A Great Big Room with Trumpets

This past weekend was the Annual Communication of the Grand Lodge of California, their statewide meeting, the counterpart to our Annual Session of Grand Chapter. Unlike our event, which has to move all over because we have to rent somewhere to hold it, the Grand Lodge holds its annual event in its own building, which is located in San Francisco. The lodge room where the official proceedings take place is the great big room, with seats laid out in a BIG U shape on the bottom floor and then a U-shaped balcony tier with even more seats. In the middle of the U is the stage area where they set up all the chairs and such. While much of the weekend session is closed to everyone except Master Masons in good standing, on Sunday is what is called the "public ceremonies" and these are open to others. I've been to these for three years in a row now and it seems to me that what happens on Sunday is that there is a little inspirational message from the Grand Chaplain, then there is a youth group thing where the five youth leaders show up and four of them speak and then they exchange gifts and pleasantries with the Grand Master while we all watch and clap at appropriate moments, then there is a little report on how the Grand Master's project went, then he gives a farewell speech, then they all go out and we take a break and then the install the new officers for the coming year. After the new officers are installed, the new Grand Master gives a speech about his plans and tells everyone what he has chosen for a project and then the guy who just finished his year gets a lot of presents and then the new Grand Master gets a lot of presents while we watch him try to get the stuff open, (all these guys in the room and not one of them can lend the Grand Master a pocket knife, what's up with that?), and then the new officers march out and we all wait in a honking long line to congratulate the new top four guys and then we wander outside starving because we started at 9:30 am and now its after 1:30 and that twenty minute break was great for stretching your legs and using the bathroom, but not long enough to eat anything and I fear by an Eastern Star standard, the reception refreshments are just not up to snuff. Of course it may not be fair to compare their cookies and punch to what gets put out at an event sponsored by the Order of the Eating Siblings. :-) The ceremonial stuff is quite beautiful and moving. They've got three trumpet guys who do fanfares and marches and stuff in addition to the Organist and assistant Organist, so the musical pieces are great. The regalia pieces are all nice and pretty and shiny so that is all nice too. And the ceremony itself is nice and short, even if the whole day is not. Someone made a comment to me that it was not fair that the Grand Lodge guys complained about our four and a half hour installation, but we were in their room for just as long. I admit that I didn't agree with that analysis because their installation didn't start until 11:00 am and it says the time in the program so if you are only coming for installation, you don't have to be there until 11:00 am. We came voluntarily to the youth session and there was a break, so I don't know that the total time from when we got there is a fair complaint. But what is a very fair complaint is that we spent forty minutes watching a grown man struggle to open packages and then we all were supposed to oooohh and aaaahh over the contents for an entire forty minutes. That sort of thing is fun when we were all nine because then, once the presents were open, we could all play with them. For adults it is less amusing. And when you've been sitting for hours, it is way less amusing. I confess that personally, I lean towards having a presentation table and letting people put their gifts there having the receiving line afterwards so those wanting to offer congratulations had their chance to do that also. But even if you want to give some presents, could you limit it to one or two or even three meaningful ones? Or if you must let them all go, couldn't you have a "present caddy" which is someone who opens the next present while the Grand Master is showing the current present to the crowd? That at least would save the opening time. So while there is no doubt in my mind that we need to streamline A LOT, like down to two hours max, there may be a few panes of glass that the stones are striking about Grand Installations. The other thing that struck me, which was a combination of a conversation I had on Friday night at a dinner and being in the BIG room all morning on Sunday, is about the hall ownerships and rents and temple boards. But that will have to be a topic for next Monday. This weekend I am home and will need to start getting ready for Grand Chapter.

de facto and de jure

One of the things that makes the study of law so interesting is that you spend years learning all these cool Latin phrases and then you spend the first ten years of your law practice remembering how to speak in plain English. Some people never figure that out. But two phrases that sort of came to the forefront for me this weekend were de facto and de jure. De facto is defined as a past action or state of affairs that is not actually legal or legitimate, but which must be accepted for all practical purposes because that's just the way it is. De jure means a condition that is in total compliance with all requirements of law. For people who do not study law or Latin, you most often heard these phrases during the discussions of school segregation, where the courts made a distinction between de jure segregation, which was an actual law saying that the school had to be segregated, and de facto segregation, where there was no law, but just based on where people lived and the drawing of the school districts, the schools just sort of ended up mostly segregated. The application of this principle that hit me this weekend was a really, really tough question - When you find a situation that is not in accordance with the rules/laws, but which nevertheless has been going on for a long time, (therefore the de facto situation), when do you change what you are doing to match the law and when do you change the law to match the situation? What do you do when you can't change the law but people will hate you for changing the situation? As I was home this weekend, I started working on a couple of projects. One of them was my list of committees and appointments. To help me organize my thoughts on appointments and people who have volunteered and what I want from each committee, I made a list of all the positions for which I have to appoint people. This includes finding my guy, my most immediate task for next January and February, then finding some co-chairs for some committees, which have to be appointed a year from now, then finding my ten appointive Grand Officers, then finding my Deputies, which I estimate will be forty, then finding Grand Representatives (35), members for standing committees (100+), special committes (40+) and Grand Chapter Week committees (110+). I made the general list a long time ago, just to get a feel for the job, but this weekend, I got more specific and added to my list the length of term for each job, so when I ask people, I can tell them how long until they are "paroled" out of the job, and how many people that other people appointed will still be on the committee and so will need my expectations letters even though I am not the one asking them to serve, and how many people need to be asked early and how many people I need to get from people behind me for them to appoint early. Well, in making my list and checking it twice, I had to do a fair bit of reading in my Constitution and there I discovered that a lot of the people that we are appointing are really special committees and not actually required ones, and that some of the required ones are not being done in the way the book says. Now in some of these instances, what is being done is working fine but it is not what is written down, and in some instances, what is written down would work better but is not being done. So which way do you lean? Do you make the de facto the de jure by trying to change the rules or do you change the de facto to match the de jure? Of course, if people like me didn't read the darn books, we wouldn't have these problems, right? If we would just stick to what "everyone" knows, these problems wouldn't come up in the first place, right? In some instances, we've been doing the de facto for so long, no one can remember it any other way and if you told them that it is illegal, they would simply refuse to believe you. After all, everyone knows the world is flat, right? And the earth is the center of the universe, right? And if we don't dance in the evergreen groves on the winter solstice, the sun will never come back and we will all die, right? And illnesses are caused by evils spirits so if you need to let the bad spirits out, you drill holes in the person's head, right? And look what happened to the guys who challenged these notions - nothing good, that's for sure! So what is a person to do? It is especially a sticky wicket when you don't even have the choice on which way to conform. If you have the choice, then you can put out a proposed rules change and if people vote to change the rules to match the de facto, then you are home free and if they vote no on the change, then you know that you need to change the de facto to match the current law (the de jure). But when you have no right to change the law, you are stuck enforcing it even if people hate it and all you can do to help yourself is to try to explain the problem. We had this arise some years ago over what I call the bingo/bunco problem. In a rule that we have no power to change, Chapters can have bingo games as long as it is not gambling and we follow very strict rules to make sure it is not gambling. We cannot sell extra cards for example, and prizes have to be donated and a bunch of other rules. But Chapters are not allowed to have Bunco nights. We didn't make this rule up and we do not have the power to change it, but people didn't like hearing this and made quite the fuss. Well, my other project of the weekend, which involved starting to slot up my calendar so I can give some dates to people who want to start planning Chapter Anniversaries that fall during what I hope will be my year, led me to go over some stuff that I believe means that some really big "always done" items are very de facto and very not de jure. And to make things worse, these things are things that we cannot change, so I either have to tell people to change what they do or stick my head in the sand and pretend not to see what is going on around me constantly, a skill that I am not very good at, I confess. I tend to be a little more on the side of the rules, I fear. At least I have a year or more to think about it and by then I will have a man who can tell me how he feels about the placement of his head too, in the sand or in the noose. At least burning at the stake for heresy is no longer on the list of potential punishments. :-) Next weekend I am in San Francisco for the Grand Lodge's annual event.

An Intimate Dinner for 200

This past weekend was the joint reception for the Worthy Grand Matron and Worthy Grand Patron. Years ago, each of these officers would have their own, separate reception in their respective areas of the state, but ten or so years ago, many of the couples decided to have a joint reception to save time and travel. It is a reflection of changes in our Order that can be seen as a progression if you know the history of the thing. In the long ago before time, it was often the case that the Worthy Matron of a Chapter and the Worthy Patron of a Chapter were both married, but not to each other. :-) In many areas of the state, it was considered better if married couples did not serve together because that way you had four people to share the work and the expense. The two non-officer spouses would help out in lots of different ways and the four people would often become close friends from their shared projects. Of course, sometimes the two couples would never want to speak to each other when the year was over, but that is a story for another time. Your mileage may vary. Anyway, since husbands and wives often did not go through together, when you had a reception for the Worthy Grand Patron and the Worthy Patrons of California, the Worthy Patrons and their wives would go to that one and when you had a reception for the Worthy Grand Matron and the Worthy Matrons of California, the Worthy Matrons and their husbands would go to that one and never the twain need meet. But some time back, a lot of Chapters had less men and wives would often ask their husbands to serve with them, so if you had two receptions, the same couple would have to go to two receptions. Of course, since we have a fair number of single women and widows, there is always the fun of having a Conductress call you up and ask to borrow your husband to go through the line with her. I have to say borrow because renting might not be legal in this state. :-) The other advantage of sharing the reception of course is that in theory, you can share the cost and the work. However, oftentimes, one Chapter takes the lead and the brunt of the cost and the work and the other contributes more or less, depending on how involved the organizers make them. As with all things, sometimes the Chapters work together awesomely and sometimes perhaps not perfectly. The only down sides of the joint reception that I see are that they tend to be in Fresno and unless you are from Fresno, that means that all the local people that helped the WGM and the WGP through the years have to travel a fair way to attend and the other down side is that when you have speakers who are connected to each of the honorees, the reception can go three or I have even seen four and a half hours. Since I start fidgeting around two hours, get to shooting pains around three and can't stand up after four, this is not so good. But since I am told that it is often better for the members to have the joint reception, that new tradition is probably going to stick for a while. But what is really interesting is that the night before the reception, on Friday night, there has traditionally been a small dinner party. Well, small if your definition of small includes up to 200 people. This dinner party, which no one really hears about unless you've ever been invited to one, is for the Grand Officers and their Escorts and the Grand Pages and their Escorts and the Deputy Grand Matrons and their Escorts. So if you have eighteen Grand Officers, that is up to thirty-six people, anywhere from twenty-one to fifty Grand Pages with their escorts is another possible forty-two to one hundred and forty-eight deputies and their escorts is another possible ninety-six. So up to 200 or so, although this year may only have been about 100-150. The variation on the number of Pages depends on how many the WGM and WGP each choose, since their numbers are unlimited. At this dinner party, there are a host of traditional presentations made. The Grand Officers who didn't have receptions this year, which traditionally is the Associate Grand Matron, Associate Grand Patron and the Associate Grand Conductress every year, and the Grand Secretary every year except her last one, during which she usually does have a reception, so there are four officers in this group, receive love gifts from the North and South Deputy Grand Matrons, since all the other officers usually get these love gifts at their receptions. The Deputies as a whole group traditionally buy a briefcase or carryon bag for the Grand Marshal. I love mine, which has that awesome pocket for your laptop so you don't have to take it out of the bag at the airport, just unfold the flap, go through the screening machine and pop the flap back up and you are on your way! Now if we can just figure out how to keep our shoes on. . . And the Deputies usually have something, like a scrapbook or memory book of some kind for the WGM and WGP with a page from the official visit to each District. That is nice to have as the years go by. So we did all that last Friday, and then had the day free on Saturday until the joint reception Saturday night. Except for the fact that all such events go longer than I can sit, it was a very nich occasion. The music was completely awesome, provided by one of our most dedicated Sisters, who volunteers her time and amazing talent constantly. If only we had a Grand Chapter Service Award for members who just give and give and give at the state level, like we do for Chapter service, she would be on my nominee list for sure. And it was also very lovely that a good number of the Worthy Matrons and Worthy Patrons were able to attend. That always makes it more special for the Grand Officer. This next weekend I will be home.

Flying Lessons - Year One

This past weekend was my first workshop for my girls. The theme was Flying Lessons - Year One. I am still amazed at how awesome it all came out. My Chapter and my service group really went above and beyond all reasonable expectations to do a phenomenal job. The workshop was single tracked, since this was the first one so we were not worried about people needing a choice because they'd already seen some stuff. Next year, we want to multi-track, both because we have less than half the time and because we want to offer some of the same stuff for people who didn't have a chance this year and because we want to offer some new stuff too. We opened with a welcome, a run through the agenda and then introductions for the participants. In the introductions, in addition to the regular stuff like name, home chapter, etc., we asked the attendees to tell us about the health of their Chapters and then some personal stuff, like what they did for a living, what they do for fun when they are not doing Star and something about themselves that others don't usually know but would find interesting. Of course, there were a couple of people whose only answers to the question on something else they do for fun was "There's other things people do?" I sure know that feeling right now myself. :-) We had four seminar slots and taught about communications, listening skills, event planning and how to find answers in our governing documents. I had presenters for the four seminars so I could run around putting out little logistics fires before anyone knew there was a snag and because my presenters are awesome at presenting this stuff! I could probably have done one of the bits, but I don't know how people manage to keep everything smooth when they do the presenting too. It seemed like every hour there was one more little teeny tiny thing that just needed a moment of my time and yet one more trip up and down the stairs. Why is it that the person you need to speak with is always on the other floor from where you are at the time? Is it like a butter side down thing or what? If it is karmic, then boy have I lifted my burden, unfortunately at the expense of my calves. Thank goodness that Monday was in the hotel, so it was all on one floor. Whew! I cannot wait for the contractor to finish the remodeling work on my jacuzzi! Between the seminars, we had breaks and meals with table topics. These were the idea of someone special to me back in 2007, but they haven't been done since that I know of and I really liked the idea, so we did four sessions of table topics. Table topics are where you hand out at the table, over lunch or dinner or a snack or something, a set of questions on a particular, relevant topic of interest and ask the table to discuss the questions and brainstorm about answers. The attendees told me that they loved the table topics for two reasons. First, it gave a table full of complete strangers a common conversation to which everyone was expected to contribute, so everyone got to talk comfortably even though they didn't know the people with whom they were sitting all that well. Second, it gave them a chance to talk about the issues and give me their ideas and impressions of current situations in our Order. They said that they really enjoyed that opportunity for them, as members, to tell me as a leader person, where they were coming from on the topics. We had two or three questions on each sheet and the right side of the room and the left side of the room had different ones, but all on the same topic. The table topics were Statewide Communications, should we have them, what purposes do they serve, what format/method of delivery did they like, how we should pay for such things, and so on. We had one talk about dress codes and whether we should conform across the state and what their Chapters were doing. Another topic was dealing with change and how their Chapters react to change and if they had new activities and if so, how those got started. And we ended with our Sunday dinner topic, Ritual Instruction and Men, discussing how people liked to get their ritual instruction, whether they felt Grand Officers needed to be involved in it and at what level, what the role of the Worthy Patron should be in ritual instruction and whether the Chapters were ready for men as Deputies, although we'd probably have to change the name from Deputy Grand Matron to perhaps District Deputy. :-) Each table reported back on their discussion at the end of each reporting period and there was a lot of consensus in the room on a lot of the issues. I was expecting a bit more disagreement, since I had people from just about everywhere except Los Angeles. There were two ladies from San Diego and one from San Fernando Valley, but no Greater LA people. And there were people from fairly far north too. I was also expecting more disagreement because I had completely new first timers mixed with people who have done it bunches and bunches, a mix of newer members and long time members too, yet they still seemed fairly uniform on where the opinions fell. I don't know for sure that we had a truly representative sample, but it was diverse. For each new table topic and break out group, we rotated who sat with whom. Almost no one got to sit with the person that came with them and few people in the same association got to sit with each other either. And with four rotations mixing up who went where, everyone got to meet almost everyone else, so that was nice too. We gave all the attendees a list of everyone who came to let them keep in touch with one another and I think that people made a lot of new friends. I also hope they got the idea that they are not alone in this. Lots of people have the same concerns and anxieties. Everyone said that they had learned something and went away with a whole to do list of things to study and try when they get back home. And they all promised to read their Ritual book cover to cover before they finish their Conductress year. Maybe there will have to be a quiz. :-) Next weekend I am in Fresno for events on Friday night and Saturday night and a meeting Sunday morning.