Because We've Always Done It That Way

This weekend was a great time for doing and planning and I believe that we accomplished a whole lot that will be great for our Order in the long term. In doing what we did and starting our planning process and in trying to look at how we are going to address the needs of our members, the biggest "problem" with trying new things seems to have been summed up in a series of questions and answers that would make Abbott and Costello drop their jaws with admiration. The bit goes like this: First Question: Why do we have to do it that way? First Answer: Because We've Always Done It That Way. Second Question: Do you why we do it that way? Second Answer: Well, no, but we've always done it that way. Third Question: Well, if we don't know why we do it that way, then why don't we try something new? Third Answer: Because your new way will never work. Fourth Question: How do you know that the new way won't work? Fourth Answer: Because we've never done it that way. I am not an advocate to change just for change's sake. I am a true believer that if it ain't broke don't fix it. (Of course I also like to believe that all problems can be solved with WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use the WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use the duct tape. Voila!) But I also feel that "because we've always done it that way" is an exceedingly silly reason by itself, UNLESS you can follow up that statement with "and it works very well for ourselves, our local groups and our state organization." If you've got the follow up, then no change is needed. Otherwise, Ya Got Trouble in River City. Of course part of the problem is that people don't agree on the problem. And maybe that is where the problem starts. (How's that for confusing?) If we can't agree on what is broken, how could we possibly agree on how to fix it? In just about any group, if you ask ten people what the biggest problems or most important priorities might be, you will probably get ten different answers. And let's be realistic - a committee of ten has trouble deciding when or where to have dinner, let alone anything more important. It takes a great deal of effort on everyone's part to come together and agree on a course of action and it only happens when everyone in the group really wants to work together and come to a compromise. Personally, I am very happy to say that I think we did some of that this weekend and I hope we will do it a lot more. It took a great deal of effort and trust and even love on the part of a great group of people, who really rose to the challenge and brought things together in a positive way. And it is things like that which give me hope and happiness for our future. Next weekend, I will be in West Sacramento, Elk Grove, Sacramento and Chowchilla.

Mixed Messages

Another weekend of Ritual instruction is behind us, with more to come, and I find myself wondering if we are getting mixed messages on what people want. I realize that in a time of transition, everything can be a bit unsettling, but I wonder if we are having the Nielsen problem. I don't know how many people remember the process used by the Nielsen raters to rate TV viewership and I don't know if it has changed over the decades, but it used to be that there were permanent Nielsen households who had little boxes attached to their TVs that automatically recorded what channels were watched on those TVs throughout the day. And then, to check the demographics of who was watching what and to make sure that the box sample was being truly representative of the American audience, a random sampling of households got little diary books to fill out on what they watched and which person in the household watched what program. I remember when I was in grade school that our house got one of those paper diary things to do. Well, the Nielsen problem was that when people were writing in the little paper diary, they could fudge their responses to what they thought looked good. They could fail to write down that they were watching soap operas and they could boost their claimed amount of educational television. While I of course would never fail to report that I watch Ace of Cakes and Chopped, and Mythbusters, but they might be okay because that's science, and I would never claim to have watched more symphony music than I really watched (zero, I'm afraid, for this past year), other, less scrupulous people might want to look better and tweak both how much they watch and what they watch. With the boxes as a check, it was easy to see how the swing went. So Nielsen just figured in some correcting factors based on the data and was able to proceed on its merry way. So how do we have the Nielsen problem? Well, as a Grand Line Officer, I hear a lot about how important instruction in our Ritual and ceremonies is to the members and how vital and important it is that the Grand Officers as a group do that instruction so that the members can see them perform and meet with them afterwards, and I hear how people missed that instruction in 2007 to 2009, when it wasn't done, but then we hold these things and hardly anyone shows up, compared to the number of people who tell us how important and vital it is and compared to the number of Chapters and officers in the area. This weekend was way, way better than before on attendance, but the events so far were in pretty populated areas with lots of Chapters in them and with eighteen officers in each Chapter, or even sixteen if you don't count the person at the piano and the guy outside the door as needing very much instruction, how do you have thirty chapters in an area and sixty people show up? Or even 120 people? Granted, the room we were in this last weekend wouldn't have held too many more people unless half of them breathed in when the other half breathed out, so not having more was probably a good thing. But it is harder to feel good about the time and the travel expense when you've got thirty people from all over the state coming to teach and only sixty people show up. It is very disheartening when everyone goes to break out groups and you are the Grand Officer who has no one to meet with or just one person. That happened to me lots when I was an appointive Grand Officer. Please don't misunderstand me on this. Having a system for teaching our work and our ceremonies is a good thing and every person who does better because of our event is an achievement. I may have some ideas on some format change things, but everyone has their own ideas on how to teach. And I am very, very happy that each of the people who came did so and I actually have had a great turnout of my own officers, but line officers usually are the biggest segment that come to these things and we can always use the extra time to talk with all of our local people because there is always a lot to do or say. So on a personal level, each of the events was great and my girls learned a lot and had a good time. But on an overall level, why do so many people say how important it is and then not show up? Is there any chance that people are saying what they think should be said, or perhaps even feel that everyone else needs instruction because those others don't perform very well but the person expressing the opinion doesn't need to come themselves because of course their work is perfect? We have a few more of these to do and I hope that perhaps we are just starting the year a little slowly and more people will come as we move forward. So far our numbers are trending up and I hope it keeps going that way. But if you build it and they don't come, what do you do? That is the question for the future. Next weekend I will be in South Pasadena and Arcadia.

The High Desert

One of the changes in Las Vegas that I have noticed over the past twenty or so years is that it used to get cold at night. Even in the summer, it used to get cold at night and when I would go visit there, I would have to remember to take a coat. But as more and more houses have been put in, as more swimming pools, misters and fountains have put more and more humidity in the air out there, and as more of Clarke County has gotten paved with heat holding asphalt, it now stays warm in the night, which may seem normal for those of you on the wrong side of the Rockies, but is darned weird for the West. I always wondered if there was a climate change component to that shift, but this past weekend I discovered that it does still get cold in the high desert and that it is nice to have a coat to put on, even if you felt like a darned fool wearing it when you got off the plane. We flew down to Burbank to start off the weekend and as I stepped off the plane in my heavy coat, out into the lovely 76 degree sunny day, yes, I indeed felt like an idiot. The worst part is that I had so many bags and wheels and things, that I couldn't take the darn coat off until after we got our luggage and then went all the way to the rental car lobby, down at the other end of the airport. I am sure that others feared for my sanity. However, we had plenty of time to cool off because even though my escort had reserved her car through Hertz and done the on line check in thing, with its guaranteed ten minutes and you are on the road nonsense, we discovered that they didn't have a car ready for us, that they wanted to charge us for an upgrade and that if we didn't want to pay for the upgrade, we'd have to wait half an hour or more until the car was ready. Some guarantee, yes? I can guarantee we'll use a different car company next time unless they give us some redress for this. See, guarantees do work. :-) So we finally get in the car and headed off into the desert. Now I realize that this is a time honored California tradition, but most people doing it are looking for gold, not a Starbucks. We were way early because in Los Angeles, it seems like your choices are way early or way late. I have not yet figured out the super secret combination of events that let's you just be on time. We drive out to Ridgecrest and get there by 4:30 or so, needing to be there by 7:00 pm. Of course, I figure that if we'd left at 4:30, we'd have hit traffic and been late, so oh well. Down the street from our destination was a Starbucks, so we passed the time going through the calendar and getting caught up on Thank You notes and the next thing you know, it's time to go. This helped me figure out why Past Grand Matrons and Patrons always seem to give you Starbucks cards as your visiting gift. They know that you will need to go there, either to hang out when you are early or to have something to drink to keep you awake, or get you awake, for those early morning and late night drives. AH HA!! Go Starbucks cards!! Anyway, we went down to the event and I got to see a lot of really wonderful people. I have said it before, but it bears repeating, that these wonderful folk from out in the desert and up 395 in Eastern California are some of the most friendly, kind and generous people you will ever have the pleasure to meet. We had a lovely Mexican meal catered by a great restaurant that I love to visit when we are in that part of the State and then an evening of entertainment and social enjoyment with some truly fabulous groups from all over the desert area. A couple of the groups I had seen or heard before on previous visits, but they are always worth watching or listening to and I hope to hear and see them again in the years to come. Everyone was particularly moved by some of the gorgeous harmonies one of the groups provided on some of the patriotic songs and I liked a Scottish cello piece performed by one of the local high school kids with a group that is going to Edinburgh soon to perform there. But alas, all good things must come to an end and the ending of this one was particularly difficult. The evening ran quite late and then we had to drive back to Burbank. Some people stayed in Ridgecrest, but we decided to head back and sleep in the same place two nights in a row. My escort and I are both night owls, but we were still pretty exhausted, mostly because it had been a full day of traveling or sitting or both. In our experience, late at night (okay, early in the morning) is the best time to be driving in Southern California anyway. When we were about twenty minutes out from our destination, my escort said that at least we were done traveling for the day and I had to say, no, we might be done for the night, but we would be traveling more today, since by then it was 1:00 am. :-) The next day we went to Burbank and that was nice because we were in the same place all day. We saw a Traditional Official Visit and then we had a nice dinner and then we did an Instructional and then we had a meeting and then we were READY for going to sleep. And here is where one pays the price for being a Grand Line Officer because everyone else had to be in Ventura by 12:15, but my little sister and I had to be there by 8:00 am because we had a Transitional to do before the Official Visit. There was some momentary panic when it was realized that there would be no real time for lunch between the two events, but one of my awesome girls of the San Fernando Valley and her husband rode to the rescue and took In and Out orders for all of us and delivered lunch just in time for us to eat between events. I really appreciated her resourcefulness and initiative and she saved the day because otherwise there might have been cranky and we don't want cranky! Afterwards it was back to the airport and home again, to unpack, get ready for another work week and get braced to go back out on Friday. Such is the life. Next weekend, I will be in Tracy, Hayward and Sacramento.

Who Let The Dogs Out

This past weekend, we had a Social Style Official Visit and a Reception Style Official Visit and a Grand Officer Instructional and two Transitionals and a Grand Line Meeting. Whew! The social OV had a guest speaker to talk about service dogs, one of the international projects for Eastern Star for 2010 through 2012. The lady who spoke to us works in rehabilitation and has a service dog to help with the therapy and treatment of the patients. It was fascinating to learn about service dogs in general and her use of one in particular. She explained that most of us think of seeing eye dogs when we think of a service dog, but that this is only one kind of service dog out there. There are also service dogs who help with the hearing impaired and also mobility issues. We saw pictures and video of dogs helping people with things like opening the refrigerator, pulling off socks and picking up dropped items. Watching these activities really showed how, for a person in a wheelchair, for example, who is strapped in because they have limited or no balance, having a dog who can pick up a pen or remote or other dropped item can allow for an enormously more independent lifestyle, simply because getting something off the floor can be a chore for someone with this sort of limited mobility, especially if they have poor grip. And being able to get socks off when you can't bend over can be a real challenge. Our speaker also showed us how kids undergoing rehabilitation, especially after suffering burn injuries, can have therapy go from painful to fun when the needed activity is turned into play time with a dog instead of just being a repetitive chores. Using the dogs in therapy activities is also good for showing people who are probably not going to make a full recovery whether a service dog would improve their lives. She also told us about the extensive training programs, both for the dogs and for the recipients. I would have liked to see the dog in action a little bit, but it was a great program! The reception style OV also had a lot of fun in it, but the format is one that is very hard for some of us to appreciate generally. Usually, there are traditional OVs, where the OV is a closed meeting and everything is done pretty much the way you would do it at a regular meeting of a Chapter. Then there are social OVs, which are open to non-members and which usually involve an informational presentation or entertainment event, like the service dog presentation. But the reception style OV doesn't make a lot of sense. It is a closed meeting, so you can't invite non-members, and you shorten some of the ceremonial work, but you only shave off about fifteen minutes of stuff. So if you are going to do a closed meeting anyway, why not just go ahead and do the traditional OV? Inquiring minds want to know. :-) This weekend also reminded me why some people think of us as the Order of the Eating Siblings, instead of the Order of the Eastern Star. :-) On Sunday, we did a Transitional in the morning and then had the OV in the afternoon. The Transitional was planned to start at 8:30 am and to be over betweeen 11:30 am and noon, but then my girls needed to be ready to start helping with the OV at noon or a touch after because that event started at 1:00 pm, so there wasn't going to be time to go get any lunch. My awesome girls in the area suggested that they could put together some sack lunches so we could eat between events there at the hall. Then I got an e-mail that there was going to be a meal after the OV so the girls were thinking of scaling back to just some snack items for between the two events because we'd be eating a meal around 3:30 pm and I thought that was great. So we get to the end of the Transitional and go in for our snack/refreshments and darned if I can't figure out how the snacks were smaller than the sack lunches would have been. What a spread! There were peanut butter sandwiches on cinnamon raisin bread and bagels with raspberry cream cheese and cheese and cracker trays and fruit and fruit salad and the yummiest deviled eggs, and coffee and tea and water and . . . Wow! I was really pleased and touched by the incredible effort put into making sure that we all got something we liked before going on to our next event. I have the best group of Dragon Riders ever! Next weekend I am in Ridgecrest, Burbank, and Ventura.

Scheduling - The Egg or the Chicken - Part 2

Some problems, I have discovered, are like nesting dolls. Just when you think that you've gotten through the outer layer, you discover another piece of the puzzle inside that. And when you peel through that layer, you get to another one and another one and another one and . . . So far, for myself, I only have to worry about the calendar in the big picture. Stuff like getting dates from other organizations, planning generally when I will put week long trips, how many spots and slots I have for events and Official Visits and Receptions and such - a very general, overall sort of picture. Beyond that general picture comes another layer which I am told is one of the toughest and one which I am spared until next year. That is the difficult task of actually putting the where into the when. It is simple enough to say generally that OVs will probably go here and here and here, and an entirely different layer of problem to say, in the morning we will be here and then we will drive to there and then we will attend this there and then everyone will go home. First you have to know where your receptions will be located, which requires lining up your Grand Officers. If you are doing receptions all at onces, then you at least need to set weekends to be north and south. But if you spread the receptions out, then you really do need to know who is where because they need to be mixed in with events and Official Visits that are a reasonable driving distance from each other. Then there is weather. I am beginning to believe that California weather is not quite as perfect and balmy as all the travel ads say because we don't all live on the coast. It sure would be nice if we did, but, news flash, we don't. Did you know that it gets rather warm in the central valley in the summer? As in, fry eggs on the hood of your car warm, no need to even open the hood and put the eggs on the engine, oh no, hood is warm enough to fry them up nicely, hot type warm. And that in January and February, getting to some parts of the state is difficult, as in almost Impossible! I have rain tires on my car, but I hate chains and I've discovered that many low land California people have never seen chains, let alone have an idea of how to put them on tires. Seriously, how many people do you know that live year round in the coastal areas of California, that even own chains? Do you know what chains are? How about salt on the road? Heard of that? Unfortunately, most places in California are rather blah in the summer. That is just the way the cookie crumbles. And some places are too cold at the beginning of the year too. So now, as you go down a layer, you have to account for weather. And festivals, yes, festivals. Some places have them and you can't get hotel rooms certain weekends. And sports events, some places have those too and everyone who is anyone local is busy. And then someone else is using the hall the day you want it, so you have to go somewhere else. And then some of us, who fly, prefer to have loops that start somewhere, go out and end somewhere else. Adding it all up together and you have passed right by sunny side up to fully scrambled on the eggs of the calendar. So everyone does the best they can with the resources available, but every year seems to have a glitch or two. It would help if someone would put a nice real hub airport somewhere in the northern part of the State, so everyone up there wouldn't have to drive two or three hours down to Sacramento to catch a plane and everyone down here would be able to get farther north before getting into a rental car. How about Redding? They have nice weather and a great Chinese restaurant in the little airport there. But since that is not likely to happen in the next two years, we slog onward. Because of this, when you look at the calendar and you see some of the scheduling, you may be tempted to ask one of the following questions: Was the lady on drugs when she thought we could get from A to B? Could someone buy this person a map of California? Does she have any idea what that road is like? or my personal favorite: Are you kidding me? Try to remember that the answers to the questions are no, got one, yes and no. Desperate times simply call for desperate measures. Sometimes desperate measures include driving for nine or ten hours over bad roads. Next weekend, I will be in San Jose, Martinez, Union City and Salinas.