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.