The Texas Tour

Three weeks down, forty-nine to go.

This past week, I traveled to Texas to attend the General Grand Chapter Installation and the Most Worthy Grand Matron's School of Instruction.  People have asked me how my trip was and the best adjective I could come up with was "It was educational."

I flew from home to LAX and from there to DFW.  We rented a car and drove to our hotel across from the Fort Worth Convention Center.  There was a snafu with the hotels with the net result putting me in the Omni, which was the correct hotel and my Worthy Grand Patron and his wife in the Sheraton on the other side of the Center.  It wasn't too far as such things go, but we found out sort of by accident, which is what made it unfortunate.

Anyway, we get all checked in and we change clothes and we stroll on over to the Center.  The Center it turns out is this absolutely enormous convention hall with lots of exhibit halls and such and really NO signage.  We were walking around for several minutes before we found something to tell us that the session was in the Arena and a few more minutes to find out how to get to that part of the building.  But no blood, no foul, the prelude was scheduled from 6:00 pm to 6:30 pm, and we found our way in about 6:15.  However, we couldn't locate a seating chart anywhere.  I finally scored a program from a gentleman who had a bunch, but there were no directions in it.  We figured out where to sit primarily by looking for people in the same dress that I was wearing, and then managed to get settled down.

Now when I had seen the tentative program, I thought it was a typo.  It said that the Installation prelude was at 6:00 pm and that the Installation was scheduled from 6:30 pm to midnight.  I figured that they just put down the time until which we had rented the hall.  I discovered that they had not overestimated by much.  We were not finished until 11:15 pm.

Knowing that my personal view is that people can't pay attention for more than fifty-five minutes at a time and people can't sit comfortably for more that two hours, you can imagine that I cannot write the words that come to my mind at this piece of foolishness.  I realize that all the lovely parts of the lovely ceremony are lovely and important to someone and that having waited fifteen years for your big night, you want to make the most of it.  But let us be realistic here - after three hours, does anyone truly think that people's attention was focused on what was going on?  No.  We were all fidgeting from our legs going numb, trying not to have to disturb the other people in our row with getting up to go to the bathroom and wondering how much of our time in Purgatory would be remitted if we sat through to the bitter end.  By the time we were through all the folderol and got to some remarks, all everyone wanted was for the darned thing to be over!  There wasn't even a seventh inning stretch!  Or a bathroom break!  It is no wonder to me that when people got up to be introduced and escorted, many of them never went back to their seats.  They just collected their little certificate or were introduced and headed right out of the arena door.

What I really wonder is whether the honored members actually enjoyed it either.  Or is this one of those "mother of the bride takes over the wedding" type nightmares, where the bride wants things different, but gets caught up in someone else's vision of how this is supposed to be done and is stuck?  Is it possible that the honorees might actually enjoy something different, but can't bring themselves to buck tradition enough to chop it down and make it fun and exciting or at least a bearable length.  I am willing to bet that if you cut the whole thing in half, the arena ceiling would not have fallen in.  And I can see lots of stuff that you could cut without in any way reducing the solemnity of the occasion or the enjoyment of the evening.  I bet that cutting it in half would more than double the positive of the occasion.  Luckily, this will never be my problem.

Next weekend, I am heading south to the Installations in my Worthy Grand Patron's Chapters.