you can try to meet them and talk with them when you travel to the other part of the state. Because the Grand Line Officers alternate North and South of the state, and the men alternate also, the person in line ahead of you is not looking at your potential pool of people, so there is no actual conflict, but you still don't ask early because that would not be fair to the person ahead of you because they should have their own time that is not intruded upon and you hope for the same courtesy in return from those that follow you. Since everyone knows that I have to find a man, an amazing number of people pay intense attention to who you talk to and who you meet with during your travels in the Grand Conductress and Associate Grand Conductress years. Very much like an arranged marriage, a bunch of different factors go into picking a man, and if he's married, his wife also, who will be a good fit and who you will still like, admire and appreciate after two and a half years of intense work together. Like a marriage, this pick is for LIFE, since even after you are done with your years of service, you have to get together at reunions, receptions for people you picked to serve with you and to be the advisors and helpers for your Grand Marshal as she goes through the Grand Line. try to meet and talk with possible people as you travel in the far part of the state. From what I have seen, nothing can substantially help or hurt your year more than the choice of your partner. So usually, when I have a decision that includes a bunch of different factors, I try to figure out what is important to consider and ask around about what things should go on my factor list. Here's what I have gleaned so far, in no particular order. The Wife - I have been told, that you aren't just "marrying" a man, you are marrying his spouse too. You are about to be a foursome and the other halves of the couple, my escort and his wife, need to get along too because as we are constantly thrown together, they will also be constantly thrown together. Also, you want someone who is going to be supportive and understanding of the amount of time you are going take away from their life together, and someone who is okay with spending the money that it costs to do all this too. In a perfect world, you want him to have a wife who can take on tasks and projects and be another pair of hands. The Money and the Time - While four years (okay, six) are more expensive than two (okay, two and a half), there are still a lot of expenses associated with serving and you want someone who can hold up their half of the costs without endangering their economics and who has the time to travel as much as the WGM and WGP need to. I sort of feel like I should find who I want and let them decide if they can afford the time and money, but it might be unkind to ask someone who you know can't afford to do it, and if you know that time and money will be okay, that is one huge headache off the list. Opposing Strengths and Weaknesses - From what I have seen, the best couples serving together cover each other's strengths and weaknesses well. So I think I want to find someone who is strong in areas where I am weak and whose weaknesses, if any, fall in areas where I am strong. That way, between the two of us, we should be able to handle anything. Of course, that requires getting to know them well enough to know what their strengths and weaknesses are, which can be its own challenge when everyone is watching who you speak with and no one is supposed to know who you pick until they are revealed in July of your Grand Conductress year. You also can't ask too many people about the men you are looking at because that can also start rumors and everyone seems eager to find out who you are going to choose. Travel Stamina and Health - Because of the amount of travel and the stress involved in the job, I am told that you want someone who is going to be able to keep up on the travel schedule and who you hope will stay healthy through your term of service and beyond. Again, this is a tough area to investigate when you have to watch how many long conversations you have with whom at Eastern Star events. Popular in their Area/Deserving in the State - I am told that you want people to be happy for your choice and excited about your man, so it helps if you choose someone who is well known and well liked, especially in their own local area and throughout the state if possible. It is also important, it seems to me, that they some experience or past service that makes them a person that the members in the state feel is deserving of the high honor of serving as Worthy Grand Patron. To pick someone who has never done much for the order would seem to add difficulty on two levels. First, it seems that a lot of people will think that there are more qualified people you could have chosen and they will be disappointed that you are not rewarding someone who has truly contributed to Grand Chapter. Second, if the person you pick has never served in Grand Chapter in any capacity, whether as a Grand Officer, a Grand Escort, a Grand Representative, on major committees for several years, or something like that, you cannot really see how they will perform in the fish bowl that is a Grand Office nor will they have a very complete understanding of what will be expected of them and what they are getting themselves into. The more they know what is coming, the less difficulty there will be when the rubber meets the road, or at least so I am told. What You Want Them to Do - Each Grand Line Lady, it seems to me, has her own idea of the role that she wants her man to play and she needs to pick someone for whom the role she requests is natural. A friend suggested to me that your man should be able to serve the way you want while still being himself and if he can't do that, he's the wrong man. So I guess I need to firm up my picture of what I expect so I can convey it correctly and find the person who will be able to fill that role while being true to himself. I am sure that there are other things I am supposed to consider, and hopefully I will find them out while I put this list together of people to look at in my travels. The toughest part I think is that I can't be seen talking to anyone too much and I can't call my potential choices for discreet discussions by phone until next November, after Grand Installation, so all the research has to be in stealth mode for this next year so as not to offend anyone. I was told that checking the back of the car for bumper stickers and emblems can be very useful in one's research, so I will have to remember to do that too. Next weekend we are off again so that everyone can be with their family for Christmas. My friends want me to come visit and I have to come up with a good way of explaining that all a Grand Officer wants for Christmas is to stay home and sleep!

Watermelon, Watermelon, Watermelon

Last weekend was the Christmas Party at our Eastern Star Senior Living Community, commonly called the Home. I understand that decades ago it was okay to be a retirement home, but that in the past twenty years or so the words "retirement home" have taken on a bad connotation, painting a picture of a sad, depressing place that people just go to die. So we, and a lot of other groups from what I have seen, have renamed their retirement homes to call them "senior living communities" which implies a more active, dynamic environment where people go to live rather than just fade away. The Home is a perfectly lovely building with awesome stained glass windows, a cozy chapel, an ice cream parlor, and a bazillion other amenities and services for our Residents. The Grand Officers visit the Home at least three times each year, once for the Christmas Party in December, once to make an Official Visit, usually held in February or March, and for the Fiesta, which is like a carnival/festival, in June. Then the Residents come to Grand Chapter for a day in October, so it comes out to about once a quarter. In between our visits, I am told that other Chapters come to visit and hold an Eastern Star meeting at the home for the Residents so that they can participate in our familiar ceremonies. For the Christmas Party, there is usually a lovely dinner and entertainment provided by the Grand Officers. It is traditional for the previous year's Grand Officers to also be invited and starting a couple of years ago, last year's Grand Officers also get to help with the entertainment, so I got to see a bunch of my 2009 Grand Family which was great because I have missed them lots. It is hard to travel with a group of people almost every weekend for a year and then suddenly they aren't there anymore. This year, it was decided that we would do the entertainment and presents and such first and then have the dinner afterwards. I sort of liked that a little better than the other way around because I think that people get really tired after dinner and having an hour or so of stuff after the dinner is harder than doing the program first and then having the dinner afterwards. At least it was easier on those of us who perhaps hadn't gotten as much sleep as they should have the night before. It is also traditional for the husband of the Worthy Grand Matron, or a substitute if said husband is not available, to play Santa and bring presents for all the members of the Home. I understand that the Home provides the official presents, but that the Worthy Grand Matron also buys presents for the Residents, so that is something for which I have to keep an eye out. Each of the Grand Officers take turns delivering the presents from Santa to the Residents and it is considered nice if you can chat with them for a minute or two, but the way the chairs were set up Saturday didn't really make that very easy, so I was only able to speak with my deliverees for a moment. One of the ladies to whom I delivered a present is over 100 years old. That's a lot of Christmases! After delivering the presents to the Residents, we sang Christmas carols with them. That is rather difficult for me since I know the words to exactly zero Christmas carols, but at least for Jingle Bells, which was sung by the 2009s and the 2010s together, words had been provided, and I think I got almost half the words right on Here Comes Santa Claus, at least I think so. For the others, we were told that if you just mouth "watermelon, watermelon, watermelon" over and over, it will look like you are singing. I think that there was a lot of watermelon flying around that room Saturday night. It's a good thing that the Residents knew almost all the words to almost all the songs because otherwise the singing would have been very soft. There was also a lovely duet of White Christmas by the gentleman playing Santa and his wife, who are marvelous singers. After dinner, the Grand Family went to our hotel for Secret Pal presents. Secret Pals is something that many Grand Families do, where each Grand Officer gets another Grand Officer to be their Secret Pal. Then you bring them presents and cards and fun things all year long and get them to the secret keeper without anyone seeing them so that your Secret Pal doesn't find out who you are until the end of the year. We all got together in the breakfast room at the hotel and the presents were handed out one at a time so that everyone could see the gifts. I got a great cookie cutter in the shape of a dragon that I am sure the Chairmen of my next events are going to come to loathe because the cookies will be way too cute not to make them for everyone, but rolling the dough out over and over is going to make them a bit crazy. But I can't wait to see how the cookies come out because the cutter has all sorts of great detail in the outline. I also got a dragon calendar and a dragon puzzle. So only three dragons this week. Perhaps the pace is slowing down and I won't end up with 1000 after all, perhaps just several hundred. After you get your Secret Pal present, you sort of have to thank the room in general because of course you don't know who your Secret Pal may be. I have a great Secret Pal who has sent me some way cool cards too. A lot of the presents were in danger of being swiped if the new owner didn't pay attention because they were so nice. Everyone had a lot of fun even though a couple of people had to be reminded not to spray their awesome new body spray at the crowd over the apple pie. I mean we understand that you want everyone to see how great it smells and some of them were very nice, but not over the pie please. Apple pie should not taste pine fresh. The next day, we had a transitional and an instructional in Lomita with much laughter and many funny hats. Perhaps I will explain about transitionals next week, when we are home for the holidays. In fact we have three travel weekends off, just in time for me to try to get my house into some kind of controlled chaos instead of the rampant chaos currently taking over every flat surface.

980 Miles

This was quite the driving weekend. While I know a lot of people in Eastern Star who would be unimpressed with this many miles in three days, to put it in my perspective, I usually drive my car about 6,000 miles a year, so I just did two months of driving in three days. I fear it may be a week before my ankle recovers and I think that my back and shoulders are going to be stiff for days (although that could also be because of the guy who rearranged my car last Thursday night.) Last Friday, I left San Jose (in a gutless wonder rental car that sounded like I was whipping the hamster to run on his wheel faster every time I pushed on the accelerator) around 1:30 pm to drive to Chico for our first Instructional of the year. I got there in time to have a bite to eat at the Togo's and change clothes in the bathroom before going over to the hall. Changing clothes in a fast food bathroom, or in your car even, is a necessary Grand Officer skill, I'm afraid. When I am driving a long distance, I usually wear sweat pants and a polo shirt and tennis shoes with good socks because I am not able to sit for long periods of time well and loose cotton clothing makes it a little easier. If I was going to check into my hotel, I would have done that and changed into my travel suit (sleeveless dress and jacket on Friday, jacket and skirt with white blouse on Saturday, pantyhose and dress shoes) in my hotel room and then driven over to the hall. But I was not staying in Chico that night and had nowhere else to change. Luckily I was not changing into my formal and petticoat, since that can be really challenging in a bathroom stall. Sometimes, if you are early enough, you can change at the hall, but when you are walking in just on time, you don't want to end up late because you aren't dressed for the event. So I got changed at the Togo's and popped over to the hall. The rest of the Grand Family had not arrived yet, but there were some members with whom I could chat. I also hauled in a box of those packets that I had put together for my girls, not knowing who might come, so I had the entire far north in the box ready to go. I have to figure out how to get the whole south down to Yorba Linda next weekend, maybe in an extra suitcase, preferably with wheels! I am ever so grateful right now for the ADA because ramps and elevators make getting little carts of boxes in and out of the halls a lot easier. An Instructional is an opportunity for the Grand Officers to show the local officers how various bits of our ceremonial work are supposed to be performed. The basics of our ceremonies are not difficult, but the devil is in the details, things like which hand you use to pick something up or hold something, which way you turn when you are walking around. Our members are very eager to do their work correctly and well and we are all very eager to help them with that, but boy are there a lot of things you can do wrong. It really takes some careful study to get all the bits done right. I am also told that some members like to see the Grand Officers do their work because it reassures them that the people who were chosen to be Grand Officers are deserving of the honor. I am not sure if that is a common view or not, but it does seem true that your ability to perform the ceremonials of our Order is a first impression deciding factor when people see the new Grand Family and getting to know us as people and valuing us that way on a more personal level sometimes seems to come a little later so it sure does help with making a good first impression on the members if you can do your Ritual work well. So, in addition to providing a learning opportunity, instructionals are a nice opportunity for the local officers to get to really know their Grand Officers. That is particularly important for me at the bottom of the Grand Line because this is where I start meeting the ladies that have done me the honor of agreeing to serve with me for four years, culminating of course in our very special year of 2013. We had four Instructionals this past weekend, in Chico, Sacramento, Merced and Tulare, and with the drive to and from San Jose at the beginning and at the end, guess how many miles that ended up being? Usually the Grand Line Officer chooses a name for the ladies serving with her and I have chosen to call my "girls" the Dragon Riders of 2013. I think that it is fun and exciting to ride a dragon, but you have to be very, very brave and that is what I am hoping for my girls. We had some time this weekend to discuss the issue of "carpet suck," an issue that I believe every organization sees to a greater or lesser extent. Generally speaking, carpet sucking is when you propose a new idea or project for a group, any group to which you belong - something that has never been done before - and a bunch of people gasp and inhale so loudly and so sharply that you think they are trying to suck the carpet off the floor by sheer force of lung power. You worry that they will hyperventilate. Well, every now and then, on occasion, I have seen a bit of this carpet sucking reaction to a new idea and when you are new and enthusiastic and you pop out a new idea and you get a big dose of carpet suck, it can be very discouraging. But I try to tell people that if you never try, you can never succeed. So you have to "screw your courage to the sticking point" and give your idea a chance. Hopefully if everyone gives it a fair chance, you'll know if it is wonderful and you should do it every year or if it was absolutely awful and never to be repeated. But you can't really figure that out unless everyone gives it a good effort because a half hearted attempt does not really test the idea. But it takes a lot of bravery sometimes to run with an idea after a big dose of carpet suck. I try to remind myself that I have to be brave too because I can't ask something of someone else that I am not willing to do. One of my "big accomplishments" for the weekend was that I managed to eat all the amazing meals fixed for the Grand Family by the wonderful members of the local chapters and not gain any weight this weekend. That may not sound like much, but when you are presented with cheesecake with cherry sauce and cookies and taco salad and chicken casserole and chicken salad croissants and brownies, etc., to eat and all of it yummy, breaking even is all you can hope for. When I was Grand Warder, I gained ten pounds in that one year and it took me all this time, a whole 'nother year, just to get back to the weight I was at when I started as a Grand Officer. It is horribly difficult when we have so many members in our order who cook and bake divinely! You want to have lots of everything! My favorite baker in Merced, for example, makes the most delectable cookies you have ever had melt in your mouth. But I cannot afford to gain another ten pounds each year for the next four and I am not supposed to eat the sweets and the sugar anyway for my health, so I fear that I will be missing out a lot in my travels. Next weekend I am flying down to Yorba Linda for the Christmas Party at our Eastern Star Senior Living Community and that should be a lot of fun.

With a Little Help from My Friends

Installation season is over for another year. Wow! At last tally, I think this was a lighter year than last year. I think I only caught ten installations from November 13 to November 29. More people seemed to be on the same date. I managed all the installations in my district and all the ones for the district just south of me, plus another sprinkling. It was very awesome to get to meet and install some of the ladies who are going to serve with me in 2013. They all seemed very enthusiastic and most of them seem to be going for the first time, so that is exciting too. When it is your first time to get in the line in your Chapter, it is exciting and scary all wrapped into one. You are excited to be taking a big step in your fraternal lift and scared that you don't know what to do and will do it all wrong. Ah yes, I can relate completely right now! But I mentioned last week that I would turn to a somewhat less happy topic, and that is a funeral. One of the duties of a Worthy Matron in a local Chapter is arranging for an Eastern Star funeral for those members of the Chapter where the person has requested or the family requests that one be held. We have our own funeral service, which is very beautiful and meaningful. It takes eight people to put it on, five ladies to act as the Star Point Officers, a lady as Worthy Matron, a man to be Worthy Patron and a Chaplain. Many Chapters delegate this duty to the Past Matrons and Patrons group because many funerals are on weekdays and that group often has the most members who are retired and can do this when needed. But this particular funeral was on Saturday morning and I knew I could go, so I volunteered to take a star point office. It was very interesting on all sorts of levels. Now I have led funeral teams and been in a funeral team many times. The two times I was Worthy Matron I ended up doing about eight funerals in those two years. Sometimes there is a whole other church service and our ceremony is just one bit that fits in somewhere. Sometimes we are it and there is nothing else. So on top layer, one of the nice things about Eastern Star is that we are always there for our members, even at the end of their days and they can be sure of having some nice words for their last good-bye. On another layer, while it is a very sad event, I have always been proud to be able to help pay this last tribute to a departed sister or brother. It is a good deed to help bury the dead and comfort the bereaving and I believe that when the family sees that there are others who also loved and cared for their loved ones, it helps because the grief is shared and others understand. It was also interesting for me because there were a lot of members at the funeral who don't come at any other time and who did not know who I was. I was in a white funeral robe, like the rest of the team, and without any name badge or other insignia. When introductions were made, I just gave my name and everyone knew that I was a member of the deceased's chapter because I was in a robe. It was actually sort of nice to just be another member for a little while. Most people going up the Grand Line who have the experience of serving as an Appointive Grand Officer get a chance to go back to a normal fraternal life for a while before becoming Grand Marshal and committing for five years, but going straight from Grand Warder to Grand Marshal, I did not have a chance at that experience. There was something very special about being at an Eastern Star event where there were no expectations of me other than to do a good job at my lines. That was actually very nice. Another interesting thing about a funeral is that you get to meet some of the friends of your departed Sister who shared some other hobby than Eastern Star. Sometimes I think that we could know each other better if we asked more about their life outside of our Order. As I look around the average Chapter room, I wonder how many people know what the people sitting next to them do for a living or what other hobbies and interests they have. You know about people's family, their kids and their grandkids and their siblings and their last illness and when they are going in for surgery and when their birthday is, etc., because we talk about all that stuff a lot, and we often know each other's Chapter name and Chapter service, but we don't seem to talk about work and play that much. I am sure that I have sat in Chapter with members for years without ever knowing that they used to be a competitive swimmer or chess champion or play the violin. When you speak with people at a funeral, you find out all sorts of things you just never knew. I also think that the family members who are not in Eastern Star get to see a bit of what their loved one found special about us and I am glad that we have that chance to share that with them. I also think that a lot more people come to someone's funeral when they are a member of Eastern Star because the Chapter tries to have some people go every time and I think that is nice for those in mourning. When my father died, his funeral was on a Wednesday. He didn't have an Eastern Star service, but a dozen members of the Chapter took the time on a work day to come to the synagogue for the service and then followed to the graveyard for the burial. It meant a lot to me that they were there because I didn't feel so alone, so when I have a chance to be there for someone else, I think of how I felt and I hope that I am able to give some similar measure of comfort to others. I got a lot of sympathy cards too and those also helped me, so I try to send them out when I knew the deceased or I know a member of the family. It's one of those things where each of us will have our own turn, to comfort and then to be comforted, and that is what I think of Eastern Star as being all about. It gives me a chance to be there for others and I know that when I am the one in need, they will be there for me. We help each other, in good times and in sad times. For me, that is one of the reasons that Eastern Star gives meaning to life. Next weekend, I will be in Chico and Sacramento and Merced and Tulare, so it will be lots of driving and the beginning of our Grand Officer Instructionals.

Four Installations and a Funeral

This weekend was one of those exhausting, yet all too typical, event packed couple of days, filled with four installations and a funeral. I had an installation on Friday night in San Jose, then the funeral on Saturday morning in Los Altos, then an installation in Napa on Saturday afternoon and then raced back down for another installation Saturday night in Santa Clara. On Sunday, I attended a breakfast and then my own Chapter's installation on Sunday afternoon. Whew! I made everything on time, although sometimes I missed the start of the picture taking. But they managed to shoot me anyway before the festivities got started. On Friday night, I attended the first of the installations. It was relatively smooth and even better, it wasn't too long. In my experience as a teacher and as a student, I have found that people can only concentrate on learning for about fifty minutes before their attention wanders off and even when they are not trying to learn anything, people can only sit still and pay attention comfortably for about two hours tops. Anything more than that without a break is almost a waste of time because everyone starts thinking only about the time and when they get to get out of the room. Over the past two years, attending dozens of these things, I have discovered that the length varies enormously. There are a bunch of pre-ceremony things that can happen and how long it takes before you start on the actual ceremony depends on those choices. Then you have the actual Ritual ceremony, and then there's a bunch of things that you can do afterwards, so it is sort of a three part tour. At the beginning of Part One, usually the first thing that happens is some people are led in from the doors in the West to the stage in the East, one or two at a time. They introduce each other to the audience. Sometimes before that, you have a little mini-ceremony where the emblems for the five points of our Star are brought in ceremoniously, along with the Bible, which is placed on the Altar in the middle of the room and sometimes this is skipped. After the initial people come in, usually the officers of the Chapter come in and take their seats. The Bible is opened and the Lord's Prayer is recited. The Flag is brought in and we say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing the National Anthem. Then there is a welcome speech or two. The traditional speech at an installation is a little (or a lot) of history about the lady and gentleman about to be installed as the heads of their Chapter, the Worthy Matron-elect and the Worthy Patron-elect. Often when the speeches are given by people who know the subjects well, they can be very entertaining, with personal anecdotes, sometimes the ones that the subjects wished no one had ever heard. Then it is very entertaining indeed, at least for the audience. After the welcomes, we start in on Escort and Introductions. The short way of doing the Escort and Introductions is to have the various dignitaries sitting in the East already and have them stand up and come to the podium to be introduced. The long way of doing this is to have the dignitaries sitting in the back of the room and asking them to retire (go just outside the doors in the West) and then having them escorted from the back to the front to be introduced. After the ones who walk the floor if you are doing that, comes a long list of those who stand for introduction and then a bunch that stand for recognition. The difference between those is that if you rise for introduction, the person who is presiding introduces the individuals who stood up and if you rise for recognition, everyone is just supposed to clap with no names given and then the people sit back down. Not only does the walking/no walking make a real difference in length, but so does the decision on how far down the "Order of Precedence" to introduce versus just recognize. Finally, after all that, the presiding officer declares a recess to prepare for the ceremony of installation. The outgoing officers go out and chairs are set up in the back of the room in a semicircle for the new officers to sit in. In the four installations I attended, the length of time for Part One, from the start time published on the invitation to the point where the recess was declared, varied from twenty-five minutes to a full hour. That's how much difference the extra walking and the talking can make. The second part of the Installation is the Ritual ceremony. From experience I can say with fair assurance that the ceremony itself, with no interruptions for songs or fancy bits, and with people who know what they are doing, takes between forty and forty-five minutes to install all eighteen officers. (There are actually twelve installing bits, nine people get installed alone, two groups of two and one group of five.) But not everyone runs right through it. Often, there is a song or three. Sometimes there is one song for both the WM and the WP after they are both installed. Sometimes there is a separate song for each of them after each one is installed. Sometimes there is a song after the star point officers are installed. (They are the group of five.) Sometimes there is a little ceremony bit after the star point officers' installation where other members present the star point officers with the emblems of their offices, which they then set on pedestals behind their chairs. And once this month, I saw a prayer type song done as part of the installation of the Chaplain. So even though the theoretical length of the Ritual ceremony is fixed, the actual length can vary a lot. This past week, I saw some people done in forty-five minutes and others that took sixty-five minutes. But even that is only Part Two. After the ceremony is over, we have Part Three, Remarks and Presentations. There is a special little escort done between these parts, where all the new WMs and WPs who attended the installation are sent out and escorted in and introduced in the East and then the WM usually starts on her remarks. These are often prefaced with a series of thank yous to all the people who helped and did stuff in the ceremony and then whatever message of substance the WM wishes to give. Then she invites the WP to preside and he gives his remarks. Somewhere in there, they each usually introduce their family and sometimes they ask members of other groups to which they belong to rise for recognition and to thank them for coming. Then comes a part that varies widely, which is inviting others to give remarks. In my own area, the Peninsula San Francisco Association, the tradition has been that only the WM and WP give remarks at Installation, but in other areas, various dignitaries sitting in the East are also called on to give remarks. We try to keep them short and interesting. I don't know how people in other areas come up with enough different things to say. Of the three local installations I did, and at which I did not have to speak, I would say that most of the room attended two, if not all three, installations this weekend and nearly everyone in the room was going to be at two or more local installations this month. That means that you have to give different remarks because if sitting that long can get boring, listening to the same person give the same remarks can get really boring. In fact, I keep notes on what remarks I gave where so that I don't repeat myself in the same region of the state for just that reason. I don't know how I would have come up with twelve more sets of remarks for this month's installations. Thankfully, I am spared that in my home area. I only had to do remarks at the installation in Napa and I knew that might happen, so I brought something along to share. But without question, more speakers means more time. Then there are presentations. Usually the WM is presented with a gavel, sometimes a new one and sometimes an old one with a new band on it for the new term of office. The WM often gives her new Marshal a baton, which is carried by the Marshal throughout the year. Many Chapters have traveling pins to be worn by the WM during the year and those are often presented. And sometimes families do presentations too. At one of the Installations I attended, on top of all this, the outgoing WM and WP were invited to sign the Bible. Now most Chapters have a tradition of having signature pages in the back of the Bible and each WM and WP signs the Bible on a line as a history memento for the Chapter. That part is really cool and you get a little choked up when you sign it because, as you look at all the names that came before you, you truly get a sense of being the latest link in a chain that has been forged over a century. Even though almost all Chapters do this signing, they differ widely on when this signing is done. In my own Chapter, the tradition had been (although it may change) that we sign the Bible at our Farewell night, which is the good bye meeting for the outgoing WM and WP, since installation is really about the new people. Some Chapters have a special honor meeting as their first meeting of the year and have the junior Past Matron and Patron sign it then. And some Chapters think of the signing as the bridge between the old and new and have the Bible signed at installation. As I said, it is a very beautiful and meaningful ceremony and if you've ever done it, then every time you see it done, you think about the last time you did it and that you are watching another link of history being added and that part is totally awesome. But when you've been sitting for over two hours, some of the awesome is diluted by wanting to stand up and stretch. I think sometimes that people don't often add up the time each part will take and balance long choices with short ones to get the ceremony down to two hours or shorter. Some Chapters do think of the whole arc of the evening and they usually do the best on balance. One of the installations this weekend did a great job on that. They had the beginning emblem ceremony and called on people for remarks, but they cut out some of the other speeches and some of the other escort and such, so the whole thing came in at a pretty perfect two hours or so. On the other hand, a couple of Chapters I attended went almost three hours and when you start late in the evening, that can be very hard to do. My spine has a curve, so sitting that long can get really painful and I know I start to fidget a bit, to keep from getting pains in my hips and legs, but I try my best to be as attentive as possible. It is just very hard to do that when it is late at night and you've been in the chair for hours. The Part Three bits varied from about thirty minutes to sixty minutes long. Then we all went into the dining room for refreshments. Getting a chance to talk with everyone and say hello to people you may not have seen in a while and congratulate the new officers and meet new people from the Chapter that you may not have met before is the best part of the whole thing for me. I've got two or three more local installations to do this week and then I will be back on the road hither and yon. Maybe next Monday I will also describe the funeral.

Money Makes the World Go 'Round

Sometimes people say things that just catch you completely by surprise. You look at them like a deer frozen in the headlights and you try desperately to figure out what they are saying. You know that the language they were speaking was English, and each of the individual words make sense, but taken together, they do not seem to have any meaning to you. Or sometimes, you can be having a conversation with someone and you think that you are both talking about the same thing, but then at some point you discover that you were having two completely different conversations that actually had nothing to do with one another. For example, you think that you are talking about dinner at Thanksgiving and they think that you are talking about Christmas. The discussion of what sort of side dishes goes along just fine until something like: No, we can't have corn because Aunt Betsy is allergic to it. What does that have to do with it? Well since she'll be there, we should try to accomodate her. Is Aunt Betsy flying out for this? You know she is, I told you last week. No you told me last week she was coming for Christmas. Yes, she's coming for Christmas. What does that have to do with Thanksgiving dinner? Nothing. So why are you bringing it up? Because you were going to serve corn. So what if I serve corn at Thanksgiving? We're not talking about Thanksgiving, we're talking about Christmas! No we're not, we're talking about Thanksgiving dinner! (Stunned expressions all around.) I call this rupture. Communication looks like it is happening, but it is not. Well, I had a rupture moment this past weekend. Someone mentioned some puzzlement on my post about the cost of the copies and CDs for my packets for my girls and they didn't understand why I was concerned about the cost. I expressed confusion, I mean, why shouldn't I care about the cost. The conversation had serious rupture until I finally figured out that they thought that the organization pays and/or reimburses these sorts of expenses. I don't know where they got that idea, but I know that I must have done a great deer in the headlights when I finally figured out what they were trying to say. So to clarify a bit, most of the expenses of going up the Grand Line or being a Grand Officer come out of the Grand Officer's pocket. There are a small amount of funds for Grand Line Officers and the WGM and WGP do have a travel budget, but nothing for an Appointive Grand Officer. And Grand Line Officers have a lot more expenses than can be made up with the small stipend that you get, or so I have heard. The first time I served as a Grand Officer, silly me, I thought it would be interesting to keep a spread sheet of the expenses. After all, Excel and I get along pretty good and it would be interesting to see if the empirical data of actual expenses matched the rumors. The problem with doing that was that I put a running balance in the rightmost column and when it passed from four digits to five, I wondered if ignorance wouldn't have been more blissful. Now before getting into the nitty gritty of the thing, let me start by saying that I was perfectly happy to spend this money for the opportunity to serve as a Grand Officer. Getting to travel all over the state as a Grand Officer is amazing and wonderful. It is absolutely awesome to go to a town where you have never been before and be welcomed with open arms by people you have never met before, just because you are Sisters and Brothers in a fraternal order. Words cannot describe how touched and honored I was each time we came into a new area and everyone was so glad to see us, so generous and so concerned that we have a good time. Money can't buy the kind of warm, instant friendship that we, as a Grand Family, received each time we travel to an event. The members all over the state open their hearts to us and are thrilled that we have come to visit them. Their concern and kindness is completely priceless. Unfortunately, getting around the state to have these wonderful experiences is not so free, as my little spread sheet showed me. When it was all done, I discovered that my Grand Warder year cost me about $15,000 and if I had not had an escort who did most of the driving and the rental cars, it would have been about another $2,500 or so. That is a lot of money, so I looked at where it went and what could be saved. This is sort of how it broke down. Clothes - About $1,800 This includes at a minimum three different formals, winter, spring and session, and a travel outfit (which you buy two or three of because you wear it all year). But the WGM also picks out a shoe color and sometimes that means buying a new handbag to match. I didn't own any silver or navy shoes, so I had to buy those and find a navy purse too. Some years, there are more clothes, such as a Western outfit or a Hawaiian outfit or a casual outfit, so the clothes could run as high as $2,200 or so. In my year, I have a funny feeling that my officers may have to have a medieval outfit because with the castle in my emblem and everyone knowing I do medieval re-creation, I suspect that a few of my Official Visits might have a medieval theme. But clothes are a real drop in the bucket compared to . . . Hotel Stays - About $6, 000 You stay in a hotel when you are not in your home area, so that averages about five hotel nights a month (some months four, some months six, etc.) at about $100 per hotel night, sometimes more with room and sales tax. There is often no getting around this one unless you are close enough to go home. Sometimes people stay with friends or relatives, but when it is your one year as a Grand Officer, you want to spend as much time as possible with your Grand Family, and evenings and fun trips after an afternoon event or on an off day can be some of the best times ever and you miss out on a lot of that when you don't stay at the hotel. Now I will admit that as a Grand Line Officer, and watching the number of years you serve go up from one to six, some of the blush is off that rose and saving a few hundred dollars staying with friends and relatives begins to look a bit more attractive. So perhaps this number can be eased down a little bit with a little help from my friends. Airline Tickets - About $3,000 Now I will be the first to admit that people who are not working can probably cut this expense in half by taking the extra time to drive everywhere. With the rising price of gas, however, I am not sure how much they would save today. There are some great ticket prices on Southwest right now, so I think I got some of my flights for cheaper than driving would cost me, but in other times, I have paid a lot for the tickets. If you work though, you can't spend an extra whole day to drive six to eight hours to things, so that means flying, often leaving Friday afternoon or evening and coming home Sunday night. This amount would have been higher, but I live close to the airport, so I could get friends to drop me off and pick me up, so I didn't have to pay for the parking and because I am also a pilot, sometimes I would fly myself down and even though the cost was about the same, I didn't put those amounts in my spread sheet. Gas/Parking/Tolls - $600 (would have been more like $2,000) I had some gas expenses, for stuff in the local area to which my escort could not go, but for the most part, she paid for the gas and did the driving when we drove to things. Our deal was that she would do the driving and the rental cars and I would pick up all the hotels because splitting all the time is a bother and the hotel expenses were more than the gas and cars. However, I must admit that this figure does not include the vehicle wear and tear. Grand Officers who drive have been known to put anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 miles on their car in that one year. It is a known joke that around the time that the new Grand Family is announced, people start looking around to see whose bought a new car so they can try to guess the new Grand Officers. Rental Cars/Cabs - about $400 (would have been more like $1,500) I did have to pick up a few rental cars when my escort was not there, but not very many. Sometimes you can save some of this by sharing a car with another Grand Officer, but oftentimes you are coming in from different parts of the state, so it can be tricky to meet up at the airport to get one car. Grand Officer Account and Gifts - about $700 When you are an Appointive Grand Officer, you pay money into a Grand Officer account that is used to buy certain traditional gifts for the WGM and WGP. Lots of Grand Families also have a Secret Pal tradition where you buy little anonymous presents for one of the other officers throughout the year. And each Grand Officer is in charge of a gift presentation to one of the other Grand Officers at some point during the year, so you have to pay for that also. Some Grand Families do more or less expensive gifts, but there is usually something that you have to buy or pay for. Also, when the Grand Family comes to your area, you often give gifts to them at your area's Official Visit or host them to a meal. Cards, Postage and Copies - about $300 When you go to different events, you get little love gifts and courtesies from the local officers. Each one of these needs a thank you card, regardless of the size or type of gift. Even when you buy these out of the Current catalog or some other bulk service, with postage added, each card costs about a dollar, so if you send 200 to 300 cards, you are going to spend $200 to $300. Some people save about half this money by printing their own cards on the computer, but that is a different expense. However, this amount would have been higher but a lot of members gave me note cards and thank you cards and stamps so I used those as much as possible. I think that forever stamps are one of the best gifts ever! You also do a letter for your local officers and you have to copy that yourself. If you want to send out other letters during the year, you pay for those too. Local Officer Gifts - About $250 When you visit local officers, it is nice to have a little token gift for them, something to say thank you for serving your Chapter and thank you for your warm welcome. You need about 200 of them because you usually have one local officer per Chapter and while you might not meet all of them, you want to be prepared. Sometimes these are more expensive, sometimes less if you have time to make things instead of having to buy them, although I made my Grand Marshal gifts and they actually cost more. Reception Expenses - About $1,700 This is a really tricky area on estimating the expenses. Each Chapter that has an Appointive Grand Officer is usually expected to put on a reception for that Officer and all that Officer's local officers, some time during the year. Some Chapters spend more on this and some spend less, but no matter how much or how little they spend, there are always expenses that you just have to pay for out of your own pocket. For example, it is often traditional to have gifts for all your local officers who come to the reception, gifts for all the other Grand Officers who came, and gifts for everyone who participated in or helped with the reception. It is traditional to provide some sort of meal event for your attending local officers and sometimes your Grand Family, and often those expenses end up out of your pocket too. I wanted photos and video for my reception so I had to pay for those out of my pocket also. If you want special entertainment, you might end up paying for that as well. However, this is one area where, if you can't afford this stuff, you can cut way, way back and save a lot of money. There are a bunch of miscellaneous little expenses that crop up too, and I didn't bother to track food expenses because I eat out all the time anyway, but if you are used to eating in, food can also be a whopper of an expense, worse if you drive because then you have more meals on the road. But the above items come to $14,750 without the misc. or any food at all and of that amount, you can probably only save, realistically, about $3,000, so even "doing it on a shoestring" means around $12,000 or about $1,000 per month. Wow! Adding it all up like that is a real eye opener every time I do it. My Grand Marshal year was about the same, with a lot more money for rental cars and gas though, because my escort traveled less so I had to pick up more of those. All in, all done, I have probably spent about $32,000 in two years, with four more to go. I have had people ask me how I manage all the travel while still working and what I want to know is how does anyone afford this without having a steady salary? I got to find me a rich husband, that's the answer! This next weekend, I am going to four Installations in the relatively local area and squeezing two other events into the morning hours. We will see what six events, and four mid-day changes of dress feels like.

What Can A Few Copies Cost?

As we move through Installation Season, I get to spend some time in the local area. Now you may think you know what local means, and I thought I did too before I started traveling as a Grand Officer, but I found out, completely by accident, that it is a fluid sort of definition. You see, a friend of mine here in San Jose wanted to throw a party at a winery and she asked me for some ideas. I instantly suggested Merryvale Winery in the Napa Valley. The cask room there is marvelous and they cater from Tra Vigne next door, which has great food. Their wines are great and the people are friendly. While I was explaining this, my friend interrupted me and said, "No, I want to do something local," and I stood there giving her a dumb deer-in-the-headlights stare because I couldn't understand what she was saying. It took me a full thirty seconds to comprehend finally that a two hour drive does not mean local to normal people. Trust me, when you are a Grand Officer, ANYTHING that you can go to and in the same day go home to sleep in your own bed is Local! If there is no hotel involved (and sleeping in your car does not count as no hotel), it is local. So since I was local this weekend, I decided to use Saturday to finish off an important task, the preparation of my Associate Conductress packets. When you are an Appointive Grand Officer, you write a letter to all your subordinate officers all over the state, telling them a bit about you and asking for information about them. Those letters go into packets that are given to the Deputies to deliver to all your subordinates in their district. So when I was Grand Warder, I wrote a letter and put together a little information sheet and the Deputies delivered those to all the Warders in all the Chapters in California. I also discovered that no one sends the information sheet back to you. Out of the 200 or so that went out, maybe I got fifty back, and they trickled in all year long. You ask them to send you a picture so you can recognize them when you visit in their local area, but no one sends you one. So you take along to the Official Visits a list of the names of the people you are looking for and try to look at name badges and ask around to find your officers, which can take a little while. Sometimes, if you know one person from a Chapter, you can ask them, "Who is your . . ." or "Do you know your Warder, Sister. . . " to try to track them down. Once you track them down, it is considered courteous to have a little token gift to give them, to thank them for serving their Chapter and to express your pleasure in meeting them. I gave out dove pins with a little flag when I was Grand Warder because the emblem of the Warder is the Dove and the fun emblem included a flag bandanna. One of my bestest buddies found them for me. When I was Grand Marshal, I made zipper pulls with an enamel and bead charm that I thought looked like a turtle, which was one of the fun emblems for 2009. But when you are a Grand Line Officer, you are going to be serving with the same people for four years and some of them are serving as a leader in their Chapter for the first time or haven't served in a long time and they can be nervous. Also, you really need to get to know them because you have a lot of work to do together. So they need a lot more substantial stuff than a token gift. Traditionally, you put together a packet for them that includes a more detailed letter, a more detailed questionnaire, a plea for a picture and any other items that you think might be helpful. The thing is that no one tells you what should go in the packet, so you sort of have to wing it. Your Advisor, the WGM who appointed you Grand Marshal, can give you samples of what she sent out, but because of the way the timing of this works, her stuff is four years old and you don't usually get to see the stuff in the more recent years unless you ask the line officers from your own Chapter if you can see what they got from their Grand Line Officers. So Step 1 becomes figuring out what to put in the packet. Step 2 is to get it all copied. Step 3 is to get it collated into envelopes and Step 4 is to label the envelopes so you can deliver the right packet to the right person at each of the 190 Chapters. I got through Step 1 pretty well after conversations with various friends and advisors, but I knew that I wanted to do something that was an old tradition, but in a new way. Years ago, in order to help your girls get familiar with the Constitution and Laws (C&L) and Instruction Book used in California, Grand Line Officers used to send out questions for the girls to answer by looking up the answers in the books. There is no possible way that I can, in any amount of instruction, teach my Associate Conductresses the answer to every single question they are going to have to deal with in the next three years. But if I teach them how to find the answers, then there is no question they can't handle. The problem is that our C&L is thick and not very well organized for finding answers. I sometimes have trouble and I have a professional skill at it. But the books are available on CD and the CD version can be searched. So I thought, why don't I just get copies of the CD made and I can give each of my ACs their own copy. The catch is that most of the services to do this are not in California anymore. I finally found a guy in Minnesota who would do them, but with shipping, they came to about $1.50 each. Not so bad, right, until you multiply by 200. You have the same sort of ouchie with the escort examples. One of the big jobs of the AC is to work with the Conductress to escort special members. There is a whole section of the Instruction Book on the rules for how to do the escorting and some of them can be pretty detailed. Often, the AC just follows along, but sometimes she has to do one thing while the Conductress does something else. So there are these example sheets that show how to do the escorting with different numbers of people on different sides of the room. The example sheets I have consist of 21 pages. My regular copy guy does black and white copies for 4.5 cents each and will go cheaper for big orders. When you multiply 21 sheets by 200 packets, I found out that it counts as a big order. Even though he went all the way down to 3.75 cents per page, which I am told is a fantastic price, it came to a pretty penny when all 200 sets were made. (That's 4200 copies for those of you who are mathematically inclined. You can figure the price and then add tax on top of that.) And that was just two of the twelve things I ended up putting in the packet. The other truly pesty thing was my letter because I wanted to put the first page on my pretty colored emblem letterhead paper and the other two pages on plain paper because color copies are 18 to 19 cents apiece. (You can guess how I learned that and I am told that that is a good price too. If you are in the San Jose area, I recommend San Jose Copy on E. Santa Clara.) I have also learned that many high speed copiers will not allow you to use paper out of one drawer for the first page and paper out of another drawer for the rest. You have to use a slower copier for that and the copies do not come out as nice or staple properly because the rollers treat the different thicknesses and slickness of the paper differently. So I had to copy all the first sheets and then the second and third sheets and then staple them together. That was when I discovered that I was out of staples for the regular sized staplers I own and all I had that was loaded was one of those teeny tiny staplers that go in those teeny tiny office supply kits. The itsy, bitsy staples are cute when you staple one letter together. I discovered that they are less cute 200 staples, and six reloads, later. Once all this stuff got copied and I was done stapling, I laid it all out on my dining room table, with 200 manila envelopes I bought at Office Max. It was then I discovered that the collating fairies have left this world for a better one because the next morning when I went in my dining room, the papers had not magically gotten into their envelopes, but were still just sitting there in my dining room, looking tall and forbidding. I truly dreaded the task of putting these twelve different items into each of 200 envelopes. Little did I know, however, that my rescue was at hand. Some friends who served with me in 2008 in the Peninsula area had offered to help if I needed anything and I let them know about the foreboding packet piles. They came to save me! It took six of us a bit over an hour to get all the packets stuffed. They were awesome! I could have spent the entire day to get this done and they came and swept in and swept out. I was actually a bit disappointed that we got done so fast because we started at 10:00 am and were done by 11:00 am with the stuffing and if we had gone a little later, I wanted to invite them to lunch. Perhaps I can do that another time. Now all that remains is the labeling and sorting into Districts. The other sticky wicket still to be faced is how I am going to get these packets where they need to be. It took three full boxes to hold them all and I fly to Southern California, where a lot of these packets are going. At almost forty pages a packet, they weigh a lot too. I can try to cut down to taking just the packets for the areas we are visiting each weekend, but even at that, I think that it is going to take me a whole extra suitcase to fly them down. Luckily I can pack all my clothes in just one monster suitcase so I don't have to pay extra for the packet case, but keeping it under fifty pounds might be challenging. I will let you know how that goes. Next week I have more "local" installations, my Chapter's Farewell meeting and I will tell you all about the Deputy's welcome I attended, a new tradition for me to see, but an old one in some areas.

Read All Instructions Before Beginning Installation

Here we are in November and this whole month is an Installation extravaganza for Eastern Star Chapters. Each local Chapter has to install its officers for the coming year and the Installations have to happen before November 30, so almost 200 Chapters are having their installations this month. Each year that I have been a Grand Officer, I have gotten some invitations to some of the local Chapters to come visit and participate in the ceremony to Install my own officer, but boy do you get more invites when you are a Grand Line Officer. I think I did about fifteen installations when I was Grand Warder and Grand Marshal and this year it looks like I may hit twenty, sometimes doing two in one day. A long time ago, when I was preparing invitations for my own Chapter Installation, in 1995, I remember being told a rule that you only send invitations to Grand Officers in your local area or perhaps those who live within 75 - 100 miles of your Chapter, but clearly that is an old rule that we have tossed out the window because I have gotten invitations from all over. I love getting them, but I feel bad that I just can't accept them all, mostly because dozens of them seem to be on the same day. This year, that day seems to be November 14. I must have already gotten a dozen invites for that same day. I have been accepting invitations as I get them if I am free on the date of the invite, so I feel a bit first come, first serve. I know that some people say you should favor your local area, but I wonder if that is entirely fair when you are a Grand Line Officer. If I go to just the Installations in my local area each year for the next four years, that means that I will be installing the same people four times into four different offices as we go up the line together. I wonder if it is better in later years to favor Chapters for whom you haven't attended an Installation yet, so you can install more different people once rather than the same people four times? At least I have all year to think about that since I am pretty well promised out for this year already. And since I am installing line officers now, they are mostly different people than the ones I installed the last two years. I have also noticed some interesting differences in the various areas around the state. In some areas, all of the visiting Grand Officers are called on to give some remarks after the official Installation Ceremony is over. In other areas, only one Grand Officer is called on and we are supposed to huddle up to pick who it will be. Some people say to favor the local Grand Officer and some people say to favor the one that came the farthest. Those are sort of incompatible, so perhaps we should just draw straws. It can make for a bit of a long evening when a whole lot of people speak. I was at one Installation where every Past Grand Matron, Past Grand Patron and Grand Officer was called on. It added an hour to the Installation, which already usually take about two hours to do. I cannot imagine that the audience was as riveted by the sixth or seventh speaker as they were by the first one, but everyone has their own traditions and diversity is a good thing. In some areas, no one is called on and only the new leaders speak at an Installation. My area does that, so I don't have to give remarks at most of the Installations I attend. When you go to a dozen in a small area, it can be hard to come up with something inspiring and original for each Installation, because you can't repeat your remarks where there are people that already heard them. I travel with several small items that I can use for remarks, so I am always ready, just in case, because you absolutely never know when someone will call on you to speak and having several lets me pick one that is most appropriate to the theme and/or Chapter. I keep a travel book where I write down where I have been and in it I also note which remarks I gave so I can avoid repeating them. I hope that the new appointive Grand Officers know to travel with draft remarks, just in case. Nobody warned me about that my first year as Grand Warder in 2008, so I got caught out a time or two. I am pretty good extemporanous speaker though, so I was able to wing it, but not everyone can do that. Dress is also interesting at Installations. Almost all the Installations are formal, regardless of the time of day, so the men are in tuxedos and the ladies in formal, floor length dresses. There was a time when it was traditional for all the lady officers who were being installed not only to wear a formal dress, but to wear a white one. They look beautiful in the room during the ceremony, but sometimes they can be hard to clean and it can be hard to explain to others why you got married every year, when they see all the pictures of you in a white dress and your husband in a tuxedo over and over and over again. In recent years, ladies have been wearing dresses of different colors to the Installation. Those can be nice since they can match a theme or the colors of the year, but it is harder to figure out who is actually being installed and sometimes the colors next to one another when the officers are lined up can clash a bit, two problems you don't have with white dresses. It is expected that Grand Officers attending an Installation will install their local officers, so I am expected to install the Associate Conductresses this year. In our ceremony, the two Conductresses are installed together, so I have been asked to do both several times this month because the Grand Conductress and I are not overlapping any Installations so far as I know. It is also expected that the Grand Officer will memorize their Installation work and recite it without reading it, even though there is usually an open book on the podium. It is a fair amount of work to memorize a section word for word perfect and you practice and practice and practice. The best is when someone else drives so you can practice in the car before you get there. One thing I have learned though is "Never Stop - Die Falling Forward". If you miss a word or turn something around, keep going! If you stop it draws attention to the mistake, but if you keep going, half the time no one will be certain if you got it right or wrong anyway as long as all the key points are there. Of course it is better to get it right, but if you don't, better to not make a big deal of it or start over. That is the kiss of Death! Luckily, most members are not that familiar with all of the Installation work, unlike our Opening and Closing ceremonies, so if you make a mistake, there is not usually the gigantic inhalation (you know, that AAAAAHHHHH type inhalation of huge amounts of air that sounds like the members are trying to suck up the carpet off the floor with nothing but lung power) at your transgression. If you mess up something everyone knows, like Opening, there can be lots of carpet suck in the room, but with Installation, you can miss a word and not give anyone a coronary. You may want to sink into the floor with shame that you got it wrong, but at least most of the other people in the room don't know it. Next weekend, I am in Davis for my one Eastern Star event this month that is not actually an Installation. I will let you know all about it next Monday.

We've Cleared the Tower

What a weekend! The Grand Family for 2010 made its first public appearance in our new travel outfits at Deputy Grand Matron School in Chowchilla, a three day tour of duty going all day Friday and Saturday and finishing up on Sunday morning. Our year is now officially launched. For those of you unfamiliar with this annual rite of passage, each year the Worthy Grand Matron (WGM) appoints Deputy Grand Matrons (DGMs or Deputies) to serve as her representatives all over the State, helping to teach our ritual and ceremonies so they are performed correctly in our Chapters, to check the books and records of each Chapter to make sure everything is in order and to be her eyes and ears. It's a big state and the time flies by. There is no way the WGM could do all this reviewing and supervising of all 190 or so Chapters on her own, so each Deputy is assigned a group of Chapters to oversee. This group of Chapters is called a District. One or more Districts can form an Association also. The WGM makes an Official Visit to each District in the State and it is part of the DGM's job to help the local leaders put it together. Sometimes there are Association events too. But a Deputy can't teach our ritual if they don't know it themselves and in most areas the Deputy is replaced every year. While each of them is required to be a Past Matron, having led their own Chapter and they therefore should be familiar with the ritual ceremonies, there is a gigantic difference between learning one part and learning all the parts. The Deputies even have to instruct the men in their parts and of course none of them have ever sat in any of the chairs that are limited to men. Teaching is also a separate skill from knowing, so even if they are good ritualists themselves, learning the work well enough to answer questions takes a higher level of understanding. To assist the Deputies in getting ready for their job, the Grand Officers, who had their own school a month ago to perfect their own work, demonstrate the various ceremonies for the Deputies and then coach them in the different parts. The big school this weekend was for all the Deputies from all over the state. We will also hold two Brush Up Schools later in the year, one in the North and one in the South. The problem is, two and a half days is not a lot of time to learn everything there is to learn. I have now been, over the years, to four DGM Schools and six Brush Up Schools and every single time I attend one, I learn something new that I have never heard of or done before. And sometimes I find out that the way I have been doing something is wrong. I love the fact that I am still learning, but my heart goes out to the Deputies. For most of them, they've never really studied the ritual at the level required to teach it and then they have to go back to their Districts and be IT, the One Who Knows, Teacher of All Floor Work, Giver of All Answers. It was obvious that all of the Deputies were really concentrating on learning everything we could teach them and they were a lot more confident and comfortable towards the end of the weekend. They asked really good questions and started to know what they did and didn't know so they could figure out what to ask. Maybe by the time I am done with this journey, I will actually know the ritual myself. The Grand Officers were great. Everyone was really putting in 110% to try to do their work perfectly for the Deputies and were unfailing in their willingness to show things over that someone needed to see. After all that hard work, we had dinner out on Saturday night at a local restaurant, but it didn't have a big enough dining room for all of us, so the Deputies and the WGM and WGP were in a big room in the back and the rest of the Grand Officers and their Escorts were in a smaller room in the front. We had a great time at dinner, even if some of us, including myself, who can't sing were doing it anyway. When you find someone sitting next to you who also knows the lyrics to Tom Lehrer songs, what can you do but sing a few? To liven up the evening, the Grand Officers decided to pay a visit to the DGM dinner, just to let them know that we missed them. We piled into their dining room with a rousing chorus of Together Wherever We Go from the musical Gypsy. Note to self - Before two dozen people pile into a dining room with sixty other people in it to serenade them, make sure your group knows all the words. We made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in tune or lyrics though, so a good time was had by all. The next morning, the DGMs had their revenge though. They treated us to new lyrics to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat and did it as a round with each side of the room taking a different start. It was very cute, especially when some of the Deputies forgot the new words and just started singing the original ones. On top of the school all day, after dinner each night, I got to attend my first Line Officers' meetings. So I have cleared that tower too. We discussed a lot of stuff, but it was really nice to work in a group of people who are all trying really, really hard to do the right things for the Order and who are truly interested in reaching consensus. I know we probably took longer doing things that way, but it was very rewarding to listen to everyone's point of view, contribute to the discussion and reach a decision together, especially when we all have to live with the results. It could have been awkward with two people from last year gone and two new people in the room, but it wasn't and that was great too. Next weekend we start into November and that is Installation Month. Instead of traveling as a group in November, the Grand Officers get invitations to local Chapter installations and go to those events individually. I am already signed up to do my first Installing on November 1 in Soquel and will let you know all about it next Monday.

Off and Running

Guess what! I managed to get myself elected and installed after all, so this blog will have a chance to be used. Whew! I am totally exhausted. I know that the Grand Chapter session is really supposed to be three days, but there is so much to do the day before and the day after that it really feels like a full five days. On Wednesday, we had lots of practice, to look our best when the Grand Officers did their stuff and I had a bunch of meetings about various pieces of legislation that had been proposed by the members. That is the last time that I will be doing the legislation thing for a while though. I've done it ten out of the past eleven years, so I am okay with taking a little rest on that. The practices were really good to have, to iron out any kinks in who goes in from where, but the concrete floor is hard on your feet, even when you are in good shoes. The real sessions started on Thursday and the Grand Officers were all very enthusiastic and excited about the Grand Chapter Session really being here and now. The sessions and days and meals and parties seem to completely run together and I am pretty sure that if I was lucky I averaged four or five hours of sleep over the five nights. I had two breakfast events that I was in charge of planning, decorating and collecting the reservations and ticket money and I don't even usually eat breakfast. Instant Oatmeal is my friend! There's something unnatural about having a hobby that gets you out of bed earlier in the morning than your day job, but my fisherman friends tell me just to get over it. We get lots of presents. They actually have a special room where you can drop off presents for the Grand Officers and they collect them and help get them delivered to the Grand Officer's room. I am certain that I came home with more stuff than I took with me. It's a good thing that my escort brought his own car because we loaded both of them. We get lots of snacks and water and all sorts of cute little items, note pads, note cards, pins and such. I got another napkin nipper, which was good because I had left mine home and I needed one. You see, for sessions, we are in formal dresses with petticoats most of the time and the dress fabrics are very slick so your napkin tends to slide right out of your lap and onto the floor. It is very awkward to fish around for your napkin in full skirts, let me tell you. So a napkin nipper is a little clothespin that is usually decorated with beads or glue on stuff. You use it to pin the napkin to the waist or skirt of your dress and then you don't lose it. They're awesome! When you first start as a Grand Line officer, you get to pick an emblem that will symbolize your year and you get to choose flowers and colors and all sorts of things that all the ladies serving with you will use for their own local installations and events. All that stuff gets revealed after you are elected. I will try to post my sheet of stuff if I can figure out how to do it. My emblem is a silver standing balance against a starry night sky and my fun emblem, which is usually an animal or a character of some kind used for fun stuff is a dragon on top of a castle. No one has ever used a dragon before. By the time I left Grand Chapter, I had been given five dragons by various friends. My Installation Escort did the math and said that if I got five dragons a week for the 200 weeks of my four years, I would have a thousand by the time I am done. Be afraid! Be very afraid! For me the whole session was rather bittersweet, especially since I had just done it the year before and remembered what that was like. I loved being at the session and getting to participate in everything, but it was sad to think that the session is the end of a year and that you have to say goodbye to an amazing group of people with whom you have laughed and cried and traveled for a whole year. You still see each other as you travel around, but it is just not the same as when you are together almost every weekend and become a family. Last year and this year has taught me that you can dry your tears, join a new family, make new friendships and get close to another group and have a wonderful new year with them, but it is still a terrible wrench to say good bye to your old family. Here's the funny thing though. When the 2008 Grand Officers were done on Saturday morning and we did our "leave-taking" ceremony, we all hugged in a big circle and cried our eyes out. Even the men were tearing up and some of the ladies were downright sobbing. But when the 2009 Grand Officers did their leavetaking, everyone was just the lightest bit sad, but a lot more laughing and hugging and saying how great it all was and how we had the best year ever. It was just as emotional, but in a very, very different way. I wonder how it will be next time and each year after that. Saturday night was the Installation of the Grand Officers and it was truly spectacular, but I must admit that it was a touch long. I have trouble sitting for long periods of time because my spine is curved so my hips are uneven, and I could tell that I wasn't the only one that had trouble staying seated in my chair until the very end. I think some people left before the end and that was too bad because there were some lovely moments that they missed. My view has changed again, as my new seat is on one side and up on a little platform where my last two seats were in the rear and in the front at the floor level. My first seat, last year, had the best view so far, in the back facing the podium. I could see everything! This year I was in front of the stage, next to the stairs going up and I couldn't see anything at all. Everything was happening above and behind me. After I found out that the podium just above me was on wheels, I lived in mortal terror that someone was going to lean on the thing and it was going to pitch over right down onto me. Thank goodness it didn't happen! My new seat is halfway between the front and the back, but on one side, so to watch the action, I have to turn my head to the left constantly, which is okay for a while but rather a bother for several hours. I am sure I will get used to it just in time to move to the other side and spend an entire year looking to the right. After the ceremonies were over, they had us go into another room to give people a chance to congratulate us. I guess I was taking too long talking with the people who came over because a couple of Past Grand Matrons told me that it was supposed to be a kiss, kiss, hug, hand the person over to the escort, move on to the next person sort of thing and I was speaking with each person, at least a little bit and taking too long. I guess I need more practice at that. After the receiving room, there were parties for the 2010s and the 2009s, proving once again that sleep is highly overrated and that you have the best time when you are a little zoned. :-) Then you get back to your room and look at the umpteen more boxes and tote bags strewn all over your room and decide that packing is something that you do in the morning. You drive back home and barely get your car unpacked before you collapse in bed and get up the next day to go to work and wonder when on earth you are going to unpack before you re-pack for the next weekend. AAAAAHHHH! Next weekend I am going to Chowchilla for Deputy Grand Matron School. I will tell you all about it when I get back.

Ready or Not, Here I Go

Greetings! This blog is about the adventure of a lifetime on which I am about to embark. This first post explains what I think I am doing and about my fraternal order. I belong to the Order of the Eastern Star, a fraternal group closely related to the Masons, and the largest fraternal order that allows both men and women to join. For a man to join, you have to be a Mason and all the ladies are related to a Mason. You used to have be a fairly close relation, but they have expanded the categories a lot, so if you want to join and we can shake your family tree hard enough that a Mason falls out, we can probably figure out a way for you to qualify. Our Order has local groups all over the country and many parts of the world. The local groups are called Chapters. The presiding officers of a local Chapter are the Worthy Matron and Worthy Patron. The leadership in a Chapter is what we call a progressive line. You start as a lower level line officer, an Associate Conductress, and then you go through a year in that office and two more years in two other offices, Conductress and Associate Matron, before you get to be Worthy Matron and lead your Chapter for a year. In your second year, as Conductress, you choose a man in your Chapter to lead your Chapter with you and he serves as Associate Patron and Worthy Patron along with you. In areas, like states, where there are a bunch of Chapters, those Chapters can form a statewide/countrywide group called a Grand Chapter. In California, where I live, Grand Chapter officers are chosen from those who have already served as the presiding officer of their local Chapter. Each year, the presiding officers of the Grand Chapter, the Worthy Grand Matron and the Worthy Grand Patron, choose ten members from our state to serve as state officers. I have been fortunate to serve as an appointed state officer the past two years. Serving as a Grand Officer means lots and lots of travel all over the State, and I do mean all over, from Crescent City to El Centro and everywhere in between, mostly on the weekends since many of us still have a day job. It is wonderful and exhausting all at the same time. I have loved it for the past two years. Here's the rub though. In addition to the ten appointed officers, the Grand Chapter has elected officers. Among these are the Grand Line Officers, who go through a progressive line, just like in the local Chapter. For ladies, we start with the Associate Grand Conductress and proceed all the way to Worthy Grand Matron, the head of the Order for the entire State of California. They say that you are not just committing four years of your life, but that it is really forever. And I was warned that if you are going to do this, you need to be prepared to spend $60,000 to $80,000 over that four years to do it right. That's a lot of money. So here I am, having put my name in to be considered for the office of Associate Grand Conductress of the Grand Chapter of California, Order of the Eastern Star. Whew! What a mouthful. Since I am running unopposed, I feel pretty good about my chances of being elected this next Friday and being installed into office Saturday night. And after that, my world will never be the same. I am told that the difference between serving as an appointed officer and a Grand Line Officer is night and day, so no matter what I think I know about it, I won't really know about it until I do it. I thought it might be nice to share these thoughts and experiences with others who might find them interesting. I also hope that it will help get some information about Eastern Star, the Best Fraternal Order Ever, out into the world. So my plan is to post at the beginning of each week, hopefully Monday or Tuesday, about what I did and learned the weekend before as I travel up the Grand Line in California. Right now I am getting ready for our Grand Chapter session in Visalia. I hope everything fits into my car and I hope you enjoy this ride with me.