Left, Left, Left Right Left in Riverside

This past weekend was the revealing of the 2012 Grand Family and our Grand Officers' School of Instruction in Riverside.

The hall at which we practiced is very close to the University, so I was struck by how much is different and how few things are the same.  Granted that it has been decades since I went to college there, but it's not just that there are whole new sets of buildings, there are whole new roads and roads that are missing too!  I remember the first time I came to the school and as you drove down University Avenue towards the campus, Carillion Tower in the middle of the student plaza was the big, obvious landmark of the school.  Now, you can't even see it because there are building and athletic fields in the way and the road that used to go right or left now only goes right.  If you look right as you turn left, you can see the straight, wide pedestrian walk that marks where the road used to be.  At least many of my favorite spots are still there and my most favorite part of campus, the botanical gardens, are still there and seem to be doing well.  I spent a great many hours there, where there are cool, shady spots even when the mercury hits 100 everywhere else.

It was very exciting to get to find out who we would be traveling with next year and of course, to find out who I had to cross off my list of Grand Officer candidates because they got taken already.  I will never tell how many people that is! :-)  Most of the people chosen were people I already knew and some of them, I know very well. Yay!

So the next morning we started having School.  The purpose of the School is for the new family to perfect their Ritual work so that, as we demonstrate the work all over the State and especially to the new Deputy Grand Matrons, we will demonstrate the work correctly.  It is not too difficult to do our work well, but it is fiendishly difficult to do it perfectly, especially in terms of spacing, timing, placement and so on.  In years past, we would have run through certain parts that require all the officers to come together or leave together over and over and over, but this year, it didn't seem like we did that many run throughs so that was certainly less stressful.  It was very obvious from the beginning that all of the officers had put in a lot of time preparing before the school so that we could really concentrate on fine tuning rather than learning the work when we got there.  That was great and I will have to try to ask my family next year to do just as good a job at preparing for school as this year's bunch did.  They did great on that!

So now that all the choices are known, my man and I have to start looking at creating our own short list of candidates.  Oh boy!  As soon as Grand Chapter is over, we get to send out a letter asking the Past Grands for recommendations though, so I hope we get a lot of good ones, especially for the Deputy Grand Matrons.  I was told that you don't ask for these names until after Grand Chapter so I have a stack of letters that will go in just a few weeks.  How exciting!

Next weekend, I am going up to San Francisco for Grand Lodge.