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.