Almost Heaven?

This past weekend, I was in West Virginia for the Tri-Line Association gathering.  This is the weekend where all of the Sisters and Brothers who will be serving in 2013, 2014 and 2015, under the same Most Worthy Grand Matron, the international head of our Order, come together to find out about her plans and meet their counterparts.  It was very educational, but a bit disappointing.

The first thing I learned is that southwest West Virginia, where we were, is not the area about which John Denver was singing.  Evidently, you approach the Blue Ridge Mountains from the East side.  That said, there were a fair number of beautiful natural sights.  I especially enjoyed going over the bridge from Ohio to West Virginia and back where the two rivers forming the boundaries meet.  It was pretty wow.

Another thing I learned, which was slightly less fun, was that all meals in West Virginia seem to need to involve either smoked meat or bacon or both.  We had club sandwiches for lunch with smoked turkey and bacon.  The dinner salad was a lettuce wedge with bacon and the dinner entree was a chicken leg wrapped in, wait for it . . . . bacon.  The trouble for me is that I don't eat bacon.  My dinner companion bravely threw himself on the grenade and ate the bacon off my salad, but when I asked the waitress if there was any chicken that was not wrapped in bacon, or something vegetarian I could get, she said that she would have to send downstairs to the restaurant for a different meal and it might take a while.  I told her that I had no problem with waiting, since my choices were waiting or starving and eventually, I got a lovely plate of liguini with alfredo sauce.  It had portobello mushrooms on top, from which my companion also had to protect me because I don't eat mushrooms, but he was up to the task and the pasta sauce was delicious.  I was wondering if dessert was going to be bacon ice cream, but it turned out to be pineapple upside down cake.

But I was there for a meeting and gathering and before we got to the food, we had our morning meeting.  We got lots of useful information about the plans at the international level for the next three years and then had some time to chat amongst ourselves.  I have to admit that some of what I heard made me intensely grateful that I was from California.

I found out that in many Grand Jurisdictions, the lady doesn't get to choose her partner at all.  In some cases, the Worthy Grand Matron two, three or even five years ahead of her chooses for her.  In some cases, they are elected from the floor from candidates who are nominated on the floor that day.  In some cases, they put in an intent to run and campaign during the year and then get elected from the floor.  Wow!!!  Of course, as they pointed out to me, many of their Jurisdictions are so small in size, that you know every single man that is eligible living in your state anyway, so no one that gets elected can be a stranger.  In some states, people serve as a Grand Officer more than one time.  Many of the ladies were jealous that I got to pick my man, but I think it works better if you want the heads of the Order to be a real team.

In one state, I found out that the man does five years, just like the lady does.  In that state, the Associate Grand Conductress is elected from among the five Grand Star Point Officers and her man is the Grand Sentinel of her Grand Star Point year.  Then as she goes through AGC and Grand Conductress, he serves as Grand Marshal and Grand Chaplain, to finally join her in the West and then in the East.  So the Worthy Grand Matron only gets to pick eight officers and not ten, but she decides the man for her Grand Star Point officer, so she is picking both.  Sweet California, wonderful California, I love you California.

On the other hand, the people from other jurisdictions were thankful that they were NOT from California when they heard what it costs to be an officer here.  One of the topics we heard about was the Tri-Line dress that we are all supposed to buy and word on the street is that these dresses regularly run about $500 apiece.  Some of the ladies were saying how much more that was than anything else they have to pay for, but I sort of shrugged.  One of the ladies asked me about it and I said that my estimated budget for each of my Grand Officers was $1500 for clothes.  When the shock had worn off just a little, they asked why and I explained about the multiple formals and outfits that we have in California.  Most of them just buy one dress for the whole year.  Then I explained that clothes weren't really a big ticket item in California because when your total year budget is $15,000 to $18,000 and you are spending $1000 a month on travel, the clothing costs are not the reason you say yes or no to serving.  So now they are glad to be from where they are from.

My only disappointment was that we didn't do more when some of us had come so far and at such expense. Having spent over $900 on airfare, $250 on a hotel and fourteen hours of travel each way, I was sort of hoping for a little more meat on the bones, conference wise.  We spent that Saturday morning going through stuff and then had lunch and then the entire afternoon was completely empty until dinner time, then we had dinner and entertainment and social time, but no other organized work.  I would have liked to have seen us use that afternoon to have round table discussions on issues common to our jurisdictions and ideas that people have tried, table topic discussions with posed questions for us to consider and provide input to our international leaders, and report backs from various tables on the topics and ideas that they had.  We could have gotten a lot of value out of that afternoon and instead it was for shopping, sightseeing and, in my case, finishing the script for our Traditional OVs.

While I am glad that I went and really learned a lot about the diversity of our Order and the views at the international level, I was left wanting more.

Next weekend, I am home getting paperwork done and to celebrate the holidays.