A Soldier and a Brass Band

What a wow weekend we just had! On Saturday, I attended a Social style Official Visit with a patriotic theme. There was a lovely dinner beforehand, which is nice not only because you are not running around trying to find a quick meal before getting to the hall, but also because it provides a wonderful time for fun and fellowship with the local members. And of course, when people ask me how I am doing, I tell them that I am short on time, money and sleep, but I have PLENTY of food. After the dinner, as each Chapter's Worthy Matron and Worthy Patron were introduced, they mentioned briefly the various community service projects in which their Chapter participates. I think that is GREAT! It would be completely awesome if every Chapter had a community service project. It gets our name and presence out into the community, gives our members a chance to work together promoting fun and fellowship, and makes everyone feel great. I have found in this life that there are few things better for making a person feel good than helping those less fortunate and seeing the happiness you can bring to another person, to help them and uplift them. Most of the things that make you feel better than that cannot be written about it a family friendly blog. :-) After the introductions, the speaker for the OV was an Army Captain, who read us the Warrior's Code with real feeling and meaning and then discussed how difficult recruiting efforts have become for our all volunteer armed forces. The sad part was that she told us that only one of five kids coming out of high school are even qualified to join and that even though society is much better today about supporting our troops, very few moms are actually comfortable with the thought of their kid becoming a soldier. She was a good speaker and I think that she was maybe a little surprised at the level of patriotism and enthusiasm for our military and our country in the room. We did a sing along of number of patriotic songs and I think she was amazed that all our members actually know the words. I know that we are unusual, being such a large group with a fairly unified view of supporting our country and our military. I hope she had a good time because we all did. The Worthy Matrons and Worthy Patrons also did a little skit that was fun and the program was a nice length too. On Sunday, we had a huge surprise at the Social OV that afternoon. The theme was colleges and scholarships and just as the Worthy Grand Patron was going to say a few words, the Deputy surprised us all with a ten piece group from the USC marching band, three trombones, a drummer, a bass drummer, a tuba and four trumpets. There were a fair number of USC alums in the room and they had a great time with the USC fight song. The band did a bunch of numbers, including some popular music and some dance numbers too. My favorite rock band is Queen, so I particularly enjoyed Another One Bites the Dust. Since neither of my two colleges had a football team, I have no particular rivalry feelings about other schools. However, the Associate Director in charge of the show, who also was a Mason (and belonged to a lot of concordant bodies, but not Eastern Star - what's up with that? - get that man a Petition!), was teasing one of my girls who went to Oregon and I guess Oregon is a USC rival, so he kept tweaking her in his monologue bits between the songs. Well, at one point, he commented that maybe he needed a lawyer and was there one in the audience and everyone at the table behind me started pointing at me and he started looking to find me and I waved to him and said, "Over here, next to the Oregon person" and everyone laughed. All my girls gave me a high five for that one. After lunch were some great speakers on schools and scholarships and there was one girl who had gotten a Masonic scholarship who spoke about how much it helped her go to school. Then a group of Job's Daughters did this really funny "Big Hats" line dance to Achy Breaky Heart that you have to see to appreciate, but it was hilarious. Next week, I am Leemore for an Offical Visit and then in Fresno for three events.

And a Dressmaker Too

This past weekend, I visited the person who is going to make the dresses for my girls to look over a final trim selection and make some design decisions. While it took three go 'rounds to get the trim I wanted, we have it now and it looked great, at least I think so. We also discussed all the persnickety details that go into the final dress look, like how far down in front and back the V-neck should fall, the length of the sleeve and so on and so forth. What astonishes me just a little bit is how many different skill sets it seems to take to do the job of Grand Line Officer well. I realize that there are lots of people to help with a lot of the different bits of the job, but at the end of the day, you really need to know at least a bit about all these different things. Just looking at the last ten days for example, to be successful, one would need to be a bit knowledgeable in all these different categories: Assisted Living Facilities: The Worthy Grand Matron and Worthy Grand Patron sit on the board of trustees for our Senior Living Community and the other Grand Line officers sit in the meetings as well, which is a very good thing, because if you've never had any experience in Assisted Living Facilities, the meetings are a great chance to learn what you are going to need to know. Just learning what all the jobs are that go with the job descriptions on the budget is a task and how everything is coded and managed is another task. Employment Issues: Since the SLC has staff, there are employment questions and issues as well. I often tell people that any time you deal with a business that is more than just the owner, you have employment issues because you have employees. It is rather inevitable. I know that I have a great advantage because our office represents clients who run these sorts of facilities and on top of doing real estate, we also do employment law on the management side, but how hard it must be to get that expertise if your work does not touch on those fields. It is vitally important for the Line Officers to be involved though, because we need to be there as the representatives of the membership. And by the time you are done, you've learned so much! Event Planner: There are a number of events that we put on every year, but each year they are supposed to be a bit different with some repeat things, some new things, a new theme and sometimes even a new format. While we ask people to take the lead on organizing the events, a fair bit of the creative juice is also supposed to come from us. Finance and Financial Planning: While we have experts to manage our investments and a well educated and practiced Finance Committee to manage the financial affairs, a Grand Line Officer at a minimum needs to be able to read a financial statement and understand a budget. Again, going to the meetings is vital and important to learn about these things if one has no outside expertise. There are also some nice books that teach these fundamentals and I wonder if we should buy one or two for our library so that people with no work experience that taught them anything about finance can get a head start. The basics are not hard, but some of them are counterintuitive. But the members are great about answering questions and again, what a great opportunity to learn and gain new skill. Fashion Design: This is the toughest one for me. For some of the members, the look of their dress is a really vital item. But almost no one, including me, who has gone through the Grand Line has any fashion design experience. At least most of us sew, so we know what a dart is and usually can distiguish between and Princess and an A-line style, but imagining how these things look on different shaped people, especially when, like me, you CANNOT draw to save your life, can be quite the challenge. I like what I have designed, but who knows what it will look like when it is put together? And I like all the fabrics, but a swatch is not a dress, so again, who knows how it will look all put together? Will people love it or hate it? Will it be a high point or will they demand that I design a tasteful paper bag accessory to go with the dress so that no one knows who is in there? All I can do is cross my fingers and hope. At least it is done and the pieces are what I wanted, no plastic sequins, no glitter and no big puffy parts. Fingers crossed now and not uncrossing until July when everyone sees the thing and I get the first reactions. I would hold my breath, but I can't do that long enough. Next weekend, I will be in Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, San Pedro and Anaheim.

Lunch At Home

This past weekend was the Official Visit to our Senior Living Community in Yorba Linda. This is an event done every year, usually in February or early March, where the Grand Officers perform the work of a mock meeting for the viewing enjoyment of the residents of our Home. There are almost sixty members of our Order that live in our Home, some of them having moved in quite recently and others having lived there for years. The current Home in Yorba Linda is our third or fourth property (depending on which ones you count :-) and is quite beautifully furnished and appointed. I particularly enjoy the stained glass windows, which were moved from a previous building into this one when we purchased it. The locations of the invidual apartments is a bit confusing, but since most of the spaces are in a big circle, if you keep going you will, usually and eventually, get to where you are going. This year, each of the Grand Officers was given two or three of the residents to be our own Special Pals and we send them cards and try to visit with them when were are at the property. After the Official Visit was over on Friday night, I had a chance to visit with one of my ladies in her apartment and we made arrangements to have lunch the next day, with my other Sister to join us, since I was going to be back on Saturday for meetings for the Home Board and the Finance Committee. Also, I had heard some very mixed comments about the food service and I was interested in seeing it for myself. While I had eaten at the Home on special occasions, such as the Christmas dinner in 2008 and 2009, I had never before shared a regular meal in the dining room with any of our Residents. So at a break in the meeting schedule, I went to the dining room to join my two ladies and we had a delightful time. I had a chance to speak with them about how things worked in the Home for the Residents and get their perspective on the people, policies and happenings which is all the more valuable to me because it is true first hand information. I also had a chance to ask a bit about how some of the Residents feel about the different format suggestions for the Christmas party and of course, I got to try the food for myself. Overall, it was a fine meal, although I did end up with one or two questions that I will have to ask later on. It's a good thing I picked the corned beef and not the fried chicken though, because I ended up having chicken for dinner that night. Dodged a bullet on that one, whew! :-) The meetings were interesting and always informative. I learned a lot there too. The Sisters and Brothers that serve on our Home Board and our Finance Committee put in a scary lot of work for our Order and considering that both of those are multi year commitments, you really have to be a dedicated member to take on those challenges. I know that those two groups also tend to get a bad reputation because they have to make hard decisions, especially in these tough economic times, and it is a shame that people sometimes fail to make a virtue of necessity. On the other hand, I think that there are also things that can be done that would ameliorate, or soften, that reputation, with a little bit of effort. After all, nobody needs a good PR firm as much as people with their hands on the purse strings. :-) Next weekend is one to stay at home, but I am going to go to the dressmaker to do a final design approval before cutting on the Worthy Matron dress I have chosen and I need to get my tax returns done since we won't have another free weekend before Tax Day!

The Voice of the People

This past weekend we attended three Traditional Official Visits and one Social Style Official Visit. That made for quite the full weekend but we had a great time! In Roseville, I found out that Maya Angelou is a member of our Eastern Star. Isn't that cool! We also heard about other famous women in history that were members of our order. In Auburn, we were treated to a lovely satire of the song Camp Granada, which was pretty funny to begin with and even more so with new words! In Marysville, we rode on the Orient Express, complete with a mystery so dire, the ladies were fainting across the steps. The dining car was also amazing! (I didn't see a little Belgian man with a curled moustache though :-) And in Clearlake, we enjoyed a marvelous presentation on the trees and wildflowers of the Coastal regions of California. It all would have been perfect, but I confess to a small, personal, uncomfortable moment when one of the groups sang the Doxology. Being Jewish, it is not the most comfortable song in the world for me. Well, actually, maybe that is a slight bit of a touch of a crumb of a scintilla of understatement, to be completely honest. However, we had another highlight of the weekend and that was a mini Town Hall discussion led by the Worthy Grand Patron. We had a chance to hear some ideas and views from the members, which have really helped me focus some of my thoughts and plans. The members told us that they would like to see our order spend more time in the community to help people more and raise more money for charitable causes, to make us more relevant to a younger membership and to have us more visible to get new members. They told us that they would like us to have closer relationships with other branches of the Masonic family and get more of the ladies whose men are in Shrine to join us also. They told us that they would like more fun activities, more diversity and more new member follow through. Those all sound great to me. Now the challenge will be seeing if we can propose acceptable programs and initiatives that will accomplish these objectives without running athwart of any evil carpet suckers (the natural enemy of the Dragon Rider of course) who pooh pooh all new ideas and attempt to strangle them in the cradle. Next weekend, I will be in Yorba Linda but not in San Diego.