Jigsaws and Dominoes

This past weekend was the start of my push to finish off the basic calendar dates for All Known Events and to lock in the dates of the various Official Visits so that the local officers can start finding a place to hold each of them.

I know that the last minute is beyond a shadow of a doubt the most productive time of any project because so many things wouldn't get done if it wasn't there and so many people save up for that last minute.  Lots of us work better when we are under pressure, so that is understandable.  And I am very glad to find out that people want to hold events and need dates for them.  I am excited about each and every plan.

But once the calendar has sort of been filled out, fitting in other events is an interesting mixture of jigsaw puzzles and dominoes.

It is a jigsaw puzzle because you are trying to get events to fit with one another.  If I go here, what is the travel time to there?  How long does that sort of event take?  Will the clothing needed for these two events be compatible or do we have to build in time to change clothes?  Will we be able to stay at one hotel for the weekend or have to change between Friday and Saturday?  Will this group be too tired from putting on this to do that the same weekend and how far should we travel to avoid that?  If we have breakfast here and lunch there, will there be traffic or will it work out?

And it is kind of like dominoes because when you move one thing, a whole bunch of other things have to move over too.  If you need to go here, then you will need to go there, so that has to move, but then that was going to go to this which now has to go to that, so that has to move too, and so on and so on.

So far today, I have added five events, necessitating the moving of twelve other things.  I hope to goodness that I have written it all out correctly and haven't got someone in two places and someone else in none!  Tonight when I go home and put all this on the big board, I hope it still looks right.

Hopefully the last few items will come in tonight or tomorrow and we will be able to lock most things down by Saturday.

This weekend I will be home, finishing this nice calendar and pushing into a bunch of forms and binders that need drafting and preparing.

Filing and Typing

Since I was home this past weekend, it was time to get caught up on a hundred things that need to happen and on which I had gotten a little behind.

So last week, I finished up the proposed revisions for the books that every Worthy Grand Matron prepares and uses for her Grand Officers, Deputys and Worthy Matrons and Worthy Patrons.  A few years ago, the idea was bounced around about making a generic version of these books and then letting each Grand Line Officer put together their own packet of special information and sheets each year, instead of doing the whole book from scratch.  We had drafts of two of the books, the Deputy book and the Worthy Matron book, to look at last year, but they got distributed too late for us to make all the edits and revisions and the other two books didn't make it for last year, so by getting the proposed edits done now, I am hopeful that we will have time between now and April to go through the proposed changes and agree on generic books that the next three or four years will be able to use without having to rewrite their own.  While I like to get things done that will help not only me, but the years to come, it is a relief for me to have these drafts done because if for some reason, they do not get reviewed, I can always just hit the magic "Accept All Changes" button and have my stuff ready to burn onto CDs.  But I would really prefer that we get to go through these and make any changes that those following after me think are beneficial or useful, so that the books will really represent our combined efforts and collective wisdom.  It will make all our books better.

This past week was devoted to getting out my winter packets to all my Dragon Riders.  I got the letter and all the inserts written and all the attachments done and scanned, which took a good few hours, but then I was faced with Lack Of List Syndrome.  This is a truly dreaded condition where you need to get stuff out to a group of people and you know who they are, but you don't have a list with contact information for them.  The snag is that not everyone who was with me last year is going on and with me this year and there are a bunch of Chapters, about thirty, in fact, who didn't have anyone last year, but may (or may not) have someone this year.  But since there are deadlines in the packet for the end of this month, I didn't want to wait too long, so I sent the packet out to everyone who was on my e-mail list last year and asked them to let me know if they were not going on and if they knew who was.

I got a bunch of responses and then had to spend about two hours fixing information and adding e-mail addresses for new people and some people who I had on my list but no e-mail before and sent out another e-mail to all the new people and addresses.  That left me with about forty packets to mail and about twenty Chapters where I didn't know if I had a person.

So then I sent in to the Grand Chapter office to see how we were doing on a list and got one which included all the Chapters that had sent in their officer forms, although I am not sure that all of them have done so.  That meant going through all 179 Chapters to see if any of the information had changed and put any new information into my Spread Sheet of All Dragon Riders.  Some people had changed and some same people had new or different snail mail or e-mail addresses.  For each new e-mail, I had to make up a contact in my Outlook directory and then add them to my All 2013 Worthy Matrons list.  When I was saving the list after the changes, about three hours after I started this nice task, Outlook warned me that I had exceeded the group size for any lesser version of Outlook and that my list would not work with any of these lesser versions.  So I guess it is a good thing that our software was upgraded last spring.

The cool part is that I have now got everyone on the e-mail list except thirty-one people, some of whom have requested no e-mail communications and some of whom I just don't have addresses for.  And I still have ten Chapters that don't have a person listed, but that is way better than before.  The sad part is that I now have to have mailing labels made up for the thirty-one people and make copies of all the information for them, so they will not get their packets until next week, when everyone else got theirs last week or earlier this week.  But that is the price I guess you pay for choosing snail mail.  At least my costs for copies and postage is hugely better than when I was mailing to everyone and only stuffing 31 instead of 179 - Woo Hoo!!!

So all that, plus about three hours of filing on which I had gotten behind ate up last weekend nicely.

Next weekend we are not traveling, it being a holiday, so I will continue to catch up on drafting tasks and secretarial stuff.  The weekend after that is also a holiday, so that will be the weekend to lock the calendar and start getting event information together.

Setting the World on Fire

This past weekend was our first leadership workshop for this year with a theme of firing up our membership.  There were a number of modules presented on communication, membership and event planning.

The materials presented in each module were interesting, but what was even more fun were the break out groups where small groups of people get to try out what they've been hearing with a series of exercises designed to apply the principles just taught.  The first break out was a sort of ice breaker/how to get to know people exercise.  My group had something called Common Ground where we are supposed to find things that everyone in the group had in common.  Since we were in a group of about a dozen, that was a little trickier than it sounds and the most basic things, like all belonging to the same fraternal order, were declared off limits by the rules.  At first, we just tried to brainstorm about things we might all have in common, like whether we were all born in California or if we all owned pets.  Sometimes one idea that didn't work led to one that did.  For example, it turned out that not all of us were born in California, but we were all born in the US.  We didn't all own pets right now, but we all had owned pets in our lives.  We weren't all wearing black shoes, because two pairs turned out to be navy, but we were all wearing dark shoes.  This exercise not only got us talking but also showed how you can build on an idea when maybe the original idea doesn't work, but it inspires another idea that does.

Another group had a beach ball and the beach ball had questions written all over it with a Sharpie marker.  That group had to toss the ball around and each person who caught it had to answer the question that was under their hand where they touched the ball.  That looked like fun too and was good for getting to know each other without anyone asking a pointed question specifically to another person.

One of the other break out exercises required us to plan an event including setting a goal and a date.  That was tricky because it was hard to figure out how to set the goal.  Our group was supposed to set a goal to participate in a project at a certain level (money contributed and boxes filled).  We did the exercise, but we mostly set the goal by going with a WAG (ask me in person if you are not familiar with the acronym :-) because we had no data on which to base any sort of goal.  It reminded me that the first time you do anything, you don't really know how it will turn out.  You should still have a goal, but you should not be disappointed if you don't meet it.  Instead, you can use the first time out to come up with a more realistic goal the next time, hopefully set just a little higher than the first time's actual performance and then try to meet that and raise that every year.  I think sometimes that people do things for the first time and get discouraged when nothing is ever perfect the first year out of the gate - you have to build up to big and wonderful.

The overall program was great and had lots of great information in it.  I hope lots of people get to participate in the remaining sessions later this year.

This weekend I am home working on Districts and Masonic Family information to distribute on Monday.

Here Comes Santa Claus

This past weekend was the Christmas Party at our Senior Living Community in Yorba Linda.  Each year, the current Grand Family and the previous year's Grand Family come to our Eastern Star Home to celebrate with our residents.

This year, the festivities started with an afternoon tea at 3:00 pm or so.  We had the opportunity to sit with some of the Residents and visit for an hour or so over tea sandwiches and sweets with tea and coffee.  Some of the Residents have the most amazing stories to tell!  One lady showed me a lovely ring that dated from back in the 1860's - Wow!  The refreshments looked yummy, but since I am currently on a low carb diet, sandwiches and sweets were off my list of things to eat - Sigh!!!

After the tea, we went into the meeting room for a sing-a-long with the Residents and a visit from Santa with presents.  The program handout was a whole book of Christmas songs and the Residents would pick different songs to sing.  Our Grand Organist also wrote a really cute parody of the Twelve Days of Christmas, using events from the 2012 Grand Family's experiences so far for the things given on each of the days.  The day after the event, we all got a copy of it to keep for our own and that will go in my memento book for this year.  After the songs, Santa comes with the presents, which are prepared by the Home staff, with the Resident's names on them, and the Grand Officers take turns playing elf, taking a present from Santa and taking it over to the person for whom it was intended, so that the Residents don't have to struggle through the crowd to get their goodies.  Then there are pictures with Santa for everyone who wants them and quite a few people did, again as a memento of this special time.

The singing part is a little tough for me because I know that next year, I will be holding this party.  I don't want to disappoint the Residents, but I am always uncomfortable with the religious songs and don't sing them.  Truthfully, I don't know the words to any Christmas carols at all, at least not past the first couple of lines that they play on commercials selling CDs of the music.  I never learned them since my family does not celebrate Christmas and have no interest in learning them now, I must admit.  Well, I do know the words to Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, but I have a funny feeling that our Residents don't really want that one on the play list.  Of course you never know - their sense of humor might just go that way, but probably best not to take a chance.

I don't want to not have the party, so I guess I will have to try to come up with a play list of more generic winter songs that people know, like Frosty the Snowman, and just stay away from the ones that involve mangers and saviors.

Someone asked me though if I wanted to do some Hanukkah songs and the honest answer is that no, I don't really care about doing them with the Residents and don't really think it is a very good idea unless we end up with a Jewish resident between now and next December.  So far as I know, we don't have any now.  There doesn't seem to me to be any point in having a bunch of people struggle through songs that they don't know and have no meaning for them, just for me.  I mean, I guess that if they wanted to learn a Hanukkah song and sing it for me as a surprise gift, that would be okay, but if it wasn't their idea, why force on them something with no value to them that might in any way detract from their enjoyment of their Christmas party?  So probably no Hanukkah songs, unless they want to do it to please me or something like that.

Next weekend, I am in Tracy, Union City and Tulare.

All In All Done

(Note - This should have posted Nov. 30)

The Installation Season is finally over - or is it?

I have completed the last of the fourteen installations that I had agreed to attend this year and each one had its own interesting theme, decorations, performance, speeches and of course refreshments.  But I noticed that there were a number of Chapters where one of the officers was either unable to attend the Installation or no one was elected in time for the Installation but will be elected and installed in December or January. 

This makes me consider a complicated topic that is important at a lot of levels, namely, what is a reasonable level of expectation and how do we (or should we?) enforce that level of expectation.

In the work world, this is a lot simpler, although not as much as people might think.  When you pay people to do things, in a perfect world, you set reasonable expectations and the people you hire meet them because they want to get paid as promised.  But even in the work world, there is always some squish room, where a person can underperform a little and still get paid and keep their job, even if they don't get as much of a raise each year or even any at all.  And now, in the present economy, many companies have given no raises to anyone for years, so getting or not getting a raise is no longer a performance indicator.  After all, if those who do not meet expectations get the same raise as those who exceed expectations - ZERO - they why bother to work harder.  There is NO traffic jam on the extra mile!!!

However, even in the work world in a good economy, when people are changing jobs, they pick the one that pays the best.  After they get there though, they stay with the job where they are treated the best.  If you treat them badly, even though you pay them well, they will leave.  Now in a bad economy, they may not be able to leave because they need the money and the job, but these people are just the volcano waiting to erupt and as soon as the economy loosens up, whoooosh, they are so gone.

But in a non-profit context, there is no monetary incentive.  So how can you set or enforce expectations?  You have to do it with other coins, usually with respect or recognition.  When you expect a lot and get it, that person should get a good reputation and be thought of with respect and admiration.  They should be recognized for their contribution and feel rewarded for their efforts.  Conversely, if they do not perform as promised, they should feel the peer pressure of their lack of performance and should feel the disappointment suffered by others.  Of course this assumes a lot of things.  First, that reasonable expectations are communicated in the first place so people can try to perform.  Second, that reward and punishment are delivered in a fair manner.  And finally, that all feed back is timely.  The results must be close enough in time to be obviously linked to the performance.

Some people feel that if others don't perform, you should lower the bar so that they feel they can reach it and that will encourage them to get over it because they can.  I feel that when you lower the bar, people who were just a bit under the old one will now be just a bit under the new one.  I like better the approach that you find out why the person didn't perform and if it can be addressed, address it and if it can't be addressed, find someone else to do the job.  If there is no one else to do the job, you have a different problem.

So why do I think of these things when I think of Installation?  Because it makes me think of officers and our expectations of their performance.  For example, there are lots of legitimate reasons why someone who has agreed to be an officer cannot make their Installation.  Stuff happens.  But unless it is an illness or emergency, that should be known in advance and planned for and even in an emergency, the courtesy of a phone call should be managed by someone.  What frosts my cake are the people who don't show up, don't call to say they are not showing up and are not dead or unconsious!  The rest of us are waiting around hoping the late person will show up and then we finally go ahead with out them.  Grrrr!  But communicating is a reasonable expectation and should happen.  And other reasonable expectations should be met too, darn it!

I know of course that 99% of the time this problem does not occur and most of the time everyone is very responsible and communicative, but this is sort of an example of Murphy's Law of Sewage.  If you take a barrel full of sewage and you add a tablespoon of wine, you've got a barrel of sewage.  If you take a barrel full of wine and add a tablespoon of sewage, you've got a barrel of sewage.  Sigh!

Next weekend, I will be in Norwalk, Yorba Linda and Escondido.

In You Go!

This past weekend and this next weekend are filled with Installations at various Chapters in my local area.  In some ways this time of year is harder than other times because the Installations occur on all days of the week and at other times, travel is primarily on the weekends, with mid-week things planned well in advance.  but for Installations, such as the ones this week, you can practically go to one every evening and two on weekend days.

Now installing officers is fun!  They are usually pleased that their Grand Officer came to install them and an Installation it is a big party with lots of good food and sometimes the food is even planned as meals and not just as extra food on top of your regular meals.  And of course, spending what you spend as a Grand Officer is enough to make anyone feel like a college student again and one of the big rules of college was that you could not pass up on a free meal!  So some very nice Chapters will be providing me with my dinner both nights this coming weekend.  I wonder what I am having.

But traveling in your local area, especially after a work day, can be pretty tiring when you do several in a row and it really makes you aware of the traffic in your area.  You can also stretch your idea of local pretty far.  I am doing at least three installations where the event is more than an hour from my house, but since I can sleep in my own bed each time, that is still local.

You also see a lot of different traditions when you go to Installations in different areas.  So far, I have only had to give remarks once,  but I may find myself called on twice this coming weekend, which is too bad, but you have to be prepared all the time OR ELSE!!  I talk off the top of my head pretty well, but you don't want to sound like a broken record.  I mean, how many times does the audience want to hear yet another person come to the microphone and say:

I want to congratulate all the officers and the new Worthy Matron and Patron.  I am sure that you will have a wonderful year full of fun activities and exciting projects.  The decorations and carrying pieces are lovely.  Thank you so much for inviting me to share your special evening.

I mean seriously, do you really want to sit through six versions of this?  I like the places where only the Worthy Matron and Worthy Patron speak the best, as long as at least one of them has a message in their speech and it is not just a long list of thank yous, which are important, but not inspiring.  One other speech by some one other person is okay too and I can handle that.  Okay, maybe I can even handle two other speeches.  But places where they call on every person sitting in the front to speak?  What is the goal behind that?  To make sure that everyone falls asleep before they get to the dining room?  How many eyes have to glaze over before some people figure out that this is not a good idea?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Luckily, more places seem to be leaning towards fewer and shorter speeches and I am all for that.  Speeches go best when there is less quantity and more quality.  And I have heard some great remarks offered and hope to hear more of them this weekend, when I attend another handful of Installations.

Next week, I continue in the "local" area.

Isn't It Grand - Part Three

In the stunning conclusion to our epic saga, your intrepid heroine attended the Grand Banquet and Ball on Friday night of Grand Chapter.  This event is modeled somewhat on the formal dinners that are held at the Grand Lodge Warden's Retreats and perhaps at other times, although I have not attended any other times to date.  The way this works is that there is a head table or two and then there are tables on the floor that are also for special people but for whom there is not enough room at the head table.  We jokingly refer to these as the kid's tables.

Anyway, everyone else goes in and gets seated and then we came into the room with our escorts one at a time and got announced as to who we were and then we walked up the center aisle and went to our seats.  Once all of us were in, there was some beginning stuff and then dinner.  Once we were about to the dessert stage, it was time for the introductions and speeches.  The Grand Banquet and Ball event was meant to take the place of what we have usually referred to as Informal Opening, the Courtesies to Dignitaries Lunch (or the Grand Representatives' Lunch, depending on who you ask and yes there's a story there, but it's not blog appropriate :-), and the Masonic Family Session, so the key elements of each of those events were incorporated into this one big party.  The dignitaries of other organizations were introduced and the youth group leaders gave the speeches that they usually would have given at the Masonic Family Session, and a representative of the Grand Master spoke also.  After the dessert and the speeches, there was a band and dancing in the corner, mostly taken over by the youth group members and by the adventurous adults who thought that they could keep up with these kids, at least for a while.  I think that everyone, especially those who participated in the dancing, had a wonderful time.

It did make me think about two things though.  The event was pricey, as it had to be because it was required to break even and a fancy dinner and a DJ are not cheap, and I understand that we subsidized the youth tickets, for which I was glad because I hope that not too many of them had the price as the interfering factor, but I am not sure that we did our best with this event and its timing.  I am just thinking about it and have not made up my mind yet, but there are a couple of thoughts that buzz around me.

For starters, not a lot of teens need, want or appreciate a fancy meal.  I will confess that as I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate a filet mignon a lot more than a sirloin, but that is mostly because you know the teeth aren't what they used to be, knives seem to have gotten duller over the years and don't cut as well, and I just can't finish more than about six ounces any more.  The three layer chocolate mousse was lovely and again, I am now at an age where I can appreciate the artistry of such a dessert (probably also because I watch too much Chopped and Iron Chef America:-), but I can remember being more of the gourmand and less of the gourmet when I was a teenager.  At that age, I probably would have preferred half a medium pizza and a hot caramel sundae with two scoops of vanilla, lots of whipped cream, nuts, a wafer and a cherry on top.  (Even back then, I had no chocolate tooth to speak of, so hot caramel, not hot fudge for sure!).  Of course, I can't eat that stuff now - the sundae would make me sick to my stomach and the pizza would be yummy going down, but bad later, ah for the days when I could eat all the fat and sugar that I wanted - Sigh!!!  But how tragic if I had not enjoyed such repasts in my ill spent youth.  And such a meal would have cost about a third of the beautiful meal we ate that night.  So I am not sure that sitting through the fancy meal and the speeches was the best for youth participation, although perhaps the dance more than made up for it.  They certainly looked like they had a great time and maybe some of them can already appreciate a fine cut of meat.

But the other concern that pops up for me is that the Masonic Family event was usually held on Saturday afternoon and this was on Friday night.  By October, school has already started, so travel time to make a Friday event is limited to after school and before the start, instead of Friday night and/or Saturday morning.  It also means that if you are not really local, you might have to stay overnight instead of coming in the morning and going home afterwards.  So I wonder if the timing affected how many of our youth group members were able to attend and whether it is more or less than we would have for a fun event on Saturday.

So there's a lot to think about on what to do with all that.

Saturday morning was great because I didn't have a breakfast to go to - yay!  The breakfast events are deathly for me because I am not an early bird!!  Really, really!! Night owl here - hoot, hoot!!  So sleep good, early breakfast less good.  Then we had the farewell session, which was lots of very sad.  You'd think that saying good bye to a family would get easier, but it doesn't.  You live and work and travel with these people for a whole year and you get to know them and laugh with them and cry with them and then they are no longer the group that you travel with any more.  I am pretty shy, although no one believes me on that, so getting to know strangers well enough to share a room or a meal or a car with them is tough and it takes me a month or two to get into the groove of a new family each year, especially when you spend the first six weeks apart, since you don't see the new family for the rest of October and most of November.  Then you spend two or three weekends in December, but then you take another three week break and then you dive into the serious traveling in January.  But once I get to know people, I tend to get to know them really well and at a deeply personal level, so saying goodbye is really hard.  So you stand around the altar and lay down your badges and you smile and you cry at the same time (Note to all who may find themselves in this position - NO MASCARA THAT MORNING!!!) and you realize that this incredible year of your life is over.  Even when you are going on to have another year, that very special year with that very special family is OVER.  I haven't had the experience yet of going through this when you don't have another year ahead of you because I went straight from a floor office into being Grand Marshal, so the first time I will face that will be when I am saying goodbye to my very own family and how much harder that will be I can't even imagine!

So you cry and say goodbye and tell yourself that you will see these people in your travels all over the state, which those of us going on can at least use as a small comfort, but it is never quite the same again.  Then you dry your eyes and go back to your room to fix yourself up a bit and change clothes to take pictures for Grand Installation.

Now Grand Installation and the taking of pictures thereof is a special challenged for the Grand Line Officers, the Grand Marshal (who is now the Associate Grand Conductress Elect) and the Grand Secretary, because we have to be quick change artists.  You see, you need to be in your next year's dress for all the pictures, then you have to change back (or this year into) your this year's dress to come in for the start of the Grand Installation, then during the recess, about an hour into the program (although I am hoping for a lot sooner), you have to change back out of the this year dress into the next year dress so that you can march in to be introduced.  It gets a little weird until you learn to stay in your Installation Dress shoes, jewelry, etc., so that all you have to toss on and off is the dress itself, although in this instance, it required a change of petticoat for many since the 2011 dress was straighter than the 2012 dress.  What a megillah!  But you do it so that everyone is happy.  One year, the WGM elect decided to spare people this rigamarole and not have the outgoing family come in at the beginning of Installation as a group so that they wouldn't have to come in and go out and there was such a folderol as you would not believe.  This was the last year for this for me though, because by tradition, the WGM and WGP elect do not go in for the opening part.  Instead, the Junior Past Grand Matron and Patron traditionally sit in the chairs.  Ostensibly this is based on some sort of "not seeing the bride before the wedding" type thing, because the WGM does not have to be in the same dress as the rest of the Grand Officers and this way, she and her dress are not seen until she is introduced for the Installation.  The best part from my perspective is no changing in and out of the clothes - Yay!!!

Next weekend I am in my home area, installing officers at Chapters nearby.

Isn't It Grand - Part Two

So when we last left our intrepid adventurers, they had survived all the way through Wednesday of Grand Chapter week.  But wait, there's more!

So Thursday morning, it's time to start the formal ceremonies of the session and to do the entry and the march in and everything.  Thursday morning was probably the easiest because the Opening is written down and you start by following it, but Thursday morning was probably the hardest because everyone has lines and no one wants to look anything but perfect in front of EVERYONE!  Of course perfection is unachievable, but the beauty of this particular ceremony is that since very few people have actually read the book on it, the number who know if you messed up is very small.  You just have to keep going and remember to die falling foward!!!

So we got through the formal opening and then into the reports and were just whizzing along.  There was a firm hand on the gavel, which I confess is something I enjoy very much and, conversely, cringe when it is lacking, so that was double plus good for me and there was a new set up for the microphones to be used for discussion where, instead of having four or so spread around the room, there was a "For" and an "Against" mike, so that you had an idea of which side people were on and the speeches could be more taking turns between the two sides, so that was a great idea.  Of course, never one to leave well enough alone, there are two little things I am thinking might make it even better.  One is that the mikes needed signs on the sides so that people coming down to speak would get to the right one (there was a little confusion on that at the beginning).  The other is to have a separate mike for questions because people with questions were going to one of the two we had and that made it confusing.  I could have stood up and cheered though, when the Chair reminded the delegates that questions start with Who, What, Where, When, How or Why, and that questions were not an opportunity to make a speech.  Yay!  Yay! Yay!  But a separate mike for the questions might have been useful.  I hope we get a chance to try that and see how it works.

Thursday afternoon we got into legislation and business items and I have to admit that even though the discussion moved along, it is very hard for me to sit there for six and seven hours in a day, so that was tough!  At work, I try to stand up and walk around at least every hour or two, but that wasn't really going to work during the session, although I did stand and walk a bit during one of the pieces of legislation and that helped some.

Thursday night was State Dinners and my Central San Joaquin Association put on a splendid Starry, Starry Night themed dinner that was formal black and white.  The decorations were great and the meal was tasty and it looked like people took the opportunity to chat and mingle, which is great.  It was also nice this year not to have to change back into my session dress to go back for an evening session like we did last year.  I will have to find a group willing to do the State Dinner next year although I am not yet sure if it will be on Thursday or Friday night.  The State Dinners have been on Friday usually, but this year, the Grand Banquet was Friday so the State Dinners moved to Thursday.  I don't know yet if they are going to try the Grand Banquet again in 2012 and am still thinking about what to do for 2013.  I know that if we decide to do it, I will need to find a chair for it.

At this point I am mixed on it.  It had great attendance and they filled the room I am told, but whatever you hold on Friday night is going to be bigger and better attended than any other time because lots of people can only take one day off work and they come in Thursday night and are there for Friday, which is when we hold elections, and so they are there to come to dinner.  I think that if you added up the attendance of all the State Dinners that are usually on Friday, the aggregate number of attendees would equal or exceed the number at the Grand Banquet, so attendance is not necessarily the measure of success here.  The bigger question is whether it is better to have one big dinner on Friday or the four separate State Dinners that night.  There are pros and cons on both sides.

The pros that I see are that you have this wonderful event with everyone participating together and with that many attendees, you can have entertainment and lots of fellowship.  The cons that I see is that in a bigger room, people get fed less quickly, there isn't room for everyone because of the limit on the size of the room and the State Dinners, which many people really enjoy when they are in the line because they are having a special event with "their group" end up less well attended because of the timing and there are things that you don't get to do that are part of the fun.  The Grand Conductress State Dinner, I discovered, is particularly handicapped because in years past, the State Dinner on Friday night was after the elections and that meant that you could introduce your man and have him tell everyone about his emblems and words and such, but since he had not yet been elected by Thursday, he could not show his stuff because it is all secret until after the elections.  I was not at the Worthy Grand Matron/Patron State Dinner, but I imagine that they had a similar problem because usually the Grand Marshal gets to talk about her new things and their meaning too, at least I got to do that in 2009 at the State Dinner, and again, they couldn't do that because the elections weren't over yet.  So that is another con on changing the nights.

Friday morning, as I mentioned, were elections and everything went smoothly and the new emblems were displayed and they are all very cool and hopefully posted soon for the membership.  Friday afternoon was Necrology, the memorial for the members that we have lost in the past year and while I would not say that it was fun, it was very solemn and I hope beautiful for those watching.  When you are involved in the ceremony, you are concentrating so hard on doing it right that you don't really have any brain power left for watching.  But it was very nice, I hope, and it was nice to be able to help perform that service for our members.

Next weekend starts the Installation Season and I will finish the Grand Chapter saga next week.  After all, all great stories are cut into three parts, right?

Isn't It Grand? - Part One

So last week was Grand Chapter and now I am one shotgun shell closer to the firing pin, Associate Grand Matron - WOW!  I'm afraid that I was bit too tired to enjoy it, so I'll have to try to get more sleep next year.  Of course I tell myself that every year, but no such luck.

My week started out with the traditional Grand Family dinner on Tuesday evening.  It is traditional for the Grand Conductress (that was me last Tuesday) and the Associate Grand Patron (he's Worthy now :-), to host the meal and my partner in crime and I had no trouble dividing the responsibilities and getting all the work done, but any time you put on an event you worry about the details and as I put together the scripting, I was certain that I would forget one of the MANY traditional things that you are supposed to do at the meal, but it all came out okay and the food was good and the bar was open, so what more can you ask for?

Wednesday is usually a practice day and since the Grand Conductress is in almost everything, that means a LOT of walking. I wore flats, but I wished very much that I had been in my sneakers because the floor of the Arena is concrete and walking on it day after day, even in flats, is just asking for feet that are pounded into mush.  At the end of Wednesday (let alone the next three days) I had to coax my feet into being feet again and not just pounded lumps of flesh that just happened to be attached to the ends of my legs.  At least next year, I do more talking and less walking.

But we had to practice all the different marches and entrances and escorts and fiddledy bits that we were going to do for the rest of the week and there is no good way to do that without actually walking through them.  I am glad we did it though, because I like to make all of my mistakes at the practice.  I pretty much never repeat my practice mistakes at the real event.  I may make new and different mistakes, but I usually remember to fix the ones I messed up at practice so it was good that I got them all out of the way.

After the practice, we had our fun night event and it was very interesting and there are pictures.  It was one of the first times I can recall that I was actually happier as a Grand Line Officer than I would have been as an appointive.  Now for me that is saying a lot because I had a great time when I was Grand Warder and it was the only year I got to be a Grand Officer and there was no paperwork and no meetings.  You know how when you are in college, you think you are busy, but you are not really busy and then you have a house and a family and a job and hobbies and you learn what busy REALLY looks like?  Well, I thought I was busy when I was Grand Warder and I was clueless!!!  Now that I have the whole traveling thing down to a machine like science, doing a year of just that would be a cake walk.  But alas, it is not to be for me. :-)

However, on Fun Night, each of the appointive officers and their escorts were doing a Project Runway sort of thing where one of them would design a costume and the other one had to model it down the runway.  The Line Officers got to be judges and actually judging was really hard, but some of the costumes were really embarrassing and I will take hard over red any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  I must say that some of the men were very brave to dress in formals, but some of them have to learn that certain kinds of high heels are harder to walk in than others and it really is a learned skill and not something that you can just do.  Even when you learn to ride a bicycle, you fall off a few times on the way and it is a long way down for tall people on high heels.  Luckily, everyone survived and a winner was chosen to great happiness and applause.

Of course when it was all over, I had paperwork to do, and had to check in on my job in the real world, which sucked up hours, but it is what it is.

Next weekend is a weekend off, and I will continue the saga of Grand Chapter next week.

Technical Difficulties (Was Tote Bags R Us)

I just found out this morning that this did not post last Tuesday when it was supposed to, so here it is now.

I am finally finished packing for Grand Chapter and am afraid that I will become known as the bag lady.  Three of us are going in one car down to the session, with our men folk following in other cars to take us home, so we have to get everything into the one car.  At least it is an SUV.  So to try to make my stuff as packable as possible, I am using tote bags and duffel bags and dress bags and suit bags and just about anything that is not an actual suitcase.  But the number of bags has gotten rather frightening.

I have packed three formal dress bags.  One bag has the formals I will wear on Thursday and Friday (yes, that's two different dresses), one bag has my cloak, (which is a heavy monster with my emblem appliqued on the back, so it will drape over my chair and make it look really cool and will keep me warm if the arena gets cold, which it usually does) and one has my 2013 Worthy Matron dress in it.  The WM dress doesn't fit me quite right yet, so it has to be altered, but I have to show it to my girls again before I give it to Kimi to fix.  There just wasn't time for a fitting before I had to show it last time and I haven't gotten it back to her, but she will be at Grand Chapter, so I will find a time on Friday or Saturday to leave it with her.  But don't worry that the bag will go home empty because I am picking up a fourth formal, my new 2012 Installation and Winter Formal, at the session and that will come home in the third bag.  I also have a suit bag with the travel suit and other nice pieces that I will wear at the session.  That is a pretty big bag, so I should only have to take the one suit bag.

So then I am on to duffel bags.  I have packed two of those, one with socks and underwear and stuff like that, and one with shoes and petticoats and make up and jewelry to go with all the other clothes.

Then we go to tote bags.  These have specific stuff in each one and I try to use the smallest one that holds all the stuff, but some of the bags are not at all small.  I have a massive Costco tote/shopping bag full of presents, stuff to sell and my 2011 carrying piece, which has to be brought back to be used as a decoration for the session.  I have my Grand Officer tote, which travels with me and has all the essentials, like Kleenex and cough drops and a Roster and maps and fans and so on.  I have my legislative tote, with a copy of our Constitution and Laws, Instruction Book, Ritual, Red Book, Robert's Rules and current legislation items.  I have Grand Line tote, filled with stuff that my soon to be Patron and I have to go over and fifty letters that have to be signed, folded, stuffed and stamped to be mailed next Monday.  I have my To Do bag, which has books (yea, like I will get a chance to read - Hah!  But hope springs eternal), my iPod in case I get to work out (equal yea right!), my GPS in case I get to go somewhere and assorted stuff like that.  And of course, I have a purse too.

And finally, we have some wheels.  I have my computer bag, which has my laptop and also all my office stuff that I need to take care of business while away from the office.  Yes, I have one of those sorts of jobs where work days gone are not really gone - sigh!  On the other hand, I get to choose my own days out, so that part is kind of cool.  But there is lots going on right now, so I fear that I will be working nights and mornings and lunch times.  Sigh again!

And I always take a portable dolly with me.  Getting into the hotel is not hard, but getting out is six kinds of nightmare.  Since everyone arrives at a different time, there are often plenty of bellmen and carts to get your stuff up, although of course with my amount of stuff, I am looking at a ten dollar tip, but hey, it's better than making three trips.  But on Sunday, lots and lots of people are leaving and even if you get on the list for a bellman and a cart, it can be past noon before you get one.  So I always take a dolly with me.  With it and a handy escort (also known as a gronker/schlepper or a Hewer of Wood and Fetcher of Water), I can usually get everything down to the car in three trips, well, maybe four, because you always take back half again as much stuff as you arrived with.  But without the dolly, you are doomed!!!!  Lots of people have portable carts that actually fold up into a clothes rack, but I am not sure that one of those will fit in my car because the bottom is bigger.  Maybe I can get the guy who makes them to make one to the dimensions of my car trunk, well okay, my escort's car trunk, because driving is an escort job. :-)

So ready or not, here I go, off to Grand Chapter in Fresno through next Sunday.

Rounding the Corner

This past weekend was the Jewish High Holidays, so there were no events and next weekend is the prep time for Grand Chapter next week, so that will be event free if you pretend that it doesn't take an entire weekend to pack for Grand Chapter, which it does.  But before I get to packing, for me there is list making to do.  There are just so many things that need to go with me to Grand Chapter that without a list, the packing would be impossible.  And there are dozens of decisions to be made too, on what will and won't go based on what I think will or won't happen.

One of the things that makes this time of year tough is keeping track of who you are and who you will be.  For example, there is a special book with the ceremonies that we do at Grand Chapter which has both an opening and a closing ceremony in it.  You are not supposed to write in these books because in theory, you turn them back in for the next Grand Family to use.  We may be going away from that, but I haven't heard so yet.  Anyway, in the Opening Ceremony, you are your current 2011 office, but the Closing Ceremony is done after Grand Installation, so for that you have to learn the lines for your 2012 office.  All of the line officers just spent two weekends in the past month (Grand Officer School and Deputy Grand Matron School) in their 2012 offices, but of course for Grand Chapter, we are still in our 2011 offices.

I have discovered that this year's transition is much easier than the past two years were.  When you are Grand Marshal, you go to the schools as Associate Grand Conductress, but strictly speaking, you haven't been elected yet, so it feels a little funny because you are Grand Line Officer without being a Grand Line Officer.  When you are AGC, you are at the schools as GC and then you go back but when you swap back and forth like that, you are doing very similar floor work and words, but on the other side of the floor, so it is really easy to get messed up on which side of the room you are on and which way you turn.  But going from the South to the West and back seems a lot easier so far.  The work is all different and the room looks totally different.

Of course for me, the room actually looks a bit familiar because I was Grand Warder way back when and the Grand Warder also sits in the West, so at the schools I was sitting about four feet to the left and two or three steps up from where I already spent a fabulous year, and the view is familiar and fun.  Of course there will be a new Grand Warder in 2012 and we reassured him that he should not feel nervous at all just because there were five Former Grand Warders in the room watching him do his work, oh no, no cause for nerves at all.  We were just trying to reassure him; that's why we kept reminding him, five of us with our eyes just on him! :-)

I tried to get him to come up and try out the chair next to me, just to see how it feels.  I am pretty sure that sitting in the AGM's chair when I was Grand Warder helped give people ideas that led to me being up there now and I just wanted to return the favor, but the GW to be was having none of that and could not be coaxed into taking the chair for a spin.  Sigh - they're making them too smart these days.

So now that I have the schools behind me, I am learning my lines for the session and looking at the floor work that we will have to do.  It is going to be just a shade trickier this year for me than last year.  To begin with, last year I just had to follow the Grand Conductress and I knew that she would know where we are going, so that was less stress right there.  And since the bulk of the escort duties were done in an informal opening session, that escort was easy if exhausting because you just went west and brought people east and went west and brought people east and went west and . . .   But this year, doing the escort during the session, you have to remember who goes in this way and who goes out that way and stuff like that there.  It is also the Official Visit of the Most Worthy Grand Matron to California, so we are expecting an extra big load of dignitaries and visitors to escort.  Lucky me!  I just hope that they left us a lot of practice time on Wednesday so we can go over all these bits and make our Grand Family proud.

Next weekend is packing weekend and then I am off to Grand Chapter Tuesday afternoon.

One Thousand Details

This past weekend was our Deputy Grand Matron School of Instruction.  This event this year is a great example of how the devil is in the details, also known as the death of a thousand cuts.

The purpose of the school is to teach our new soon to be Deputies how all the ceremonial work is done so that they can go teach it to all the people in their own Districts and in theory then everyone can learn to do the work perfectly.  Unfortunately, sometimes the rubber meets the road, and sometimes it's the window glass.

Part of the problem is that it is SO MUCH material to try to squeeze into just two and a half days.  To really master EVERYTHING seems more like a two and a half week project.  But you have what you have and there ain't no more!  (Okay, there is a brush up school, but it is only a day and really needs to be just for brushing up and snagging a few things that are done later in the year.)  It helps a lot when the Deputies come fairly well prepared and we can concentrate on those devilish details, but sometimes it is hard to know what you don't know.  After all, every member sees many of these ceremonies every meeting, but it is sort of like when you are a passenger instead of a driver.  I find that I can be a passenger going somewhere over and over again, but then when I am the driver, I don't know where that place is.  When I am the driver, I have to pay attention to the route, but when I am a passenger, not so much.  And since there is no GPS for our ceremonial work, this is flying without a parachute.

So I know that I have watched the ceremony over and over, but did I really ever pay a lot of attention to the men's parts?  After all, I was never going to hold that office, so why would I?  There are several Star Point officers whose positions I doubt I will ever hold, so while I have heard their words and seen their actions over and over, do they really sink in?  Not so much, I fear.  So no matter how much you know, until you get out on the floor and try to do the work, you may not realize how much you don't know.  In some respects the Grand Officers have it easy, although most lady Grand Officers have been Deputies, so they have done their time in the trenches.  A Grand Officer learns their part perfectly, but they only have to learn their one part (or in the case of the Grand Line, one part per year :-).  Deputies need to know them all because they need to be able to teach them all.  And that is a LOT of work.

But this school was particularly helpful for me because I was able to see what was being done and make LOTS and LOTS of notes for next year when (GASP!) I am supposed to lead one of these things (AAAAAHHH!)  There were some new things done this year that I liked and want to remember to include and there were some things that were good, but maybe we can improve a bit on them.  But since I have a memory like a sieve, I just have to make notes.  Even an hour later, I may not remember what I was thinking an hour earlier.  I think I came home with about ten pages of notes.  The bothersome part is that now I have to read my own writing and type the notes up before I forget what they say!

Next weekend there are no statewide events because of the Jewish holidays so I will be home.

Big Building - No Parking

This past weekend was the Grand Lodge session in San Francisco.  Because we do not schedule opposite Grand Lodge, and ladies are not allowed in until the Sunday morning public session, we had Saturday free.

The problem was that I had so many things to do, I of course got none of them done.  I spent the morning scrubbing the belly of one of my airplanes, the nastiest job there is in airplane maintenance (followed in a close second place by packing bearings with grease as a close second, but at least the packing grease is clean grease).  You have to get your rags and your diluted Simple Green and lie down on a creeper and then slide yourself under the plane and clean by reaching up.  One secret is to spray the rag, not the plane, so less cleaner drips on you.  Another secret is to use three rags in a reverse osmosis on each section.  You use one rag for getting the really thick black stuff off the plane, which completely saturates the rag, then you use another rag to get the residue off, and then you use a finishing rag that wipes away any little streaks or bits.  Then you scoot yourself on the creeper down to another piece of airplane and you toss the first rag in the used pile, your residue rag becomes your thick stuff off rag, your finishing rag becomes your residue rag and you start a new finishing rag, and so on and so on, over and over again.  We had an oil leak recently, so the belly was real mess.  The only plusses to the job is that it is good for triple work hours because it is such a grind, so I got five hours credit for a bit under two hours of work, and I can do it alone and unsupervised.  I have GOT to learn to do more stuff on my own!!!

Then I went target shooting with a bunch of friends who wanted confirmation that rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated and then we had a late lunch.  Then I came home and continued working on my Chapter/Lodge/Youth Group lists.

One of the ideas that we are considering for 2013 is having Masonic Family events where the Chapters invite all the local lodges and youth groups to an event for everyone together.  It can be a social event or a community service event or even a Relay For Life day.  But one of the stumbling blocks is to make sure everyone gets an invite from some Chapter or District.  So we are cutting up lists of the Chapters, Lodges and youth groups by Eastern Star District so that we can give people the groups that need to be invited in their area.  And for right now, I do mean cutting, and pasting!

Sunday morning, I went up to the Grand Lodge public ceremonies, which includes the youth groups and the Grand Lodge Installation.  What is interesting to me is that the Installation takes about two hours, same as one of ours, but the Ritual portion for Grand Lodge is a lot shorter because they install all but the seven top offices in one big group, then the next three in a group, and then the last four individually.  Grand Chapter's Installation has twelve installations, not six, and lots more floor area to cover too.  But Grand Lodge fills in the extra time pretty well.  It is a nice ceremony with some very touching and meaningful bits in it.

The thing about going up to Grand Lodge on Sunday is that there is NO parking!  People staying at the hotels can park there, but the parking garage next to the Grand Lodge gets full on Thursday and that is that for the weekend.  Taking BART doesn't work so well unless you take a cab or a cable car up the hill.  How such a big building can have so little parking confuses me.  The hall was only half full Sunday, so what do they do when it is all full?

I also enjoyed the chance to see the rooms on the Exhibit level because we are hoping to do a Ladies' Welcome Tea with goodie bags and door prizes on the Sunday of Grand Lodge in 2013.  About half the Brothers bring their ladies with them, but usually there is only an organized activity for them on Saturday, even though Grand Lodge starts on Friday afternoon.  So we are thinking it would be nice to have a welcome set up, with maps for shopping and tour info, maybe water and sunscreen wipes and kleenex and of course our trifold and maybe door prizes.  The rooms look great for that, so I hope we will be able to make it happen.

Next weekend, I am in Riverside for the Deputy Grand Matron's School of Instruction.

Left, Left, Left Right Left in Riverside

This past weekend was the revealing of the 2012 Grand Family and our Grand Officers' School of Instruction in Riverside.

The hall at which we practiced is very close to the University, so I was struck by how much is different and how few things are the same.  Granted that it has been decades since I went to college there, but it's not just that there are whole new sets of buildings, there are whole new roads and roads that are missing too!  I remember the first time I came to the school and as you drove down University Avenue towards the campus, Carillion Tower in the middle of the student plaza was the big, obvious landmark of the school.  Now, you can't even see it because there are building and athletic fields in the way and the road that used to go right or left now only goes right.  If you look right as you turn left, you can see the straight, wide pedestrian walk that marks where the road used to be.  At least many of my favorite spots are still there and my most favorite part of campus, the botanical gardens, are still there and seem to be doing well.  I spent a great many hours there, where there are cool, shady spots even when the mercury hits 100 everywhere else.

It was very exciting to get to find out who we would be traveling with next year and of course, to find out who I had to cross off my list of Grand Officer candidates because they got taken already.  I will never tell how many people that is! :-)  Most of the people chosen were people I already knew and some of them, I know very well. Yay!

So the next morning we started having School.  The purpose of the School is for the new family to perfect their Ritual work so that, as we demonstrate the work all over the State and especially to the new Deputy Grand Matrons, we will demonstrate the work correctly.  It is not too difficult to do our work well, but it is fiendishly difficult to do it perfectly, especially in terms of spacing, timing, placement and so on.  In years past, we would have run through certain parts that require all the officers to come together or leave together over and over and over, but this year, it didn't seem like we did that many run throughs so that was certainly less stressful.  It was very obvious from the beginning that all of the officers had put in a lot of time preparing before the school so that we could really concentrate on fine tuning rather than learning the work when we got there.  That was great and I will have to try to ask my family next year to do just as good a job at preparing for school as this year's bunch did.  They did great on that!

So now that all the choices are known, my man and I have to start looking at creating our own short list of candidates.  Oh boy!  As soon as Grand Chapter is over, we get to send out a letter asking the Past Grands for recommendations though, so I hope we get a lot of good ones, especially for the Deputy Grand Matrons.  I was told that you don't ask for these names until after Grand Chapter so I have a stack of letters that will go in just a few weeks.  How exciting!

Next weekend, I am going up to San Francisco for Grand Lodge.

Bittersweet Chocolate

This past weekend was the joint reception for the Worthy Grand Matron and Worthy Grand Patron, an event that is usually considered the last big hurrah of an Eastern Star year, leaving only the Grand Chapter session itself to close out 2011.  The Grand Officers were in chocolate brown matching formals in honor of our WGM and WGP.

September and October are interesting sort of blended months for Grand Line Officers.  We are all, of course, still holding our 2011 offices, but next weekend, we will meet our 2012 Grand Family and have a school of instruction on our soon to be new offices that we will hold after Grand Installation next month.  And we will also have a school of instruction for the soon to be 2012 Deputy Grand Matrons, where we will show the work of our next year offices.  But we are still this year's officers!  It feels sort of weird every year at this time.

I call it bittersweet because it is hard to say good bye each year to your family and start learning to be part of a new family.  Even though you didn't choose these Sisters and Brothers, and even though in many years, they don't consider you to "really" be part of "their family" (and boy does this vary WIDELY from year to year!!), you've traveled with them for a year, shared happy times and hardships with them, and gotten to know them and now they are leaving and you are moving on to make new friends with a new group.  I have made special friendships out of each of my years of service so far and have missed those friends each time the year turns.

It is particularly hard for me because I really am very shy around strangers.  No one believes me when I tell them that, but it is true.  It takes me a while to get used to new people and I am terrible with learning names so that takes me a while too.  In fact, it is one of the things that I try to spend serious amounts of time at Grand Officer School doing, learning the names of all the new officers and escorts.  It is also hard because lots more people know my name than I know theirs.  I am great with faces and I can look at a person and know that I know them and I can often remember when I met them and sometimes even where we were or what they were wearing at the time, but the names just don't stick and since it is awkward not to remember people's names, strangers are hard for me.  I work at it every day at every event, to get out there and shake hands and meet strangers, but it is tough.  Maybe that is why I like events with meals, because if I am sitting at a table with people, I have time to get to know them and get their names in my head.

The irony of the idea of the reception as the last hurrah is that the thing that almost everyone remembers the most about a Worthy Grand Matron is how smoothly her session went, even though it is the very last thing we do.  People forget the receptions but the remember the session. If you had a smooth session, they remember you as doing a great job and if you have a rocky session, then not so much.

The joint reception is a "recent" (in Eastern Star terms where you need twenty years to be "not recent") innovation, primarily designed I believe, to save travel for the WMs and WPs and to save money for the Chapters of the WGM and WGP.  It used to be in California, unlike other states, that wives and husbands were discouraged from going to the East in their Chapter together because that way there were two couples to share the time and the work.  When it was that way, the WPs and their spouses could go to the WGP reception and the WMs and their spouses could go to the WGMs reception.  But in recent times, there have been so many couples going to the East together, that separate receptions meant they had to travel twice instead of once.

I did consider trying something new here and having a WGP reception in the South, which the southern WMs and WPs would  attend, and a WGM reception in the North, which the northern WMs and WPs would attend, but once I started looking at the 2013 calendar, I discovered that there weren't two weekends available to use so it would have to be a joint reception because there was only one Saturday open.  Ah well!

Next weekend, I will be in Riverside, finding out who will be in the 2012 Grand Family.

New England Style

This past weekend, since there were no events on the Grand Chapter calendar, I was able to attend the wedding of my cousin which was held in Connecticut.  A long time ago I lived in Massachussetts and my father was actually raised a Mason there and had his Shrine membership there as well, all the years until he passed away, but I haven't been back to any New England state in the past twenty years or so.  Mostly, I remember how there are two or three nice weeks in the spring and two or three nice weeks in the fall and the rest of the time the weather is unpleasant for one reason or another, especially to California weather wimps like me.

Yes, there was a time when I would stride happily down the snow lined sidewalks in a T-shirt and jeans, but those days are gone and not coming back.  Now I want the weather to be higher than 60 and less than 85 at all times, with rain only while I am indoors and don't have to be out in it, preferably from midnight to 6:00 am so that it has dried out by the time I go outside, and snow is something that I love to see on the mountain tops because it makes them so pretty from a distance.  I like the relative humidity to be high enough that I don't feel dried out but low enough that I don't feel like I just stepped into the bathroom after someone took a hot shower for thirty minutes without the window open or the ceiling fan going.  Okay, I know how to handle weather outside of those conditions, but I also know how to handle snakebites and poison oak - that doesn't mean I want to have to deal with those things, okay?  So most of the time weather in the San Francisco Bay Area stays within parameters and most of the time in New England, the weather is outside of parameters.  I did get lucky, I am told however, because it didn't rain until the day I was leaving and it lulled long enough for me to get in and out of the rental car and into the airport, so four days and no rain I had to be out in.  Yay!

As long as I was out there visiting, I made arrangements to visit with my counterpart, the lady who will be serving as Worthy Grand Matron in Connecticut when I am serving in California.  That was totally cool.  It was a lot of fun to learn how they do things differently there and of course, some of why they can.  To begin with, the whole state is only about two hours from corner to corner, so by California measures, every event is local.  They have only thirty Chapters, so they can make an Official Visit to each one and usually those visits are during the week on the Chapters regular meeting night, with a couple of exceptions for Chapters that meet in places where the parking would be difficult.  The entire Grand Family makes all the visits, possible because everything is local, and they seldom if ever need to stay in a hotel room.  That part sounded pretty cool.

However, the less cool part was that at these visits, the Chapter does the entire Initiation ceremony and demonstrates balloting procedures on top of Opening, Closing and regular Chapter business, plus the WGM has to review the books and records of the Chapter, so these visits can take three hours or more and all on a work night, so those who work have to drive an hour home and then go to work the next morning.  They try not to schedule these things on consecutive days, but that length of visit would tire me out completely.  But I understand why they do it.  They don't have districts and deputies there, so the Worthy Grand Matron has to do herself all the inspecting and viewing that we have our Deputies perform.  Yay for Deputies!!!

Another thing I found interesting there was that they introduce their legislation at their Grand Chapter session and it then lies over for a whole year before being voted on at the following year's session.  Then, after the session when it was introduced, the WGM has three informational meetings to discuss the items and the reasoning behind them.  Of course that is more practical when anyone in the state can probably get to all three meetings, so they can pick based on schedule.  We have trouble covering the whole state in ten to twelve Transitionals or Instructionals and even then we can't get to everywhere.

I also found out that the Grand Line officers have a New England Association where the six states, and a couple of Candian provinces also, get together at intervals to discuss problems and issues and plans, just as we do in some areas of the state.  They get to visit each other's sessions and share ideas.  That would be nice, but not practical when the entire six state area would fit in California with land leftover.  Still it was interesting to hear about.

All in all, visiting with my counterpart was totally awesome and it really gives a person a great opportunity to see how differerently our governing documents can be interpreted and implemented.  They started from the same place, but ended up somewhere totally different and maybe we need to remember sometimes that different does not equal bad.

Next weekend, I will be in Fresno for lots of stuff.

A Western Ride Into the Sunset

This past weekend I attended the last two receptions of the year for Appointive Grand Officers.

Saturday morning was supposed to be a rafting trip, but it got cancelled because they said that the water was too high and fast.  I had really looked forward to going since I hadn't been on a rafting trip since 2007.  Knowing that I was going to be a Grand Officer in 2008 (and thinking that it was only going to be one year, so I wanted to go to EVERYTHING), I figured that if I wanted a vacation in 2007-2008, I should go early.  So in May 2007, I took a week off and rafted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, the whole way from Lee's Ferry to Lake Mead.  The River Guide and my little note book of the days of the journey sit here in my office and occasionally I look at these mementos of the days when I could take a week's vacation and go somewhere that was not an Eastern Star event, ah, the good old days! :-)

Anyway, I had bought all new gear for the Grand Canyon, including water shoes and water socks and water pants and even water panties, an adventuring vest (that's a big vest with lots of pockets with velcro and zippers that is actually big enough to wear on the outside of your life vest so you can use the pockets), adventure pants (again lots of pockets/full length, but with zippers so you can turn them into knee shorts), a new Gortex hat and even new floats for my glasses.  If you wear glasses and you go river rafting you want to have a string to hold them on that has little floats on it so if they do get knocked off you, they will float to the surface and you can usually find them.

So I spent all that money and haven't had a chance to use the gear since 2007, and here was this great opportunity, but I guess some of the people who signed up for the trip weren't quite as happy about faster, deeper water than some of us adreneline junkies appreciate and since they might actually get wet, they didn't want to go.  Okay, maybe some of the ones who don't know how to swim might just have a teeny, tiny bit of basis for their fear, but if you are wearing a life vest, and you always should when white water rafting, then you really have to work at it to drown.  Still, I suppose better safe than sorry, but my gear was not happy at being put away again unused.  It's still growling at me from the drawer. :-)

So instead of rafting, I went to a Western wear shop near my house and got new Western boots and a new hat.  I have riding boots, hiking boots, dress boots and even tall leather boots with spiky heels, a left over from my more wild and well spent youth (okay, I have two pairs, one in white and one in black, but who's counting? ), but until now have never owned a pair of Western boots since I am really not into the Western thing.  Even when I go riding, whether horses or motorcycles, I wear my riding boots, which are tough and practical, tall enough and big enough that my pant legs can tuck in them without buying special book cut jeans.

But I was thinking about Western stuff because the Saturday reception was a Western theme and that got me to thinking about next year.  See, next year's fun emblem is a horse and even though I think it is a race horse and not really an every day riding type horse and even though you don't wear Western wear to horse races (Western wear is for rodeos, bronco and bull riding and stuff like that, but horse races are more genteel), I have a funny feeling that there will be people next year inspired to do Western themed things next year, so I thought, what the heck, let's make a little costume investment here and buy the darn boots and hat.  Of course, since I was spending money, it seemed only fair that my escort do likewise, so he had to get boots and a hat and Western shirt too, so that did make me feel better. :-)

So now I am all equipped for your basic Western event, already possessing a couple of shirts and skirts and some jeans.  Of course, I also have leather for my hand guns, but they tend to frown on that level of authenticity.  I had to explain that to my escort for next year.  He got a sad face when I mentioned it.  And I got to wear my new duds Saturday night.  The reception was cool, but the room was HOT!!!  I went to visit with members sitting outside a couple of times, just to cool off a bit before I completely melted.  And at one point I scored an ice cold water bottle which felt great on the back of my neck.  Of course I also drank the water, since I do believe that you should consume what you hunt. :-)  The reception folk had made these totally awesome WANTED posters with the pictures of all the Grand Officers on them, so I got to take that home and I will have to find a great spot for it.  It was a wonderful souvenir.

The next day, the reception had a sunset theme, partially because it was the last appointive's reception and it now feels like we are winding down towards the end of this year.  We have only the WGM/WGP reception in a couple of weeks and then Grand Chapter as 2011 events and soon enough, we will know our 2012 family and, for those of us going on, have a bunch of 2012 things to do.  I am trying to get everything that I can possibly get done early done so that the decks are more clear for after Grand Chapter, when the thousand things you can't do early, like sending letters asking the Past Grands for recommendations for Grand Officers and Deputies, have to be done and done quickly.

Next weekend I am going to Connecticut for my cousin's wedding, but I am going to try to have lunch with my counterpart there, the lady in my same spot for the Grand Chapter of Connecticut.

Picnics and Picnic Food

This past weekend was Jam and Jelly Day at the Masonic Home again and I am very pleased to be able to say that they managed to put us inside the room this time so we could hear the introductory remarks and welcome speeches.  We were packed like sardines, hip to hip, but at least we were in the room.  Yay!  The only tricky part was when you had to turn, back towards the door, for example, when the flag came in, or towards the stage to acknowledge the people being introduced up there.  Since we were seated in chairs at the base of the stage facing out and packed tight enough that you could decide if you liked the texture of your neighbor's garments while you sat there, turning required that everyone do it at the same time and at the same rate.  This is tricky when the people on either side of you are not in sync.  I hope no one thought I was being too forward when I turned.

As always, my favorite part is the picnic style lunch with the members of the local area.  Unfortunately, before we got to that stage, we had to get through the death of a thousand introductions.  This time, being in the room, I was able to get some pretty good data on the amount of time spent on each part of the process.  The self introductions were still pretty useless in terms of hearing and seeing, but they didn't take too long this time.  However, the part where we introduce the Residents who were serving as our escorts for the day took almost forty-five minutes.  That meant that from the time we were called to order until the time the first speaker started her remarks was an hour and a half.  The remarks and closing were actually very nicely done, fun and short, so the program was over in a touch under two hours and then we could go find out people and set up to eat.  That is not a terrible amount of time except that we are then expect to sit for another hour to hour and a half for the meal and added all up together, that's three to three and a half hours of sitting and that is way too much for a number of the Residents who were participating, let alone for those of us who just can't sit that long.

So I asked some of the people putting on the program what they thought about cutting out the Resident escort introductions and instead, having the Worthy Grand Matron introduce those Residents during her Special Introductions and then making sure that each Resident got to sit with her or his Grand Officer during the meal time so that they could have a nice chat and visit.  I was told that the Residents just love the program and we couldn't possibly cut that part.  But to me, it sounded like a bit of an automatic answer, the sort of answer that someone told this person who told that person, who is now telling it to me with no actual data.

So, to check on this, I asked some of the Residents who were at the lunch and they told me that the part they love was getting to sit with the Grand Officers and having lunch with them and that while they liked being introduced, they didn't like the length of the program at all.  In fact, a couple of the residents had to go back to their rooms very shortly after we sat for lunch because they were so tired and just couldn't sit any longer.  My own escort, who was a lovely lady of 94, felt bad because she wanted to go back to her room when we had just started eating because she was tired from all the sitting, but she didn't want me to feel slighted.  I of course told her that she should go rest and that I was happiest if she did what made her feel the best and she went back to her room after a nice hug and goodbye.  But there is no doubt in my mind that she would have rather skipped the introductions and then gotten to spend that forty-five minutes sitting with us and chatting at lunch with her visitors.

So I am wondering if we should try cutting the long intros, add the short intros, get the program down to an hour and then have more time for lunch and socializing.  The funniest thing I noted about the conversations on this topic is that, on the next day, when we were at another event in the same area, I brought up the question of dropping the Resident introductions again with some of the other local members.  I was again told that, because the Residents loved that part so much, we couldn't possibly drop that part.  Then, these same members told me that they either don't attend the event at all, or in one case they only attend when they are in a leadership position in their Chapter out of a sense of duty, because it is so long and boring, so since it is no fun, they don't come.  Sounds like a situation that needs a little reviewing to me.

The next day was an area event that was a picnic in the park.  I had another day of fabulous food, which didn't help my scale any come Monday morning, but at least I gained the half pound in a good cause.  There were some interesting picnic games and lots of wonderful fellowship.

Next weekend, I will be in Knight's Ferry, Oakdale and Sacramento.

Stuck In Committee

This past weekend, I attended two more receptions and during the drives, worked on committee letters.

The Committee letters are turning out to be a lot of work, which would seem surprising when all of these committees have been in existences for years and you would think that their duties and the expectations for their members would be well established.  But I have discovered that it is not that simple.

To begin with, over the years, some committees have come up with pretty good ways of fulfilling their duties to make their work and their interactions with other members and the Grand Chapter session smooth and relatively pain free.  Unfortunately, those processes are not written down anywhere, so sometimes when the composition of the committee turns over (since some committees only serve for one year and can be replaced in their entirety if the WGM so desires) the new people don't know how anything is done and then they are left floundering around and the results are seriously less than satisfactory.

Then there are some committees where they used to have a stated purpose and/or process, but over the years, the committee stopped doing its purpose so when people come on the committee, they seem to have no idea what to do or what is expected of them.  Some of these committees are simply obsolete and should be cut down to little or nothing, but since it takes legislation to do that, Associate Grand Matrons keep having to find people to fill the slots required by our Constitution and Laws, even though the people appointed have nothing to do.

And then there are some committees where their work for the year is supposed to be chosen by the Worthy Grand Matron, but to be able to tell the committee members what that work will be at the time that they are asked to join the committee requires knowing what you are going to want a year later, since it is a strict rule that committee members are only asked in the year before their service begins.  This year, for example, I have asked a dozen or so people to serve because their service starts in 2012 as Co-Chairs and then they will be my Chairs in 2013.  But I will not be asking people whose service starts with my Grand Installation until next spring/summer.  However, that is no reason that I can't get the meat of the letters done now, when I have just a teensy, tiny bit less to do than the mountain of work that occurs in the AGM year, doing the calendar, getting Grand Officers and getting Deputies lined up.  So for those committees, you are evidently expected to dream up projects for them so they have something to do.

So as we spend hours and hours driving down the road, my AGP to be and I have been discussing what we will want various committees to do in addition to their stated duties in our Constitution and trying to put that discussion into writing.  On a few of the Committees that has been relatively easy because one of us has served on them and have a clear idea of how we would like to see them operate.  But on some of them, especially the ones where we are supposed to make up our own projects for them, it can be quite the challenge.  It is also hard sometimes to try to put it in writing in a way that will make sense to the people that will be getting the letters with these inserts in them.  I am glad that we've gotten started on talking all this out because I have a feeling that it is going to take us all winter to get these done so that they will be ready to go out next year when they should.

Of course, discussing these committee things also leads my AGP and me to discussions about lots of other topics, so it also seems that for every task we complete, three more pop up.  I never knew that the job was such a Hydra.  I guess we are going to have to find someone with a handy torch, to keep the heads from continuing to multiply.

Next weekend, I will be in Union City and Danville.

Roses and Togas

This past weekend were two more receptions for appointive officers and they were truly diverse.

We started on Saturday with a trip to the Grand Ole Opry, a formal reception with a lovely barbecue dinner and a country western band for entertainment.  It turns out that the last trip the honored member took with her husband before he died was to the Grand Ole Opry and having that theme was a tribute.  There was no doubt that it was very important and meaningful for the honoree, but I must admit that it is hard to watch your honoree cry when you're trying to please them.  You just have to remember that even happy memories can be bittersweet sometimes.  But there were many more and plenty of happy moments and surprises too.

One thing that caused an interesting conversation for me later was that the singers did a heavy gospel number when the Bible was brought in for the prayer.  Ironically, this particular song, heavy on the saviour and the saving stuff, didn't bother me in the slightest, because it was a reception for a particular person and I feel very strongly that as long as we stay this side of good taste and decency, the music at a reception should be what the honored member wants.  Like a wedding, the bride should have what she wants, within reasonable boundaries of common sense and good taste.  So this song was meaning neutral for me because while it carried no particular meaningfulness for me, I was glad for the honoree if she was getting what she wanted. 

(As a side note, when the Bible was carried in for my reception, the song coming in was a Jewish High Holiday song that is the favorite of a dear friend of mine and the going out song for the Bible was Adon Olam, which is my favorite song from the Sabbath liturgy.  I am sure that few if any people recognized the songs, played without words, but I liked them and they are great pieces of music.)

So the irony was that after the reception was over, a gentleman that I do not know, but who I assume was Jewish because he was wearing a Chai, which means Life in Hebrew, was unhappy and confused because he thought that Masonic principles were more ecumenical and he was made uncomfortable by the VERY Christian song.  But he was comforted by reassurances that this particular song was done just for this special member, for her special day and that the Order as a whole is supposed to be following Masonic principles of embracing a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being without requiring or affiliating to a particular religious denomination or sect.

This was weird for me because I am not comfortable with some things that happen at OVs, which are supposed to be Chapter meetings, like gospel songs heavy on the saving, groups that form a cross to carry the Bible and/or emblems in and out, escorting a Christian flag, and so on.  There are some Chapters that do these things and I generally just don't visit those.  I totally respect the right of the members to do those things in their own Chapter meeting and I always encourage people to check out two or three Chapters if they can, to find the right one for them.  But at the Official Visit, when you have lots of people from all over and they are all different religious beliefs, I prefer sticking to the ecumenical, non-sectarian stuff.

After the formality and solemnity of Saturday night, we all got a little whiplash attending Sunday's reception with its Delta House/Animal House/Toga Party theme.  The members of the honored member's Chapter were dressed up in all variety of Roman wear, some tunics, some togas, some dresses, oh my!  Since this reception was for a wild and crazy guy, it was a wild and crazy reception.  I must say that I hope no one actually drank all the cheap Coors Light and Budweiser beer that came out of the cans they put up for decorations because there were lots of cans on strings around the room.  The speeches were funny and the music cute too.  We were treated to a lovely lip sync rendition of Shout, complete with dancing and jumping and if in my entire life, I never see another guy in a brightly colored plaid jacket with pink pants and a pink tie, I think that will be okay because some things should only be experienced once. :-)

Next weekend, I am in Santa Rosa and Napa.

A Dog and Pony Show

This past weekend was the traditional Associate Matron/Associate Patron workshop.  This workshop is held every year by the Associate Grand Matron and Associate Grand Patron for their local officers as an opportunity to provide helpful information for the members who are soon to be the leaders in their Chapters and for the AGM and the AGP to roll out their plans and programs for the coming year.

This year it was held at a hotel, with a social on Friday night, and the program on Saturday and Sunday until just before lunch time.  The social was a fun event with some lovely ice breakers and fun games.  After I checked into the hotel, I wandered down to find registration and the social.  When I walked in the room where the social was going on, I was mobbed by people, all of whom were trying to hand me green pieces of paper and writing implements.  At first I wondered if in the dim light, I resembled somebody famous because I have never walked in a room and been mobbed for my autograph before.  It was very exciting in a claustrophobic sort of way.  But it turns out that one of the party games was one of those "Find a person who . . . " things with prizes for getting all the boxes filled and the middle box of the bottom row was "a person with a pilot's license" which most of the members know includes me.  I know that there were at least two other people in the room with pilot's licenses, but evidently they have kept it quieter than me because they weren't mobbed.  So I spent the first fifteen minutes of the social signing pieces of green paper.  One of my friends suggested as a joke that since going up the Grand Line is so expensive, I should have charged for my autograph.  After all, the famous people do. :-)

The next morning, I attended the workshop sessions to see what was presented and make some notes about what I might want to repeat next year and what I might want to change a bit.  It was great to see the material and get some ideas on paper.  There were a couple of bits that I had seen before, but some of them you always enjoy anyway, like seeing the FISH video.  And there were a couple of bits that were lengthened or shortened from what I had seen before and it was very useful to see those other versions and get a sense of some of the available options.

The hardest part, it seems to me, is that there is so much to cover and so little time to get to it all.  You can't make people sit and listen for too long without losing them completely, but at the same time, you have all this stuff that they are going to need and all this other stuff that you want them to have and you just have to find a way to balance it all out.

On Saturday night, there was a Masonic education segment that was facilitated by my AGP-designee.  Of course, he had volunteered to do this before everyone knew that he was going to be my guy.  He has a lot of experience at this and always does a great job, but I am pretty certain that the discussion did not go quite the way that he was expecting it to go.  In fact, I am pretty sure that you would have needed a serious four wheel drive to follow that twisty, convoluted conversation path.  Yep, a serious four wheel drive with monster shocks and a raised cab because that session went seriously off the beaten path.  I suspect that there will never again be a Masonic education discussion quite like that one EVER!

Sunday morning, we got to find out the project that was chosen for next year and enjoyed an explanation of the cause and how we can help disabled veterans, which sounds very cool and I can't wait to see how it goes next year.  There are also going to be some fundraiser evenings that will be put on like USO shows and I am looking forward to attending those.  Because I love my Sisters and Brothers, I will not be a participant because we don't want to scare off the members.

Next weekend, I am in San Diego and Thousand Oaks.

And a Riverboat Sailing to Christmas

This past weekend started out with the Superior Association Event, which began with lunch on a, you guessed it, riverboat, the Delta King.  For a state that is mostly desert, I am getting on a lot of river boats this summer.

We had a lovely lunch in the boat, which is floating on the river as it goes through Old Sacramento and then we went over to the California Railroad Museum before shopping on the streets of Old Sacramento.  The Railroad Museum, which I am told is the largest one in the world, was pretty amazing.  They have a lot of fully restored train cars, including engines, dining cars, freight cars and a caboose or two.  Some of them are bigger than others, but they are all LARGE!  Which means that Westerns are ruined for me for ever because looking up at the size of some of these monsters, I can tell that you'd break a leg or an ankle jumping off the thing while it was standing still, let alone while it was moving.  And running along the top in cowboy boots - I don't think so!  Traditional cowboy boots of the era had leather soles, which are smooth and slick, so running along a moving train, that rattles and sways from side to side and is made of polished wood or metal, with a curve in it from the top peak down to where it meets the side of the train - not happening!  Nice thought, try again!  I don't know that you could run along the top of the thing in cowboy boots while it isn't moving.  And jumping off, well, I suppose we all have to die sometime, but that's not the way I would choose.  If you are lucky, you break something that kills you right away.  But more often than not, it looks like you would just break something painful that wouldn't kill you, so you'd just get to lie there and suffer.  Not a good idea at all!  So train running and jumping is not only off my list of things to do in this lifetime (okay, it was never really on there in the first place. :-), but I don't think I will ever be able to suspend disbelief watching a Western again.  Alas, another lovely illusion shattered by the experiences of going up the Grand Line.

The item that particularly caught my eye in the train museum was a golden spike, called the Lost Spike, that is a twin to the Last Spike that was driven in to finish the Transcontinental Railroad and a picture and painting that went along with it.  The first fascinating thing is that the picture of the spike being driven doesn't have all the rich, important people standing in carefully placed positions as the spike goes it.  It's got a bunch of tired railroad workers standing around while the thing got driven in place, with some important people mixed in the crowd.  But the commissioned painting of the event has all the important people in lovely, perfect positions, more important people bigger and in front of course, and you can see everyone and they are all nice and shiny clean too.  The painting is famous, the photo far less so, and that would be what one would expect since even in the 1800s, PR people evidently knew how to get the most bang for their buck.

The Lost Spike itself is on display and was evidently picked up by the museum only in 2005.  There is a plaque explaining that the Last Spike was engraved hastily and had the wrong date on it (May 8) because that is the day that they thought it would go in, although it really went in on May 10, and the engraving on the Last Spike was not as neat and fancy as the Lost Spike because the Lost Spike was engraved after the fact and with all the time in the world.  I particularly liked the inscription, common to both of them, "May God continue the unity of our Country, as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world.  May 10, 1867.

After the Superior Event in San Francisco, I drove back to San Jose to attend an Emerald City Lights themed reception for our Grand Green Star Point Officer.  The reception was done in a modified formal style, sort of like my own in that there were introductions but not escorting and no presentations.  That shortened the program part to an hour which gave us time for a lovely half an hour of music and dance entertainment before going in for refreshments.  The songs and dances were very nice and everyone enjoyed them.

After the reception, I engaged in an old tradition that I happen to like, that of offering hospitality to the Grand Family when they are in your area.  This is a tradition that used to be more universal in Grand Families, but which has fallen off in more recent times.  It used to be that when the Grand Family was in the local area of one of the Grand Officers, the local would have everyone over for a meal or drinks or just some social time.  If your home was too small for everyone, you could also have them out at a local restaurant or bar.  I know that with times being tougher, this added expense can be hard for some and with a schedule that is squeezed into weekends, times can also be hard to find, but I have always liked this tradition because it gives everyone some social down time when it is just the Family, to talk and enjoy each other's company without detracting from member time as would happen if the Family socialized at an event.  Most of the Family was able to make it over to my house and I enjoyed having them.  I think I've hooked a couple of them on my homemade fruit cordials. :-)

On Sunday, it was back up to Richmond for a Blue Christmas reception, which was done in the full, traditional style, with escort and presentations and everything.  It was a lovely afternoon with the most amazing decorations.  I don't know if I have ever seen so many blue Christmas decorations ever.  I don't think I knew there were so many in existence.  And they all looked great!

I couldn't help but notice though, that where the night before, the modified program was over, including speeches, in about an hour, followed by a half an hour of entertainment and then a social hour, the full, traditional style, took and hour and ten minutes to get through all the preliminaries and escort before the Worthy Patron took the gavel to start the speeches, and the speeches and presentations took us to a full two hours of program.  While I feel very strongly that a reception is a very personal thing and, like a wedding, an honored member should have what they want, within reasonable boundaries of cost and decorum, I wonder as a general idea how much is added or subtracted by the member experience by these changes.  Of course, since I can't sit for great lengths of time with pain, I am probably somewhat biased on this issue.

Next weekend, I am in Fresno for the AM/AP workshop.