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.