Weather and Prayer

There is a scene in the movie Patton that I have always enjoyed. Patton goes to his unit Chaplain and tells the Chaplain that he needs to write a prayer that the next day, the troops would have good weather. The Chaplain is a bit taken aback and asks if Patton really thinks that it would be favorable to God for him to pray for good weather to kill his fellow men and that perhaps this is not the way to approach the Almighty. Patton replies that he is very comfortable and solid in his relationship with the Almighty, so if the Chaplain writes a good prayer, then they'll have good weather. Evidently, this can work as I had the opportunity to test this past weekend, driving north for the next two Transitionals. The weather reports on Thursday said that there would be rain and snow from San Jose all the way to Redding, where we needed to be on Saturday but that it might clear up a bit Saturday night. I was not looking forward to driving in the snow on Friday, and I guess my weather prayers worked, because we got all the way from San Jose to Red Bluff with no weather effects at all and just a little rain and a very few snow flakes that didn't stick on the last three miles. Saturday and Sunday were beautiful, with clear skies, snow on the mountains and nice, brisk air. I did discover however, that the word nice going with the word brisk is a "beauty in the eye of the beholder" situation. Not all people find brisk nice. :-) I try very hard to appreciate each day and the natural beauty in the world around us. On the drive up, I had joked about how we never know if today is our last day and I always want to make sure that I enjoy something every day, just in case. After all, time is our most precious commodity, since we don't know how much we have and cannot make more than our allotted amount. I also figured that having used up all of my weekend prayer points on such lovely weather, I probably should lay off asking for anything else over the weekend. After all, it is never good to press one's luck. Unfortunately, I had a chance to see how true my Friday words were on Saturday and I did have to offer up another prayer or two over the weekend because I got the most terrible news that one of my Dragon Riders had passed away. It was very sudden and quite unexpected. She was going through the line for the first time and was very, very excited about it and to lose her like this was incredibly sad. I try to remind myself that my sorrow at her loss is for myself missing her and going on without her, because she is doing fine on the other side of eternity. But any time someone we know passes away suddenly, it reminds us once more to be appreciative of the time we have. Another movie bit that I appreciate says that we are not given the opportunity to choose the times in which we live or the amount of that time. It is only given to us to decide what to do with the time we have. I choose to believe that I am doing the right things with my time here. Next weekend, I will be in Roseville, Auburn, Marysville and Clearlake.

Stuck in Committee

This past weekend, someone asked me about the various committees that we have at the state level and how some of them work and operate. What I found particularly interesting is that some of them seem unknown to our general membership and others are not what they used to be, yet we continue to perpetuate them, for what reason I am not certain. One of the areas of apparently constant confusion are the committees with lots of area people who don't seem to do anything. There was a time, back before e-mail and the Internet and a lot of changes when those committee area people had a lot to do, such as processing applications and giving fund raising speeches in the Chapters in their area. But for many of these committees, the processing function has been centralized, either in the Chairman or in one of our statewide programs, and the visiting aspect has disappeared. What puzzles me is that even though the committee doesn't do anything any more, people don't want to get rid of it. It seems to me that either we have to redefine duties for these committees to give them some useful reason to exist, or let them go. There was some legislation at one point to cut down some of these, but for some inexplicable reason, it didn't pass at Grand Chapter. So the members must feel that these committees still have work to do and that is great, if only the people who voted no on cutting down the committee sizes would let us know what that work is supposed to be. The topic came to mind as I was looking through my Mighty Binder of All Volunteers for potential Co-Chairs for about a dozen committees which I am supposed to line up between now and July. For some of our committees, there is a Chair and a C0-Chair, with the idea that the Co-Chair learns about the job the year before they are the Chair. It is a great system so long as the Chair does their job of training up the Co-Chair. We have some committees that are fabulous at passing this information on. But to do that, I have to find the proposed Co-Chairs this year, so they can be appointed Co-Chair for 2012 and then serve as Chair in 2013. To help me do this, I have inherited the Mighty Binder, which has all the member volunteer resumes that have been turned in to Grand Chapter since 2007. It used to have resumes that were older in it, but I decided to remove anything that was older than 2007 because they were just too far out of date to be useful. I mean, seriously, I was looking through all the sheets and some of the people had passed away. Now I am not prejudiced in favor of the living or anything, but it is harder to drive a car or send e-mail from beyond the grave. However, if any of the members who have passed away want a committee appointment, I hope they send me an e-mail or give me a call. When I regain consciousness, I will be sure to appoint them to whatever committee they want. :-) Anyway, after weeding out the oldest sheets, I have in this binder all these resumes that people sent in indicating that they want to help and I also have all the ones for people who were recommended by Deputies last year and starting into this year. It is a whopping big binder! I mean five inches thick type big! Thirty foot Twinkie big! It came to me from my fraternal mom, who got it from hers and so on, and when I am done with all my appointments, I will pass it on to my Grand Marshal so that she can start collecting names and sheets for when it is her turn to fill committees. I wonder if the other lines have these also? It sure is coming in handy. I guess it is the sort of thing one could always start and then start passing on. Anyway, I have a bit longer to wait before I ask anyone to do anything, to give those ahead of me a chance to finish their committees and then I have to line up these dozen or so people. I am hoping to have Co-Chairs that have been on the committee before, but I also hope next year to have at least a third or so of the committee people I choose be new people because I think it is important to have a nice mix of those who have done it and those who are new. We'll see how it goes. Next weekend, I am in Redding and Healdsburg.

Pandas, Snow Leopards and Star, Oh My!

This past weekend was the first O-Vent ever held, a combination of the Official Visits (Social Style) to the three districts of the San Diego and Imperial County areas and the San Diego Event, which has been an annual association wide social event for many years. The ladies coined the term O-Vent to indicate this combination and it was GREAT! We all gathered at the San Diego Zoo, which has a group gathering/party area on the left of the main gate. They put up a tent for us and set up tables and chairs and a podium mike for the program. The tent was a bit warm, but the weather has been hot and cold in February all over the state, so it is tough to figure out if you want your tent sides up or sides down and they charge to change, so we managed just fine. The program started with a presentation on service dogs. Service dogs is a national project for the three years from 2009 to 2012 and our local representative for the project has chosen to concentrate on service dogs to help returning veterans who were disabled in the line of duty. There is a great group in San Diego that train service dogs to perform all kinds of tasks, like unzipping things and taking off socks and shoes and even opening the refrigerator. Thank goodness no one has taught my cats how to do that one! We also had a demonstration of tasks that service dogs do for their human companions, including a dog that has been taught to brace for a lady with poor balance. It is amazing what these dogs can do for people. They are trained for almost two years before being matched up with a person and the person has to be trained too. After the program, we had a great lunch and lots of fun and fellowship. There were just under two hundred people and everyone I spoke with had a wonderful time. After lunch were the speech moments, but I had to listen from outside to some of that because I just got too hot in the tent and I am sensitive to heat. But I could hear pretty well from the shade just outside the tent. Heat and me are a bad combination. I can get really heat exhausted, especially when I am in an enclosed space, like a tent, with little air movement, but after twenty minutes or so outside, I was fine. Our event tickets included admission to the zoo and all its attractions for the day and also a pass good to come back to the zoo in the next thirty days. All of us out of towners, and quite a few local members too, donated their passes to be given to our local youth groups so that they can have a free fund event day at the zoo too. What a great way to spend the day with our San Diego members. I hope they try something like that again. Of course, with all new things must come some carpet sucking and this was no different. Most of the grumblings were the same things I hear every time there are social OVs since some people don't like events that are not formal and traditional. (I think that every group has a few of this kind of carpet sucker - they usually start their remarks with "Well, back in the old days. . . ") But there was one grumble that was a toughie and maybe there is a way to work around it. Usually, there is no charge for the members attending an Official Visit event. There is usually a charge for association events because they usually include a meal and entertainment. With this combination event, there was a charge because the event included the meal and the zoo entrance, so everyone attending had to pay. I loved the event and hope to see more like it, but I wonder if there might have been a way to split it up a little differently so that people who just wanted to see the presentation and hear the remarks could do that for free and those who wanted to stay for the meal and the social hour and the entertainment could pay. I don't know if it is possible and I don't know if trying to do that would kill the event because people wouldn't stay. But it is something to talk about and think about. I just hope that talking and thinking doesn't kill the idea because even if it is not solvable, I don't think it has to be an event crushing problem. Maybe it just becomes something that gets done in an area every other year instead of every year or something like that. I had a great time though. Next weekend, I am in Bellflower for a Transitional.

Planning Ahead and Ahead and Ahead

This week has been very interesting because it has involved lots of planning ahead and then ahead some more, and then ahead some more on top of that. While lots of people over the past two years have told me to just take each year as it comes and deal with one year at a time, I am beginning to think that being a Grand Line Officer is a bit like being pregnant in the sense that when it is over, the memory of what you went through sort of fades away and all you are left with are the happily ever after bits. I mean seriously, who would ever get pregnant a second time with a full and clear memory of feeling like a beached whale and the pain and trauma involved. I am convinced that the survival of the species depends on some selective memory here. Also, I think that God gives us the good kid first to lull us into thinking that this is easier than we feared it would be and that way we trick ourselves into having the second kid who turns out to be the little demon in diapers. So why do I say that this same principle of convenient amnesia applies? Because all those people who said take it one year at a time must have conveniently forgotten how much stuff has to be done seriously early. For example, the Grand Chapter budget is written for expenses from October 1 to September 30 each year. So anything that I am supposed to plan that will happen before September 30, 2012, needs to go into the 2012 budget, which is being prepared right now, in February 2011. So I have to put together the budget now for something we will do in 2012 and that means thinking out what I want to do and how I want to do it too. Oh boy! And then there are events that would fall in the 2012 calendar, which is also in current process. While the lady in line ahead of me puts together her calendar and gives me my event dates, just as I will do next year for my little sister, I have to find the places where the events will be held so that those places can go in the itinerary. The hope is for everything that goes in the itinerary to be turned in no later than the end of July, beginning of August, because the itinerary is printed in time to be sold at Grand Chapter. So the places for my events in 2012 have to be chosen and set up by August 2011. And again, to select places means having a general idea of the shape of the events so as to help determine what sort of place I need to line up. Then there are the committees where you ask the lady in line ahead of you to please appoint your hoped for Chairman as Co-Chair for committees. There are about ten or twelve of these committees where the people that I would like as Chairs should be the previous year's co-Chairs so that they can learn how to do what they do and to create continuity from year to year. I think this system is wonderful and I wish we did it for more committees, but it means finding a dozen or so committee chairs this summer to be appointed in fall 2012, so that they can be Chair for 2013. That seems rather plan ahead to me also. So I am at a bit of a loss to understand how this "one year at a time" thing is really supposed to work. Maybe they only mean it to apply to the first two years, when one is Grand Marshal and has way more than enough stuff to do, and when one is Associate Grand Conductress and is still getting one's Grand Line Officer sea legs. Oh well, we are off and planning. . . Next weekend, I will be in San Diego and Escondido.