Tradition, Tradition!

This past couple of weeks, I have been working with others in the Grand Line on the books that we put out for our officers in preparation for their time as leaders of our local Chapters.  The Leadership Committee and Grand Line are exploring the possibility of standardizing these books for the Worthy Matrons and Worthy Patrons with separate Special Instruction Packets for each year.  That way, a person who is repeating would not have to buy another copy of the whole book.  They would just have to get the year's packet.  It would also help create more consistency from year to year, which we hope will help the members in our Chapters.

So we are working on edits and polish, but one of the very interesting side effects is a growing awareness of how radically different traditions are around the state when it comes to all sorts of things.  The challenge is writing a handbook that is not so vague as to be useless, while allowing enough flexibility to allow individual Chapter traditions to be used without causing anxiety.  Here are some of the questions whose answers vary as you travel around the state and sometimes even from Chapter to Chapter within the same area:

Who is the Chairman of the Deputy's Official Visit?
(The right answer is NOT whichever poor dumb hick didn't get out of the way fast enough!  Well, that might be the answer, but it shouldn't be the answer :-)
A.  The last lady in the Chapter to serve as Deputy
B.  The lady who was Worthy Matron in the same year as the Deputy
C.  The current Conductress
D.  The current Associate Matron
E.  None of the above.

Who is the Chairman of the Worthy Matron and Worthy Patron's Farewell meeting?
(The right answer is NOT the Worthy Matron because no one else volunteered. :-)
A.  The Installation Chairman
B.  The Junior Past Matron
C.  The Associate Matron
D.  Whoever the Worthy Matron asks
E.  None of the above.

Who is in charge of lining up dining room chairmen for every meeting?
(The right answer is NOT "dining room chairmen, what do they do?")
A.  The Worthy Matron
B.  The Associate Matron
C.  The Conductress
D.  A Chairmen of Chairmen appointed by the Worthy Matron
E.  None of the Above

So there are a fair number of places where we can talk about a thing and then need to advise people to consult their Chapter's traditions on what to do.

But that brings us to the next problem, which is that many Chapters don't seem to have their Traditions written down.  So to find out what they are, you have to ask around.  But the problem with that is that if your Chapter has had consolidations, you can get five different answers from five different people because the Chapters that have consolidated all had different traditions in the first place.  We try to advise Chapters when they consolidate that they should form a Traditions committee to write up the traditions and work out a new list for the new Chapter, but many people are understandably reluctant to do that because they don't want to start fights over whose traditions are going to be kept and which tossed.  But the pain and grief that line officers go through trying to find out what a Chapter's traditions might be could be helped a lot by just having the list.  So maybe we need to adopt the old rule of voting - If you don't vote, you can't beef about who gets elected.  This version would be - If your Chapter traditions are not written down, you can't beef if the Worthy Matron is doing something else.  I bet that would encourage people to sit down, make the list and hash it out.

Of course, traditions can cause grief too.  Sometimes people like to do something different and then they get the fact of a "Chapter Tradition" tossed at them as a reason why they "CANNOT" possibly do the new thing.  The important thing to remember, but deathly painful about which to remind others, is that a tradition is a custom, but it is not a rule or a law.  So sometimes you need to be flexible and let someone try something new without punishing them for daring to have a new idea.  I mean, where would we be today if the tradition of having an outhouse hadn't been broken by people who were tired of going outside to take a leak.  Without indoor plumbing, that's where we'd be.  So it's nice to have these things written down, so that we know when we are doing something different and can brace against the tornado it causes, instead of getting blindsided when someone tells us that we've VIOLATED THE SACRED TRADITION and we just look at them and go Huh?

Next weekend, I will be at the Summer Festival at the SLC and the Masonic Picnic in Covina.