That's Entertainment

One of the most fun aspects of Eastern Star events is the entertainment. Since almost all of it is home grown, the level of professional presentation varies widely. Let's just say that the outcomes can be, oh what is the word, unpredictable. Of course, the best part is that you are entertained either way. If they get it right, you have a good time. If they get it wrong, you have a good time. Even the entertainers are having a good time. After all, how many times in life can you stand up and make a complete fool out of yourself in front of a hundred people for free. (People who get paid to do that don't count.) So at one Official Visit, we had a lovely series of songs that were sung for our enjoyment and I suppose you can say that they were all successful because we all enjoyed ourselves. But on one of the songs, the accompanist and the singer got a little cross wired. I think that the piano player went from page 1 to page 4, while the singer went to page 2. The singer had a great sense of humor and timing and managed to get the song back on track and the audience amused all at the same time. He was great! And we all had a good laugh. Of course, that was more fun than when I got to be part of the entertainment on Sunday. Sunday was the Grand Assembly Session for the members of the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls in California. The session was held in the Fresno Convention Center which is an arena style center (they also play hockey there, don't ask me how I know that. :-) and the stage is set up at one end and the girls sit in the seats in the stands on the other three sides, making sort of a rectangle. By tradition, there is a time set aside at their session for dignitaries to come and lose their dignity for the entertainment of a thousand teenage girls. Another way of putting this is that the State Officers and Leaders for Eastern Star and Amaranth and a couple of other groups come and get introduced and greeted at the Sunday afternoon session and then the Eastern Star Grand Officers usually perform some sort of short entertainment for the girls. I wonder how come the officers from the other groups don't have to provide any entertainment. What is up with that? Anyway, in years past, the Eastern Star Grand Officers would do a song or a skit or something. This year we were allotted six minutes and we could be shorter, but not longer. Now if you think that six minutes is not very long, see if you can hold your breath for that length of time. It is also pretty long if you are trying to hold ten pound weights in your arms at full extension or if you are trying to outrun a car. But the longest six minutes of your life is entertaining a bunch of teenagers when people usually pay you not to sing. Thankfully, the plan put together by our saint of a Grand Marshal involved only minimal singing and that was only of a song we've been practicing all year as our Closing Ode at meetings. But in order to fill in the rest of the time, it was decided that we would line up on the floor of the arena, facing the stage area and then all of the ladies would lift up their skirts and petticoats to reveal their bloomer pantaloons which had letters sewn on them that spelled CA OES loves (a heart) RAINBOW. The problem is that when you want to spell something, you have to line up in the right order and if you want anyone to be able to read what you are spelling out, it helps to line up from left to right. It doesn't work so well the other way. So first we faced the stage and picked up our skirts and petticoats and showed our pantaloons with their letters on them and yelled out California OES loves Rainbow. We did that part okay. But then we had to run to the side and face the side and do it again, and then turn another ninety degrees and do it again and then once more for the last side of the room. Because I love my Sisters and Brothers, I will not try to describe exactly how this went. Let us be merciful and just say that no animals were harmed in the making of this production and that eventually, each side of the room saw our pantaloons in the correct order of letters and even reading the right direction. After flashing our drawers to all and sundry, we then sang one verse of Wonderful World and were then mercifully allowed to go back to our seats. I suppose it was all worthwhile because the girls loved it and clapped and cheered, so we did a great job, but if there was ever a moment in my life that I wished that I was a drinker, well, I would have gone for a double right then and there. Too bad I don't really drink, darn it. I have nothing to wash away or even cloud the memory. Alas! I will just have to add this to my list of stories that will be hilarious about ten years from now. Funny how that list has been growing all year. Next week, we are get to stay home so I will be finishing my spring letter to my girls and getting 200 envelopes stuffed and mailed out.

The City Mouse and the Country Mouse

This past weekend, we attended three Official Visits. Two of them were in the LA Basin, in West Covina and in Riverside, and one was out in the desert, in Yucca Valley. One of the things that strikes me as different between the City and the Country from these visits is that the pace of life, the importance of groups and social ties and the challenges of the membership seem different between these groups. But, where people live does not really seem to decide if they are a true City Mouse or a Country Mouse. It seems to go more towards their desires and expectations. The City Mouse seems in more of a hurry and their involvement in the Masonic family is one of many activities calling on their time and interest. They seem to prefer shorter meetings and less formality. They love their Chapter and want it to provide a range of activities, but extra meetings, like an Official Visit, seem harder to work into an already full schedule. However, while they have more trouble with the time, they have less problems with distance because many members live and/or work close to their hall. The City Mouse doesn't want to have to travel too far away to get to an event. My home geography is more like a City Mouse and when I was a Deputy, I had several chapters in my district and the farthest from my home was my own home Chapter and that was only twenty-five minutes away. It was hard to make meetings because of my work schedule, but not because of how far I had to go. The Country Mouse seems to have more time for Masonic family activities, but maybe because that is because there are simply less other distractions. For the most part, they seem able to schedule extra activities, but many people may have trouble attending because of the distances involved. I know one Deputy who had only two chapters, but they were 150 miles apart, so visiting the one that she did not live near was a major undertaking. I never thought about getting a hotel room just to visit a Chapter (well, not until I became a Grand Officer and since then, okay, it happens to me every weekend, but I am talking about normal people, here), but this Deputy regularly had to get a room to go because by the time the meeting let out at 10:00 or later, she wasn't up to driving home. The thing about the Country Mouse though that seems to clash with the City Mouse is that the Country Mouse wants more to happen to justify the drive. If you are going to travel two hours each way, four hours round trip, to be somewhere, the Country Mouse would like the event to last at least three or four hours to make the travel worthwhile. Now that I have a true appreciation for the time the travel can take, I sometimes feel like a Country Mouse in this aspect. If I have come hundreds of miles, I want an activity that keeps me occupied for longer to make the trip more worthwhile. So this takes me to two interesting places. First, I know that the day will come that I will be the lucky person to decide which Chapter goes in which District and I also know that Thou Shalt Not Cross An Association Line, but I wonder if there is also some friction when you mix City Mice and Country Mice. If you have some people who only want to come if the event is close and short, perhaps mixing them with people that will come a long way, but only if the event is longer does seem fraught with danger. On the other hand, any Chapter can have a mix of City Mice and Country Mice, making it harder to tell what you are dealing with. The second thing that strikes me is that having different types of focus makes it very hard for one size to fit all. Some things seem to work better in some areas and other things in other areas, so maybe conformity has to give way to diversity. That could be true in a lot of aspects and I am sure that I will learn more about them as my travels continue. Next weekend, I am in Chowchilla and Fresno for four events.

Order of the Eating Siblings

Some time in the past, someone suggested that rather than Order of the Eastern Star, OES stood for Order of the Eating Siblings because you simply cannot seem to have a Star event, not even a planning meeting, without food being served. And of course, food must be accompanied by at least water, coffee and tea, right? Now some events seem to allow for just light refreshments while other events seem to be set up to assure that the guests will have to be tipped on their sides and rolled out to their cars, like Violet Beauregarde in Willie Wonka after she gets turned into a blueberry. But even "cake and punch" never seems to be just "cake and punch," no, you have to have tea and coffee and perhaps nuts and chocolates on the table and perhaps some ice cream or some jello or some cookies, just a few, or some brownies or . . . . I think that being in charge of refreshments must be harder today than it was decades ago, for lots of reasons. For one thing, it used to be that when a lady volunteered to say, be the dining room chairman for a regular meeting night, she had a couple of days to shop and cook and bake. Most of the ladies did not work, so everything was home made, which is also cheaper, and since most ladies cooked and baked regularly, they had a full kitchen and all the necessary tools and space to do the job. Looking at houses, it sometimes seems to me like the newer the house, the smaller the kitchen. I know that when I am trying to cook or bake, I would probably kill small furry animals for an extra couple of cabinets to store stuff in my kitchen and another two feet of counter space. Lots of ladies work now and luckily, we've made the transition from home made to store bought pretty well and few people, if anyone, complain when you bought instead of baked the cookies. But bought stuff is more expensive and you want to buy it closer to the event, so the shopping has to be done one or at most two evenings before the meeting, which puts on a bit more of a time constraint. Also, people used to just eat what you fed them. We knew so much less about health and food choices that you didn't have so many complications like you do now. People didn't worry so much about healthy, so for light snacks, you served a lot of cake and cookies and pies and ice cream and who doesn't love those? It also used to be that if you were doing a meal event (we had two of them this weekend, a lunch and a breakfast), you provided perhaps a salad and an entree and a dessert and people ate it and it was all good. Everyone raised their kids to eat what was put in front of them and like it, darn it! But the times, they are a'changin'. Now, you have to make sure that there are vegetarian options and sugar free options and I have religious restrictions too, and by the time you add all the other allergies and dietary restrictions people have, you are either serving an entire menu of food items or someone is going to starve to death. What a grief! I am constantly impressed and amazed at what a good job people do at putting together a menu of items where everyone can at least eat something. These event chairs must be pulling their hair out to get the menu done, but they do a phenomenal job of succeeding. I am probably one of the toughest people to feed, between not eating sweets, olives, mushrooms, eggplant, avocado, black beans, pork or shellfish, but I have almost always found something to munch on wherever I have gone, so my hat is off to every person who has added another clump of gray hairs to their head trying to come up with a meal menu. One thing I really enjoyed last year that I hope carries forward is that last year we had a bunch of Grand Officers who were diabetic or on a diabetic diet and so the snacks had more cheese and crackers and salami and fruit items instead of all the sugar and it was wonderful. I love cookies and cakes and such, but they are really bad for me and with the healthy snacks, I can enjoy them without guilt. I have just now finally finished losing all the weight I gained in my first two years of this journey, about seventeen or eighteen pounds I picked up as Grand Warder and Grand Marshal, and I really don't want them back, so I hope that there are more healthy snacks in my future. Next week I will be in Yorba Linda, Yucca Valley and Riverside.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

This weekend I attended a couple more OVs and almost the last Instructional. Talking with some of my girls, I was struck by how much we discuss dates and times and the manner in which time really does fly by. I've been thinking of this journey as a six year tour, which is now two and a half years over, but I realized that there is something a bit deceptive about that because the last year isn't for planning, but for doing. All the prep time is over a year before the journey is over and that means that whatever I want to do in my year has to be completely ready to launch by July or August 2012, whenever I hold my last workshop, because it is at the workshop that your calendar, your projects, your programs and just about everything other than your appointees has to be announced and start being distributed. And the appointees have to be appointed already because all that stuff has to go to be printed in the itinerary for distribution at Grand Chapter in October. So really, I have two and a half years before I launch the Great Ship of State and then I get to spend the last year doing all the things that are already planned out. Also, it is all well and fine to think about this in terms of lots of years, but there are a lot of deadlines along the way and looking at the body of work to be done, I am getting concerned that the two and a half years or so I have left may be cutting it fine. There are lots of things that are particularly time critical and then a bunch of stuff that just has to get done sometime. I've been trying to wrap my mind around it and I think it goes like this. Books - Grand Officer Book, Deputy Book, Worthy Matron Book, Worthy Patron Book These can be done at any time, although the last one can't be finished until you have a man to review it, add his bits to it and do any editing that is required. Having looked at several versions now, I wonder if we aren't reinventing the wheel on these each year. Except for thirty or forty pages that is specific to each year, most of this can probably be done in a standard form. Maybe that is an approach to consider. It is a lot of work though, any way you slice it. Choosing a Man/Choosing a Dress - I can start asking around after Installation this October for my man and my dress and need to make choices before July 2011, although several people hope I will get this done earlier rather than later. It seems to me to be something of a toss up on which of these two decisions people think is the more important one. Session Stuff - Committees, Schedule, Decorations, etc. Everything but the people, like picking a theme and decorations and such, can be done any time. For the Committees, you can think about who you want, but there is only a limited list that you are supposed to ask during the Grand Conductress year. The rest have to wait until you are Associate Grand Matron. So I have half a dozen or so people to find between November 2010 and July 2011 and the rest have to be found and asked between November 2011 and July 2012. Grand Officers, Deputy Grand Matrons, Committees - Other than the handful of committee people that you ask ahead of time, all of these people are supposed to be found and asked and confirmed between November 2011 and July 2012. You have to do this at the same time as . . . Calendar - which also has to be done between November 2011 and July 2012. This includes getting the events for all the other organizations that you have to visit on the calendar and then deciding when to hold OVs, receptions, and everything else on the Grand Chapter calendar. More Dresses! - In addition to the dress for my girls, I have to choose winter dresses for my Grand Officers, year dresses for my Deputies, and session dresses for my Grand Representatives. I also have to choose spring and session dresses for my Grand Officers and session dresses for the Deputies, six dresses in all. The first three dresses, or the fabric and the person making them, needs to be decided in time to get them done before October 2012, so say no later than March 2012. The spring Grand Officer dresses go just a few months after that and the session dresses a few months after that. Whew! So here's the part that puzzles me. The Calendar and the people are both such huge jobs and they both have to be done during a very narrow window of time. I don't see how you can do any of the other stuff at the same time and I am not sure that the nine months you get is enough to do the whole job. Several people have told me to just take this one year at a time and concentrate on the stuff at hand, but I feel like you have to get absolutely everything you can get done early done so you can clear your decks for the big, last nine months rush which includes the two hardest tasks, finding all your people and the calendar set up. I can't figure out how you have time enough for those if you are also trying to write books and make session decisions and so on and so forth. I mean, granted that after three years on the road you've learned to get by with minimal food and sleep, but no matter how much you try to stretch it, there's still only twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week and I am convinced that if I blink right now, when I open my eyes another month will have flown by. Having enough, or not enough, time can lead to some uncomfortable problems, too. For example, to help us find the people, we get member resumes that people turn in and I certainly want to use as many if not all of the people who send those in because it seems to me that they have shown some interest in getting involved. But I have heard that in some years, people have been reappointed to a committee rather than getting new people on board simply because the AGM ran out of time to fill all the spots and it is easier to ask those already serving if they want to go on because hopefully they already know what they are doing. I have been thinking about this and I think that where it is possible to get some new, qualified people, we should try to do that because the more people who have served on a committee, the greater number of people who know how to do what that committee does, but turning over the whole committee to new people who have never done it before seems a bit fraught with danger because none of those people know how things were done before. They might come up with better ways, but they also might spend a lot of their time reinventing the wheel. It is a puzzlement! But to do that, you have to have the time to talk to the people and get a feel for where they would serve best. Just appointing them out of a hat seems dangerous too. So I want to meet these people as I travel, but I am not supposed to ask for recommendations until the person ahead of me has asked for her recommendations, so it seems like we are setting ourselves up to do everything at the last minute and that doesn't quite seem like the best way to do it. Maybe I need to ask around some more and see if my understanding is wrong or if there is something I am missing. Perhaps there's a secret time machine that you get when you become AGM to help. :-) Next weekend, I will be in Escondido and Sun City, but not in San Marcos.

Greetings and Felicitations

This past weekend was the Official Visit to my very own home district. Besides the luxury of two nights in my very own bed, amazing fun right there, having the OV in your own district when you are a Grand Officer means giving a greeting speech of some kind. It is an interesting tradition which seems to have evolved from its original intent, at least so far as I have been told. The story goes that, in the before time, one of the local Distinguished members (those who have served as Worthy Grand Matron or Worthy Grand Patron in the past) would be asked to give a welcome speech to open the Official Visit, welcoming the current WGM and WGP and their Grand Family. I understand that this tradition started because the Distinguished members were expected to know the protocol of such things and usually knew the current WGM and WGP so they were in a position to give a welcome that would please the visitors. But then some areas started having more than one Distinguished member and they didn't want to ask some but not others, so they started asking all of them and in some areas each one gives their own speech and in other areas, they do one speech together as a group. I wonder if the Distinguished members like it that way or if they would rather draw straws and take turns? Then people wanted to include current Honored members, which means those serving as Grand Officers and/or Grand Representatives, because those people are having a short, very special time in their Eastern Star life, so some clever person, who remains nameless to this day so far as I can find out, came up with this idea of adding a "Greeting" speech on top of the "Welcome" speech, so that those who were having just their one special year could also participate in the Official Visit. Somehow, though, the need for both a welcome and a greeting got "traditionalized" so now, even when a local area doesn't have current Honored members, they still scrape up a greeter for a "Greeting" speech, usually a past Honored member. I find this a little funny, sort of a tail wagging the dog sort of thing. The extra speech was created to give an opportunity to the one year people and now you are expected to cough up an extra speech even if you don't have one year people. Go figure! Anyway, that is the way it is currently working, so since our area includes both me and another Grand Officer, the two of us were expected to give a Greeting speech. Since I have done this two years in a row now, and will be doing it for the rest of my Eastern Star life if these traditions continue, I suggested to my compadre Grand Officer that she should get to give the speech all by herself and have the spotlight. Her response was something like this: No, no, no, no some more, not even, no and um, no! Getting the impression that perhaps she was not in love with the idea of doing the speech herself, I suggested that she could write something that would please her and I would just help present it. Her response to this suggestion sounded sort of like: No, no, no, nuh-uh, no, no, and I don't think so! While it is possible that I misinterpreted, I took this to mean that she would like me to help write it or perhaps even write the thing for both of us. So I found out what the theme of the event was and wrote a short, light hearted greeting with a couple of good jokes and a great pun, certain to produce volumes of groans. The secret to including a great pun is that it has to be punny enough that you get the groans, but not so awful that they throw fruit. We must have walked that fine line successful because someone did call for the hook to pull us off the stage, but no tomatoes were in evidence. If I am very, very lucky, perhaps they won't ask me to speak again next year. However, I am not holding my breath. :-) In some areas, the greeter is expected to give some facts and history about the local Chapters that are included in the District. If there are only a couple of Chapters, you can really get into some interesting trivia and tidbits about the Chapters. But when you have seven or eight, as we did at each of the OVs this past weekend, it can be really hard to give that sort of speech and make it both interesting and short enough. When they do the local Chapters, I find it most interesting when they tell us unique things about the Chapters and not just name, number, year of founding, location, number of members, etc. It is great to hear about each Chapter's special community service project, for example and I really enjoy it when they tell us about some of the local flavor that makes each region that we visit special. Sometimes they've included facts about how the lodge was involved in the founding of the town and other local history bits and that is always very interesting to me. Next weekend, I will be in Vallejo, Richmond and Burlingame.