A Dog and Pony Show

This past weekend was the traditional Associate Matron/Associate Patron workshop.  This workshop is held every year by the Associate Grand Matron and Associate Grand Patron for their local officers as an opportunity to provide helpful information for the members who are soon to be the leaders in their Chapters and for the AGM and the AGP to roll out their plans and programs for the coming year.

This year it was held at a hotel, with a social on Friday night, and the program on Saturday and Sunday until just before lunch time.  The social was a fun event with some lovely ice breakers and fun games.  After I checked into the hotel, I wandered down to find registration and the social.  When I walked in the room where the social was going on, I was mobbed by people, all of whom were trying to hand me green pieces of paper and writing implements.  At first I wondered if in the dim light, I resembled somebody famous because I have never walked in a room and been mobbed for my autograph before.  It was very exciting in a claustrophobic sort of way.  But it turns out that one of the party games was one of those "Find a person who . . . " things with prizes for getting all the boxes filled and the middle box of the bottom row was "a person with a pilot's license" which most of the members know includes me.  I know that there were at least two other people in the room with pilot's licenses, but evidently they have kept it quieter than me because they weren't mobbed.  So I spent the first fifteen minutes of the social signing pieces of green paper.  One of my friends suggested as a joke that since going up the Grand Line is so expensive, I should have charged for my autograph.  After all, the famous people do. :-)

The next morning, I attended the workshop sessions to see what was presented and make some notes about what I might want to repeat next year and what I might want to change a bit.  It was great to see the material and get some ideas on paper.  There were a couple of bits that I had seen before, but some of them you always enjoy anyway, like seeing the FISH video.  And there were a couple of bits that were lengthened or shortened from what I had seen before and it was very useful to see those other versions and get a sense of some of the available options.

The hardest part, it seems to me, is that there is so much to cover and so little time to get to it all.  You can't make people sit and listen for too long without losing them completely, but at the same time, you have all this stuff that they are going to need and all this other stuff that you want them to have and you just have to find a way to balance it all out.

On Saturday night, there was a Masonic education segment that was facilitated by my AGP-designee.  Of course, he had volunteered to do this before everyone knew that he was going to be my guy.  He has a lot of experience at this and always does a great job, but I am pretty certain that the discussion did not go quite the way that he was expecting it to go.  In fact, I am pretty sure that you would have needed a serious four wheel drive to follow that twisty, convoluted conversation path.  Yep, a serious four wheel drive with monster shocks and a raised cab because that session went seriously off the beaten path.  I suspect that there will never again be a Masonic education discussion quite like that one EVER!

Sunday morning, we got to find out the project that was chosen for next year and enjoyed an explanation of the cause and how we can help disabled veterans, which sounds very cool and I can't wait to see how it goes next year.  There are also going to be some fundraiser evenings that will be put on like USO shows and I am looking forward to attending those.  Because I love my Sisters and Brothers, I will not be a participant because we don't want to scare off the members.

Next weekend, I am in San Diego and Thousand Oaks.