The Local Scene

This past weekend, I had to stay home for various reasons, so I had the opportunity to attend a reception hosted by my Chapter for one of our members who is a current Grand Representative. It's sort a funny situation, with a move and a consolidation and an appointment and all sorts of other stuff mixed in. It's a little bit soap opera, but very interesting. Starting with consolidations, which I may not have mentioned before, consolidation is when two or more Chapters, for whatever reasons, decide to join together and be just one Chapter. It's a lot like an arranged marriage and it can work well or poorly depending on the attitude of the people involved and sometimes the reasons for the consolidation, just like a marriage. And some of the same strategies that work for marriages work for consolidations, but there are a lot less counseling services available and there is no divorce so you better make it work. :-) In the case of the Chapter in which I was initiated, we were losing our meeting place because the Board for our Hall decided to sell it to a developer who was willing to pay A LOT of money for the land to build houses. So we decided to consolidate with another Chapter rather than just finding a new place to meet. Once you decide to bite the bullet and take the plunge, there are all sorts of very intricate rules and voting requirements, but the part everyone cares about is that three of your people meet with three of their people and one member of the Grand Chapter Consolidation Committee and settle down on the horse blankets to dicker. Whose name will we keep or will we come up with a new name? Whose Chapter number will we keep? It's usually the lowest one, but not absolutely always. Where will we meet? What night will we meet? How many times a month will we meet? What will our dues be? Who will be our first officers, and so on. Sometimes it is a piece of cake because the answers are already pretty well known. In the case of that first consolidation, most of the answers were sort of known in advance. We were losing our hall, so it was going to be their place. Our number was a lot lower, so we'd hang on to that. Since both our place names were geographic, changing to something more generic made sense. Our dues were pretty close, so we went with the bigger number. Everything got done and there we were. But I would say that the harder part comes after the Consolidation is over. And again, sometimes people settle right in and have no trouble after they work out who gets the right sink and who gets the left sink and I do the dishes and you take out the trash. But every now and then, thankfully not too often I hope, you get people who feel violated. They feel that all of a sudden, their home has been invaded by Those People. They don't think like you. They don't understand Your Traditions. They want to do things Differently Than We've Always Done Them. . . and so on and so forth. One of the ones I detest is "they got more things their way than our way." Come on people, it is not a scoring contest! Maybe we should consider adding some requirement that the Grand Chapter member that helps with the paperwork sticks around for a few meetings and helps get the Chapter thinking as one. I think sometimes that they need the help after the wedding almost more than before it. It is so like a marriage without pre-marital counseling, the comparison is scary. When people get married and move in together, (okay, I know most people nowadays do it the other way around, but work with me here), they each have to toss out their notions of The Right Way and work together to find The Right Way For Us. For some people it is totally easy. For others it seems to be close to impossible. That first consolidation was a little hard and rocky for a couple of years, but we worked it all out and found the way to make the Chapter about all of us. We combined activities and traditions and figured out what worked and what did not. We started out on one meeting night and ended up moving to another, but that was all okay too. That was in 1999. By 2002 when I was Worthy Matron again, I would say that the kinks had worked themselves out and we were tooling along pretty good. We were having fun and everyone knew each other's name. Hurray! Then in 2008, another Chapter came along and wanted to join us. We went through the process again and again decided to jump the broom, but that one was a little tougher to get to work. I think that there were people in that one that didn't want to get married to each other, just like you may love your spouse, but not be totally thrilled with your in-laws. However, it is a package deal, so you accept that now you are all one family and move on. As it happened, we did it again in 2009, but that one seemed to be a cakewalk. That second one in 2008 is the one that brought this Grand Representative into my current Chapter. What makes it really convoluted is that this particular member had moved out of the area about eight years ago and joined a Chapter in the central valley. So he was not local when we consolidated and although a Past Patron of my Chapter several times over (because all the Past Matrons and Past Patrons of all the Chapters in consolidation become PMs and PPs of the consolidated Chapter), I never actually belonged to his Chapter while he was serving in the East. And many of our newer members had never had the privilege of meeting him before, which was their loss because he is a great guy with a slightly twisted sense of humor, but that works for me. So you may wonder how come the reception was at my Hall when he lives in the central valley and belongs to a Chapter there too. Well, when a member is appointed Grand Representative and belongs to two Chapters, one of those Chapters is identified as the Chapter "out of which they are appointed." It can be sort of important, because we have a rule that no one Chapter can have two Grand Representatives. So if you have two people who belong to the same two Chapters, you have to appoint one of them out of one Chapter and the other out of the other Chapter. So, primarily since this member had not yet served as Worthy Patron in his new area, he was appointed out of my Chapter, so the reception was at my Masonic Hall. I am actually glad it worked out that way because it was my pleasure and privilege to be there to honor him. It was a lovely reception with good food of course. The other thing that is interesting about the whole process is that I have been told, and again, your mileage may vary, but I have been told that Grand Officers are not supposed to attend receptions for Grand Representatives or Deputy Grand Matrons unless they are for your own District or a close personal friend, so as not to overshadow the honored member. So this last Saturday was the only day that I attended a local reception and will probably be the only one I make all year. Yet all the Chairmen are told nowadays to send the invitation to all the Grand Officers and Past Grands and not just the local ones and the ones that belong to the same Chapters as the honored members, so I still haven't figured that one out. Next weekend I will be in Los Altos and Milpitas as we put on my very first workshop for my girls. I can't wait!