Fraternal Life On the Way Up

Up and Down and All Around

2012-01-26T12:10:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, we finished the last School of Instruction and the last few All Member Instructionals, getting set to start the Official Visits for this year. I understand that the Transitionals have also been finished for this year, so all of the Ritual Instruction to be done by the Grand Family is over and now it is time to see how well some of those lessons have been learned, hopefully with the help of refreshers from our local Deputy Grand Matrons.

One of the things that we don't seem to have a good way to measure is how much people actually learn at the Instructionals and how much value it has for them. Also, we don't know which parts are better or less useful. Without this data, it is tough to try to figure out how to improve so that we can maximize the value to our membership. I know that we have a committee that is starting to put together some questionnaires for the members to fill out, but we will have to see if that yields good numbers of responses and good data. I sure hope so because data lets us aim our efforts instead of shooting in the dark.

The quality of the instruction will be particularly important this year, as I am expecting that most if not all of the Official Visits to be Traditional style. As I understand it, the instructions to the Worthy Matrons were that the Worthy Grand Matron prefers that Districts that did a Social Style OV last year do a Traditional one this year. Nothing was said about a preference for those Chapters that did Traditional last year. But looking at a spread sheet that I started putting together back in 2008, it looks to me like in years where each district is allowed to choose, certain ones always choose Traditional and certain ones always choose Social, so if you tell the Socials to do Traditional, the odds of any of the ones that did Traditional last year doing Social this year are slim - not impossible, but thin. And of course, since we are all careful to state preferences rather than giving orders, I suppose someone out there who did Social last year might do Social this year anyway, but ironically, that would be a bit anti-social. :-)

So expecting all Traditional Official Visits fills me with some mixed emotions. On the one hand, our Ritual work is amazingly beautiful when it is done well. Unfortunately, it can be like sitting through nails on a chalkboard when it is done poorly. So first, a quiet prayer must be offered up that all of the officers will have practiced diligently and will be prepared to do a splendid job so that every Visit will go smoothly and enjoyably. Otherwise, sitting through one of these can feel like being in the back seat of the car with your Grandmother driving down the freeway at thirty-five miles an hour and wondering why everyone is honking at her. Again, a quiet prayer that there will be no problem.

The other thing that becomes relevant, especially for some of the Grand Officers, is that in the usual course of things, if a District does not have an installed officer for a particular station, the Grand Officer fills in and does the work for the Official Visit. Now when you know about this in advance, it is easy to give yourself a quick refresher before you get to the event. But I have been to several OVs where the Grand Officer found out they were filling in when they got there. I myself have sat in as the Ritual officer at least once every year I have served except the last year - there was always at least one Conductress at every Traditional OV I attended last year, so I dodged the bullet on that one.

Of course, the Grand Officers have been doing an awesome job of their Ritual work at all the Instructionals and Schools, so they will do great if they have to do their work, but sometimes it is just nervous-making not to know if you are going to have to "perform", so hopefully there will be few surprises.

Next weekend, I will be in San Marino, Yorba Linda, Orange and Newhall.

Inertia

2012-01-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

One of Newton's Laws of Motion (he had three major ones and his "laws" ruled the multiverse until Einstein came along and made everything complicated - they are still good as long as you don't go too fast or too near a black hole :-) states that a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest. That tendency to just sit there motionless and the energy it takes to overcome that sittingness and get moving defines the inertia of the object. This is why, when your car dies on the road, it takes a big push to get the thing moving, but once it's moving, it tends to roll a lot easier and in fact, you have to pull on it or use the brakes or run to the front real fast when you want it to stop. You have to apply enough force to overcome its inertia to get it rolling and then you have to apply extra force again to make it stop.

But I have discovered that people have inertia too - there is a tendency to do things as we have always done them and it takes an added amount of energy to make a change. If the change is a good one and you do it for a few years, then that becomes the new version of reality and we do that new thing until another amount of energy is applied to change things again. If you do not add energy to the system, the thing just goes the way it has always gone.

Of course any system has a limited amount of energy floating around in it available to do stuff. Unfortunately, this is also true of a Grand Line Officer. So we tend to triage a bit and focus on some things and not all things, because there often isn't enough energy to do everything. You can get around that a bit by doing lots and lots of planning and prep work ahead of time so that the slingshot is wound and ready to go when the time comes, but still, there are lots of things that we are not allowed to do ahead of time too.

I've been thinking about this because I have been discussing some changes in scheduling and formatting for next year with the appropriate people and what I find amazing is the number of times that I say I would like to see something done differently and someone else says, "Oh yes, we really need to do that. We've thought about it and talked about it for years, but we've never tried changing it." Or they say, "Oh yes, our members have wanted us to do that for a long time, so that would be great." While I am the first to admit that it is nice to hear that one's ideas are not all out in the tall weeds, I get puzzled about why changes weren't made earlier.

As near as I can figure out, it seems to be either a Forest for the Trees problem or an Authority problem. Either because they've always done it that way, they are too close to the problem to see what needs doing, but when you show it to them they have an Ah-Hah moment or they are worried that they don't have the power to Change The Tradition of Forever, but if the AGM wants it different when she is WGM, well then all to the good because then it is her fault and not the local members' responsibility.

But the problem is that this only works to the extent I know about it and have the chance to help with the planning for next year. Where I don't know about it, I can't help. So I am wondering what the best way would be to help get people thinking about what they do and if they could do better. How do you encourage people to really look at what they do, sort of from the outside, and ask themselves if this is the best way or just the way it's always been? When I have the answer to that, I bet I could make some real money. ;-)

Next weekend, I am in Riverside and Ventura.

Rotations

2012-01-12T14:39:00.000-08:00

This past weekend we got back on the road, with two instructionals in the north part of our state. It has been great having the chance to meet with our local members and talk about plans and upcoming events that they should consider attending. I wish we had more time to talk. In years past, the meeting was the last thing, so groups that were done earlier could go and groups that had more to cover could stay and we have a defined time, so that is less useful, but then again, there were years when we didn't do these at all or only in very limited areas, so some is certainly better than none.

Having an e-mail list though has made up for a lot of it though. I've already put out two e-mails with more information in the past week and am ecstatic that I have all but twenty-eight of the Associate Matrons of California on my e-mail list. Of course I also have ten Chapters that don't have an Associate Matron and I am very worried about those because how are they going to have a good year next year if no one is planning it this year? The new Dragon Riders coming in now have a lot of catching up to do, but at least they will be in on the planning of the Official Visit and such. Those who come in next year, and every Chapter will have to have SOMEONE take the office or the previous person has to stay in it, will spend the whole year scrambling to catch up and that's gotta be tough!

One of the questions that keeps coming up is "From what Chapter will you choose the Deputy Grand Matron for our District?" I am a little puzzled at this question because I would think that getting the best person is more important than getting someone from a particular Chapter, but I can appreciate that if there is a good person in every Chapter in a District, you'd want to do a little rotating around so that one Chapter doesn't supply the person all the time. And I have found out that in some Districts, they are very strict about their rotation and quite put out if you don't follow it. Unfortunately for those Districts, they've been put out for a few years now because between consolidations and people not wanting to serve, most rotations have been blown to the place of eternal punishment in a wicker container carried by grip. So at this point, how do you rotate those?

To be sure, I have a list of all the people who have served as Deputy since 2007, sorted by the Chapter from which they came and I have listed on my spread sheet the two or three Chapters who have waited the longest since they had a Deputy and when I have lots of recommendations in a District, I have no problem in considering that timing as one of several factors. But in some Districts, I have no recommendations at all and in others, only one or two, so if they don't come from the right Chapters, what can an Associate Grand Matron do? In a perfect world, I would have a couple of names from every Chapter but in that perfect world, my teleportation machine works and I save tons on gas and airline tickets, so much for that!

So getting back to unfortunate reality, the choices are limited, especially if you are looking at new people and not as much as repeaters, which is the other wrinkle that a hot iron set on cotton doesn't seem to affect. Some people feel that if there is any new person, even a marginally qualified new person, that is better than taking a repeater and some people feel the exact opposite. There has been some discussion about what would happen if we tried to consider re-appointing the same Deputy for two, three or even four years. One of the advantages of the plan is that presumably, the Deputy would get better, more knowledgeable and more capable each year. Another advantage is that, let's say on a three year rotation, each AGM would only be trying to fill a third of the slots instead of all of them each time and that would really help! It also means that there would only be a Deputy reception in the District every three or four years instead of every year.

But the downsides are that people would have to accept that the Deputy is not changing Chapters each year, that less people will have the opportunity, and in some areas, they would have to change their expectations. Right now, there are some districts where it is understood that the Deputy will be coming to two, maybe three meetings and will be holding one, maybe two practices for each Chapter. In other areas, they think that the Deputy is supposed to show up for EVERY meeting of EVERY Chapter in their District for the whole year. That simply blows my mind! I think that sometimes, the Worthy Matron ought to get to preside without her teacher sitting at her elbow watching her and we'd get more people willing to do the job if we didn't overburden it. Nevertheless, in the areas with the 100% tradition, if the Deputy substantially fails expectations, they get a lot of grief about it and, needless to say, you'd burn a person up pretty quickly if you required that of them.

So it is a tricky issue, but given our demographics, one that will probably have to be wrestled with sooner, rather than later.

Next weekend, I am in San Jose, Fairfield and Vallejo.

Blink and You Miss It

2012-01-04T14:40:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was filled with tasks, some of which even got done. What is amazing though is the length of the lead time on so many things. You try really hard to keep everything low key and to avoid intruding on anything going on this year, but Wow! If you don't get stuff done early, you are dooooooomed! And if you blink, the time is gone and the next thing you know, you're rushing around. I hate rushing around. Sigh!

So this past weekend, my fraternal mom and I had a lovely meeting to talk about, of all things, Grand Installation. Yes, an event that isn't going to take place for almost ten more months, nevertheless, plans have to get started now because of the long lead time on the many items to be arranged.

For example, it has been traditional for the Grand Officers (or at least the ladies - why the men are often spared this is completely beyond me) to have a carrying piece that they carry in when they are introduced during the recess and that they then carry it to their station when they are installed and put it on a stand and it becomes part of the Installation decorations and then they take the carrying pieces and stands home with them and then they have to bring them back the following year to serve as decorations during one's Grand Chapter session and then they get to take them home again, again!

The carrying pieces can be whatever you want them to be, but lovely stained glass panels of the Worthy Grand Matron's emblem have become the carrying piece of choice for many ladies. I have seen (and been the happy recipient) of other types of pieces that are truly lovely (I have an embroidered piece that came out wonderfully), but no matter what sort of thing it is, they usually need months of lead time to have them made plus having the stands made, so you have to decide in January what you want in October. It is also traditional for the Deputy Grand Matrons to have carrying pieces, so that's another couple of dozen things that have to be made. At least that is something I didn't have to decide about because it is supposed to be a surprise. Yay! Something that I just get to show up and enjoy! Yay, yay, yay!!!

Then there is deciding who is going to do what in the ceremony, if there is any special music or set up for which you have to find instrumentalists, singers or sheet music, whether you want corsages and so on and so on and so on. All I can say is that I am truly grateful that at least after making the decisions, I have my fraternal parents to turn all this stuff into reality. And being a triangle (which means someone who loves to delegate) I am totally yay on having people I can count on to get stuff done and having them worry about it so I can take it off my head. I have lots of other things still in process, so getting my installation list down to buying a dress and writing a speech sounds wonderful, maybe mythical, but still great sounding.

It was also the weekend for getting some more calendar items done in preparation for locking the calendar. Hopefully I have all the date requests by now and no one else will want a slot for anything, but we'll see. :-). And of course, with some dates, putting them on the calendar also involves finding a chair person to agree to get a location and get that to me, and we will see how that goes too.

Next weekend, I am in Ukiah and Los Molinos.

Jigsaws and Dominoes

2011-12-27T17:33:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was the start of my push to finish off the basic calendar dates for All Known Events and to lock in the dates of the various Official Visits so that the local officers can start finding a place to hold each of them.

I know that the last minute is beyond a shadow of a doubt the most productive time of any project because so many things wouldn't get done if it wasn't there and so many people save up for that last minute. Lots of us work better when we are under pressure, so that is understandable. And I am very glad to find out that people want to hold events and need dates for them. I am excited about each and every plan.

But once the calendar has sort of been filled out, fitting in other events is an interesting mixture of jigsaw puzzles and dominoes.

It is a jigsaw puzzle because you are trying to get events to fit with one another. If I go here, what is the travel time to there? How long does that sort of event take? Will the clothing needed for these two events be compatible or do we have to build in time to change clothes? Will we be able to stay at one hotel for the weekend or have to change between Friday and Saturday? Will this group be too tired from putting on this to do that the same weekend and how far should we travel to avoid that? If we have breakfast here and lunch there, will there be traffic or will it work out?

And it is kind of like dominoes because when you move one thing, a whole bunch of other things have to move over too. If you need to go here, then you will need to go there, so that has to move, but then that was going to go to this which now has to go to that, so that has to move too, and so on and so on.

So far today, I have added five events, necessitating the moving of twelve other things. I hope to goodness that I have written it all out correctly and haven't got someone in two places and someone else in none! Tonight when I go home and put all this on the big board, I hope it still looks right.

Hopefully the last few items will come in tonight or tomorrow and we will be able to lock most things down by Saturday.

This weekend I will be home, finishing this nice calendar and pushing into a bunch of forms and binders that need drafting and preparing.

Filing and Typing

2011-12-21T16:43:00.000-08:00

Since I was home this past weekend, it was time to get caught up on a hundred things that need to happen and on which I had gotten a little behind.

So last week, I finished up the proposed revisions for the books that every Worthy Grand Matron prepares and uses for her Grand Officers, Deputys and Worthy Matrons and Worthy Patrons. A few years ago, the idea was bounced around about making a generic version of these books and then letting each Grand Line Officer put together their own packet of special information and sheets each year, instead of doing the whole book from scratch. We had drafts of two of the books, the Deputy book and the Worthy Matron book, to look at last year, but they got distributed too late for us to make all the edits and revisions and the other two books didn't make it for last year, so by getting the proposed edits done now, I am hopeful that we will have time between now and April to go through the proposed changes and agree on generic books that the next three or four years will be able to use without having to rewrite their own. While I like to get things done that will help not only me, but the years to come, it is a relief for me to have these drafts done because if for some reason, they do not get reviewed, I can always just hit the magic "Accept All Changes" button and have my stuff ready to burn onto CDs. But I would really prefer that we get to go through these and make any changes that those following after me think are beneficial or useful, so that the books will really represent our combined efforts and collective wisdom. It will make all our books better.

This past week was devoted to getting out my winter packets to all my Dragon Riders. I got the letter and all the inserts written and all the attachments done and scanned, which took a good few hours, but then I was faced with Lack Of List Syndrome. This is a truly dreaded condition where you need to get stuff out to a group of people and you know who they are, but you don't have a list with contact information for them. The snag is that not everyone who was with me last year is going on and with me this year and there are a bunch of Chapters, about thirty, in fact, who didn't have anyone last year, but may (or may not) have someone this year. But since there are deadlines in the packet for the end of this month, I didn't want to wait too long, so I sent the packet out to everyone who was on my e-mail list last year and asked them to let me know if they were not going on and if they knew who was.

I got a bunch of responses and then had to spend about two hours fixing information and adding e-mail addresses for new people and some people who I had on my list but no e-mail before and sent out another e-mail to all the new people and addresses. That left me with about forty packets to mail and about twenty Chapters where I didn't know if I had a person.

So then I sent in to the Grand Chapter office to see how we were doing on a list and got one which included all the Chapters that had sent in their officer forms, although I am not sure that all of them have done so. That meant going through all 179 Chapters to see if any of the information had changed and put any new information into my Spread Sheet of All Dragon Riders. Some people had changed and some same people had new or different snail mail or e-mail addresses. For each new e-mail, I had to make up a contact in my Outlook directory and then add them to my All 2013 Worthy Matrons list. When I was saving the list after the changes, about three hours after I started this nice task, Outlook warned me that I had exceeded the group size for any lesser version of Outlook and that my list would not work with any of these lesser versions. So I guess it is a good thing that our software was upgraded last spring.

The cool part is that I have now got everyone on the e-mail list except thirty-one people, some of whom have requested no e-mail communications and some of whom I just don't have addresses for. And I still have ten Chapters that don't have a person listed, but that is way better than before. The sad part is that I now have to have mailing labels made up for the thirty-one people and make copies of all the information for them, so they will not get their packets until next week, when everyone else got theirs last week or earlier this week. But that is the price I guess you pay for choosing snail mail. At least my costs for copies and postage is hugely better than when I was mailing to everyone and only stuffing 31 instead of 179 - Woo Hoo!!!

So all that, plus about three hours of filing on which I had gotten behind ate up last weekend nicely.

Next weekend we are not traveling, it being a holiday, so I will continue to catch up on drafting tasks and secretarial stuff. The weekend after that is also a holiday, so that will be the weekend to lock the calendar and start getting event information together.

Setting the World on Fire

2011-12-14T17:37:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was our first leadership workshop for this year with a theme of firing up our membership. There were a number of modules presented on communication, membership and event planning.

The materials presented in each module were interesting, but what was even more fun were the break out groups where small groups of people get to try out what they've been hearing with a series of exercises designed to apply the principles just taught. The first break out was a sort of ice breaker/how to get to know people exercise. My group had something called Common Ground where we are supposed to find things that everyone in the group had in common. Since we were in a group of about a dozen, that was a little trickier than it sounds and the most basic things, like all belonging to the same fraternal order, were declared off limits by the rules. At first, we just tried to brainstorm about things we might all have in common, like whether we were all born in California or if we all owned pets. Sometimes one idea that didn't work led to one that did. For example, it turned out that not all of us were born in California, but we were all born in the US. We didn't all own pets right now, but we all had owned pets in our lives. We weren't all wearing black shoes, because two pairs turned out to be navy, but we were all wearing dark shoes. This exercise not only got us talking but also showed how you can build on an idea when maybe the original idea doesn't work, but it inspires another idea that does.

Another group had a beach ball and the beach ball had questions written all over it with a Sharpie marker. That group had to toss the ball around and each person who caught it had to answer the question that was under their hand where they touched the ball. That looked like fun too and was good for getting to know each other without anyone asking a pointed question specifically to another person.

One of the other break out exercises required us to plan an event including setting a goal and a date. That was tricky because it was hard to figure out how to set the goal. Our group was supposed to set a goal to participate in a project at a certain level (money contributed and boxes filled). We did the exercise, but we mostly set the goal by going with a WAG (ask me in person if you are not familiar with the acronym :-) because we had no data on which to base any sort of goal. It reminded me that the first time you do anything, you don't really know how it will turn out. You should still have a goal, but you should not be disappointed if you don't meet it. Instead, you can use the first time out to come up with a more realistic goal the next time, hopefully set just a little higher than the first time's actual performance and then try to meet that and raise that every year. I think sometimes that people do things for the first time and get discouraged when nothing is ever perfect the first year out of the gate - you have to build up to big and wonderful.

The overall program was great and had lots of great information in it. I hope lots of people get to participate in the remaining sessions later this year.

This weekend I am home working on Districts and Masonic Family information to distribute on Monday.

Here Comes Santa Claus

2011-12-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was the Christmas Party at our Senior Living Community in Yorba Linda. Each year, the current Grand Family and the previous year's Grand Family come to our Eastern Star Home to celebrate with our residents.

This year, the festivities started with an afternoon tea at 3:00 pm or so. We had the opportunity to sit with some of the Residents and visit for an hour or so over tea sandwiches and sweets with tea and coffee. Some of the Residents have the most amazing stories to tell! One lady showed me a lovely ring that dated from back in the 1860's - Wow! The refreshments looked yummy, but since I am currently on a low carb diet, sandwiches and sweets were off my list of things to eat - Sigh!!!

After the tea, we went into the meeting room for a sing-a-long with the Residents and a visit from Santa with presents. The program handout was a whole book of Christmas songs and the Residents would pick different songs to sing. Our Grand Organist also wrote a really cute parody of the Twelve Days of Christmas, using events from the 2012 Grand Family's experiences so far for the things given on each of the days. The day after the event, we all got a copy of it to keep for our own and that will go in my memento book for this year. After the songs, Santa comes with the presents, which are prepared by the Home staff, with the Resident's names on them, and the Grand Officers take turns playing elf, taking a present from Santa and taking it over to the person for whom it was intended, so that the Residents don't have to struggle through the crowd to get their goodies. Then there are pictures with Santa for everyone who wants them and quite a few people did, again as a memento of this special time.

The singing part is a little tough for me because I know that next year, I will be holding this party. I don't want to disappoint the Residents, but I am always uncomfortable with the religious songs and don't sing them. Truthfully, I don't know the words to any Christmas carols at all, at least not past the first couple of lines that they play on commercials selling CDs of the music. I never learned them since my family does not celebrate Christmas and have no interest in learning them now, I must admit. Well, I do know the words to Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, but I have a funny feeling that our Residents don't really want that one on the play list. Of course you never know - their sense of humor might just go that way, but probably best not to take a chance.

I don't want to not have the party, so I guess I will have to try to come up with a play list of more generic winter songs that people know, like Frosty the Snowman, and just stay away from the ones that involve mangers and saviors.

Someone asked me though if I wanted to do some Hanukkah songs and the honest answer is that no, I don't really care about doing them with the Residents and don't really think it is a very good idea unless we end up with a Jewish resident between now and next December. So far as I know, we don't have any now. There doesn't seem to me to be any point in having a bunch of people struggle through songs that they don't know and have no meaning for them, just for me. I mean, I guess that if they wanted to learn a Hanukkah song and sing it for me as a surprise gift, that would be okay, but if it wasn't their idea, why force on them something with no value to them that might in any way detract from their enjoyment of their Christmas party? So probably no Hanukkah songs, unless they want to do it to please me or something like that.

Next weekend, I am in Tracy, Union City and Tulare.

All In All Done

2011-12-05T11:17:00.000-08:00

(Note - This should have posted Nov. 30)

The Installation Season is finally over - or is it?

I have completed the last of the fourteen installations that I had agreed to attend this year and each one had its own interesting theme, decorations, performance, speeches and of course refreshments. But I noticed that there were a number of Chapters where one of the officers was either unable to attend the Installation or no one was elected in time for the Installation but will be elected and installed in December or January.

This makes me consider a complicated topic that is important at a lot of levels, namely, what is a reasonable level of expectation and how do we (or should we?) enforce that level of expectation.

In the work world, this is a lot simpler, although not as much as people might think. When you pay people to do things, in a perfect world, you set reasonable expectations and the people you hire meet them because they want to get paid as promised. But even in the work world, there is always some squish room, where a person can underperform a little and still get paid and keep their job, even if they don't get as much of a raise each year or even any at all. And now, in the present economy, many companies have given no raises to anyone for years, so getting or not getting a raise is no longer a performance indicator. After all, if those who do not meet expectations get the same raise as those who exceed expectations - ZERO - they why bother to work harder. There is NO traffic jam on the extra mile!!!

However, even in the work world in a good economy, when people are changing jobs, they pick the one that pays the best. After they get there though, they stay with the job where they are treated the best. If you treat them badly, even though you pay them well, they will leave. Now in a bad economy, they may not be able to leave because they need the money and the job, but these people are just the volcano waiting to erupt and as soon as the economy loosens up, whoooosh, they are so gone.

But in a non-profit context, there is no monetary incentive. So how can you set or enforce expectations? You have to do it with other coins, usually with respect or recognition. When you expect a lot and get it, that person should get a good reputation and be thought of with respect and admiration. They should be recognized for their contribution and feel rewarded for their efforts. Conversely, if they do not perform as promised, they should feel the peer pressure of their lack of performance and should feel the disappointment suffered by others. Of course this assumes a lot of things. First, that reasonable expectations are communicated in the first place so people can try to perform. Second, that reward and punishment are delivered in a fair manner. And finally, that all feed back is timely. The results must be close enough in time to be obviously linked to the performance.

Some people feel that if others don't perform, you should lower the bar so that they feel they can reach it and that will encourage them to get over it because they can. I feel that when you lower the bar, people who were just a bit under the old one will now be just a bit under the new one. I like better the approach that you find out why the person didn't perform and if it can be addressed, address it and if it can't be addressed, find someone else to do the job. If there is no one else to do the job, you have a different problem.

So why do I think of these things when I think of Installation? Because it makes me think of officers and our expectations of their performance. For example, there are lots of legitimate reasons why someone who has agreed to be an officer cannot make their Installation. Stuff happens. But unless it is an illness or emergency, that should be known in advance and planned for and even in an emergency, the courtesy of a phone call should be managed by someone. What frosts my cake are the people who don't show up, don't call to say they are not showing up and are not dead or unconsious! The rest of us are waiting around hoping the late person will show up and then we finally go ahead with out them. Grrrr! But communicating is a reasonable expectation and should happen. And other reasonable expectations should be met too, darn it!

I know of course that 99% of the time this problem does not occur and most of the time everyone is very responsible and communicative, but this is sort of an example of Murphy's Law of Sewage. If you take a barrel full of sewage and you add a tablespoon of wine, you've got a barrel of sewage. If you take a barrel full of wine and add a tablespoon of sewage, you've got a barrel of sewage. Sigh!

Next weekend, I will be in Norwalk, Yorba Linda and Escondido.

In You Go!

2011-11-18T17:44:00.000-08:00

This past weekend and this next weekend are filled with Installations at various Chapters in my local area. In some ways this time of year is harder than other times because the Installations occur on all days of the week and at other times, travel is primarily on the weekends, with mid-week things planned well in advance. but for Installations, such as the ones this week, you can practically go to one every evening and two on weekend days.

Now installing officers is fun! They are usually pleased that their Grand Officer came to install them and an Installation it is a big party with lots of good food and sometimes the food is even planned as meals and not just as extra food on top of your regular meals. And of course, spending what you spend as a Grand Officer is enough to make anyone feel like a college student again and one of the big rules of college was that you could not pass up on a free meal! So some very nice Chapters will be providing me with my dinner both nights this coming weekend. I wonder what I am having.

But traveling in your local area, especially after a work day, can be pretty tiring when you do several in a row and it really makes you aware of the traffic in your area. You can also stretch your idea of local pretty far. I am doing at least three installations where the event is more than an hour from my house, but since I can sleep in my own bed each time, that is still local.

You also see a lot of different traditions when you go to Installations in different areas. So far, I have only had to give remarks once, but I may find myself called on twice this coming weekend, which is too bad, but you have to be prepared all the time OR ELSE!! I talk off the top of my head pretty well, but you don't want to sound like a broken record. I mean, how many times does the audience want to hear yet another person come to the microphone and say:

I want to congratulate all the officers and the new Worthy Matron and Patron. I am sure that you will have a wonderful year full of fun activities and exciting projects. The decorations and carrying pieces are lovely. Thank you so much for inviting me to share your special evening.

I mean seriously, do you really want to sit through six versions of this? I like the places where only the Worthy Matron and Worthy Patron speak the best, as long as at least one of them has a message in their speech and it is not just a long list of thank yous, which are important, but not inspiring. One other speech by some one other person is okay too and I can handle that. Okay, maybe I can even handle two other speeches. But places where they call on every person sitting in the front to speak? What is the goal behind that? To make sure that everyone falls asleep before they get to the dining room? How many eyes have to glaze over before some people figure out that this is not a good idea? Inquiring minds want to know!

Luckily, more places seem to be leaning towards fewer and shorter speeches and I am all for that. Speeches go best when there is less quantity and more quality. And I have heard some great remarks offered and hope to hear more of them this weekend, when I attend another handful of Installations.

Next week, I continue in the "local" area.

Isn't It Grand - Part Three

2011-11-09T17:33:00.000-08:00

In the stunning conclusion to our epic saga, your intrepid heroine attended the Grand Banquet and Ball on Friday night of Grand Chapter. This event is modeled somewhat on the formal dinners that are held at the Grand Lodge Warden's Retreats and perhaps at other times, although I have not attended any other times to date. The way this works is that there is a head table or two and then there are tables on the floor that are also for special people but for whom there is not enough room at the head table. We jokingly refer to these as the kid's tables.

Anyway, everyone else goes in and gets seated and then we came into the room with our escorts one at a time and got announced as to who we were and then we walked up the center aisle and went to our seats. Once all of us were in, there was some beginning stuff and then dinner. Once we were about to the dessert stage, it was time for the introductions and speeches. The Grand Banquet and Ball event was meant to take the place of what we have usually referred to as Informal Opening, the Courtesies to Dignitaries Lunch (or the Grand Representatives' Lunch, depending on who you ask and yes there's a story there, but it's not blog appropriate :-), and the Masonic Family Session, so the key elements of each of those events were incorporated into this one big party. The dignitaries of other organizations were introduced and the youth group leaders gave the speeches that they usually would have given at the Masonic Family Session, and a representative of the Grand Master spoke also. After the dessert and the speeches, there was a band and dancing in the corner, mostly taken over by the youth group members and by the adventurous adults who thought that they could keep up with these kids, at least for a while. I think that everyone, especially those who participated in the dancing, had a wonderful time.

It did make me think about two things though. The event was pricey, as it had to be because it was required to break even and a fancy dinner and a DJ are not cheap, and I understand that we subsidized the youth tickets, for which I was glad because I hope that not too many of them had the price as the interfering factor, but I am not sure that we did our best with this event and its timing. I am just thinking about it and have not made up my mind yet, but there are a couple of thoughts that buzz around me.

For starters, not a lot of teens need, want or appreciate a fancy meal. I will confess that as I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate a filet mignon a lot more than a sirloin, but that is mostly because you know the teeth aren't what they used to be, knives seem to have gotten duller over the years and don't cut as well, and I just can't finish more than about six ounces any more. The three layer chocolate mousse was lovely and again, I am now at an age where I can appreciate the artistry of such a dessert (probably also because I watch too much Chopped and Iron Chef America:-), but I can remember being more of the gourmand and less of the gourmet when I was a teenager. At that age, I probably would have preferred half a medium pizza and a hot caramel sundae with two scoops of vanilla, lots of whipped cream, nuts, a wafer and a cherry on top. (Even back then, I had no chocolate tooth to speak of, so hot caramel, not hot fudge for sure!). Of course, I can't eat that stuff now - the sundae would make me sick to my stomach and the pizza would be yummy going down, but bad later, ah for the days when I could eat all the fat and sugar that I wanted - Sigh!!! But how tragic if I had not enjoyed such repasts in my ill spent youth. And such a meal would have cost about a third of the beautiful meal we ate that night. So I am not sure that sitting through the fancy meal and the speeches was the best for youth participation, although perhaps the dance more than made up for it. They certainly looked like they had a great time and maybe some of them can already appreciate a fine cut of meat.

But the other concern that pops up for me is that the Masonic Family event was usually held on Saturday afternoon and this was on Friday night. By October, school has already started, so travel time to make a Friday event is limited to after school and before the start, instead of Friday night and/or Saturday morning. It also means that if you are not really local, you might have to stay overnight instead of coming in the morning and going home afterwards. So I wonder if the timing affected how many of our youth group members were able to attend and whether it is more or less than we would have for a fun event on Saturday.

So there's a lot to think about on what to do with all that.

Saturday morning was great because I didn't have a breakfast to go to - yay! The breakfast events are deathly for me because I am not an early bird!! Really, really!! Night owl here - hoot, hoot!! So sleep good, early breakfast less good. Then we had the farewell session, which was lots of very sad. You'd think that saying good bye to a family would get easier, but it doesn't. You live and work and travel with these people for a whole year and you get to know them and laugh with them and cry with them and then they are no longer the group that you travel with any more. I am pretty shy, although no one believes me on that, so getting to know strangers well enough to share a room or a meal or a car with them is tough and it takes me a month or two to get into the groove of a new family each year, especially when you spend the first six weeks apart, since you don't see the new family for the rest of October and most of November. Then you spend two or three weekends in December, but then you take another three week break and then you dive into the serious traveling in January. But once I get to know people, I tend to get to know them really well and at a deeply personal level, so saying goodbye is really hard. So you stand around the altar and lay down your badges and you smile and you cry at the same time (Note to all who may find themselves in this position - NO MASCARA THAT MORNING!!!) and you realize that this incredible year of your life is over. Even when you are going on to have another year, that very special year with that very special family is OVER. I haven't had the experience yet of going through this when you don't have another year ahead of you because I went straight from a floor office into being Grand Marshal, so the first time I will face that will be when I am saying goodbye to my very own family and how much harder that will be I can't even imagine!

So you cry and say goodbye and tell yourself that you will see these people in your travels all over the state, which those of us going on can at least use as a small comfort, but it is never quite the same again. Then you dry your eyes and go back to your room to fix yourself up a bit and change clothes to take pictures for Grand Installation.

Now Grand Installation and the taking of pictures thereof is a special challenged for the Grand Line Officers, the Grand Marshal (who is now the Associate Grand Conductress Elect) and the Grand Secretary, because we have to be quick change artists. You see, you need to be in your next year's dress for all the pictures, then you have to change back (or this year into) your this year's dress to come in for the start of the Grand Installation, then during the recess, about an hour into the program (although I am hoping for a lot sooner), you have to change back out of the this year dress into the next year dress so that you can march in to be introduced. It gets a little weird until you learn to stay in your Installation Dress shoes, jewelry, etc., so that all you have to toss on and off is the dress itself, although in this instance, it required a change of petticoat for many since the 2011 dress was straighter than the 2012 dress. What a megillah! But you do it so that everyone is happy. One year, the WGM elect decided to spare people this rigamarole and not have the outgoing family come in at the beginning of Installation as a group so that they wouldn't have to come in and go out and there was such a folderol as you would not believe. This was the last year for this for me though, because by tradition, the WGM and WGP elect do not go in for the opening part. Instead, the Junior Past Grand Matron and Patron traditionally sit in the chairs. Ostensibly this is based on some sort of "not seeing the bride before the wedding" type thing, because the WGM does not have to be in the same dress as the rest of the Grand Officers and this way, she and her dress are not seen until she is introduced for the Installation. The best part from my perspective is no changing in and out of the clothes - Yay!!!

Next weekend I am in my home area, installing officers at Chapters nearby.

Isn't It Grand - Part Two

2011-10-31T19:29:00.000-07:00

So when we last left our intrepid adventurers, they had survived all the way through Wednesday of Grand Chapter week. But wait, there's more!

So Thursday morning, it's time to start the formal ceremonies of the session and to do the entry and the march in and everything. Thursday morning was probably the easiest because the Opening is written down and you start by following it, but Thursday morning was probably the hardest because everyone has lines and no one wants to look anything but perfect in front of EVERYONE! Of course perfection is unachievable, but the beauty of this particular ceremony is that since very few people have actually read the book on it, the number who know if you messed up is very small. You just have to keep going and remember to die falling foward!!!

So we got through the formal opening and then into the reports and were just whizzing along. There was a firm hand on the gavel, which I confess is something I enjoy very much and, conversely, cringe when it is lacking, so that was double plus good for me and there was a new set up for the microphones to be used for discussion where, instead of having four or so spread around the room, there was a "For" and an "Against" mike, so that you had an idea of which side people were on and the speeches could be more taking turns between the two sides, so that was a great idea. Of course, never one to leave well enough alone, there are two little things I am thinking might make it even better. One is that the mikes needed signs on the sides so that people coming down to speak would get to the right one (there was a little confusion on that at the beginning). The other is to have a separate mike for questions because people with questions were going to one of the two we had and that made it confusing. I could have stood up and cheered though, when the Chair reminded the delegates that questions start with Who, What, Where, When, How or Why, and that questions were not an opportunity to make a speech. Yay! Yay! Yay! But a separate mike for the questions might have been useful. I hope we get a chance to try that and see how it works.

Thursday afternoon we got into legislation and business items and I have to admit that even though the discussion moved along, it is very hard for me to sit there for six and seven hours in a day, so that was tough! At work, I try to stand up and walk around at least every hour or two, but that wasn't really going to work during the session, although I did stand and walk a bit during one of the pieces of legislation and that helped some.

Thursday night was State Dinners and my Central San Joaquin Association put on a splendid Starry, Starry Night themed dinner that was formal black and white. The decorations were great and the meal was tasty and it looked like people took the opportunity to chat and mingle, which is great. It was also nice this year not to have to change back into my session dress to go back for an evening session like we did last year. I will have to find a group willing to do the State Dinner next year although I am not yet sure if it will be on Thursday or Friday night. The State Dinners have been on Friday usually, but this year, the Grand Banquet was Friday so the State Dinners moved to Thursday. I don't know yet if they are going to try the Grand Banquet again in 2012 and am still thinking about what to do for 2013. I know that if we decide to do it, I will need to find a chair for it.

At this point I am mixed on it. It had great attendance and they filled the room I am told, but whatever you hold on Friday night is going to be bigger and better attended than any other time because lots of people can only take one day off work and they come in Thursday night and are there for Friday, which is when we hold elections, and so they are there to come to dinner. I think that if you added up the attendance of all the State Dinners that are usually on Friday, the aggregate number of attendees would equal or exceed the number at the Grand Banquet, so attendance is not necessarily the measure of success here. The bigger question is whether it is better to have one big dinner on Friday or the four separate State Dinners that night. There are pros and cons on both sides.

The pros that I see are that you have this wonderful event with everyone participating together and with that many attendees, you can have entertainment and lots of fellowship. The cons that I see is that in a bigger room, people get fed less quickly, there isn't room for everyone because of the limit on the size of the room and the State Dinners, which many people really enjoy when they are in the line because they are having a special event with "their group" end up less well attended because of the timing and there are things that you don't get to do that are part of the fun. The Grand Conductress State Dinner, I discovered, is particularly handicapped because in years past, the State Dinner on Friday night was after the elections and that meant that you could introduce your man and have him tell everyone about his emblems and words and such, but since he had not yet been elected by Thursday, he could not show his stuff because it is all secret until after the elections. I was not at the Worthy Grand Matron/Patron State Dinner, but I imagine that they had a similar problem because usually the Grand Marshal gets to talk about her new things and their meaning too, at least I got to do that in 2009 at the State Dinner, and again, they couldn't do that because the elections weren't over yet. So that is another con on changing the nights.

Friday morning, as I mentioned, were elections and everything went smoothly and the new emblems were displayed and they are all very cool and hopefully posted soon for the membership. Friday afternoon was Necrology, the memorial for the members that we have lost in the past year and while I would not say that it was fun, it was very solemn and I hope beautiful for those watching. When you are involved in the ceremony, you are concentrating so hard on doing it right that you don't really have any brain power left for watching. But it was very nice, I hope, and it was nice to be able to help perform that service for our members.

Next weekend starts the Installation Season and I will finish the Grand Chapter saga next week. After all, all great stories are cut into three parts, right?

Isn't It Grand? - Part One

2011-10-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

So last week was Grand Chapter and now I am one shotgun shell closer to the firing pin, Associate Grand Matron - WOW! I'm afraid that I was bit too tired to enjoy it, so I'll have to try to get more sleep next year. Of course I tell myself that every year, but no such luck.

My week started out with the traditional Grand Family dinner on Tuesday evening. It is traditional for the Grand Conductress (that was me last Tuesday) and the Associate Grand Patron (he's Worthy now :-), to host the meal and my partner in crime and I had no trouble dividing the responsibilities and getting all the work done, but any time you put on an event you worry about the details and as I put together the scripting, I was certain that I would forget one of the MANY traditional things that you are supposed to do at the meal, but it all came out okay and the food was good and the bar was open, so what more can you ask for?

Wednesday is usually a practice day and since the Grand Conductress is in almost everything, that means a LOT of walking. I wore flats, but I wished very much that I had been in my sneakers because the floor of the Arena is concrete and walking on it day after day, even in flats, is just asking for feet that are pounded into mush. At the end of Wednesday (let alone the next three days) I had to coax my feet into being feet again and not just pounded lumps of flesh that just happened to be attached to the ends of my legs. At least next year, I do more talking and less walking.

But we had to practice all the different marches and entrances and escorts and fiddledy bits that we were going to do for the rest of the week and there is no good way to do that without actually walking through them. I am glad we did it though, because I like to make all of my mistakes at the practice. I pretty much never repeat my practice mistakes at the real event. I may make new and different mistakes, but I usually remember to fix the ones I messed up at practice so it was good that I got them all out of the way.

After the practice, we had our fun night event and it was very interesting and there are pictures. It was one of the first times I can recall that I was actually happier as a Grand Line Officer than I would have been as an appointive. Now for me that is saying a lot because I had a great time when I was Grand Warder and it was the only year I got to be a Grand Officer and there was no paperwork and no meetings. You know how when you are in college, you think you are busy, but you are not really busy and then you have a house and a family and a job and hobbies and you learn what busy REALLY looks like? Well, I thought I was busy when I was Grand Warder and I was clueless!!! Now that I have the whole traveling thing down to a machine like science, doing a year of just that would be a cake walk. But alas, it is not to be for me. :-)

However, on Fun Night, each of the appointive officers and their escorts were doing a Project Runway sort of thing where one of them would design a costume and the other one had to model it down the runway. The Line Officers got to be judges and actually judging was really hard, but some of the costumes were really embarrassing and I will take hard over red any day of the week and twice on Sunday. I must say that some of the men were very brave to dress in formals, but some of them have to learn that certain kinds of high heels are harder to walk in than others and it really is a learned skill and not something that you can just do. Even when you learn to ride a bicycle, you fall off a few times on the way and it is a long way down for tall people on high heels. Luckily, everyone survived and a winner was chosen to great happiness and applause.

Of course when it was all over, I had paperwork to do, and had to check in on my job in the real world, which sucked up hours, but it is what it is.

Next weekend is a weekend off, and I will continue the saga of Grand Chapter next week.

Technical Difficulties (Was Tote Bags R Us)

2011-10-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

I just found out this morning that this did not post last Tuesday when it was supposed to, so here it is now.

I am finally finished packing for Grand Chapter and am afraid that I will become known as the bag lady. Three of us are going in one car down to the session, with our men folk following in other cars to take us home, so we have to get everything into the one car. At least it is an SUV. So to try to make my stuff as packable as possible, I am using tote bags and duffel bags and dress bags and suit bags and just about anything that is not an actual suitcase. But the number of bags has gotten rather frightening.

I have packed three formal dress bags. One bag has the formals I will wear on Thursday and Friday (yes, that's two different dresses), one bag has my cloak, (which is a heavy monster with my emblem appliqued on the back, so it will drape over my chair and make it look really cool and will keep me warm if the arena gets cold, which it usually does) and one has my 2013 Worthy Matron dress in it. The WM dress doesn't fit me quite right yet, so it has to be altered, but I have to show it to my girls again before I give it to Kimi to fix. There just wasn't time for a fitting before I had to show it last time and I haven't gotten it back to her, but she will be at Grand Chapter, so I will find a time on Friday or Saturday to leave it with her. But don't worry that the bag will go home empty because I am picking up a fourth formal, my new 2012 Installation and Winter Formal, at the session and that will come home in the third bag. I also have a suit bag with the travel suit and other nice pieces that I will wear at the session. That is a pretty big bag, so I should only have to take the one suit bag.

So then I am on to duffel bags. I have packed two of those, one with socks and underwear and stuff like that, and one with shoes and petticoats and make up and jewelry to go with all the other clothes.

Then we go to tote bags. These have specific stuff in each one and I try to use the smallest one that holds all the stuff, but some of the bags are not at all small. I have a massive Costco tote/shopping bag full of presents, stuff to sell and my 2011 carrying piece, which has to be brought back to be used as a decoration for the session. I have my Grand Officer tote, which travels with me and has all the essentials, like Kleenex and cough drops and a Roster and maps and fans and so on. I have my legislative tote, with a copy of our Constitution and Laws, Instruction Book, Ritual, Red Book, Robert's Rules and current legislation items. I have Grand Line tote, filled with stuff that my soon to be Patron and I have to go over and fifty letters that have to be signed, folded, stuffed and stamped to be mailed next Monday. I have my To Do bag, which has books (yea, like I will get a chance to read - Hah! But hope springs eternal), my iPod in case I get to work out (equal yea right!), my GPS in case I get to go somewhere and assorted stuff like that. And of course, I have a purse too.

And finally, we have some wheels. I have my computer bag, which has my laptop and also all my office stuff that I need to take care of business while away from the office. Yes, I have one of those sorts of jobs where work days gone are not really gone - sigh! On the other hand, I get to choose my own days out, so that part is kind of cool. But there is lots going on right now, so I fear that I will be working nights and mornings and lunch times. Sigh again!

And I always take a portable dolly with me. Getting into the hotel is not hard, but getting out is six kinds of nightmare. Since everyone arrives at a different time, there are often plenty of bellmen and carts to get your stuff up, although of course with my amount of stuff, I am looking at a ten dollar tip, but hey, it's better than making three trips. But on Sunday, lots and lots of people are leaving and even if you get on the list for a bellman and a cart, it can be past noon before you get one. So I always take a dolly with me. With it and a handy escort (also known as a gronker/schlepper or a Hewer of Wood and Fetcher of Water), I can usually get everything down to the car in three trips, well, maybe four, because you always take back half again as much stuff as you arrived with. But without the dolly, you are doomed!!!! Lots of people have portable carts that actually fold up into a clothes rack, but I am not sure that one of those will fit in my car because the bottom is bigger. Maybe I can get the guy who makes them to make one to the dimensions of my car trunk, well okay, my escort's car trunk, because driving is an escort job. :-)

So ready or not, here I go, off to Grand Chapter in Fresno through next Sunday.

Rounding the Corner

2011-10-11T16:59:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Jewish High Holidays, so there were no events and next weekend is the prep time for Grand Chapter next week, so that will be event free if you pretend that it doesn't take an entire weekend to pack for Grand Chapter, which it does. But before I get to packing, for me there is list making to do. There are just so many things that need to go with me to Grand Chapter that without a list, the packing would be impossible. And there are dozens of decisions to be made too, on what will and won't go based on what I think will or won't happen.

One of the things that makes this time of year tough is keeping track of who you are and who you will be. For example, there is a special book with the ceremonies that we do at Grand Chapter which has both an opening and a closing ceremony in it. You are not supposed to write in these books because in theory, you turn them back in for the next Grand Family to use. We may be going away from that, but I haven't heard so yet. Anyway, in the Opening Ceremony, you are your current 2011 office, but the Closing Ceremony is done after Grand Installation, so for that you have to learn the lines for your 2012 office. All of the line officers just spent two weekends in the past month (Grand Officer School and Deputy Grand Matron School) in their 2012 offices, but of course for Grand Chapter, we are still in our 2011 offices.

I have discovered that this year's transition is much easier than the past two years were. When you are Grand Marshal, you go to the schools as Associate Grand Conductress, but strictly speaking, you haven't been elected yet, so it feels a little funny because you are Grand Line Officer without being a Grand Line Officer. When you are AGC, you are at the schools as GC and then you go back but when you swap back and forth like that, you are doing very similar floor work and words, but on the other side of the floor, so it is really easy to get messed up on which side of the room you are on and which way you turn. But going from the South to the West and back seems a lot easier so far. The work is all different and the room looks totally different.

Of course for me, the room actually looks a bit familiar because I was Grand Warder way back when and the Grand Warder also sits in the West, so at the schools I was sitting about four feet to the left and two or three steps up from where I already spent a fabulous year, and the view is familiar and fun. Of course there will be a new Grand Warder in 2012 and we reassured him that he should not feel nervous at all just because there were five Former Grand Warders in the room watching him do his work, oh no, no cause for nerves at all. We were just trying to reassure him; that's why we kept reminding him, five of us with our eyes just on him! :-)

I tried to get him to come up and try out the chair next to me, just to see how it feels. I am pretty sure that sitting in the AGM's chair when I was Grand Warder helped give people ideas that led to me being up there now and I just wanted to return the favor, but the GW to be was having none of that and could not be coaxed into taking the chair for a spin. Sigh - they're making them too smart these days.

So now that I have the schools behind me, I am learning my lines for the session and looking at the floor work that we will have to do. It is going to be just a shade trickier this year for me than last year. To begin with, last year I just had to follow the Grand Conductress and I knew that she would know where we are going, so that was less stress right there. And since the bulk of the escort duties were done in an informal opening session, that escort was easy if exhausting because you just went west and brought people east and went west and brought people east and went west and . . . But this year, doing the escort during the session, you have to remember who goes in this way and who goes out that way and stuff like that there. It is also the Official Visit of the Most Worthy Grand Matron to California, so we are expecting an extra big load of dignitaries and visitors to escort. Lucky me! I just hope that they left us a lot of practice time on Wednesday so we can go over all these bits and make our Grand Family proud.

Next weekend is packing weekend and then I am off to Grand Chapter Tuesday afternoon.

One Thousand Details

2011-10-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was our Deputy Grand Matron School of Instruction. This event this year is a great example of how the devil is in the details, also known as the death of a thousand cuts.

The purpose of the school is to teach our new soon to be Deputies how all the ceremonial work is done so that they can go teach it to all the people in their own Districts and in theory then everyone can learn to do the work perfectly. Unfortunately, sometimes the rubber meets the road, and sometimes it's the window glass.

Part of the problem is that it is SO MUCH material to try to squeeze into just two and a half days. To really master EVERYTHING seems more like a two and a half week project. But you have what you have and there ain't no more! (Okay, there is a brush up school, but it is only a day and really needs to be just for brushing up and snagging a few things that are done later in the year.) It helps a lot when the Deputies come fairly well prepared and we can concentrate on those devilish details, but sometimes it is hard to know what you don't know. After all, every member sees many of these ceremonies every meeting, but it is sort of like when you are a passenger instead of a driver. I find that I can be a passenger going somewhere over and over again, but then when I am the driver, I don't know where that place is. When I am the driver, I have to pay attention to the route, but when I am a passenger, not so much. And since there is no GPS for our ceremonial work, this is flying without a parachute.

So I know that I have watched the ceremony over and over, but did I really ever pay a lot of attention to the men's parts? After all, I was never going to hold that office, so why would I? There are several Star Point officers whose positions I doubt I will ever hold, so while I have heard their words and seen their actions over and over, do they really sink in? Not so much, I fear. So no matter how much you know, until you get out on the floor and try to do the work, you may not realize how much you don't know. In some respects the Grand Officers have it easy, although most lady Grand Officers have been Deputies, so they have done their time in the trenches. A Grand Officer learns their part perfectly, but they only have to learn their one part (or in the case of the Grand Line, one part per year :-). Deputies need to know them all because they need to be able to teach them all. And that is a LOT of work.

But this school was particularly helpful for me because I was able to see what was being done and make LOTS and LOTS of notes for next year when (GASP!) I am supposed to lead one of these things (AAAAAHHH!) There were some new things done this year that I liked and want to remember to include and there were some things that were good, but maybe we can improve a bit on them. But since I have a memory like a sieve, I just have to make notes. Even an hour later, I may not remember what I was thinking an hour earlier. I think I came home with about ten pages of notes. The bothersome part is that now I have to read my own writing and type the notes up before I forget what they say!

Next weekend there are no statewide events because of the Jewish holidays so I will be home.

Big Building - No Parking

2011-09-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Grand Lodge session in San Francisco. Because we do not schedule opposite Grand Lodge, and ladies are not allowed in until the Sunday morning public session, we had Saturday free.

The problem was that I had so many things to do, I of course got none of them done. I spent the morning scrubbing the belly of one of my airplanes, the nastiest job there is in airplane maintenance (followed in a close second place by packing bearings with grease as a close second, but at least the packing grease is clean grease). You have to get your rags and your diluted Simple Green and lie down on a creeper and then slide yourself under the plane and clean by reaching up. One secret is to spray the rag, not the plane, so less cleaner drips on you. Another secret is to use three rags in a reverse osmosis on each section. You use one rag for getting the really thick black stuff off the plane, which completely saturates the rag, then you use another rag to get the residue off, and then you use a finishing rag that wipes away any little streaks or bits. Then you scoot yourself on the creeper down to another piece of airplane and you toss the first rag in the used pile, your residue rag becomes your thick stuff off rag, your finishing rag becomes your residue rag and you start a new finishing rag, and so on and so on, over and over again. We had an oil leak recently, so the belly was real mess. The only plusses to the job is that it is good for triple work hours because it is such a grind, so I got five hours credit for a bit under two hours of work, and I can do it alone and unsupervised. I have GOT to learn to do more stuff on my own!!!

Then I went target shooting with a bunch of friends who wanted confirmation that rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated and then we had a late lunch. Then I came home and continued working on my Chapter/Lodge/Youth Group lists.

One of the ideas that we are considering for 2013 is having Masonic Family events where the Chapters invite all the local lodges and youth groups to an event for everyone together. It can be a social event or a community service event or even a Relay For Life day. But one of the stumbling blocks is to make sure everyone gets an invite from some Chapter or District. So we are cutting up lists of the Chapters, Lodges and youth groups by Eastern Star District so that we can give people the groups that need to be invited in their area. And for right now, I do mean cutting, and pasting!

Sunday morning, I went up to the Grand Lodge public ceremonies, which includes the youth groups and the Grand Lodge Installation. What is interesting to me is that the Installation takes about two hours, same as one of ours, but the Ritual portion for Grand Lodge is a lot shorter because they install all but the seven top offices in one big group, then the next three in a group, and then the last four individually. Grand Chapter's Installation has twelve installations, not six, and lots more floor area to cover too. But Grand Lodge fills in the extra time pretty well. It is a nice ceremony with some very touching and meaningful bits in it.

The thing about going up to Grand Lodge on Sunday is that there is NO parking! People staying at the hotels can park there, but the parking garage next to the Grand Lodge gets full on Thursday and that is that for the weekend. Taking BART doesn't work so well unless you take a cab or a cable car up the hill. How such a big building can have so little parking confuses me. The hall was only half full Sunday, so what do they do when it is all full?

I also enjoyed the chance to see the rooms on the Exhibit level because we are hoping to do a Ladies' Welcome Tea with goodie bags and door prizes on the Sunday of Grand Lodge in 2013. About half the Brothers bring their ladies with them, but usually there is only an organized activity for them on Saturday, even though Grand Lodge starts on Friday afternoon. So we are thinking it would be nice to have a welcome set up, with maps for shopping and tour info, maybe water and sunscreen wipes and kleenex and of course our trifold and maybe door prizes. The rooms look great for that, so I hope we will be able to make it happen.

Next weekend, I am in Riverside for the Deputy Grand Matron's School of Instruction.

Left, Left, Left Right Left in Riverside

2011-09-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

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.

Bittersweet Chocolate

2011-09-12T17:16:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the joint reception for the Worthy Grand Matron and Worthy Grand Patron, an event that is usually considered the last big hurrah of an Eastern Star year, leaving only the Grand Chapter session itself to close out 2011. The Grand Officers were in chocolate brown matching formals in honor of our WGM and WGP.

September and October are interesting sort of blended months for Grand Line Officers. We are all, of course, still holding our 2011 offices, but next weekend, we will meet our 2012 Grand Family and have a school of instruction on our soon to be new offices that we will hold after Grand Installation next month. And we will also have a school of instruction for the soon to be 2012 Deputy Grand Matrons, where we will show the work of our next year offices. But we are still this year's officers! It feels sort of weird every year at this time.

I call it bittersweet because it is hard to say good bye each year to your family and start learning to be part of a new family. Even though you didn't choose these Sisters and Brothers, and even though in many years, they don't consider you to "really" be part of "their family" (and boy does this vary WIDELY from year to year!!), you've traveled with them for a year, shared happy times and hardships with them, and gotten to know them and now they are leaving and you are moving on to make new friends with a new group. I have made special friendships out of each of my years of service so far and have missed those friends each time the year turns.

It is particularly hard for me because I really am very shy around strangers. No one believes me when I tell them that, but it is true. It takes me a while to get used to new people and I am terrible with learning names so that takes me a while too. In fact, it is one of the things that I try to spend serious amounts of time at Grand Officer School doing, learning the names of all the new officers and escorts. It is also hard because lots more people know my name than I know theirs. I am great with faces and I can look at a person and know that I know them and I can often remember when I met them and sometimes even where we were or what they were wearing at the time, but the names just don't stick and since it is awkward not to remember people's names, strangers are hard for me. I work at it every day at every event, to get out there and shake hands and meet strangers, but it is tough. Maybe that is why I like events with meals, because if I am sitting at a table with people, I have time to get to know them and get their names in my head.

The irony of the idea of the reception as the last hurrah is that the thing that almost everyone remembers the most about a Worthy Grand Matron is how smoothly her session went, even though it is the very last thing we do. People forget the receptions but the remember the session. If you had a smooth session, they remember you as doing a great job and if you have a rocky session, then not so much.

The joint reception is a "recent" (in Eastern Star terms where you need twenty years to be "not recent") innovation, primarily designed I believe, to save travel for the WMs and WPs and to save money for the Chapters of the WGM and WGP. It used to be in California, unlike other states, that wives and husbands were discouraged from going to the East in their Chapter together because that way there were two couples to share the time and the work. When it was that way, the WPs and their spouses could go to the WGP reception and the WMs and their spouses could go to the WGMs reception. But in recent times, there have been so many couples going to the East together, that separate receptions meant they had to travel twice instead of once.

I did consider trying something new here and having a WGP reception in the South, which the southern WMs and WPs would attend, and a WGM reception in the North, which the northern WMs and WPs would attend, but once I started looking at the 2013 calendar, I discovered that there weren't two weekends available to use so it would have to be a joint reception because there was only one Saturday open. Ah well!

Next weekend, I will be in Riverside, finding out who will be in the 2012 Grand Family.

New England Style

2011-09-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, since there were no events on the Grand Chapter calendar, I was able to attend the wedding of my cousin which was held in Connecticut. A long time ago I lived in Massachussetts and my father was actually raised a Mason there and had his Shrine membership there as well, all the years until he passed away, but I haven't been back to any New England state in the past twenty years or so. Mostly, I remember how there are two or three nice weeks in the spring and two or three nice weeks in the fall and the rest of the time the weather is unpleasant for one reason or another, especially to California weather wimps like me.

Yes, there was a time when I would stride happily down the snow lined sidewalks in a T-shirt and jeans, but those days are gone and not coming back. Now I want the weather to be higher than 60 and less than 85 at all times, with rain only while I am indoors and don't have to be out in it, preferably from midnight to 6:00 am so that it has dried out by the time I go outside, and snow is something that I love to see on the mountain tops because it makes them so pretty from a distance. I like the relative humidity to be high enough that I don't feel dried out but low enough that I don't feel like I just stepped into the bathroom after someone took a hot shower for thirty minutes without the window open or the ceiling fan going. Okay, I know how to handle weather outside of those conditions, but I also know how to handle snakebites and poison oak - that doesn't mean I want to have to deal with those things, okay? So most of the time weather in the San Francisco Bay Area stays within parameters and most of the time in New England, the weather is outside of parameters. I did get lucky, I am told however, because it didn't rain until the day I was leaving and it lulled long enough for me to get in and out of the rental car and into the airport, so four days and no rain I had to be out in. Yay!

As long as I was out there visiting, I made arrangements to visit with my counterpart, the lady who will be serving as Worthy Grand Matron in Connecticut when I am serving in California. That was totally cool. It was a lot of fun to learn how they do things differently there and of course, some of why they can. To begin with, the whole state is only about two hours from corner to corner, so by California measures, every event is local. They have only thirty Chapters, so they can make an Official Visit to each one and usually those visits are during the week on the Chapters regular meeting night, with a couple of exceptions for Chapters that meet in places where the parking would be difficult. The entire Grand Family makes all the visits, possible because everything is local, and they seldom if ever need to stay in a hotel room. That part sounded pretty cool.

However, the less cool part was that at these visits, the Chapter does the entire Initiation ceremony and demonstrates balloting procedures on top of Opening, Closing and regular Chapter business, plus the WGM has to review the books and records of the Chapter, so these visits can take three hours or more and all on a work night, so those who work have to drive an hour home and then go to work the next morning. They try not to schedule these things on consecutive days, but that length of visit would tire me out completely. But I understand why they do it. They don't have districts and deputies there, so the Worthy Grand Matron has to do herself all the inspecting and viewing that we have our Deputies perform. Yay for Deputies!!!

Another thing I found interesting there was that they introduce their legislation at their Grand Chapter session and it then lies over for a whole year before being voted on at the following year's session. Then, after the session when it was introduced, the WGM has three informational meetings to discuss the items and the reasoning behind them. Of course that is more practical when anyone in the state can probably get to all three meetings, so they can pick based on schedule. We have trouble covering the whole state in ten to twelve Transitionals or Instructionals and even then we can't get to everywhere.

I also found out that the Grand Line officers have a New England Association where the six states, and a couple of Candian provinces also, get together at intervals to discuss problems and issues and plans, just as we do in some areas of the state. They get to visit each other's sessions and share ideas. That would be nice, but not practical when the entire six state area would fit in California with land leftover. Still it was interesting to hear about.

All in all, visiting with my counterpart was totally awesome and it really gives a person a great opportunity to see how differerently our governing documents can be interpreted and implemented. They started from the same place, but ended up somewhere totally different and maybe we need to remember sometimes that different does not equal bad.

Next weekend, I will be in Fresno for lots of stuff.

A Western Ride Into the Sunset

2011-08-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I attended the last two receptions of the year for Appointive Grand Officers.

Saturday morning was supposed to be a rafting trip, but it got cancelled because they said that the water was too high and fast. I had really looked forward to going since I hadn't been on a rafting trip since 2007. Knowing that I was going to be a Grand Officer in 2008 (and thinking that it was only going to be one year, so I wanted to go to EVERYTHING), I figured that if I wanted a vacation in 2007-2008, I should go early. So in May 2007, I took a week off and rafted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, the whole way from Lee's Ferry to Lake Mead. The River Guide and my little note book of the days of the journey sit here in my office and occasionally I look at these mementos of the days when I could take a week's vacation and go somewhere that was not an Eastern Star event, ah, the good old days! :-)

Anyway, I had bought all new gear for the Grand Canyon, including water shoes and water socks and water pants and even water panties, an adventuring vest (that's a big vest with lots of pockets with velcro and zippers that is actually big enough to wear on the outside of your life vest so you can use the pockets), adventure pants (again lots of pockets/full length, but with zippers so you can turn them into knee shorts), a new Gortex hat and even new floats for my glasses. If you wear glasses and you go river rafting you want to have a string to hold them on that has little floats on it so if they do get knocked off you, they will float to the surface and you can usually find them.

So I spent all that money and haven't had a chance to use the gear since 2007, and here was this great opportunity, but I guess some of the people who signed up for the trip weren't quite as happy about faster, deeper water than some of us adreneline junkies appreciate and since they might actually get wet, they didn't want to go. Okay, maybe some of the ones who don't know how to swim might just have a teeny, tiny bit of basis for their fear, but if you are wearing a life vest, and you always should when white water rafting, then you really have to work at it to drown. Still, I suppose better safe than sorry, but my gear was not happy at being put away again unused. It's still growling at me from the drawer. :-)

So instead of rafting, I went to a Western wear shop near my house and got new Western boots and a new hat. I have riding boots, hiking boots, dress boots and even tall leather boots with spiky heels, a left over from my more wild and well spent youth (okay, I have two pairs, one in white and one in black, but who's counting? ), but until now have never owned a pair of Western boots since I am really not into the Western thing. Even when I go riding, whether horses or motorcycles, I wear my riding boots, which are tough and practical, tall enough and big enough that my pant legs can tuck in them without buying special book cut jeans.

But I was thinking about Western stuff because the Saturday reception was a Western theme and that got me to thinking about next year. See, next year's fun emblem is a horse and even though I think it is a race horse and not really an every day riding type horse and even though you don't wear Western wear to horse races (Western wear is for rodeos, bronco and bull riding and stuff like that, but horse races are more genteel), I have a funny feeling that there will be people next year inspired to do Western themed things next year, so I thought, what the heck, let's make a little costume investment here and buy the darn boots and hat. Of course, since I was spending money, it seemed only fair that my escort do likewise, so he had to get boots and a hat and Western shirt too, so that did make me feel better. :-)

So now I am all equipped for your basic Western event, already possessing a couple of shirts and skirts and some jeans. Of course, I also have leather for my hand guns, but they tend to frown on that level of authenticity. I had to explain that to my escort for next year. He got a sad face when I mentioned it. And I got to wear my new duds Saturday night. The reception was cool, but the room was HOT!!! I went to visit with members sitting outside a couple of times, just to cool off a bit before I completely melted. And at one point I scored an ice cold water bottle which felt great on the back of my neck. Of course I also drank the water, since I do believe that you should consume what you hunt. :-) The reception folk had made these totally awesome WANTED posters with the pictures of all the Grand Officers on them, so I got to take that home and I will have to find a great spot for it. It was a wonderful souvenir.

The next day, the reception had a sunset theme, partially because it was the last appointive's reception and it now feels like we are winding down towards the end of this year. We have only the WGM/WGP reception in a couple of weeks and then Grand Chapter as 2011 events and soon enough, we will know our 2012 family and, for those of us going on, have a bunch of 2012 things to do. I am trying to get everything that I can possibly get done early done so that the decks are more clear for after Grand Chapter, when the thousand things you can't do early, like sending letters asking the Past Grands for recommendations for Grand Officers and Deputies, have to be done and done quickly.

Next weekend I am going to Connecticut for my cousin's wedding, but I am going to try to have lunch with my counterpart there, the lady in my same spot for the Grand Chapter of Connecticut.

Picnics and Picnic Food

2011-08-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was Jam and Jelly Day at the Masonic Home again and I am very pleased to be able to say that they managed to put us inside the room this time so we could hear the introductory remarks and welcome speeches. We were packed like sardines, hip to hip, but at least we were in the room. Yay! The only tricky part was when you had to turn, back towards the door, for example, when the flag came in, or towards the stage to acknowledge the people being introduced up there. Since we were seated in chairs at the base of the stage facing out and packed tight enough that you could decide if you liked the texture of your neighbor's garments while you sat there, turning required that everyone do it at the same time and at the same rate. This is tricky when the people on either side of you are not in sync. I hope no one thought I was being too forward when I turned.

As always, my favorite part is the picnic style lunch with the members of the local area. Unfortunately, before we got to that stage, we had to get through the death of a thousand introductions. This time, being in the room, I was able to get some pretty good data on the amount of time spent on each part of the process. The self introductions were still pretty useless in terms of hearing and seeing, but they didn't take too long this time. However, the part where we introduce the Residents who were serving as our escorts for the day took almost forty-five minutes. That meant that from the time we were called to order until the time the first speaker started her remarks was an hour and a half. The remarks and closing were actually very nicely done, fun and short, so the program was over in a touch under two hours and then we could go find out people and set up to eat. That is not a terrible amount of time except that we are then expect to sit for another hour to hour and a half for the meal and added all up together, that's three to three and a half hours of sitting and that is way too much for a number of the Residents who were participating, let alone for those of us who just can't sit that long.

So I asked some of the people putting on the program what they thought about cutting out the Resident escort introductions and instead, having the Worthy Grand Matron introduce those Residents during her Special Introductions and then making sure that each Resident got to sit with her or his Grand Officer during the meal time so that they could have a nice chat and visit. I was told that the Residents just love the program and we couldn't possibly cut that part. But to me, it sounded like a bit of an automatic answer, the sort of answer that someone told this person who told that person, who is now telling it to me with no actual data.

So, to check on this, I asked some of the Residents who were at the lunch and they told me that the part they love was getting to sit with the Grand Officers and having lunch with them and that while they liked being introduced, they didn't like the length of the program at all. In fact, a couple of the residents had to go back to their rooms very shortly after we sat for lunch because they were so tired and just couldn't sit any longer. My own escort, who was a lovely lady of 94, felt bad because she wanted to go back to her room when we had just started eating because she was tired from all the sitting, but she didn't want me to feel slighted. I of course told her that she should go rest and that I was happiest if she did what made her feel the best and she went back to her room after a nice hug and goodbye. But there is no doubt in my mind that she would have rather skipped the introductions and then gotten to spend that forty-five minutes sitting with us and chatting at lunch with her visitors.

So I am wondering if we should try cutting the long intros, add the short intros, get the program down to an hour and then have more time for lunch and socializing. The funniest thing I noted about the conversations on this topic is that, on the next day, when we were at another event in the same area, I brought up the question of dropping the Resident introductions again with some of the other local members. I was again told that, because the Residents loved that part so much, we couldn't possibly drop that part. Then, these same members told me that they either don't attend the event at all, or in one case they only attend when they are in a leadership position in their Chapter out of a sense of duty, because it is so long and boring, so since it is no fun, they don't come. Sounds like a situation that needs a little reviewing to me.

The next day was an area event that was a picnic in the park. I had another day of fabulous food, which didn't help my scale any come Monday morning, but at least I gained the half pound in a good cause. There were some interesting picnic games and lots of wonderful fellowship.

Next weekend, I will be in Knight's Ferry, Oakdale and Sacramento.

Stuck In Committee

2011-08-15T17:55:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I attended two more receptions and during the drives, worked on committee letters.

The Committee letters are turning out to be a lot of work, which would seem surprising when all of these committees have been in existences for years and you would think that their duties and the expectations for their members would be well established. But I have discovered that it is not that simple.

To begin with, over the years, some committees have come up with pretty good ways of fulfilling their duties to make their work and their interactions with other members and the Grand Chapter session smooth and relatively pain free. Unfortunately, those processes are not written down anywhere, so sometimes when the composition of the committee turns over (since some committees only serve for one year and can be replaced in their entirety if the WGM so desires) the new people don't know how anything is done and then they are left floundering around and the results are seriously less than satisfactory.

Then there are some committees where they used to have a stated purpose and/or process, but over the years, the committee stopped doing its purpose so when people come on the committee, they seem to have no idea what to do or what is expected of them. Some of these committees are simply obsolete and should be cut down to little or nothing, but since it takes legislation to do that, Associate Grand Matrons keep having to find people to fill the slots required by our Constitution and Laws, even though the people appointed have nothing to do.

And then there are some committees where their work for the year is supposed to be chosen by the Worthy Grand Matron, but to be able to tell the committee members what that work will be at the time that they are asked to join the committee requires knowing what you are going to want a year later, since it is a strict rule that committee members are only asked in the year before their service begins. This year, for example, I have asked a dozen or so people to serve because their service starts in 2012 as Co-Chairs and then they will be my Chairs in 2013. But I will not be asking people whose service starts with my Grand Installation until next spring/summer. However, that is no reason that I can't get the meat of the letters done now, when I have just a teensy, tiny bit less to do than the mountain of work that occurs in the AGM year, doing the calendar, getting Grand Officers and getting Deputies lined up. So for those committees, you are evidently expected to dream up projects for them so they have something to do.

So as we spend hours and hours driving down the road, my AGP to be and I have been discussing what we will want various committees to do in addition to their stated duties in our Constitution and trying to put that discussion into writing. On a few of the Committees that has been relatively easy because one of us has served on them and have a clear idea of how we would like to see them operate. But on some of them, especially the ones where we are supposed to make up our own projects for them, it can be quite the challenge. It is also hard sometimes to try to put it in writing in a way that will make sense to the people that will be getting the letters with these inserts in them. I am glad that we've gotten started on talking all this out because I have a feeling that it is going to take us all winter to get these done so that they will be ready to go out next year when they should.

Of course, discussing these committee things also leads my AGP and me to discussions about lots of other topics, so it also seems that for every task we complete, three more pop up. I never knew that the job was such a Hydra. I guess we are going to have to find someone with a handy torch, to keep the heads from continuing to multiply.

Next weekend, I will be in Union City and Danville.

Roses and Togas

2011-08-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

This past weekend were two more receptions for appointive officers and they were truly diverse.

We started on Saturday with a trip to the Grand Ole Opry, a formal reception with a lovely barbecue dinner and a country western band for entertainment. It turns out that the last trip the honored member took with her husband before he died was to the Grand Ole Opry and having that theme was a tribute. There was no doubt that it was very important and meaningful for the honoree, but I must admit that it is hard to watch your honoree cry when you're trying to please them. You just have to remember that even happy memories can be bittersweet sometimes. But there were many more and plenty of happy moments and surprises too.

One thing that caused an interesting conversation for me later was that the singers did a heavy gospel number when the Bible was brought in for the prayer. Ironically, this particular song, heavy on the saviour and the saving stuff, didn't bother me in the slightest, because it was a reception for a particular person and I feel very strongly that as long as we stay this side of good taste and decency, the music at a reception should be what the honored member wants. Like a wedding, the bride should have what she wants, within reasonable boundaries of common sense and good taste. So this song was meaning neutral for me because while it carried no particular meaningfulness for me, I was glad for the honoree if she was getting what she wanted.

(As a side note, when the Bible was carried in for my reception, the song coming in was a Jewish High Holiday song that is the favorite of a dear friend of mine and the going out song for the Bible was Adon Olam, which is my favorite song from the Sabbath liturgy. I am sure that few if any people recognized the songs, played without words, but I liked them and they are great pieces of music.)

So the irony was that after the reception was over, a gentleman that I do not know, but who I assume was Jewish because he was wearing a Chai, which means Life in Hebrew, was unhappy and confused because he thought that Masonic principles were more ecumenical and he was made uncomfortable by the VERY Christian song. But he was comforted by reassurances that this particular song was done just for this special member, for her special day and that the Order as a whole is supposed to be following Masonic principles of embracing a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being without requiring or affiliating to a particular religious denomination or sect.

This was weird for me because I am not comfortable with some things that happen at OVs, which are supposed to be Chapter meetings, like gospel songs heavy on the saving, groups that form a cross to carry the Bible and/or emblems in and out, escorting a Christian flag, and so on. There are some Chapters that do these things and I generally just don't visit those. I totally respect the right of the members to do those things in their own Chapter meeting and I always encourage people to check out two or three Chapters if they can, to find the right one for them. But at the Official Visit, when you have lots of people from all over and they are all different religious beliefs, I prefer sticking to the ecumenical, non-sectarian stuff.

After the formality and solemnity of Saturday night, we all got a little whiplash attending Sunday's reception with its Delta House/Animal House/Toga Party theme. The members of the honored member's Chapter were dressed up in all variety of Roman wear, some tunics, some togas, some dresses, oh my! Since this reception was for a wild and crazy guy, it was a wild and crazy reception. I must say that I hope no one actually drank all the cheap Coors Light and Budweiser beer that came out of the cans they put up for decorations because there were lots of cans on strings around the room. The speeches were funny and the music cute too. We were treated to a lovely lip sync rendition of Shout, complete with dancing and jumping and if in my entire life, I never see another guy in a brightly colored plaid jacket with pink pants and a pink tie, I think that will be okay because some things should only be experienced once. :-)

Next weekend, I am in Santa Rosa and Napa.

A Dog and Pony Show

2011-08-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

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.

And a Riverboat Sailing to Christmas

2011-07-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

This past weekend started out with the Superior Association Event, which began with lunch on a, you guessed it, riverboat, the Delta King. For a state that is mostly desert, I am getting on a lot of river boats this summer.

We had a lovely lunch in the boat, which is floating on the river as it goes through Old Sacramento and then we went over to the California Railroad Museum before shopping on the streets of Old Sacramento. The Railroad Museum, which I am told is the largest one in the world, was pretty amazing. They have a lot of fully restored train cars, including engines, dining cars, freight cars and a caboose or two. Some of them are bigger than others, but they are all LARGE! Which means that Westerns are ruined for me for ever because looking up at the size of some of these monsters, I can tell that you'd break a leg or an ankle jumping off the thing while it was standing still, let alone while it was moving. And running along the top in cowboy boots - I don't think so! Traditional cowboy boots of the era had leather soles, which are smooth and slick, so running along a moving train, that rattles and sways from side to side and is made of polished wood or metal, with a curve in it from the top peak down to where it meets the side of the train - not happening! Nice thought, try again! I don't know that you could run along the top of the thing in cowboy boots while it isn't moving. And jumping off, well, I suppose we all have to die sometime, but that's not the way I would choose. If you are lucky, you break something that kills you right away. But more often than not, it looks like you would just break something painful that wouldn't kill you, so you'd just get to lie there and suffer. Not a good idea at all! So train running and jumping is not only off my list of things to do in this lifetime (okay, it was never really on there in the first place. :-), but I don't think I will ever be able to suspend disbelief watching a Western again. Alas, another lovely illusion shattered by the experiences of going up the Grand Line.

The item that particularly caught my eye in the train museum was a golden spike, called the Lost Spike, that is a twin to the Last Spike that was driven in to finish the Transcontinental Railroad and a picture and painting that went along with it. The first fascinating thing is that the picture of the spike being driven doesn't have all the rich, important people standing in carefully placed positions as the spike goes it. It's got a bunch of tired railroad workers standing around while the thing got driven in place, with some important people mixed in the crowd. But the commissioned painting of the event has all the important people in lovely, perfect positions, more important people bigger and in front of course, and you can see everyone and they are all nice and shiny clean too. The painting is famous, the photo far less so, and that would be what one would expect since even in the 1800s, PR people evidently knew how to get the most bang for their buck.

The Lost Spike itself is on display and was evidently picked up by the museum only in 2005. There is a plaque explaining that the Last Spike was engraved hastily and had the wrong date on it (May 8) because that is the day that they thought it would go in, although it really went in on May 10, and the engraving on the Last Spike was not as neat and fancy as the Lost Spike because the Lost Spike was engraved after the fact and with all the time in the world. I particularly liked the inscription, common to both of them, "May God continue the unity of our Country, as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world. May 10, 1867.

After the Superior Event in San Francisco, I drove back to San Jose to attend an Emerald City Lights themed reception for our Grand Green Star Point Officer. The reception was done in a modified formal style, sort of like my own in that there were introductions but not escorting and no presentations. That shortened the program part to an hour which gave us time for a lovely half an hour of music and dance entertainment before going in for refreshments. The songs and dances were very nice and everyone enjoyed them.

After the reception, I engaged in an old tradition that I happen to like, that of offering hospitality to the Grand Family when they are in your area. This is a tradition that used to be more universal in Grand Families, but which has fallen off in more recent times. It used to be that when the Grand Family was in the local area of one of the Grand Officers, the local would have everyone over for a meal or drinks or just some social time. If your home was too small for everyone, you could also have them out at a local restaurant or bar. I know that with times being tougher, this added expense can be hard for some and with a schedule that is squeezed into weekends, times can also be hard to find, but I have always liked this tradition because it gives everyone some social down time when it is just the Family, to talk and enjoy each other's company without detracting from member time as would happen if the Family socialized at an event. Most of the Family was able to make it over to my house and I enjoyed having them. I think I've hooked a couple of them on my homemade fruit cordials. :-)

On Sunday, it was back up to Richmond for a Blue Christmas reception, which was done in the full, traditional style, with escort and presentations and everything. It was a lovely afternoon with the most amazing decorations. I don't know if I have ever seen so many blue Christmas decorations ever. I don't think I knew there were so many in existence. And they all looked great!

I couldn't help but notice though, that where the night before, the modified program was over, including speeches, in about an hour, followed by a half an hour of entertainment and then a social hour, the full, traditional style, took and hour and ten minutes to get through all the preliminaries and escort before the Worthy Patron took the gavel to start the speeches, and the speeches and presentations took us to a full two hours of program. While I feel very strongly that a reception is a very personal thing and, like a wedding, an honored member should have what they want, within reasonable boundaries of cost and decorum, I wonder as a general idea how much is added or subtracted by the member experience by these changes. Of course, since I can't sit for great lengths of time with pain, I am probably somewhat biased on this issue.

Next weekend, I am in Fresno for the AM/AP workshop.

From Riverboats to Rock and Roll

2011-07-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

This past weekend were three more receptions for appointed Grand Officers and they were all spectacular in their own way. The only hard part was that they all had different themes calling for different clothes, so I think I packed more outfits for this weekend than I've needed all year long. :-) But it was lots of fun to dress up and participate in every one of them.

We started Friday night with a gambling themed social reception. After the obligatory remarks and speeches time, we enjoyed a room that reminded me of a riverboat casino. There were gaming tables and dealers and when we walked in the door, everyone got a $10,000 chip to play the games. Too bad that there was no cashier, because I would have just cashed out and called it a great day. :-) But everyone had the chance to play the games for free and there is nothing with less stress than the fun of playing gambling games when none of the money on the table is yours. :-)

All of the Grand Officers had feathers or dealer visors to add ambiance to the day and I don't think I have seen that many feather boas in one room at the same time since I went to a Las Vegas drag queen show. It was quite colorful. As with all things Eastern Star, there were tasty snacks and finger foods to enjoy between rounds at the gaming tables. I think that I will have to get the receipe for these mozzarella and pepperoni pinwheels that they served. They were serious YUM!

Saturday night was the Wearing of the Purple and it was all about the Crown. We all wore purple shirts or blouses and some of the men also had purple ties. One of the nice things about choosing a Mr. Wizard who has traveled several times before is that he already has a fair collection of wardrobe bits, so he shouldn't have to buy too many pieces to fit the various dress themes and evidently, a purple tie was already in his closet. Or if he ran out and bought one, he hasn't admitted it to me. :-) There were several great musical selections including some wonderful vocals and instrumental pieces and all of the Grand Officers wore plastic tiaras with little flashing lights on them. They probably looked better on the ladies than on the men, but what a bunch of good sports. Since Mr. Wizard has traveled before, I think he was not terribly surprised to find himself wearing this thing and that is good, because he'll wear a lot more weird things before our time is done.

Sunday afternoon brought us to a Rock and Roll BBQ reception, for which I wore black jeans and a white shirt and my black leather biker jacket. I have a funny feeling that I may be the only Grand Line Officer in Eastern Star history to own a black leather and chrome snap jacket, or if not, the only one who has dared to wear it to a reception. But we were told to dress rock and roll and I wore a pink hairband too, so there you go. It made the honoree happy, so everything else is moot. The honored member is part of a band and his band played lots of great songs for the entertainment. The totally best one of all is the one where our Grand Chaplain did the vocals himself. He told me that he was not a singer, just a guitarist, but his song was awesome. I wonder if we will ever be able to get him to repeat it. We had a great BBQ lunch too and it was a shame to get to the end of the program. I wish I had had the courage to yell encore, but the last time I did that, I ended up on a stage doing bad hula dancing, so I took a pass on that this time. :-)

Next weekend I am in Sacramento, Los Gatos and Vallejo.

Off To See The Wizard

2011-07-12T18:38:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was so full of events and plans coming together that I had to come back to work to get some rest.

Saturday was my reception and the announcement of Mr. Wizard, the man I have asked to run for the office of Associate Grand Patron this October, who will, assuming we are both elected, serve with me as the co-head of the Order in 2013. I think sometimes that the Grand Conductress reception is the biggest event in the trip up the Grand Line because everyone wants to know who you have chosen and even those who think they know want confirmation.

But the demographic of the event was very interesting. Usually, a lot of Past Grand Matrons and Past Grand Patrons show up to the reception because they've all been there themselves and want to know who is coming next. By a lot I mean usually a couple dozen, so I arranged for forty-eight chairs on the stage, twenty-four on the ladies side and twenty-four on the men's side, with an aisle down the middle, figuring that the front row of six on each side would be taken by the speakers and presiding officers and then the back three rows on the ladies side would be full and a row or two of men. Then I had almost four hundred chairs set up in the room theater style for the audience. Usually, the stage is full and ladies are sitting on the men's side because we run out of chairs on the ladies' side, and usually there are lots of empty chairs around the audience because people sit more on the ends and not in the middle or there are round tables and no one wants the chairs that you have to turn around.

Well, I may have had more empty chairs on the stage than in the audience. Almost every chair in the audience was taken, but I had twenty-five or so empty seats on the stage. If I had realized the numbers were going to fall that way, I would have moved the Grand Officers to the stage and freed up a row in the audience, but who knew. At least I can be happy that there was a great turn out and that I had the room sized correctly because there were just a few empty chairs, so everyone had a place to sit but we didn't feel like a really tiny nut in a really big shell.

Everything came out awesome! The photographer is a man who I know from my professional world, who had never been to an Eastern Star or Masonic event before and told me today that he never knew that I was a spiritual person before, and that he felt inspired by my speech at the reception. Maybe I have to get him a petition to a local Lodge. I wonder where he lives. He has offered to set up an on line file of pictures for me so I can send the link to my girls and they can print out pictures that they want and we are going to see if that works.

I should have the video in a week or so and then I can start to remember what people said and what happened. When you are in the midst of it, you are so busy being in the moment, that you hardly remenber anything! I remember just bits and flashes, but luckily the electronic memory can bring it all back!

Then, if that wasn't enough, we had our workshop on Sunday, with a hundred people for leadership and management training. That was a mixed group of my girls and their little sisters and their Associate Patrons to be and assorted guests and we had a great time presenting modules on strategic planning, budgeting, motivating volunteers and working with our Lodges along with interesting exercises and discussions. I am hopeful that we will help improve the leadership skills in our Chapters and be able to accomplish more with each year as we grow into the new Millenium! The attendees were enthusiastic and fun.

As is customary, I showed the girls the dress that I have chosen for them for our Worthy Matron year. However, I failed slightly in my intelligence gathering. I did not find out if the materials were all washable, so I have a task on my list and luckily my girls are forgiving because we had half the workshop still to go and they were kind enough to refrain from lynching me for not knowing this fact about the dress. Most seemed to like it, or if they didn't, they didn't say so to me. :-)

It was a tremendous amount of work and planning, but the results were spectacular and have proven one of my basic rules of Eastern Star - everything is more fun when it is over and you can look back and say Wow, I did that!

Next weekend I am going to three receptions, in Ridgecrest, Yorba Linda and San Pedro.

Fun and Not So Fun

2011-07-05T12:17:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the final big push in getting ready for the Reception and Workshop this weekend. I am truly blessed to have lots of wonderful support and helpers from my Chapter and from all over my area to truly show that many hands make light work. Two work parties later, we are all ready to go, at least on all the things that can be done ahead of time. The "day of" tasks and the thousand and one "punch list" items is still a little daunting. Still, we've got four evenings to get the punch list done, well, okay really three because I have my nail appointment on Thursday, well okay, really two because we may have a practice or run through on one of those, okay, really one because Friday has already been eaten by "day of" tasks . . .well, maybe I can get stuff done during my lunch hours. :-)

Of course, the rest of the Eastern Star world isn't holding still while I get through this count down either. There are other receptions for other Grand Officers on the weekends that follow my weekend of events and so I also owe some people scrapbook pages for those, but on the other hand, there are loads of empty evenings after this weekend to do that, five whole evenings, well, okay, maybe four because I fly out on that Friday, and well, maybe three because I have to pack on that Thursday, well, okay, maybe two because my Chapter meeting is that Wednesday, well, okay, maybe one because I have to work late one of those nights to make up for leaving early on Friday, so okay, yeah, one night, three scrapbook pages. That can be done, right? I mean who needs to buy groceries or clean house or any of those other silly things, yes? I can eat fast food and do scrapbook pages, sure!

So maybe I've gotten to the point where nothing gets to get on my task list without a time estimate and yes, sleep is highly overrated anyway!

So, honestly, the preparation part is stressful but it can be fun too. Having a great bunch of people help you get great things done is awesome! So while sleeping every now and then would be nice, I will just have to catch up on that another month.

What is not so fun is the number of people who keep telling me that they "know" who I've chosen to go with me and that they've "known" since last year or they go to some guy that they think it might be and tell him that they "know" it is him and how much they will enjoy his year. I keep reminding myself that it would not be polite to say a bad word to these people.

If people want to guess on their own, or even in their Association or social group, that's fine and that can be fun as a game. I have one group who told me that they discussed it at an Association meeting and wrote down their guess in an envelope and they are going to bring the envelope to the reception and see if they guessed right. That sounds like great fun as long as they are happy whether they are right or wrong.

But people telling me that they knew last year, when I didn't even know last year is just annoying. And teasing one of the eligible men is just plain mean. It hurts people's feelings A LOT! If they are the guy, then you force them to lie to you, which is awkward and embarrassing, and if they are not the guy, how much more embarrassing to be thought of that way and then to have everyone find out that it isn't you. I don't want to spoil people's fun of guessing, but if anyone out there thinks it is fun to be teased "I know who you've chosen, I know who you've chosen, ha ha ha-ha ha, neeener, neener, neeener" then they have a very weird sense of humor.

It also causes hurt feelings because there are rules for the timing of asking people to do certain things and breaking the timing makes it look like you don't care about others. A Grand Line lady is not supposed to ask a man to serve with her until she is Grand Conductress. Has the rule been broken in the past? Yes. Is that good? No. Did I ask my guy before the proper time? No. So anyone who "knew" when I was Associate Grand Conductress must be precognitive, since even I didn't know.

The same is true with asking people to serve as Grand Officers. You aren't supposed to ask anyone until you are Associate Grand Matron, but I've got people starting rumors that I've asked a Grand Marshal already. Reality - I haven't asked anyone and won't until the right time and truthfully, I haven't even made a final decision on who I am going to ask, so anyone who says they know is three steps ahead of me. And the discomfort of teasing people is just as bad for the Grand Officer appointees. They aren't supposed to say anything until they are announced and so asking people forces them to either lie or get their feelings really hurt because if they say no and they really aren't one of the ones chosen, how hurtful!

So if I could make one wish, not only for myself, but for those still before me and for those that come after and for every person that some day may find themselves considered for any Grand Officer position, it would be for people to spread the word that asking ahead or teasing ahead is just not fun. Guess among yourselves all you want, but don't tell me or any other Grand Line officer that you "know" their choices for AGP or Grand Officer and please, if you have any mercy at all, don't ask people if or tell people that they are one of the "chosen".

Next weekend, I am here in San Jose for the Conductresses Reception and the combined Conductress/Associate Conductress/Associate Patron designee Workshop. It promises to be an amazingly fun weekend and I will probably be the happiest person on the planet next Sunday afternoon.

The End of the Dusty Trail

2011-06-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

This past week marked the last Official Visits for this Grand Chapter year. I didn't even realize that we were on the last ones until someone mentioned it, but now we enter into Reception season and the next thing I know it will be time for Schools and Grand Chapter again.

People always told me that time runs faster as you get older, but evidently I am over the hill and gaining speed because for the life of me, I can't figure out where six months of this year went. The end of this week is July and a week after that is the first reception, which is mine! AAAHHH!!

So we made a big, big loop this past weekend, with lots of miles between locations. I confess that I flew the circuit because I just can't sit in a car that long any more. So I left San Jose in my little plane on Friday afternoon, flew to Bakersfield, attended the Official Visit there, stayed overnight, flew to Palmdale, attended the Official Visit there, flew to San Luis Obispo, rented a car and drove to Santa Maria, stayed there overnight and then drove back to San Luis in the morning for the LAST OV of 2011 and then flew home to San Jose.

My brave escort went with me on this flying loop and some of the other Grand Officers and Escorts were teasing her about being so very brave, but her dad was involved in aircraft so she's been around planes lots. And anyone who has flown with crop dusters no doubt finds my flying a bit on the boring side, since I tend to stay in the middle of the air and avoid the edges (you know, ground, outer space, mountains, stuff like that) except when landing. Every time I take off, I remind myself that now I have to land the plane, one way or another because landings must always equal take offs. It is inescapable math, just like the speed of light and the power of gravity. Try ignoring that sort of math and bad things happen.

It was hot in Bakersfield and Palmdale, although the locals told us that the weather was actually quite nice for their area for this time of year. But then, I am a weather wimp and proud of it. I want the temperature between 60 and 85 at all times and anything outside those parameters is cold or hot, respectively. When my family left Boston and I started visiting my sister in Las Vegas, I made myself a promise not to live in places with certain problems such as

Having to dig the car out of the snow
Having to plug in your car at night so it doesn't freeze solid
Having to wear mosquito netting in your back yard
Having to use the tail of your shirt to open the car door because the metal is so hot it will burn your fingers
Having to wear sunscreen to go to the grocery store
Having to install misters so that you can use your patio

Luckily it cooled off a lot when we got back out to the coast, so that was great!

The Official Visits were nice, but there weren't very many members there. I wonder if we were running into vacation time since a lot of people I know go on vacation as soon as school lets out. It would have been nice to get to visit with more of the members, but I had a wonderful time with those who were there.

In Bakersfield, we attended the traditional Kern County dinner and Social Style OV, which made me wonder about something that happened earlier this year. When we went to the Orange Belt and to San Diego, I remember that some of the members were put out about having to pay for the meal and entertainment to attend the Official Visit and that it was suggested that we have a "free" part of the event where locals could meet the Grand Family and not have to pay and then go into our meal and entertainment part for those who did want to pay.

However, for forty years, or so they said at the event, the Kern County OV has been a dinner followed by the Official Visit and everyone pays and no one has ever said boo about it. So is the problem the paying or is it just that it is new?

I also have started wondering about that on receptions because I was told, when I was an appointive officer, that you could not charge the attendees for a reception, although you could charge for add on events, if you organized a separate outing for those coming to the area or not. But one of the invitations I got for one of this year's receptions asks for a payment for the food and such and I am curious if something has changed that I never heard about. I am sure that someone will tell me all about it.

Anyway, in Kern County, there is a tradition that the previous year's Grand Family come and help serve the food and afterwards, they all go off somewhere and eat something else. My daddy always told me to be a little suspicious about people who cook or serve you food and then don't eat the same food, so I am wondering a little bit, but maybe I will find out the secret in 2014, when I get to help serve for the first time.

The Official Visits in Palmdale and San Luis were Traditional Style, but they did not have as many officers and I would have liked to see for the numbers of Chapters in the District. At least that keeps the introductions shorter. :-)

Next week I will stay home and finish the preparations for my reception and the Conductress/AC/AP Designee workshop, with two work parties planned and hopefully enough.

I'm Late, I'm Late, For A Very Important Date

2011-06-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I enjoyed two Official Visits, in Los Molinos and in Yreka.

I started out flying from San Jose to Redding and parking my airplane there. It is as north as you can reasonably go and stay in the valley. After Redding, you have to start climbing over the Shasta Cascades and the weather can get annoying. So we parked the plane in Redding and then drove down to Los Molinos for the OV. Driving along, I never knew how much stuff there was to do and to see in the Redding area. After all, I've only gone up there to go to a meeting or event, or as I was passing through on my way to farther north. So I definitely have to put on my list of "things I am going to do when I have time again" (which is maybe only three years from now :-) to go to that area when I have free time and go see all the bridges and caves and recreational activities. Alas, that time is not now, so we drove to Los Molinos, had dinner and went to the Masonic Hall. The Chapters there did a lovely job and I had the opportunity to visit with quite a few of my Dragon Riders, which was great!

After spending the night in Red Bluff, we drove a couple of hours up to Yreka for their Social OV. Their theme was Mad Hatter's Tea Party and they had done an absolutely amazing job on costumes, decorations, the whole nine yards! The Worthy Matrons and Patrons were dressed like the characters and there was even an Alice and a couple of Alice "clones" from the local youth group. They even had a table that was set up crooked. They did a great little skit bit building on the theme too. I cannot imagine how much time those wonderful costumes must have taken though. There was a White Queen and a Red Queen and a White Rabbit and a Caterpillar and a Mad Hatter and more! It must have taken them weeks of preparation. They put on a great party and everyone had a lot of fun.

To add to the excitement, it turns out that this past weekend was some sort of pioneer days celebration in the town. The street alongside the Masonic Hall was closed for booths and I think that they were re-enacting black powder gun fights as part of the entertainment because every now and then we heard stuff being shot off. I told my girls that I had never realized there was so much gang violence in a little town like Yreka. :-) They assured me that it was limited to one weekend a year, but that it happend to be this particular weekend. :-) That is one of the tough scheduling problems that we all face - when we set up a calendar a year or more ahead of time, we never know if it is going to be the weekend that there is some big local event and there is nothing we can realistically do to change the weekend if we find out afterwards. A Grand Chapter calendar is like a Jenga game which is right near the end. Everything is precariously balanced and you can't change one thing without throwing tons of other stuff completely out of whack.

Today, I am hoping that the overcast clears in Fortuna so that I can fly myself up for the OV this evening. I wanted to make all the OVs this year and I have so far, but Mother Nature may prevent me from this one because I can't fly up safely if the overcast doesn't burn off. So I will know in about three hours if I will make it. I will be going to Bakersfield, Palmdale and San Luis Obispo this weekend.

Mountain Flying

2011-06-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I attended the Official Visit in Susanville. For those of you who do not know where that is, from the San Francisco Bay Area, you drive four hours to Reno and then you turn north on 395 and drive back into California and an hour and a half later or so, you get to Susanville. It is in a lovely vally with very friendly people, but I can understand why they feel just a little isolated. Basically, from there, you have to drive at least an hour or two to get to somewhere from which you can go to somewhere else. There is no easy way.

Of course, I did cheat a little because I just can't sit in a car for five hours any more without serious pain. My hips are uneven, so sitting straight with my feet on the floor without crossing my ankles or my legs is tough for me for more than a couple of hours and sitting in a car for five, even with a meal break or something, is just torture. At work, I have an ergonomic chair, but even then I try to get up and walk around every hour or so, which you just can't do on long drives if you actually want to get where you are going.

So I flew myself from San Jose to Susanville, a total flight time of about two hours because the roads in the air are very straight. The only annoying part about doing that is that you have to fly over mountains and there are very few radio navigation aids in that part of California. But if you can look out the window, you can use pilotage, which means watching the ground and steering based on what you see. I chose to fly from San Jose to Oroville and when over Oroville, turn up the river valley and fly from there to Lake Almanor and then turn right and fly into Susanville. It is always harder to go than to come back because the first time into a strange airport, you have to find the airport, but coming back, you've already seen the terrain and you are flying to somewhere familiar, so that is better.

When I got there, a very nice young lady gave me a lift into town and dropped me off at the Masonic Center and her dad fueled my plane while I was gone, and afterwards, one of the brothers kindly volunteered to give me a lift back, so that was all very easy. That part of flying is really cool! But no one wanted to go up or come back with me. I guess with little planes, you either love them or hate them.

All of the members at the Official Visit were very welcoming and they were very touched and pleased that I had made it. I was very glad I had made it also. The members there really appreciate how long and hard a drive it is for anyone to get up to visit them and I appreciate that it is a long and hard drive for them to get to visit anywhere else.

There is also a perception, which I hope to help dispel, that lady Grand Line Officers never visit the far away places until they are Worthy Grand Matron. I don't think that this is true, but it is a persistent myth. I do appreciate how isolated and alone some of our areas must feel when most of the state seems to give the impression that California only goes from Sacramento to San Diego and east only as far as Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside. So if my visiting can help our members in the North and East feel welcome and appreciated, I am happy to do it.

The only other puzzlement for me on these far away Official Visits is whether it is better to put only one or two in a group, or put them in a week long trip where you go from one to the other each day, whether the Official Visits are better during the day or at night and what we can do to get the most members to attend. This Official Visit was on a Sunday afternoon and it looked to me like there were about sixty local members there. I don't know if that is the total, active membership in the District, or if there are more members who would come in the evening or on a weekday or on a Saturday. I wish my Lucky 8 ball had those sorts of answers on its little float. :-)

Next weekend, I will be in Los Molinos and Yreka. I will not be going to Oregon.

Carneval! No, Fiesta! No, Festival!

2011-06-06T18:07:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday was our Summer Festival at our Senior Living Community in Yorba Linda. This is an annual event that raises funds to pay for something special for our Residents or to boost our Endowment Fund that provides the income to run the facility. For many years, this was a two day event, but a few years ago, they went to a one day event instead. It used to be that each Grand Officer had a booth to fit the chosen theme for the year and the Grand Officers collected donated items from all over the state to fill these booths. Some booths are sort of pre-set, especially for the line officers, while many of the appointive officer booths changed from year to year to accommodate the theme. The day started bright and early with the Associate Patrons preparing and serving breakfast and went well into the evening with a dinner and entertainment night to cap it all off.

Some changes were made last year that have carried into this year and some more changes made this year, so we are all waiting to see how it went. Last year's car show came back this year, with even more cars on display, including some real beauties, and booths were again made available for outside vendors, which made it a nicer draw for the community and the public to come. Most of the appointive officers did not have individual booths, but they did help out with drinks and other booths. The line officers and a couple of other groups had their traditional booths, mostly serving food and beverages, except for the lucky Conductresses and Chaplains, who sold formals and books respectively.

Now the thing about the formals and the books is that they are bulky and they are heavy, so getting them gathered up from all over and brought down to Yorba Linda can be a challenge calling for an entire logistics corps, but instead, I had two brave Chairmen, who got it all together. They were awesome! Extra special kudos go to the husband of one of my Chairmen, who did the work of five people and I am grateful that he survived the experience, (although, come to think of it, I am not sure I did see him come back from that last dumpster run. :-) I could not have managed without these three hardy souls.

The thing about the formals booth though, is that it is one of our biggest money makers because lots of people are thrilled to get a gently used formal for only ten dollars and our overhead is the lowest, since all the stuff is donated and we don't have to pay for ingredients or paper products like the food booths do. But it is a never ending work load. We no sooner got everything up and running but we were had our first customers. It really takes two people to handle each sale, one to collect the money and give change and another person to bag the purchases. At the same time, we had people who were dropping off more donations all day long, which was great because it meant that our stock kept getting refreshed and people who came by later saw new stuff and not just picked over stuff, which also gave people an excuse to come back and buy more, but it also meant that I had two people who were busy all morning and a pinch of the afternoon getting the new stuff onto hangars and sorted into our racks. We sorted the dresses by color rather than by size because size sorting would have been impossible and usually, people are looking for a particular color. But it was more work to keep it that way than it would have been to just toss everything onto a rack.

So that was four full time people all day, but then you also need to give people breaks and take turns getting lunch and snacks and water and such. I only got out of the booth for a lunch hour and potty break which included the inevitable picture taking session for the Grand Family, so I never actually saw any of the other booths or the car show cars, darn it. But we had a good day, I hope, and had a great booth!

Next weekend, I will not be going to Fresno, but I will go to Susanville if the weather cooperates.

Tradition, Tradition!

2011-05-31T21:40:00.000-07:00

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.

Writing A Three Part Novel - Well, Maybe Four

2011-05-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

This past week or so, I have been working on book edits and suggestions. It is very important, but it is like slogging through mud and just as fast.

Each year, the Associate Grand Matron and Associate Grand Patron have written whole books, really, really, one for the butcher, one for the baker, one for the candlestick maker - no sorry, mind going away, okay found it - one for their Grand Officers, one for their Deputies, and one for their subordinate officers, to use during their year. The theory is that they work together on the first two books and then each write the one for their group, either Matrons or Patrons. I am not sure how much theory and reality have fused here, but it is just vaguely possible that she writes more than he does, but it is just a scurrilous rumor.

The usual course of this was for the Grand Line officers to give these books to their Grand Officers and Deputies and to sell these books to their subordinates. That used to mean making gobs of paper copies and then hauling huge boxes of books to workshops to distribute and sell and then using the extras for firewood on long, cold nights. After all the Line officers paid for these out of their pocket and if they don't sell them all, the least the extras can do is be worth their weight in wood, yes?

It was always a big hassle and a really tough job. Recently, we went to a CD format, because it only costs a buck and a half to bulk copy CDs and they are lighter weight. You don't get your money back out of the extras though, since you should not throw CDs into a fireplace. We are still offering paper copies to those who pre-order them, but few people want them and when they do, since they are pre-ordered, there are no extras so that saves A LOT.

Anyway, a lot of the stuff in these books, especially the Worthy Matron and Worthy Patron books, repeats itself from year to year, so it seemed a bit silly that we all had to redo the books, primarily to change the illustrations and to tack in the few items that change, like songs, projects, flag tributes and so on. It became apparent that if you created a packet with all the changed pages, you could create a common book that could be used year after year. That way, if you went through again, you wouldn't have to buy another one, just that year's packet, and the Grand Line officers would not be reinventing the wheel all the time.

But to make sure that it will work for several years, we are trying to go through them together as an upcoming Grand Line and work out books that make sense, are readable and understandable and are comfortable for people coming from different areas. That's where it gets a bit tricky.

You see, traditions are so different in so many places that you have to try to explain how we do this if we do this, but this is how we do this if we do that, but this is how we do that if we do this, and so on and so on. And of course, everything has to correspond with our Ritual and our Constitution and our Instruction Book because if there are any inconsistencies, someone is going to find them and then all H E double hockey sticks will break loose. So the reading is pretty slow going and the books are pretty large. But when this is all done, it will be amazing!!! Someday, when my Grand Marshal is in my current spot, she will love me forever!

Next weekend has no events so I am going to see about finishing my training flights for my instrument rating check ride and hope to get my instrument rating in the next couple of weeks.

A Room With A View

2011-05-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Orangebelt O-Vent, the other combined Official Visit and Association Event, like the one put on by the San Diego area last February. This one was held at a winery, with wine tasting and tours in the morning and a lovely gourmet lunch and program after.

Because this was the other O-vent of the year, I heard some similar feedback to that in San Diego, about how members should not have to pay to attend the Official Visit to their area. Ironically, this event could have partially solved that problem, but it didn't quite happen that way. The reason is because the wine tasting morning made for a wonderful social time. Even people who don't like to taste wine could socialize and chat with friends. What probably could have happened, because the wine tasting area was a big outdoor area with plenty of seating and tables, is that it probably could have been arranged so that people who were not going to attend the lunch and program later could come during the social time, just to chat with the Grand Officers and meet people. Everyone paid for their own wine tasting, or not, if they didn't want to, so that was a totally voluntary cost. And there was plenty of room. But it just didn't work out that way. Maybe another time.

The other thing that struck me about the O-Vent format is that technically, you would not have to charge people to come if the Chapters wanted to pay for the event instead of charging the attendees. The first Official Visit of the year was like that, where we had a splendid dinner and entertainment evening and no one paid to attend. The Chapters followed the formula in our rules where each Chapter paid its share of the cost of the event, based on their proportionate share of the membership in the District. So a Chapter with 100 members would pay half of what a Chapter with 200 members would pay and so on. That is the traditional way that OVs are paid for and you could have a dinner/entertainment OV and do that, as we saw at the beginning of the year. But you'd have to plan it a bit ahead of time and get your estimated cost for the Chapter into the Chapter budget the year before the OV so that people wouldn't be surprised about the increase in cost. Still, that way, no one would be charged a ticket price and Chapters with more attendees would get more value for their dollar, so more attendees would be better since the amount each Chapter pays is dependent on their total membership and not based on who shows up.

As my planning process continues, I will need to find out what areas would like to try this O-Vent sort of thing, who wants an Association event unrelated to the Official Visit and what other things people want to put into the calendar. As usual, everything seems to need to happen earlier than you might think because each O-Vent changes the number of Official Visits that I have to fit into the calendar. So the decision on whether to do that or not may have to happen sooner rather than later. But I think that it will probably be necessary to either have a free portion of the event so that members can come and meet the Grand Family without paying or the entire event will have to be free of charge with the Chapters each paying their per capita share as set out in our Constitution. It is definitely something to think about, now that we have seen two of these and have gotten some feedback from our membership.

Next weekend I have work commitments close to home and I have books to review, so I will not be traveling.

Clothing Makes The Man

2011-05-10T18:18:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I attended an official visit which, while Traditional Style, was nevertheless in Hawaiian dress. Since it can get pretty hot in parts of California, Hawaiian dress can be very comfortable compared to layers and layers of nylon. But an interesting comment by one of the members caught my ear.

This member, who was speaking to someone else in the dining room during refreshments, made a comment about how hard it was to figure out in the crowd who the Grand Officers were when they were not dressed all alike, which is often how we appear at events. I do not know if she was trying to find her particular Grand Officer or looking for Grand Officers in general, but it did raise an interesting point. What is the proper balance between wanting the Grand Officers to be readily identifiable and having them pay too much for clothes and outfits for all occasions? Do Grand Officer name badges need to be large and obvious so that we can be found, or can smaller, less ostentatious badges do the same job?

As I am thinking about all the clothing selections and forms that I have to prepare in the next year or two, one of the items that I have to consider is how many outfits I will make my Grand Officers purchase for use during my year. While I hope that each outfit I select can be used again in the years to come, I cannot count on that happening, particularly for the Grand Line Officers, who will be dressing to match others as they move forward. I know that I am probably looking at a bare minimum of a formal, a travel outfit, a medieval, and a polo shirt, I could add a lot of other things too, like one or two more formals, another skirt for the ladies and slacks for the men, a Western outfit, a Hawaiian outfit, etc., etc. Each year has a flavor, which is why my officers will probably need a medieval outfit but probably won't need a matching Western or Hawaiian, but do I go with just one formal or just two, or the traditional three or more? There's cost, but there is also style and appearance. As the old saying goes about clothing making a man, it seems to me that there is an expectation that clothes are one of the things that make a Grand Officer.

So when a year does not have an ocean or seaside flavor and you ask for Hawaiian, I don't think it is realistic to expect matching outfits. On the other hand, if the themes of the year are very Western, I might think that the members do expect some sort of uniform look, even if it is just a matching top.

We are also experimenting with smaller name badges this year. The older ones were very, very obvious and quite showy, but the darn things used to catch on EVERYTHING. I mean, we all like being close to one another, but when every hug ends with an "Ooops" or a "Hang on a sec, I'm snagged on your dress", it is not so fun. So it does seem like some change was in order, but I am wondering if the current iteration is a bit too small and doesn't quite say enough. At least the ice has been broken on the idea that we don't have to use the same stuff every single year, so hopefully some experimenting in the years to come will let us reach a happy place where hugs end when they end.

Next weekend, I am going to Temecula all day.

Similarities and Differences

2011-05-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I attended the Junior Warden's Retreat in Newport Beach. This is a training retreat put on by the Grand Lodge of California for all the men who will be serving as Master of their Lodge in 2013, the counterparts to my girls, put on by my Grand Lodge counterpart, whose title is actually Senior Grand Warden because the Grand Lodge Line has an extra officer, which does introduce a certain level of confusion because next year, he will be the Deputy Grand Master and all his guys will be Senior Wardens, but then in 2013, they will catch up with each other when he is Grand Master and they are all Masters of their respective Lodges. Whew!

I understand that the Grand Lodge has been doing retreats for the Junior and Senior Wardens for about twenty years now. They have a leadership team that includes paid staff and volunteers and enough people to put on two days of seminars, with separate sessions on Saturday for the ladies apart from the men, and eight rooms for group exercises. A lot of great material was presented with power point slides and various hand outs.

I went because I am trying to improve leadership training for California Eastern Star and I hate reinventing the wheel. But translating over the materials presents some interesting challenges.

The top stumbling block that I see is, as it often is, money. As I understand it, the Grand Lodge, through its Foundation, subsidizes these retreats and the participants, while paying a high price, are not paying what it actually costs for the whole thing. I didn't see the price for this one, but I think that it was in the range of $350-$400, including the hotel room for two nights, the meals, the binder of materials and all activities. I could be wrong on that, but I think that I am in the ball park. Knowing hotels as I do, and these retreats are held at very nice hotels, the actual cost, all in, was probably closer to $550, so that is a fairly substantial subsidy. You could probably get the cost down to closer to what the attendees actually paid if you moved it to a much less expensive hotel, but then you are not going to get the same level of amenities either, with two ballrooms and eight break out rooms available for two and a half days at one property. I also understand that a lot of Lodges reimburse some or all of these expenses for their line officers. Of course, with average lodge dues around $100 a member, this sort of thing is probably a little easier to budget.

So we are starting smaller, with less expensive hotels, and sometimes using Masonic Centers and volunteer help to prepare meals. Where we are concentrating our efforts is in the program content and I think that we are doing a fine job of providing a very high level of quality in our training programs, with excellent facilitators and presenters. On the quality of experience side, we are already in good standing. We may not be able to afford the fancy stuff, but at least we are giving wonderful value for what we do charge, with presenters and materials that would cost three times what we charge if a person was trying to get the same level of training in the private sector.

However, our other challenge is establishing a "tradition of training". I am sure that Grand Lodge had the same situation twenty years ago when they started, but we have it now, in that we are still trying to get the idea that line officers attend training sessions to be "what we do" so that people who serve as line officers naturally expect to have and attend leadership and management training sessions. We need to start thinking about standardizing when we hold these sessions and maybe some of the materials we present and which year we present them. I have often told my girls that I cannot teach them the answer to every question or problem they will face, but I can try to teach them how to find the answers and how to work the problems. Now we have to think about doing that for everyone so that our Chapters have good and strong leaders every year moving forward.

Next weekend, I will be in Fairfield.

Always More Paperwork

2011-04-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

April and May (March a little bit, but not so much) are the season of the Deputy Grand Matron Reports to the Grand Line Officers, ta da! What a mouthful.

If you've never been a deputy or a Grand Line Officer, you may never have seen one of these before. It's a two page form (with a third page that is for the Grand Secretary, but sometimes we get sent that one too) that the Deputy fills out for each Chapter in her District. The format has changed a bit from year to year, as each Worthy Grand Matron can choose the information that she wants to receive, but the basic parts have remained fairly consistent as long as I have seen them. There is a set of headers identifying the Deputy, District, Chapter, etc., and then room for the Deputy to list the dates on which various practices and meetings occurred. Then there are a number of questions about the status of the offices and officers, asking if they are all filled, if people learned their work, if anyone is copying or printing out of our Ritual, which is not allowed, if there are any outstanding officers who are doing an extraordinary job. There is also a question on the harmony and condition of the Chapter - you get all kinds of answers to that one because it is not very defined.

Then there are some questions on the location at which the Chapter meets. I am a bit puzzled sometimes at that because most Chapters are meeting where the Chapter has met for years and why you would ask this over and over again is a little confusing to me. Also, we never seem to do anything with the information, so I am not sure how it helps. I did work with Aims and Objectives on getting a spread sheet together of information on the meeting places to help me earlier this year to find places for Transitionals and I hope to use it next year as I finish up the calendar, but I would think that you would only need the place information once every five years or so. But maybe there is a reason I have not heard or learned yet. I will keep my eyes open on that.

The second page of the form asks for recommendations for Grand Chapter Committees, Grand Representatives, Deputy Grand Matrons and Grand Officers. This is the most valuable part for me right now, although I am told that when I am Worthy Grand Matron, it will be the first page that matters most, which makes sense because by then I will already have chosen my people. What I don't understand is why the form asks for contact information and the years served as Worthy Matron or Patron, but doesn't ask for the reasons why the person recommended would be good for the proposed job. I wonder if this is a bit of a left over from before the computer era. When I get these forms from the Deputies, I send a list of the recommended people, all of them, without any marking as to what the person was recommended for, to the Grand Secretary and someone sends me back the member records for all the people listed. The member record gives basic contact information, all of a person's service history, every office held at the local and state level, and the Chapters in which they are members, and so on. Before we were computerized, I can see where the contact info and stuff was important, but ironically, it is very seldom filled in on the form, so I guess most of the Deputies don't know why I need it either.

Once I get the member record from Grand Chapter, I write on it who recommended them, and what they were recommended for, and then I read it over and make my own decision on what I think would be the best service for the person and then I put the record into one of my two Big Binders Of All, one of which is for honored positions and the other of which is for proposed committee members. When I get member resumes, they go into the proposed committee member binder unless I have a recommendation sheet for them that I filed in the other binder, in which case I put the resume in the other binder with the recommendation sheet. I am hoping that my Big Binders of All will help me next year in finding my honored members and to fill my committees. I have had some committee Co-Chairs to work on this year, but next year is the massive crunch, so hopefully all this paperwork now will help me out then.

After finishing up the recommendations, the Deputy Reports go in my District Binder, which has all the Chapters in each district behind a number tab. I am hoping that collecting the reports for the same Chapter over these years will help me understand the situation in the Chapter when I have to be the one to consider decisions and situations, so we will see in the future if that was a good idea or not.

Next weekend, I am going to the Junior Warden's Retreat, put on by my Grand Lodge counterpart. I am excited to be there to support him and also to see what they are doing as I contemplate how we can improve leadership and management training for our Sisters and Brothers.

Belgium, Yes Belgium

2011-04-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

This past week was an adventure and a half. We just did seven Official Visits in six days. Wow! Since they were all "relatively" close to the Bay Area, lucky me, I got to work three of the four work days and then rush out the door to get to somewhere else. Doing all these OVs in a row, and taking Wednesday off work because Tuesday night was just a hair too far to go home, really threw me for a loop on trying to remember what day it was and where we were going next.

Tuesday was not actually Belgium, it was Healdsburg, but I wished several times for my old watch, which showed the day of the week and not just the date on the face. So we started in Healdsburg on Tuesday night with a lovely Social OV with a train theme and learned all about the various train lines that first linked the East and North San Francisco Bay Areas. Listening to the accounts of what folk had to go through just to cross a hundred miles really makes you wonder why we complain so much about the distance we travel to visit other Chapters. On the other hand, they did not have traffic jams, but I think the roads were equally bad in both eras. I learned the difference between standard, narrow and wide gauge rails and discovered that we have yet another annoying thing for which we can thank the British system of weights and measures. :-)

Because of the distance back home from Healdsburg, we decided to take Wednesday off and have a lovely spa day. My escort and I and three others in the Grand Family went to the Raindance Spa in Sonoma (Great place! Friendly staff and nice facilities). I went for the whole enchilada -since I don't spa very often, when I do, I like to do it all, so I had a massage, facial, spa manicure and spa pedicure. After I win the lottery, I am definitely getting myself a massage guy with a travel table who can come to my house and do the massage thing two or three times a week. I am putting this near the top of my list, right after quitting work and taking that cruise around the world (36 countries in 105 days, valet service and pets allowed in the suite grade cabins - you see, it really is on my list.) I bet they have a massage guy on the boat too! We had a lovely lunch at the spa and eventually had to shower and dress and head to Martinez for a traditional OV where we did Good of the Order in the dining room after the meeting was closed and had a philosophical discussion about the symbolism in our Order. But after that OV, we had to drive home and I had to head to work before driving to Burlingame for another Traditional OV, this time with a baseball theme.

It was on Thursday that I began to doubt not only the day of the week, but the year. There we were with the baseball diamond marked on the floor and baseball shirts. We sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game and ate hot dogs and chips. The dislocation effect however, is because we sang that song and ate more hot dogs than I even want to contemplate in 2008, when baseball was a theme element for the year. I didn't know you could get flashbacks off a hot dog! The entertainment was a great spoof of Abbott and Costello's Who's on First. As Grand Conductress, I am now "Why?" which makes good sense since I am often the person asking this question about old customs and traditions. :-)

On Friday, we attended a Social OV with a Cocktails at Tiffany's theme. I got to wear one of my black cocktail suits, which I usually only wear for work events and received many lovely compliments on it. The light refreshments were a bit overwhelming in quantity and variety and proved what I have been telling people when asked how I am doing - I am getting short of money, time and sleep, but I am in NO danger of starving! There was a nice silent auction for the WGM's project and some good speakers about scholarships and our scholarship fund. On Saturday, we headed to Lodi for a Traditional OV and then to Murphys for a Social Style OV where The Great Panda Express Train Robbery mystery story was enacted for our enjoyment. We got to dress for the Old West and I got to visit with many friends from the area. Murphys is also fun for shopping and many of those Gold Country have lovely antique shops. Finally, on Sunday, we headed to Merced, where we had the most fabulous breakfast with far more dishes served than I could even remember, let alone eat, and then our final OV of the trip with an Easter Egg Hunt theme.

I knew that week long trips could be exhausting, but working during most of it made it ever so much more so and my heart goes out to all of the north folk who also worked during the week as we attended these OVs. The two week long trips I am looking at having will at least be far enough away that I don't have to get up early to go to work because I will only be doing some work in the hotel and in the car. Whew! Next weekend we are resting and recuperating, I hope.

Universal Budget Woes

2011-04-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend has been quite interesting. As I flew south, everyone was wondering if the Federal government was going to shut down or find a way to keep going, a scenario that I remember best from an episode of the West Wing, a series I enjoyed immensely. I knew also that Governor Brown has California all in a tizzy over the State budget too, with anticipated shortfalls all over the place. In some ways I find that ironic because a fair number of the spending policies with automatic bumps in good economic times, but no automatic decreases in bad times, which created a big chunk of the current problems were put in place the last time that Brown was governor. Talk about your chickens coming home to roost! I was hoping to escape budget woes when I went south this past weekend, but alas, my wishes were not meant to be. I was merely dropping from the furious financial frying pan into the fretful fiscal fire. Specifically, this weekend was the first preliminary meeting of the Finance Committee to prepare all the budgets for next year, which runs from October 1 through September 30. I think that no one may realize how many different budgets that comes to because different groups put them together, but the poor (and exceedingly hard working) Finance Committee has to review them all. I think that we had six to give the preliminary look this past weekend: Grand Chapter Budget Grand Chapter Week Budget Eastern Star Senior Living Community Budget Eastern Star Professional Plaza Budget Endowment Budget and last, but not least, Foundation Budget I have found that when you have a really hard job to do, sometimes it is easier to start with the hardest task because once that is out of the way, everything else is all down hill. But when we started on the Grand Chapter Budget, it felt more like having one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. I have never felt so much like I was looking at a situation that had rented the farm with an option to buy. Last year at the Grand Chapter session, the Finance Committee had proposed a per capita increase of $4.50 per member. It failed by a nine vote margin. But this past weekend, we learned that they had been neither kidding nor exaggerating when they said that we needed the increase. Over the past four or five years, everything that could be cut has been cut to the bone, and even beyond, and as uncontrollable expenses, such as insurance, go up and revenue comes down, pretty soon you are making stone soup (nail soup to some with Eastern European antecedents), but no one is coming along to contribute real ingredients. Have you ever gotten to the point in your life when you look at a bad situation and then you look around the table, hoping that someone has a brilliant solution, but there is nothing but silence? I can only imagine that it must be a little bit like being told that you have cancer and there is a medicine that will save your life, but your insurance company won't pay for it and you have no way to get the money, so you know that even though you don't have to be doomed, you are doomed unless someone steps up to the plate to save you? This past weekend was a lot like that. Now I know that there are people in the same boat out there, people who have lost their job and can't find another one and are spending their savings and hoping that they find a way to make more money before their savings runs out and they don't know what to do besides pray and keep trying. But it is very hard to wrap oneself around the idea that if just a few people don't come around and vote yes to pass the per capita increase, we may be in the same spot. After the meetings were over, we went to a truly wonderful Social OV with a delicious dinner beforehand and then an evening of entertainment by members of our youth groups, who also helped serve the dinner. There were many wonderful pieces done. I especially enjoyed a couple of songs done by the choir of the local Job's Daughter's Bethel and I am wondering when I will have the chance to hear them again. But it was hard to get into the festive mood knowing what I had heard at the Finance meeting. At one point, towards the end of the Finance meeting, I made a comment to the others sitting at the table that I believe in the members of our Order and that I have faith that when our members learn about the situation we face, when they see that we have done our best to close the gap and make ends meet but that there just isn't anything left to cut, just like the unemployed family that is trying to choose between food, heat, water and medicine and just can't cut any more, that our members will step up and do what needs to be done. Now I get to wait six months and see if my faith is justified. This weekend starts tonight for me and goes through Sunday. I will be in Healdsburg, Martinez, San Francisco, Castro Valley, Lodi, Murphys and Merced.

The Past and the Future

2011-04-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

This past weekend at one of the Official Visits, I saw a tradition repeat that I first saw in 2008. It was cool then, but it is even cooler now. In the Central Valley, there is a Lodge that has a Bible which is decades old. The Bible was given to the Lodge by a member who asked that it be preserved and that the signatures of leaders of Masonic bodies and others be collected in it. It has the signatures of three Masonic Presidents in it, although not the latest ones, which I hope they get sometime soon, but it is also signed each year by the Worthy Grand Matron and Patron of the Grand Chapter of California. When I first saw this Bible signing, in 2008, when I was serving as Grand Warder, it was a lovely ceremony and I was thrilled to see the book. I took pictures of the 2008 signatures and also of the page with the Presidents on it. But at the time, I never dreamed that I would perhaps someday have the opportunity to sign it and it is something that I can truly look forward to. I understand that they have over five hundred signatures in the Bible so far and add to it each year. Wow! It is particularly cool to me because I have quite a few friends who are Past Grand Matrons and Patrons and I am also touched at the thought of being in this Bible with all of them, as a part of history. I hope I get the chance to do it. :-) We also attended one day of the Grand Assembly session for the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls. I have been to that several times before, but I always enjoy seeing the girls and their enthusiasm. One of the things that I find most touching about being with the Rainbow girls is the sense of happiness and amazement that I feel in the room every year. Here I am in a room with several hundred teenage girls and I can put my purse down on my chair and walk away from it and give no thought to anything happening. Here are several hundred teenage girls and they are going to be polite and respectful and kind (well maybe not always perfectly to their friends, but definitely to me. :-) What incredible girls and what an incredible organization that helps them grow into confident, mature young ladies! The only sad part of the afternoon is that they do a ceremony for the girls who are aging out of the Rainbow and there were a lot of tears as these girls realize that their membership in Rainbow is coming to a close. That is sad to watch. (On the other hand, Sisters and Brothers leave our Order in a box carried by six people, so maybe aging out is not so bad. :-) Next weekend, I am in Yorba Linda, South Pasadena and Bellflower.

A Soldier and a Brass Band

2011-03-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

What a wow weekend we just had! On Saturday, I attended a Social style Official Visit with a patriotic theme. There was a lovely dinner beforehand, which is nice not only because you are not running around trying to find a quick meal before getting to the hall, but also because it provides a wonderful time for fun and fellowship with the local members. And of course, when people ask me how I am doing, I tell them that I am short on time, money and sleep, but I have PLENTY of food. After the dinner, as each Chapter's Worthy Matron and Worthy Patron were introduced, they mentioned briefly the various community service projects in which their Chapter participates. I think that is GREAT! It would be completely awesome if every Chapter had a community service project. It gets our name and presence out into the community, gives our members a chance to work together promoting fun and fellowship, and makes everyone feel great. I have found in this life that there are few things better for making a person feel good than helping those less fortunate and seeing the happiness you can bring to another person, to help them and uplift them. Most of the things that make you feel better than that cannot be written about it a family friendly blog. :-) After the introductions, the speaker for the OV was an Army Captain, who read us the Warrior's Code with real feeling and meaning and then discussed how difficult recruiting efforts have become for our all volunteer armed forces. The sad part was that she told us that only one of five kids coming out of high school are even qualified to join and that even though society is much better today about supporting our troops, very few moms are actually comfortable with the thought of their kid becoming a soldier. She was a good speaker and I think that she was maybe a little surprised at the level of patriotism and enthusiasm for our military and our country in the room. We did a sing along of number of patriotic songs and I think she was amazed that all our members actually know the words. I know that we are unusual, being such a large group with a fairly unified view of supporting our country and our military. I hope she had a good time because we all did. The Worthy Matrons and Worthy Patrons also did a little skit that was fun and the program was a nice length too. On Sunday, we had a huge surprise at the Social OV that afternoon. The theme was colleges and scholarships and just as the Worthy Grand Patron was going to say a few words, the Deputy surprised us all with a ten piece group from the USC marching band, three trombones, a drummer, a bass drummer, a tuba and four trumpets. There were a fair number of USC alums in the room and they had a great time with the USC fight song. The band did a bunch of numbers, including some popular music and some dance numbers too. My favorite rock band is Queen, so I particularly enjoyed Another One Bites the Dust. Since neither of my two colleges had a football team, I have no particular rivalry feelings about other schools. However, the Associate Director in charge of the show, who also was a Mason (and belonged to a lot of concordant bodies, but not Eastern Star - what's up with that? - get that man a Petition!), was teasing one of my girls who went to Oregon and I guess Oregon is a USC rival, so he kept tweaking her in his monologue bits between the songs. Well, at one point, he commented that maybe he needed a lawyer and was there one in the audience and everyone at the table behind me started pointing at me and he started looking to find me and I waved to him and said, "Over here, next to the Oregon person" and everyone laughed. All my girls gave me a high five for that one. After lunch were some great speakers on schools and scholarships and there was one girl who had gotten a Masonic scholarship who spoke about how much it helped her go to school. Then a group of Job's Daughters did this really funny "Big Hats" line dance to Achy Breaky Heart that you have to see to appreciate, but it was hilarious. Next week, I am Leemore for an Offical Visit and then in Fresno for three events.

And a Dressmaker Too

2011-03-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I visited the person who is going to make the dresses for my girls to look over a final trim selection and make some design decisions. While it took three go 'rounds to get the trim I wanted, we have it now and it looked great, at least I think so. We also discussed all the persnickety details that go into the final dress look, like how far down in front and back the V-neck should fall, the length of the sleeve and so on and so forth. What astonishes me just a little bit is how many different skill sets it seems to take to do the job of Grand Line Officer well. I realize that there are lots of people to help with a lot of the different bits of the job, but at the end of the day, you really need to know at least a bit about all these different things. Just looking at the last ten days for example, to be successful, one would need to be a bit knowledgeable in all these different categories: Assisted Living Facilities: The Worthy Grand Matron and Worthy Grand Patron sit on the board of trustees for our Senior Living Community and the other Grand Line officers sit in the meetings as well, which is a very good thing, because if you've never had any experience in Assisted Living Facilities, the meetings are a great chance to learn what you are going to need to know. Just learning what all the jobs are that go with the job descriptions on the budget is a task and how everything is coded and managed is another task. Employment Issues: Since the SLC has staff, there are employment questions and issues as well. I often tell people that any time you deal with a business that is more than just the owner, you have employment issues because you have employees. It is rather inevitable. I know that I have a great advantage because our office represents clients who run these sorts of facilities and on top of doing real estate, we also do employment law on the management side, but how hard it must be to get that expertise if your work does not touch on those fields. It is vitally important for the Line Officers to be involved though, because we need to be there as the representatives of the membership. And by the time you are done, you've learned so much! Event Planner: There are a number of events that we put on every year, but each year they are supposed to be a bit different with some repeat things, some new things, a new theme and sometimes even a new format. While we ask people to take the lead on organizing the events, a fair bit of the creative juice is also supposed to come from us. Finance and Financial Planning: While we have experts to manage our investments and a well educated and practiced Finance Committee to manage the financial affairs, a Grand Line Officer at a minimum needs to be able to read a financial statement and understand a budget. Again, going to the meetings is vital and important to learn about these things if one has no outside expertise. There are also some nice books that teach these fundamentals and I wonder if we should buy one or two for our library so that people with no work experience that taught them anything about finance can get a head start. The basics are not hard, but some of them are counterintuitive. But the members are great about answering questions and again, what a great opportunity to learn and gain new skill. Fashion Design: This is the toughest one for me. For some of the members, the look of their dress is a really vital item. But almost no one, including me, who has gone through the Grand Line has any fashion design experience. At least most of us sew, so we know what a dart is and usually can distiguish between and Princess and an A-line style, but imagining how these things look on different shaped people, especially when, like me, you CANNOT draw to save your life, can be quite the challenge. I like what I have designed, but who knows what it will look like when it is put together? And I like all the fabrics, but a swatch is not a dress, so again, who knows how it will look all put together? Will people love it or hate it? Will it be a high point or will they demand that I design a tasteful paper bag accessory to go with the dress so that no one knows who is in there? All I can do is cross my fingers and hope. At least it is done and the pieces are what I wanted, no plastic sequins, no glitter and no big puffy parts. Fingers crossed now and not uncrossing until July when everyone sees the thing and I get the first reactions. I would hold my breath, but I can't do that long enough. Next weekend, I will be in Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, San Pedro and Anaheim.

Lunch At Home

2011-03-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Official Visit to our Senior Living Community in Yorba Linda. This is an event done every year, usually in February or early March, where the Grand Officers perform the work of a mock meeting for the viewing enjoyment of the residents of our Home. There are almost sixty members of our Order that live in our Home, some of them having moved in quite recently and others having lived there for years. The current Home in Yorba Linda is our third or fourth property (depending on which ones you count :-) and is quite beautifully furnished and appointed. I particularly enjoy the stained glass windows, which were moved from a previous building into this one when we purchased it. The locations of the invidual apartments is a bit confusing, but since most of the spaces are in a big circle, if you keep going you will, usually and eventually, get to where you are going. This year, each of the Grand Officers was given two or three of the residents to be our own Special Pals and we send them cards and try to visit with them when were are at the property. After the Official Visit was over on Friday night, I had a chance to visit with one of my ladies in her apartment and we made arrangements to have lunch the next day, with my other Sister to join us, since I was going to be back on Saturday for meetings for the Home Board and the Finance Committee. Also, I had heard some very mixed comments about the food service and I was interested in seeing it for myself. While I had eaten at the Home on special occasions, such as the Christmas dinner in 2008 and 2009, I had never before shared a regular meal in the dining room with any of our Residents. So at a break in the meeting schedule, I went to the dining room to join my two ladies and we had a delightful time. I had a chance to speak with them about how things worked in the Home for the Residents and get their perspective on the people, policies and happenings which is all the more valuable to me because it is true first hand information. I also had a chance to ask a bit about how some of the Residents feel about the different format suggestions for the Christmas party and of course, I got to try the food for myself. Overall, it was a fine meal, although I did end up with one or two questions that I will have to ask later on. It's a good thing I picked the corned beef and not the fried chicken though, because I ended up having chicken for dinner that night. Dodged a bullet on that one, whew! :-) The meetings were interesting and always informative. I learned a lot there too. The Sisters and Brothers that serve on our Home Board and our Finance Committee put in a scary lot of work for our Order and considering that both of those are multi year commitments, you really have to be a dedicated member to take on those challenges. I know that those two groups also tend to get a bad reputation because they have to make hard decisions, especially in these tough economic times, and it is a shame that people sometimes fail to make a virtue of necessity. On the other hand, I think that there are also things that can be done that would ameliorate, or soften, that reputation, with a little bit of effort. After all, nobody needs a good PR firm as much as people with their hands on the purse strings. :-) Next weekend is one to stay at home, but I am going to go to the dressmaker to do a final design approval before cutting on the Worthy Matron dress I have chosen and I need to get my tax returns done since we won't have another free weekend before Tax Day!

The Voice of the People

2011-03-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

This past weekend we attended three Traditional Official Visits and one Social Style Official Visit. That made for quite the full weekend but we had a great time! In Roseville, I found out that Maya Angelou is a member of our Eastern Star. Isn't that cool! We also heard about other famous women in history that were members of our order. In Auburn, we were treated to a lovely satire of the song Camp Granada, which was pretty funny to begin with and even more so with new words! In Marysville, we rode on the Orient Express, complete with a mystery so dire, the ladies were fainting across the steps. The dining car was also amazing! (I didn't see a little Belgian man with a curled moustache though :-) And in Clearlake, we enjoyed a marvelous presentation on the trees and wildflowers of the Coastal regions of California. It all would have been perfect, but I confess to a small, personal, uncomfortable moment when one of the groups sang the Doxology. Being Jewish, it is not the most comfortable song in the world for me. Well, actually, maybe that is a slight bit of a touch of a crumb of a scintilla of understatement, to be completely honest. However, we had another highlight of the weekend and that was a mini Town Hall discussion led by the Worthy Grand Patron. We had a chance to hear some ideas and views from the members, which have really helped me focus some of my thoughts and plans. The members told us that they would like to see our order spend more time in the community to help people more and raise more money for charitable causes, to make us more relevant to a younger membership and to have us more visible to get new members. They told us that they would like us to have closer relationships with other branches of the Masonic family and get more of the ladies whose men are in Shrine to join us also. They told us that they would like more fun activities, more diversity and more new member follow through. Those all sound great to me. Now the challenge will be seeing if we can propose acceptable programs and initiatives that will accomplish these objectives without running athwart of any evil carpet suckers (the natural enemy of the Dragon Rider of course) who pooh pooh all new ideas and attempt to strangle them in the cradle. Next weekend, I will be in Yorba Linda but not in San Diego.

Weather and Prayer

2011-02-28T15:53:00.000-08:00

There is a scene in the movie Patton that I have always enjoyed. Patton goes to his unit Chaplain and tells the Chaplain that he needs to write a prayer that the next day, the troops would have good weather. The Chaplain is a bit taken aback and asks if Patton really thinks that it would be favorable to God for him to pray for good weather to kill his fellow men and that perhaps this is not the way to approach the Almighty. Patton replies that he is very comfortable and solid in his relationship with the Almighty, so if the Chaplain writes a good prayer, then they'll have good weather. Evidently, this can work as I had the opportunity to test this past weekend, driving north for the next two Transitionals. The weather reports on Thursday said that there would be rain and snow from San Jose all the way to Redding, where we needed to be on Saturday but that it might clear up a bit Saturday night. I was not looking forward to driving in the snow on Friday, and I guess my weather prayers worked, because we got all the way from San Jose to Red Bluff with no weather effects at all and just a little rain and a very few snow flakes that didn't stick on the last three miles. Saturday and Sunday were beautiful, with clear skies, snow on the mountains and nice, brisk air. I did discover however, that the word nice going with the word brisk is a "beauty in the eye of the beholder" situation. Not all people find brisk nice. :-) I try very hard to appreciate each day and the natural beauty in the world around us. On the drive up, I had joked about how we never know if today is our last day and I always want to make sure that I enjoy something every day, just in case. After all, time is our most precious commodity, since we don't know how much we have and cannot make more than our allotted amount. I also figured that having used up all of my weekend prayer points on such lovely weather, I probably should lay off asking for anything else over the weekend. After all, it is never good to press one's luck. Unfortunately, I had a chance to see how true my Friday words were on Saturday and I did have to offer up another prayer or two over the weekend because I got the most terrible news that one of my Dragon Riders had passed away. It was very sudden and quite unexpected. She was going through the line for the first time and was very, very excited about it and to lose her like this was incredibly sad. I try to remind myself that my sorrow at her loss is for myself missing her and going on without her, because she is doing fine on the other side of eternity. But any time someone we know passes away suddenly, it reminds us once more to be appreciative of the time we have. Another movie bit that I appreciate says that we are not given the opportunity to choose the times in which we live or the amount of that time. It is only given to us to decide what to do with the time we have. I choose to believe that I am doing the right things with my time here. Next weekend, I will be in Roseville, Auburn, Marysville and Clearlake.

Stuck in Committee

2011-02-22T14:55:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, someone asked me about the various committees that we have at the state level and how some of them work and operate. What I found particularly interesting is that some of them seem unknown to our general membership and others are not what they used to be, yet we continue to perpetuate them, for what reason I am not certain. One of the areas of apparently constant confusion are the committees with lots of area people who don't seem to do anything. There was a time, back before e-mail and the Internet and a lot of changes when those committee area people had a lot to do, such as processing applications and giving fund raising speeches in the Chapters in their area. But for many of these committees, the processing function has been centralized, either in the Chairman or in one of our statewide programs, and the visiting aspect has disappeared. What puzzles me is that even though the committee doesn't do anything any more, people don't want to get rid of it. It seems to me that either we have to redefine duties for these committees to give them some useful reason to exist, or let them go. There was some legislation at one point to cut down some of these, but for some inexplicable reason, it didn't pass at Grand Chapter. So the members must feel that these committees still have work to do and that is great, if only the people who voted no on cutting down the committee sizes would let us know what that work is supposed to be. The topic came to mind as I was looking through my Mighty Binder of All Volunteers for potential Co-Chairs for about a dozen committees which I am supposed to line up between now and July. For some of our committees, there is a Chair and a C0-Chair, with the idea that the Co-Chair learns about the job the year before they are the Chair. It is a great system so long as the Chair does their job of training up the Co-Chair. We have some committees that are fabulous at passing this information on. But to do that, I have to find the proposed Co-Chairs this year, so they can be appointed Co-Chair for 2012 and then serve as Chair in 2013. To help me do this, I have inherited the Mighty Binder, which has all the member volunteer resumes that have been turned in to Grand Chapter since 2007. It used to have resumes that were older in it, but I decided to remove anything that was older than 2007 because they were just too far out of date to be useful. I mean, seriously, I was looking through all the sheets and some of the people had passed away. Now I am not prejudiced in favor of the living or anything, but it is harder to drive a car or send e-mail from beyond the grave. However, if any of the members who have passed away want a committee appointment, I hope they send me an e-mail or give me a call. When I regain consciousness, I will be sure to appoint them to whatever committee they want. :-) Anyway, after weeding out the oldest sheets, I have in this binder all these resumes that people sent in indicating that they want to help and I also have all the ones for people who were recommended by Deputies last year and starting into this year. It is a whopping big binder! I mean five inches thick type big! Thirty foot Twinkie big! It came to me from my fraternal mom, who got it from hers and so on, and when I am done with all my appointments, I will pass it on to my Grand Marshal so that she can start collecting names and sheets for when it is her turn to fill committees. I wonder if the other lines have these also? It sure is coming in handy. I guess it is the sort of thing one could always start and then start passing on. Anyway, I have a bit longer to wait before I ask anyone to do anything, to give those ahead of me a chance to finish their committees and then I have to line up these dozen or so people. I am hoping to have Co-Chairs that have been on the committee before, but I also hope next year to have at least a third or so of the committee people I choose be new people because I think it is important to have a nice mix of those who have done it and those who are new. We'll see how it goes. Next weekend, I am in Redding and Healdsburg.

Pandas, Snow Leopards and Star, Oh My!

2011-02-15T11:22:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was the first O-Vent ever held, a combination of the Official Visits (Social Style) to the three districts of the San Diego and Imperial County areas and the San Diego Event, which has been an annual association wide social event for many years. The ladies coined the term O-Vent to indicate this combination and it was GREAT! We all gathered at the San Diego Zoo, which has a group gathering/party area on the left of the main gate. They put up a tent for us and set up tables and chairs and a podium mike for the program. The tent was a bit warm, but the weather has been hot and cold in February all over the state, so it is tough to figure out if you want your tent sides up or sides down and they charge to change, so we managed just fine. The program started with a presentation on service dogs. Service dogs is a national project for the three years from 2009 to 2012 and our local representative for the project has chosen to concentrate on service dogs to help returning veterans who were disabled in the line of duty. There is a great group in San Diego that train service dogs to perform all kinds of tasks, like unzipping things and taking off socks and shoes and even opening the refrigerator. Thank goodness no one has taught my cats how to do that one! We also had a demonstration of tasks that service dogs do for their human companions, including a dog that has been taught to brace for a lady with poor balance. It is amazing what these dogs can do for people. They are trained for almost two years before being matched up with a person and the person has to be trained too. After the program, we had a great lunch and lots of fun and fellowship. There were just under two hundred people and everyone I spoke with had a wonderful time. After lunch were the speech moments, but I had to listen from outside to some of that because I just got too hot in the tent and I am sensitive to heat. But I could hear pretty well from the shade just outside the tent. Heat and me are a bad combination. I can get really heat exhausted, especially when I am in an enclosed space, like a tent, with little air movement, but after twenty minutes or so outside, I was fine. Our event tickets included admission to the zoo and all its attractions for the day and also a pass good to come back to the zoo in the next thirty days. All of us out of towners, and quite a few local members too, donated their passes to be given to our local youth groups so that they can have a free fund event day at the zoo too. What a great way to spend the day with our San Diego members. I hope they try something like that again. Of course, with all new things must come some carpet sucking and this was no different. Most of the grumblings were the same things I hear every time there are social OVs since some people don't like events that are not formal and traditional. (I think that every group has a few of this kind of carpet sucker - they usually start their remarks with "Well, back in the old days. . . ") But there was one grumble that was a toughie and maybe there is a way to work around it. Usually, there is no charge for the members attending an Official Visit event. There is usually a charge for association events because they usually include a meal and entertainment. With this combination event, there was a charge because the event included the meal and the zoo entrance, so everyone attending had to pay. I loved the event and hope to see more like it, but I wonder if there might have been a way to split it up a little differently so that people who just wanted to see the presentation and hear the remarks could do that for free and those who wanted to stay for the meal and the social hour and the entertainment could pay. I don't know if it is possible and I don't know if trying to do that would kill the event because people wouldn't stay. But it is something to talk about and think about. I just hope that talking and thinking doesn't kill the idea because even if it is not solvable, I don't think it has to be an event crushing problem. Maybe it just becomes something that gets done in an area every other year instead of every year or something like that. I had a great time though. Next weekend, I am in Bellflower for a Transitional.

Planning Ahead and Ahead and Ahead

2011-02-08T14:37:00.000-08:00

This week has been very interesting because it has involved lots of planning ahead and then ahead some more, and then ahead some more on top of that. While lots of people over the past two years have told me to just take each year as it comes and deal with one year at a time, I am beginning to think that being a Grand Line Officer is a bit like being pregnant in the sense that when it is over, the memory of what you went through sort of fades away and all you are left with are the happily ever after bits. I mean seriously, who would ever get pregnant a second time with a full and clear memory of feeling like a beached whale and the pain and trauma involved. I am convinced that the survival of the species depends on some selective memory here. Also, I think that God gives us the good kid first to lull us into thinking that this is easier than we feared it would be and that way we trick ourselves into having the second kid who turns out to be the little demon in diapers. So why do I say that this same principle of convenient amnesia applies? Because all those people who said take it one year at a time must have conveniently forgotten how much stuff has to be done seriously early. For example, the Grand Chapter budget is written for expenses from October 1 to September 30 each year. So anything that I am supposed to plan that will happen before September 30, 2012, needs to go into the 2012 budget, which is being prepared right now, in February 2011. So I have to put together the budget now for something we will do in 2012 and that means thinking out what I want to do and how I want to do it too. Oh boy! And then there are events that would fall in the 2012 calendar, which is also in current process. While the lady in line ahead of me puts together her calendar and gives me my event dates, just as I will do next year for my little sister, I have to find the places where the events will be held so that those places can go in the itinerary. The hope is for everything that goes in the itinerary to be turned in no later than the end of July, beginning of August, because the itinerary is printed in time to be sold at Grand Chapter. So the places for my events in 2012 have to be chosen and set up by August 2011. And again, to select places means having a general idea of the shape of the events so as to help determine what sort of place I need to line up. Then there are the committees where you ask the lady in line ahead of you to please appoint your hoped for Chairman as Co-Chair for committees. There are about ten or twelve of these committees where the people that I would like as Chairs should be the previous year's co-Chairs so that they can learn how to do what they do and to create continuity from year to year. I think this system is wonderful and I wish we did it for more committees, but it means finding a dozen or so committee chairs this summer to be appointed in fall 2012, so that they can be Chair for 2013. That seems rather plan ahead to me also. So I am at a bit of a loss to understand how this "one year at a time" thing is really supposed to work. Maybe they only mean it to apply to the first two years, when one is Grand Marshal and has way more than enough stuff to do, and when one is Associate Grand Conductress and is still getting one's Grand Line Officer sea legs. Oh well, we are off and planning. . . Next weekend, I will be in San Diego and Escondido.

Because We've Always Done It That Way

2011-01-31T10:40:00.000-08:00

This weekend was a great time for doing and planning and I believe that we accomplished a whole lot that will be great for our Order in the long term. In doing what we did and starting our planning process and in trying to look at how we are going to address the needs of our members, the biggest "problem" with trying new things seems to have been summed up in a series of questions and answers that would make Abbott and Costello drop their jaws with admiration. The bit goes like this: First Question: Why do we have to do it that way? First Answer: Because We've Always Done It That Way. Second Question: Do you why we do it that way? Second Answer: Well, no, but we've always done it that way. Third Question: Well, if we don't know why we do it that way, then why don't we try something new? Third Answer: Because your new way will never work. Fourth Question: How do you know that the new way won't work? Fourth Answer: Because we've never done it that way. I am not an advocate to change just for change's sake. I am a true believer that if it ain't broke don't fix it. (Of course I also like to believe that all problems can be solved with WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use the WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use the duct tape. Voila!) But I also feel that "because we've always done it that way" is an exceedingly silly reason by itself, UNLESS you can follow up that statement with "and it works very well for ourselves, our local groups and our state organization." If you've got the follow up, then no change is needed. Otherwise, Ya Got Trouble in River City. Of course part of the problem is that people don't agree on the problem. And maybe that is where the problem starts. (How's that for confusing?) If we can't agree on what is broken, how could we possibly agree on how to fix it? In just about any group, if you ask ten people what the biggest problems or most important priorities might be, you will probably get ten different answers. And let's be realistic - a committee of ten has trouble deciding when or where to have dinner, let alone anything more important. It takes a great deal of effort on everyone's part to come together and agree on a course of action and it only happens when everyone in the group really wants to work together and come to a compromise. Personally, I am very happy to say that I think we did some of that this weekend and I hope we will do it a lot more. It took a great deal of effort and trust and even love on the part of a great group of people, who really rose to the challenge and brought things together in a positive way. And it is things like that which give me hope and happiness for our future. Next weekend, I will be in West Sacramento, Elk Grove, Sacramento and Chowchilla.

Mixed Messages

2011-01-25T18:36:00.000-08:00

Another weekend of Ritual instruction is behind us, with more to come, and I find myself wondering if we are getting mixed messages on what people want. I realize that in a time of transition, everything can be a bit unsettling, but I wonder if we are having the Nielsen problem. I don't know how many people remember the process used by the Nielsen raters to rate TV viewership and I don't know if it has changed over the decades, but it used to be that there were permanent Nielsen households who had little boxes attached to their TVs that automatically recorded what channels were watched on those TVs throughout the day. And then, to check the demographics of who was watching what and to make sure that the box sample was being truly representative of the American audience, a random sampling of households got little diary books to fill out on what they watched and which person in the household watched what program. I remember when I was in grade school that our house got one of those paper diary things to do. Well, the Nielsen problem was that when people were writing in the little paper diary, they could fudge their responses to what they thought looked good. They could fail to write down that they were watching soap operas and they could boost their claimed amount of educational television. While I of course would never fail to report that I watch Ace of Cakes and Chopped, and Mythbusters, but they might be okay because that's science, and I would never claim to have watched more symphony music than I really watched (zero, I'm afraid, for this past year), other, less scrupulous people might want to look better and tweak both how much they watch and what they watch. With the boxes as a check, it was easy to see how the swing went. So Nielsen just figured in some correcting factors based on the data and was able to proceed on its merry way. So how do we have the Nielsen problem? Well, as a Grand Line Officer, I hear a lot about how important instruction in our Ritual and ceremonies is to the members and how vital and important it is that the Grand Officers as a group do that instruction so that the members can see them perform and meet with them afterwards, and I hear how people missed that instruction in 2007 to 2009, when it wasn't done, but then we hold these things and hardly anyone shows up, compared to the number of people who tell us how important and vital it is and compared to the number of Chapters and officers in the area. This weekend was way, way better than before on attendance, but the events so far were in pretty populated areas with lots of Chapters in them and with eighteen officers in each Chapter, or even sixteen if you don't count the person at the piano and the guy outside the door as needing very much instruction, how do you have thirty chapters in an area and sixty people show up? Or even 120 people? Granted, the room we were in this last weekend wouldn't have held too many more people unless half of them breathed in when the other half breathed out, so not having more was probably a good thing. But it is harder to feel good about the time and the travel expense when you've got thirty people from all over the state coming to teach and only sixty people show up. It is very disheartening when everyone goes to break out groups and you are the Grand Officer who has no one to meet with or just one person. That happened to me lots when I was an appointive Grand Officer. Please don't misunderstand me on this. Having a system for teaching our work and our ceremonies is a good thing and every person who does better because of our event is an achievement. I may have some ideas on some format change things, but everyone has their own ideas on how to teach. And I am very, very happy that each of the people who came did so and I actually have had a great turnout of my own officers, but line officers usually are the biggest segment that come to these things and we can always use the extra time to talk with all of our local people because there is always a lot to do or say. So on a personal level, each of the events was great and my girls learned a lot and had a good time. But on an overall level, why do so many people say how important it is and then not show up? Is there any chance that people are saying what they think should be said, or perhaps even feel that everyone else needs instruction because those others don't perform very well but the person expressing the opinion doesn't need to come themselves because of course their work is perfect? We have a few more of these to do and I hope that perhaps we are just starting the year a little slowly and more people will come as we move forward. So far our numbers are trending up and I hope it keeps going that way. But if you build it and they don't come, what do you do? That is the question for the future. Next weekend I will be in South Pasadena and Arcadia.

The High Desert

2011-01-18T13:55:00.000-08:00

One of the changes in Las Vegas that I have noticed over the past twenty or so years is that it used to get cold at night. Even in the summer, it used to get cold at night and when I would go visit there, I would have to remember to take a coat. But as more and more houses have been put in, as more swimming pools, misters and fountains have put more and more humidity in the air out there, and as more of Clarke County has gotten paved with heat holding asphalt, it now stays warm in the night, which may seem normal for those of you on the wrong side of the Rockies, but is darned weird for the West. I always wondered if there was a climate change component to that shift, but this past weekend I discovered that it does still get cold in the high desert and that it is nice to have a coat to put on, even if you felt like a darned fool wearing it when you got off the plane. We flew down to Burbank to start off the weekend and as I stepped off the plane in my heavy coat, out into the lovely 76 degree sunny day, yes, I indeed felt like an idiot. The worst part is that I had so many bags and wheels and things, that I couldn't take the darn coat off until after we got our luggage and then went all the way to the rental car lobby, down at the other end of the airport. I am sure that others feared for my sanity. However, we had plenty of time to cool off because even though my escort had reserved her car through Hertz and done the on line check in thing, with its guaranteed ten minutes and you are on the road nonsense, we discovered that they didn't have a car ready for us, that they wanted to charge us for an upgrade and that if we didn't want to pay for the upgrade, we'd have to wait half an hour or more until the car was ready. Some guarantee, yes? I can guarantee we'll use a different car company next time unless they give us some redress for this. See, guarantees do work. :-) So we finally get in the car and headed off into the desert. Now I realize that this is a time honored California tradition, but most people doing it are looking for gold, not a Starbucks. We were way early because in Los Angeles, it seems like your choices are way early or way late. I have not yet figured out the super secret combination of events that let's you just be on time. We drive out to Ridgecrest and get there by 4:30 or so, needing to be there by 7:00 pm. Of course, I figure that if we'd left at 4:30, we'd have hit traffic and been late, so oh well. Down the street from our destination was a Starbucks, so we passed the time going through the calendar and getting caught up on Thank You notes and the next thing you know, it's time to go. This helped me figure out why Past Grand Matrons and Patrons always seem to give you Starbucks cards as your visiting gift. They know that you will need to go there, either to hang out when you are early or to have something to drink to keep you awake, or get you awake, for those early morning and late night drives. AH HA!! Go Starbucks cards!! Anyway, we went down to the event and I got to see a lot of really wonderful people. I have said it before, but it bears repeating, that these wonderful folk from out in the desert and up 395 in Eastern California are some of the most friendly, kind and generous people you will ever have the pleasure to meet. We had a lovely Mexican meal catered by a great restaurant that I love to visit when we are in that part of the State and then an evening of entertainment and social enjoyment with some truly fabulous groups from all over the desert area. A couple of the groups I had seen or heard before on previous visits, but they are always worth watching or listening to and I hope to hear and see them again in the years to come. Everyone was particularly moved by some of the gorgeous harmonies one of the groups provided on some of the patriotic songs and I liked a Scottish cello piece performed by one of the local high school kids with a group that is going to Edinburgh soon to perform there. But alas, all good things must come to an end and the ending of this one was particularly difficult. The evening ran quite late and then we had to drive back to Burbank. Some people stayed in Ridgecrest, but we decided to head back and sleep in the same place two nights in a row. My escort and I are both night owls, but we were still pretty exhausted, mostly because it had been a full day of traveling or sitting or both. In our experience, late at night (okay, early in the morning) is the best time to be driving in Southern California anyway. When we were about twenty minutes out from our destination, my escort said that at least we were done traveling for the day and I had to say, no, we might be done for the night, but we would be traveling more today, since by then it was 1:00 am. :-) The next day we went to Burbank and that was nice because we were in the same place all day. We saw a Traditional Official Visit and then we had a nice dinner and then we did an Instructional and then we had a meeting and then we were READY for going to sleep. And here is where one pays the price for being a Grand Line Officer because everyone else had to be in Ventura by 12:15, but my little sister and I had to be there by 8:00 am because we had a Transitional to do before the Official Visit. There was some momentary panic when it was realized that there would be no real time for lunch between the two events, but one of my awesome girls of the San Fernando Valley and her husband rode to the rescue and took In and Out orders for all of us and delivered lunch just in time for us to eat between events. I really appreciated her resourcefulness and initiative and she saved the day because otherwise there might have been cranky and we don't want cranky! Afterwards it was back to the airport and home again, to unpack, get ready for another work week and get braced to go back out on Friday. Such is the life. Next weekend, I will be in Tracy, Hayward and Sacramento.

Who Let The Dogs Out

2011-01-10T15:36:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, we had a Social Style Official Visit and a Reception Style Official Visit and a Grand Officer Instructional and two Transitionals and a Grand Line Meeting. Whew! The social OV had a guest speaker to talk about service dogs, one of the international projects for Eastern Star for 2010 through 2012. The lady who spoke to us works in rehabilitation and has a service dog to help with the therapy and treatment of the patients. It was fascinating to learn about service dogs in general and her use of one in particular. She explained that most of us think of seeing eye dogs when we think of a service dog, but that this is only one kind of service dog out there. There are also service dogs who help with the hearing impaired and also mobility issues. We saw pictures and video of dogs helping people with things like opening the refrigerator, pulling off socks and picking up dropped items. Watching these activities really showed how, for a person in a wheelchair, for example, who is strapped in because they have limited or no balance, having a dog who can pick up a pen or remote or other dropped item can allow for an enormously more independent lifestyle, simply because getting something off the floor can be a chore for someone with this sort of limited mobility, especially if they have poor grip. And being able to get socks off when you can't bend over can be a real challenge. Our speaker also showed us how kids undergoing rehabilitation, especially after suffering burn injuries, can have therapy go from painful to fun when the needed activity is turned into play time with a dog instead of just being a repetitive chores. Using the dogs in therapy activities is also good for showing people who are probably not going to make a full recovery whether a service dog would improve their lives. She also told us about the extensive training programs, both for the dogs and for the recipients. I would have liked to see the dog in action a little bit, but it was a great program! The reception style OV also had a lot of fun in it, but the format is one that is very hard for some of us to appreciate generally. Usually, there are traditional OVs, where the OV is a closed meeting and everything is done pretty much the way you would do it at a regular meeting of a Chapter. Then there are social OVs, which are open to non-members and which usually involve an informational presentation or entertainment event, like the service dog presentation. But the reception style OV doesn't make a lot of sense. It is a closed meeting, so you can't invite non-members, and you shorten some of the ceremonial work, but you only shave off about fifteen minutes of stuff. So if you are going to do a closed meeting anyway, why not just go ahead and do the traditional OV? Inquiring minds want to know. :-) This weekend also reminded me why some people think of us as the Order of the Eating Siblings, instead of the Order of the Eastern Star. :-) On Sunday, we did a Transitional in the morning and then had the OV in the afternoon. The Transitional was planned to start at 8:30 am and to be over betweeen 11:30 am and noon, but then my girls needed to be ready to start helping with the OV at noon or a touch after because that event started at 1:00 pm, so there wasn't going to be time to go get any lunch. My awesome girls in the area suggested that they could put together some sack lunches so we could eat between events there at the hall. Then I got an e-mail that there was going to be a meal after the OV so the girls were thinking of scaling back to just some snack items for between the two events because we'd be eating a meal around 3:30 pm and I thought that was great. So we get to the end of the Transitional and go in for our snack/refreshments and darned if I can't figure out how the snacks were smaller than the sack lunches would have been. What a spread! There were peanut butter sandwiches on cinnamon raisin bread and bagels with raspberry cream cheese and cheese and cracker trays and fruit and fruit salad and the yummiest deviled eggs, and coffee and tea and water and . . . Wow! I was really pleased and touched by the incredible effort put into making sure that we all got something we liked before going on to our next event. I have the best group of Dragon Riders ever! Next weekend I am in Ridgecrest, Burbank, and Ventura.

Scheduling - The Egg or the Chicken - Part 2

2011-01-04T15:01:00.000-08:00

Some problems, I have discovered, are like nesting dolls. Just when you think that you've gotten through the outer layer, you discover another piece of the puzzle inside that. And when you peel through that layer, you get to another one and another one and another one and . . . So far, for myself, I only have to worry about the calendar in the big picture. Stuff like getting dates from other organizations, planning generally when I will put week long trips, how many spots and slots I have for events and Official Visits and Receptions and such - a very general, overall sort of picture. Beyond that general picture comes another layer which I am told is one of the toughest and one which I am spared until next year. That is the difficult task of actually putting the where into the when. It is simple enough to say generally that OVs will probably go here and here and here, and an entirely different layer of problem to say, in the morning we will be here and then we will drive to there and then we will attend this there and then everyone will go home. First you have to know where your receptions will be located, which requires lining up your Grand Officers. If you are doing receptions all at onces, then you at least need to set weekends to be north and south. But if you spread the receptions out, then you really do need to know who is where because they need to be mixed in with events and Official Visits that are a reasonable driving distance from each other. Then there is weather. I am beginning to believe that California weather is not quite as perfect and balmy as all the travel ads say because we don't all live on the coast. It sure would be nice if we did, but, news flash, we don't. Did you know that it gets rather warm in the central valley in the summer? As in, fry eggs on the hood of your car warm, no need to even open the hood and put the eggs on the engine, oh no, hood is warm enough to fry them up nicely, hot type warm. And that in January and February, getting to some parts of the state is difficult, as in almost Impossible! I have rain tires on my car, but I hate chains and I've discovered that many low land California people have never seen chains, let alone have an idea of how to put them on tires. Seriously, how many people do you know that live year round in the coastal areas of California, that even own chains? Do you know what chains are? How about salt on the road? Heard of that? Unfortunately, most places in California are rather blah in the summer. That is just the way the cookie crumbles. And some places are too cold at the beginning of the year too. So now, as you go down a layer, you have to account for weather. And festivals, yes, festivals. Some places have them and you can't get hotel rooms certain weekends. And sports events, some places have those too and everyone who is anyone local is busy. And then someone else is using the hall the day you want it, so you have to go somewhere else. And then some of us, who fly, prefer to have loops that start somewhere, go out and end somewhere else. Adding it all up together and you have passed right by sunny side up to fully scrambled on the eggs of the calendar. So everyone does the best they can with the resources available, but every year seems to have a glitch or two. It would help if someone would put a nice real hub airport somewhere in the northern part of the State, so everyone up there wouldn't have to drive two or three hours down to Sacramento to catch a plane and everyone down here would be able to get farther north before getting into a rental car. How about Redding? They have nice weather and a great Chinese restaurant in the little airport there. But since that is not likely to happen in the next two years, we slog onward. Because of this, when you look at the calendar and you see some of the scheduling, you may be tempted to ask one of the following questions: Was the lady on drugs when she thought we could get from A to B? Could someone buy this person a map of California? Does she have any idea what that road is like? or my personal favorite: Are you kidding me? Try to remember that the answers to the questions are no, got one, yes and no. Desperate times simply call for desperate measures. Sometimes desperate measures include driving for nine or ten hours over bad roads. Next weekend, I will be in San Jose, Martinez, Union City and Salinas.

Scheduling - The Chicken or the Egg - Part 1

2010-12-28T11:20:00.001-08:00

One of the major bug a boos of an Eastern Star year is the calendar. As I have mentioned, I have already started putting together a general idea of how mine will look, but currently, I am painting with a broad brush, just getting the overall feel of what I want to do and how. There are a number of different views on how the calendar should be put together and some of them are mutually exclusive. Each seems to have its good points and its bad points, but at the end of the day, you do the best you can and pray for good weather. One of the topics that has been floating around for me is the question of OVs and Receptions. In some years, all of the Official Visits start in January and end around June or July. Then all the Receptions fall in, starting with the Grand Conductress in July, before the legislative booklet comes out and announces her nominee for her, and then all of the appointive officers and the Grand Treasurer, presuming that she or he will only serve one year, which is what has been happening lately, and ending in September with a joint reception for the WGM and WGP. There used to be separate receptions for those two, with his first and hers after, but time, cost, convenience and travel have encouraged the joint reception for our leaders, assuming that by the end of the year, you and your guy are still on good speaking term. :-) I had considered splitting those two back apart, simply because it is nice to have your reception close to family and friends so that those who have done all the work of supporting you can attend with minimal trouble, but the 2013 calendar has conspired against me on that and forced a decision to have a joint reception because there's only on Saturday in September to have it. So Mr. Wizard and I will not have to discuss the pros and cons on that topic, since the calendar has decided it. For people who do all the receptions at the end of the year, the philosophy is that receptions should fall closer to the end of a person's term of service. After all, we are honoring the service they've given rather than the service they are going to do, some say. And it is nice to get the OVs done earlier so that all the Deputies can breathe a little easier. The other advantage here is that the Chapter giving the reception has more time to plan it and put it together. However, another way of doing the OVs and Receptions is to spread both out over more of the calendar. Receptions can start as early as March or April and are spread throughout the year. In this model, the OVs can go later, even into July and August also. But it also means that some people have very early receptions and their Chapters have less time to plan and prepare. The advantage of spreading the receptions out is that the Grand Family doesn't attend two and three receptions each weekend and it is less hardship for all of the Grand Family to attend each one without missing because they don't have to race off to get ready for their own. It also allows more receptions to be placed on Saturday nights, which seems to be the time that gets the most attendees and if you are going to put on a reception, it would seem to be nice to get as many people to attend as possible. And it also allows for a slightly easier travel schedule if your Grand Officers are very spread out because if you have three receptions in a weekend, you have to travel to each one. So I am wrassling with these two different views and trying to decide between them as I look at the basics of charting out a calendar. However, this is the macro view. The problems of the micro view are a topic for next week. This weekend I will be home for New Year's.

One Year or Four

2010-12-20T18:26:00.000-08:00

This past weekend we did two Transitionals in the San Joaquin Valley. Transitionals are instruction opportunities put on by the Grand Conductress and Associate Grand Conductress for their officers, and anyone else who is interested, sometimes ladies who are considering becoming line officers/leaders in their Chapter at a later date or someone who wants to learn to do the specific ritual work of those two offices better, and anyone who gets dragged along, usually a husband who will probably be serving with his wife later anyway and knows that driving and schlepping is his calling in life. We start by going through all the different ceremonial bits that are special for Conductresses to do, which look awesome when done correctly and sort of like a demolition derby when done incorrectly. When done correctly, you are amazed at how smoothly, easily and beautifully it all looks. When done really, really wrong, the best you hope for is that no one gets hurt by running into anyone else and nothing that is not supposed to be dropped hits the floor. Since there are so many of these extra bits, and since no one else really needs to practice those bits, they are not usually covered in full and excruciating detail at the more general officer practices and training sessions, so it is important that the two Grand Line Officers in those positions try to get that extra training and information out to the sisters serving with them. But because we still have to be at everything else, there is a lot of maneuvering to get time slots set up that dovetail with the rest of the Grand Family's calendar. The bottom line is that the first three months of the first two years of Grand Line Officer-ness are very busy! This year we are doing eleven Transitionals from December to February. I wanted to get them all done as early as possible so that the girls would have lessons in how to do the work before they had to do it too many times this year. Luckily, there are several empty weekends on the Grand Chapter calendar in December and February, so I was able to load in our events. After we do the joint practice, there is some break out time where we each take our own group of girls to do some things specific to that particular year. Associate Conductresses, for example, are in charge of the ballot box, and that piece of work can take a lot of practice to do well. Conductresses open and close the Bible, so we practice doing that gracefully and reverently. And hopefully there is a little time to talk about what is going on for the rest of the year, special events and such. All in and all done, we go for about three and a half hours, about two hours of joint session, a fifteen minute break, and then about an hour of separate activities. Doing two of these in one day, was quite the challenge. Luckily, I was fortified with coffee, juice and muffins at the first one and a fabulous baked potato and salad bar before the second one, all put together by my girls. They did a great job! My understanding was that these came to be called Transitionals because the girls were transitioning from being an appointed floor officer into an elected leadership position in their Chapter and the AGC and I, as their Grand Line officers, are given this opportunity to help them make that transition, form local groups to support them in their endeavors and as a time to spend with their big/little sisters as they move up the line. But one thing that has changed over the past two decades or so is the number of people who tell me that they are not going on through the line, but instead are just helping their Chapter out. Some of these people come to the Transitionals anyway because they want to do a good job for their Chapter in this one office, and I am glad that they do. But I am told that some people don't come because since they are not going on, they have no need to meet me or for me to get to know them. That makes me sad sometimes because whether you are in for one year or four, the work that we are teaching is this year's stuff and if you are going to help, it would be nice to try your best. Now some people tell me that they don't have to come because they've done it several times before and so they already know the work, but just to let every one in on a big secret - The Work Has Changed Over The Years! Shocking, isn't it? Yes, the work has actually changed over the years and there are some things where, if you learned them years ago and did them that way, they are no longer the correct way. So it would be nice if everyone serving their Chapter in one of these roles would come, but as they say, we can fill the trough, but we can't make you come take a drink. The ones I feel for the most however, are the ones who want to come and can't. Whether it is because of their work or family schedule or other commitments, it is sad when someone really wants to participate and cannot attend. It is too bad that we cannot videotape one of our Transitionals and make the tape available for people who couldn't come to check out. Oh well, some times you win, sometimes you lose. We are off the next two weekends for Christmas and for New Year's.

Silver Lining

2010-12-13T15:18:00.001-08:00

This past weekend I had a lovely opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade, to find the silver lining inside the rain cloud and to make the best of a bad situation. On Saturday, I had a call from a lady who told me that the Conductress of her Chapter had not gotten the sheet of Transitional dates in her packet that went out last Monday and she was wondering if we had cancelled the Transitional. After taking several deep breaths and trying not to freak out at how a missing piece of paper had turned into a cancelled event, I explained that no, we had not cancelled, that all the Transitionals were still on and that they were still all in the same places and at the same times. Having handled the immediate problem, I then started to consider the bigger picture. Of the 181 Chapters in California, I had had to mail packets by regular mail to Conductresses for 74 of them. I knew that all the ones on e-mail had gotten the Transitional schedule, so the total possible pool of missing people was 74. I knew that some of them had picked up the schedule at the State Dinner at Grand Chapter, some of them had gotten it sent to them by their Association President and some of them had already told me that they were just helping out for the one year and not going on. Eliminating all of those left me with about 60 to 65 who might or might not have gotten the schedule. So, not knowing which ones did and which ones did not get the list, there were two options. I could type or write out 65 envelopes and send out another mailing right now, which might or might not get to them on time, depending on where they were, or I could pick up the phone and call all these Sisters and make sure they had their local information. Mailing would have taken me about two hours, calling about four, but with calling, I might have more certainty. I suppose I could have done nothing, but the thought of 65 people who might miss because of a mailing was unacceptable. Still, calling 65 people is a pretty daunting task. The next choice facing me was how to do it. My cell phone signal in my house is very poor, but the cell phone has unlimited calling and free long distance. My land line signal is great, but I would get charged ten cents a minute for the calls. I did briefly toy with the idea that I could sit in the jacuzzi and make the calls because the signal outside is very good, but I didn't have a laminated Conductress roster and it is hard to dial when the screen fogs up. So I decided that I would sit in the breakfast nook, which has maximum windows, and make the calls, all 65 of them. And yes, it did take four hours. And yes, I've never had so sore an ear in all my life! My old phone was a flip phone, so it was at least contoured a little bit. These BlackBerries and other BB type phones may be great for e-mail and texting, but holding a flat surface to your face for four hours is misery squared. The worst part was that the signal was only usable on the left side, so I couldn't even switch off from ear to ear. I had to take a break every twenty calls or so to massage life back into my ear. Nevertheless, I got all the calls made and hopefully one more nightmare out of my life, fingers crossed. And I did get some good lemonade and silver lining out of the situation. For lemonade, I got to speak directly with about half of the sisters that I called, leaving messages for the others, and got to find out about them and their Chapters and chat a little, which was nice. For silver lining, I got to move eighteen more people off my snail mail list so that in the spring, when I send stuff out, I am down to only 56 mailings, less than two pages of labels. Hurrah! (I realize that normal people don't get excited about this sort of thing, but if you've been there, you understand completely!) So this morning, I got to add a bunch of people to my e-mail list and take them off the snail mail list, I got to make more notes and comments on my Spread Sheet of All Knowledge About My Girls and I've already started getting some responses back to the questionnaires in my last packet, which makes me very happy. I also learned a couple of interesting things. I learned that some people can set their cell phone not to receive incoming calls. I suppose that is to save minutes. But it is very inconvenient when those people have disconnected their land line and don't provide an e-mail either and my tech friend tells me that phones set that way also do not show the call in their call log, so I guess some people don't want to talk to anybody. I also found out that some people set their voice mail on their cell phone not to allow messages to be left, so I guess that they are relying on their call log to get back to people and I hope they call me back, but we will have to see. Next time, I am checking all the packets twice! Next weekend, I am in Fresno and Manteca.

Afternoon Tea

2010-12-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was the Christmas Party at our Senior Living Community in Yorba Linda, commonly referred to as the SLC. In years past, the party had several parts, including an entertainment segment of holiday songs and jokes, a segment with Santa handing out presents for all the residents and a fancy dinner at which the Grand Officers of the current year and the last year were invited to sit with and have dinner with the residents of the SLC. The general membership was also invited to come to the party and join in the fun. All of the pieces of this party were good, but the timing and arrangement were not the best and it could get very crowded. The residents' largest meal of the day is usually lunch and not dinner, and many of them no longer like to stay up late and don't want a big, late meal, so this format was not working to maximize the enjoyment of the residents, which is the whole purpose of the party. Last year, the party pieces were rearranged to start earlier and end earlier, and that did work better. This year, we did a couple of new things, which worked well, but have a couple of spots that can be improved going forward. It was great both last year and this year to try something different and we are definitely heading in the right direction. And luckily, I get to see how next year goes before I have to make a decision on what to do. This year, in addition to doing the Santa presents, the Grand Officers have each been given some residents, three in my case, to whom we delivered presents by making an individual visit to their units. I think they enjoyed that a lot and I enjoyed having the chance to chat with my residents about their families and hobbies. That part was great! I hope we get to do that again, but I wonder if they will change us all around or let us keep with the same residents. The appointive officers in the Grand Family will change, of course, but those of us who are in the Grand Line will be the same people next year. It would be nice to have new people and over time get to know all the residents, but it could also be nice to keep the same people because it would be very hard to tell your last year's people that you need to spend your visiting time with others and not with them and that could be awkward too, so there is definitely something to think about as we move forward. After the visits, we had afternoon tea together. I had a lovely time chatting with a couple of other residents at the tea, but I would have liked to have been seated with my new special friends so that we could continue our chat and so that when the private visits were over, I could have said that I would see them again in a bit at the tea. On the other hand, sitting with different people did give me a chance to meet two more residents and find out about them and their hobbies, so again, this needs some thinking over. The tea was a little tough for me because it was all desserts and some of us who had meetings all morning had not had any lunch. And I had so hoped that there would be cucumber sandwiches. What's a tea without cucumber sandwiches? :-) After the tea, we had the sing along and then the Santa visit and then the residents had presents for the Grand Officers. In honor of the tea, I got a lovely ornament of a tea pot with a little cup with SLC 2010 painted on it. It is in my curio cabinet now and will be a lovely memento of the day. The one part that always gets a little awkward, (maybe more for the people sitting around me than for me, :-) is that I am Jewish and don't sing Christmas carols. I don't mind being in a room where other people are singing them, but I don't sing them. Sometimes people ask me if there are any Hanukkah songs that we could include, but I tell them that this party is for the residents, all of whom so far as I know are Christian, and that they should have the songs they know and love to make their holiday bright. They wouldn't know the Hanukkah songs and those songs would have no meaning for them anyway, so I don't need them and have no plans to include them in my year. What I may do, that was done a few years ago, is a little education piece on the story of Hanukkah and what it is about, because I think that could be fun and interesting. I find learning about other people's holidays fun, even if I don't celebrate those holidays. So I may do that, but we don't have to sing dreidel songs. The only problem I have run into is that other people think that I have to sing the Christmas songs whether I want to or not as part of my duty to entertain the residents. When forced to it, I try to compromise some and sing the winter/snow type songs, like Frosty the Snowman or Let It Snow, but people do not seem to understand that even these are very uncomfortable for me because no matter the lyrics, these are still Christmas songs and to me, singing them implies that I am celebrating that holiday. No one has ever asked me to eat a pork chop for the comfort of others, but I guess people don't see celebrating Christmas in the same light, perhaps because for many people Christmas has become so secular that they have lost track that this is really a religious holiday. In the same vein, I don't mind at all if other people sing these songs while I am there because those who believe in those songs should get their chance to sing them. I respect their religious views and they should have the chance to celebrate in their way. And if they want to eat pork chops, I hope that they enjoy them immensely. :-) We also had our first Transitional this weekend, but I will write about that next Monday. Next weekend we are off duty. :-)

In Need of a Crystal Ball

2010-11-29T18:40:00.001-08:00

I am done with Installations for another year. Each one had elements that made it unique and special, but changing into a formal in the bathroom at my office was getting a little old, so I am okay with being done for this year. Now I am in need of a better crystal ball because, unfortunately, I am only getting static on the one I have. I need to reach into the future and see how next year's Grand Chapter session is going to go, but so far, the future is too undecided for my powers of precognition to bring it into focus. There are a lot of changes proposed for this next year's session and I want to adopt the ones that work. But if some of them do not work out, I want to be able to either try the same idea with some fixes and changes, or be able to try a different idea to address the same problem. Usually, I would have another year before worrying about it and I would be able to see how this year's session went before it became an issue. But the Fates are conspiring against me. When we do our contracts with the convention center for the annual session, we have to tell them which rooms and areas we are using and on which days. This coming program uses less spaces and times than in years past because of the different combination of planned events. But since I am not sure how all of that is going to go, I don't want to lose out on the ability to have the same spaces we've used in the past, in case I need them. I was hoping for some time to figure that out, but along comes the convention center and wants us to make some decisions. I am not sure how permanent those decisions may be because again, usually, we have up to a year before the event to let spaces go, but I have not confirmed that in the current situation and I have been told that we have to decide now about three years from now. Hence my need to get that darn crystal ball tuned in a little better. The key element bothering me this week is something called the Masonic Family Honor Session. This is a session where we invite and honor members of other Masonic groups besides our own. It is an open session, meaning that non-members are allowed to attend, and it is usually attended by representatives of the youth groups as well as the other adult Orders that are associated with the Masons, along with the Grand Lodge officers from the Grand Lodge of California. Traditionally, this Honor Session, which is on Saturday afternoon, after the business of the annual session is concluded, but before Grand Installation Saturday night is held in a different building than our big meeting area because the decoration team for the Grand Installation needs the time to set up the regular meeting area with the decorations for the new officers. I am told that even when everyone clears out by noon, the decorations team is hard pressed to get everything done in time for the doors to re-open at 5:30 or 6:00 pm for the Installation to start around 7:00 pm. Now, there are a couple of solutions to this problem. In 2011, there is not going to be a Saturday afternoon session, so the room will be empty anyway. Another way to solve the problem is to cut down on the Installation decorations, and just change the stuff in the East and maybe put up an archway in the West and call it a day. That you could do in a couple of hours and you again wouldn't need another place to hold the honor session to get out of the way of the decorators. But since it is other people, and not the ones being installed, who decide on the decorations, it is hard to get all of those people for several years in a row to agree to cut down on the decorating. Nobody wants to be the only team that didn't put out a full effort so without agreement among several teams to do that for several years in a row, it is not happening. So since cutting down on the decorations doesn't seem all that likely, we are back to the other side of the equation, which is to have, or not to have, this Saturday afternoon session. I hope sincerely that this year's ideas are a smashing success, but since the ether has gone from analog to digital and I don't have a converter box for the crystal ball yet (there's a market in there somewhere I am sure :-) I am uncomfortable "renting the farm, with an option to buy" on that happening. So I think that I need to hang on to a space to hold that afternoon session, at least until we see how this year works out, or until a higher power decides to grace me with advance knowledge in this area. Next weekend, I will be in Yorba Linda and in Riverside.

Ignorance is Bliss?

2010-11-22T18:03:00.001-08:00

I've gotten four more Installations down and only three to go as the end of November comes into view. But of course, there's more to do in November than just Installations. I am getting ready for the start of our Transitionals the first weekend in December and I am getting a budget together for the last two years of this journey, the two that I will share with my player to be named later, also known for now as Mr. Wizard. Did you ever have an idea that sounded great when you started out, but once you got into it, you weren't really sure it was such a cool thing? Well I had this silly idea that, in the interests of full disclosure, I would write this two year budget for all the expenses that I and my man would have in our two years together, to give myself an idea of how expensive it was going to get, since the costs seem to go up every year, and so that he, and his wife or escort, could know what to expect. I sort of figured that it is better to get all the big shocks done up front because after that, most people can take anything in stride. But now that I sort of have the whole thing done, the numbers on it look kind of big and I wonder if anyone is going to say yes after seeing this thing. Even after taking off the stipend amounts that are available the last two years and even after splitting the joint costs more onto my side than his side, the numbers are sort of owwie. Maybe it wouldn't be so disturbing if a person went in not knowing and just sort of spent as they went. Then it would only be a shock when it was over and they looked back on how much was spent. The biggest items appear to be travel expenses and, believe it or not, gifts. If I've done my math correctly, then my travel expenses for those last two years are going to come out around $1,400 a month, on average, for twenty-four months. Assuming he drives instead of flying, his total comes in a fair bit lower, but it's still over $1,100 a month and that's just for gas and hotels. No food, no nothing else. Wow! I couldn't believe the total on the gifts either. For the two of us together, counting everything I could think of that we have to pay for, the gift budget for the two years (really almost all of it is in the last year) came to $16,700. AAAHHH!!! After those numbers, my $6,000 budget for clothes for the two years looked almost miniscule. And $1200 for postage, unless I can get more of my girls onto e-mail, practically nothing. After all, when you are drowning in an ocean, who cares if someone pours a tea cup of water on your head. All in and all done, after all the reimbursements and fund raisers I could think of and assuming contributions from our respective Chapters for a joint reception and assuming that I took on the lion's share of the gifts and other shared expenses, the lowest I could get his number per month for twenty-four months was about $1,200. Of course if I ask him by February or March and he starts saving early, he can think of the amount as around $950 per month. Hey, that's a three digit number. No problem, right? So now I wonder. Is ignorance bliss or is full disclosure better? I need someone to say yes after all and the idea of the job alone is enough to scare anyone. On the other hand, if he's the type to get scared off, then he's probably not right for me, since I am definitely more of a roller coaster girl than a merry-go-round type. I'll take the big drops and lows if I get the big highs too. Next weekend I will finish off the last of the Installations in my local area.

Calling for Volunteers

2010-11-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I attended two more Installations and in both of them, a common thread got me thinking about one of the hardest parts of leadership in a volunteer organization, which is asking for volunteers to do stuff for you. The problem is a serious multilegged beastie. Here are some of the legs I've noticed. Asking Strangers - For those of us who are shy, talking to strangers or calling them on the phone is bad enough. Asking them for favors is torture squared! But there's no getting around it. Whether you are a local officer, calling people you don't know out of your Chapter's own roster of members or you are at a state level and calling people you don't know who've been recommended to you, you just have to pick up the phone and dial. AAAHH!! At least with members of Eastern Star, you are fairly well assured that even if they don't want to do what you ask them to do, they'll at least say no nicely and not make it any worse on you. But how tough to make lots of calls and get lots of rejection. I have been spared that so far, but then, I've only had to ask a few people so far too. Motivating People - People have different things that motivate them to volunteer to help and that make them feel rewarded for their service. Some people like little gifts, some want public thanks, some want private thanks. Some people don't want or need anything so long as they can have the satisfaction of having a good job to do and doing it well. Figuring out what each person would most appreciate can be tough and if you don't get it right, you can not only end up with someone who feels unappreciated, but someone that you may have "un-motivated" to help next time. So you really need to try to figure this out. Why They Say Yes - Sometimes people agree to do things because it is good for the Order as a whole, sometimes they say yes because they are willing to do a favor for the person who is doing the asking, sometimes they say yes because the job proposed for them will be fun and sometimes people say yes because they see this job as a stepping stone to other things. Do we care why they say yes? Well, sometimes we do. For some jobs, why a person said yes will have a bearing on how well the job will get done and for some jobs, we want more altruistic motives than for others. At the end of the day, if someone is agreeing to mop the floor and take out the trash, I may not care too much why. :-) But if they are agreeing to do a job that confers perceived status or recognition, then I may care why a lot. But when you don't know the person very well, figuring this out can be a real challenge. Anybody want to go fishing in a grain silo for a shirt button? Matching the Person to the Job - Some jobs call for organizational skills and others for creativity. Some jobs need good people skills and some jobs require self-motivators who work well alone. Again, when you don't know the people on a personal level, matching the person to the job can be a tough problem because if you put the right person in the wrong job, nothing good will come of it. These are just a few of the issues that arise when trying to fill out a volunteer roster, whether it is for Chapter dining room chairman for one meeting or a five year appointment to a statewide committee. It sure would be nice if we had a better way of gathering information on who the people are and how they think before we take the leap into asking them to help us out with things. The other wish I would have is for wisdom in how to deal with the people who say, "if you need help, let me know" as you are walking around during a social hour. I am totally grateful for every person who volunteers to help me, but if anyone thinks that I am going to remember that they offered by the time the social hour is over and I have a chance to make a note of the person, they are overestimating my memory. And that is assuming that I can remember their name with which to make the note by the time I get back to my note book. I suppose I could write their name and offer on my hand, but I wouldn't want to get ink on anyone else. And people look at you weird when you write on other parts of your body. :-) Next weekend, I have more Installations to attend in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Tis the Season To Install

2010-11-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

Here we are back in November and a month of Installation Ceremonies stretches out before me. With 183 Installations in twenty-nine days (no one installs on Thanksgiving so far as I know), there is obviously no way to attend even a fraction of them, especially not when your teleporter is on the fritz and no one seems to carry parts for it. Even if you don't work and could travel every day and go to two installations every weekend day, that would only be thirty-eight you could get to as a possible maximum, and even if you went to different ones each of your four years as a Grand Line officer, another impossible task, but if we're going to dream, let's dream BIG, you still couldn't get to them all. And of course the problem was even more impossible back when there were over 200 Chapters or more. So this year, an interesting philosophical question has been posed - If you can't get to all of them, should you go to any but your own Chapter? And if you do go to more, how do you decide which ones? One side says that the is the only way to be fair is to go to none but your own, because that way, everyone is treated equally. Other people say that you should accept invitations in the order in which you receive them, because that is what you do with all other social activities in life. Still other people say that you should go to all the ones in your Association or general area, because those are the people who support you in your service as a Grand Officer, but not travel outside of your area because of the fairness issue. And then others say that you should go to all the Chapters in your district and also the ones where someone you know or served with is going in as either the head of the Chapter or as one of your own subordinate officers.

Before this question arose, I started doing what I have done every year, which is to accept invitations in the order received if I could reasonably get to the Installation. So far, I've accepted about eleven, but more invitiations are coming in all the time. I've also found out that I am not acting quite normal because I send an RSVP to every invitation, either yes or no, but other people evidently only send a yes and ignore the invite if it is a no because I've had several people surprised to hear from me with a no. Go figure? And my pet peeve for the season are the invitations that don't give any RSVP information at all, nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero! I know that people are really bad sometimes about the RSVPs, but please don't make us work at it. :-)

I am going to have to think about the idea of how many installations to do as I go into the next two years. But for now, next weekend, I am heading south on Saturday for installing down there and then coming back Sunday morning for my own Chapter. WHEW!

Schoolhouse Rock

2010-11-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

Another year comes around and another Deputy Grand Matron school for the Grand Officers to help teach the new Deputy Grand Matrons how to perform the ceremonies of our Order so that they in turn can instruct the individual Chapters in their Districts. Each year, the main school is traditionally held near the home Chapter of the Worthy Grand Matron, so this year, we were in Hayward. The school this year was a little different because a fair number of the Deputies are repeaters, meaning that they have served as deputy before. That makes it different because on the one hand, the repeaters can ask questions at a greater level of detail, having learned all the basics before, but it can also be a challenge because some things have changed and it is tough to learn a new way when you have an old way stuck in your head. I had that problem last year because when I was first Associate Conductress in my Chapter, I learned a lecture that has since been completely re-written and it is tough to get the old one out of your head in favor of the new one. I had that same toughness in a couple of spots this year although luckily I had all of last year watching my Big Sister to try to fix those. For example, when I was first a Conductress in my Chapter in the early nineties, I could have sworn that we turned at a different point on the floor to go in to open the Bible, one of the duties that the Conductress performs most often, but now we turn at an earlier point and it is hard to get that stuck in your head unless you just do it over and over. Some other little bits have changed also and for each one, you have to toss out the old and in with the new, assuming you remember which is which of course. I really enjoyed the school not only because I love to teach, but it also gave me a bit more practice before I have to go out on the road and teach all this stuff to my girls, so that I can have it all correct in my head because if you teach it wrong, it gets done wrong FOREVER! One thing that made this particularly interesting is that in Hayward, the first floor of the lodge building is rented out to a church on Sunday. As we discovered at Grand Officer School, and as we were reminded this weekend, this particular church is not quiet. In fact, we could have danced to the music on the second floor, where we were practicing, without any trouble whatsoever. I've never wanted to go to church before, being Jewish, but I must admit that I was curious to see what on earth was going on down there that had to be so LOUD. Unfortunately, the church got out around an hour or so before we were done, so they had cleared out by the time we went downstairs. So I guess I will have to check it out another time. I thought I had mostly recovered from Grand Chapter, but spending Friday on my feet again in flats taught me that I was overly optimistic. So Saturday was tennis shoe day since I knew that there would also be walking to do on Sunday. On Sunday, because it was Halloween, the Grand Officers came in to start the day and then we went out on "break" while some other stuff was discussed with the Deputies, and then we came back into the room in costumes. I am sure that there will be opportunities for people to see our costumes because as soon as we walked in, the cameras started going off. There were lots of individual pictures taken and then some people insisted on group pictures too. I wore my Dorothy costume, complete with silver shoes, (I am a book Dorothy, not a movie Dorothy, I'll have you know), and pigtails tied with gingham ribbons. Someone told me that I looked young enough to card with my hair parted in the middle and put into pigtails and I know that it is true because when I was in my thirties, I wore my hair that way and got carded. That may be why I now part my hair on one side. I know I look young enough to be Dorothy in the costume, but I also knew that the Eastern Star paparazzi were likely to get us, so Dorothy was a better choice than the only other costume I own, which is a short, black satin saloon girl costume with red, ruffled petticoats and a hairband with a feather sticking up out of it. Sometimes people ask me why I don't wear my medieval clothing for a Halloween costume and I tell them that I don't think of those clothes as a costume. They're my clothes for SCA events and medieval parties, just like my formals are for Eastern Star events and formal occasions, although I admit that I own a few that could be turned into costumes. :-) Now that it is November, we are into Installation season. I will be doing installations all over the state each weekend this month. I only go to ones where I am invited and I try to always RSVP any invitation I get, but it helps when there is a proposed RSVP contact on the invite. I will pick up on more group travel with the Grand Family the first weekend in December.

Guide Us With The Light Of Love - To Somewhere I Can Sit Down

2010-10-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

This past week was our annual statewide meeting for the Grand Chapter of California. The session was called Guide Us With The Light of Love, and what I wanted most in the world was to be guided to a nice chair where I could sit and put my feet up. I've been to a lot of sessions, but I am not sure I have ever gotten this much exercise, even when I was going to the fitness center every day. I headed down on Tuesday for a lovely dinner and small, traditional party and that was the last night that I got to sleep on the same day as when I awoke. On Wednesday, we had practices. That was a really good thing because we were performing ceremonies and formations that were new and special for the session, but I made a tactical error. In an effort to match my outfit, I wore dress flats instead of my nice walking sneakers. Note to self - next year, wear the sneakers for the practice day, no matter what you are wearing. The problem is that we practiced from about 8:30 am until about 5:00 pm with little if any time off, except the lunch hour, because the Conductresses do A LOT of walking, and the floor of the convention center is concrete. So concrete floor plus walking all day plus no arch support equals swollen feet by the end of Wednesday and that was only the practice day. After practice, we went to dinner and that meant I got to change from the flats to heels for my cocktail dress, but visiting with the members involved being on my feet some more until the dinner and entertainment started. Then we were back in the arena for some more practice and then we had a meeting that went to 11:00 pm and then I had to sort out tote bags and such for the next morning. Now it is not really the late nights that kill me. It is the early mornings that wring me out. Thursday morning was picture time, so we had to be dressed and ready to go by 7:45 am, which meant getting up at 6:30 am. It must be an offense against Heaven and Earth to get up earlier on the weekend for your avocation than you get up during the week to go to work. And the sentence for this offense is serious exhaustion. After all, you can do the math - go to sleep at 12:30 am, get up at 6:30 am. . . So we get up for pictures and take those and then we go back down to the arena to be with the members until it is time to walk in. Then we do some walking and then finally, we do some sitting. Then we go have lunch, then we do more walking, then we do more sitting. But some of the sitting ran late, so Thursday dinner was diet soda and cheese crackers before we went back down for Informal Opening. This is where the Conductresses, (that's me and my big sister), get to wear a race track in the floor by going to one end of the arena, picking up people and asking them to follow me, walking them up the middle of the long side to the other end of the arena, dropping them off and then going back down the outside of the chairs to the other end of the arena to get more people and then turning around and walking them up the middle, east, west, east, west, back and forth and back and forth. I haven't run laps like that in years. Finally we ran out of people so we got to sit for a bit. Then it was over and I went back to my room to check e-mail and catch up on everything and make sure my office had not burnt to the ground (the only condition under which I asked them to call me - well, okay, if a tornado hit it they could call me for that too. :-) And then I went to find some place that was still open where I could get some dinner. I now know where to find the Denny's in Visalia and I also know that the IHOP is only 24 hour on Friday and Saturday. So that finished two days of concrete foot pounding. But wait, there's more. On Friday, I had a breakfast to attend, so that meant getting up at 5:45 am to be at breakfast by 7:00 am so we could be done by 8:00 am to go back into the morning session. Day Three on the desert island that was my little platform on which I sat - food, session, walking, food, session, walking, food, session. . . you get the picture. The last session of Friday ended about 10:00 pm and I headed upstairs completely exhausted, but didn't actually get to go to sleep until about 12:30 pm again. I ate terribly at the meals, including desserts and rolls with butter, which are just about the worst for my diet. I was convinced that I would come home having gained two or three pounds over the five days, but I guess all that walking was good for something, because I weighed exactly the same when I got on the scale this morning - go figure. Anyway, on Saturday morning, for the first time in three years, I didn't have a breakfast - woo hoo! So I got to sleep all the way to 7:00 am, the latest since Tuesday, and by this point, I no longer had feet, just big swollen lumps where my feet used to be. My knees were also reminding me that they hated me and while it was very likely that I would live, it was no longer my first choice. Saturday morning was not too bad, at least not until we danced the stroll for the recessional, but the afternoon was a killer because we were back on the race track, going up and back and up and back until we ran out of people. By then, all I wanted was to sit down and never get up again. But then it was time to change clothes for pictures and then take the pictures and then change back for opening and then walk in and then change again for installation and then walk in and around again and then stand in a receiving line for an hour and then go to the first party and then go to the second party and then it was so far past midnight that there was no point in pretending it was still Saturday. Unfortunately, I learned that I had hit the wall in a really bad way. I was in such pain and so far beyond exhausted that the very innocent last straw produced a really bad and disproportionate result. My escort asked me about this coming week and when she should pick me up this coming Thursday, and at any other time, I would have calmly explained that I was too busy just surviving this week and had not considered next week at all and didn't have my calendar with me so I couldn't pin down a time right now, but if they called or e-mailed me, I would be happy to figure that out. That is what I should have done. But I was so beyond reality, that I opened my mouth and said a BAD WORD. Like watching a train wreck, I heard it come out and realized that I had reached the point where I was no longer able to be social, so I apologized to the person who asked the question, who luckily knows me pretty well, so she knew I was just tired and in pain and said she'd e-mail me this week and I told everyone I had to go and a couple of people suggested that I stay, but I had to tell them that I have hit the wall and was incapable of being awake another minute. That part was BLAH! I went back to my room and slept in, but I was too tired to recover on one night's rest. Then we had to pack up to go home. Now my escort and I had been unable to coordinate cars, so he had driven down also and we had two cars to take home. I thought that it was a bad thing that we couldn't drive together, but one of my Past Grand friends whose done this before told me that in the future we would bring two cars on purpose, just to get all our stuff home and it took me three hours from when we got home to get the cars unloaded and everything put away. I was going to write my thank you notes, but I was still only firing on one cylinder, so I will have to do those tonight. I have never been so exhausted by a Grand Chapter session before, but then I've never been on the floor doing escort at Grand Chapter before either. I've got to try to train up for next year since I am now Grand Conductress, so will be doing escorting again next October. Next weekend, I am in Hayward for Deputy Grand Matron School.

Second Verse, Same As The First

2010-10-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are full circle, back to just before the Grand Chapter session. By this time next week, I will have moved up to the next slot in this journey and will be starting out on another exciting year. I am all packed up and ready to move out in a couple of hours. Packing is what is top of my list today though. You know, I rafted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, all the way from Lee's Ferry to Lake Mead, a bit over 300 miles in eight days, and everything I needed fit in a twenty-five pound duffel bag and a five pound day pack. Well, the duffel is in the car, but it is not alone. I had so much stuff to pack, for five days mind you and not eight, and truth be told, I am grateful that I can see out the back window. I've got a formal bag with a session dress, cocktail dress and installation dress. I've got another suit bag with a travel dress and a 15th Century Tudor with all required accoutrements. I've got the duffel with socks, underwear, sleepwear, make up, toiletries, pillows, etc. Then I've got tote bags, lots of tote bags. All I ask is that you don't call me a bag lady, okay, just because I've got: A legislative tote with the stuff I need on the floor of the session, legislative booklet, C&L, Red Book, Instruction Book, etc. A session tote with the stuff for this particular session, carrying piece, meal reservations, stuff for the state dinner, Secret Pal present, etc. A shoe and slip tote, with four pairs of shoes, petticoat and the other required undergarmets for all those dresses. A to do bag, with my IPod and GPS for the drive, snacks, and a book so that I can pretend that there will be a minute at some point to read, hah, hah! A computer bag with my computer and work stuff, since being out for three and a half days in a row means having to check e-mail and such. A hand cart, so that when I get there and there are no hotel carts, I am not having to bring everything up two items at a time. AND can you believe it, an entire flat of water. That at least I do not expect to bring back. WHEW! Now the only question in my mind is, what am I missing? I am leaving behind my two kitties, who have two helpers scheduled to take care of them for the next five days. And my contractor has the house, so I wonder what it will look like when I get home. Eeeek! The new linoleum goes into the laundry room today, but I won't see it until Sunday, so I hope they show up with the right kind. I am sure that I will remember what I am forgetting just as I pull up to the hotel. Wish me luck!

Left (Pause) Left (Pause) Left Right Left

2010-10-11T19:28:00.001-07:00

This past weekend was Revelation and Grand Officers' School for the incipient 2011 Grand Family. This blog is my fifty-third entry, marking the first of a new year for me, although technically, next week is the "Entry before Grand Chapter" entry, due to how the calendar has fallen. Revelation is when the Associate Grand Matron and Associate Grand Patron get to reveal who they have chosen to be their ten appointive Grand Officers for the coming year. It is a very exciting time for everyone. The people who have been asked to serve get to come out of the closet and are relieved of the burden of lying to their best friends and loved ones, the current Grand Family get to find out the identity of their Little Sisters and Brothers, which also means finding out how far you are going to have to travel to make the Former Grand Officer Presentation to the next person (closest one - same district; farthest one - across state lines), and the Grand Line Officers get to meet their next Family and look forward to traveling with them for a year. The one thing I wish, more than anything else, in connection with Revelation, is that there was some way to get people to stop asking the question, Are You Going to Be a Grand Officer Next Year? The answer is always NO. Whether the answer is really yes or really no, the answer is always NO. Please do not make your friends lie to you. They are not programmed to respond in this area! Please do not try to figure out when the secret weekend is, when the officers all met each other for the first time, and please do not call your friends houses to see if they are gone that weekend. Please do not hint that you know where they went and please do not tell them that you know that they will be an officer next year. Please do not try to guess the hotel or location at which they are meeting and please do not go there and search the parking lot for cars and license plates that you recognize. [No animals were harmed in the making of this rant.] I realize that everyone loves to be "in the know" but if you love them, leave them alone. And for goodness sake, if you asked and they lied, do not blame them for it. You put them on the spot and gave them no choice, so while the rest of the country may have a quandry, Don't Ask, Don't Tell needs to apply here. We've gotten the Don't Tell down, now we need to work on Don't Ask. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. So after the Revelation, which was particularly cute this year with a power point presentation and cartoon stick figures (who doesn't love cartoon stick figures :-), we all start in on Grand Officer's School. This is a two and a half day boot camp for the new "kids" to polish their performance of the various ceremonies of the Order, and I do mean boot camp. You don't sit very much, every nuance is checked and re-checked and they feed you enough food for an army. I realize that the 2011 fun emblems of a panda and a snow leopard are traditional zoo animals, but does that really mean that we needed feeding time every two hours or less? Well, maybe so. :-) By tradition, the AGM's Chapter fixes the meals and snacks and the school is held at her Chapter's meeting place or close by. This year, some members from the AGP's Chapter also came up to help, which was really nice to see, especially for me since these same folk fed me in 2007 and 2009, so it was nice to see them. But next time, a few less cookies perhaps. :-) Perfecting your Ritual work can be a really intensive experience, but it is utterly necessary because in just three short weeks, (actually a little less now), we have to be the demonstrators and teachers for the Deputy Grand Matrons, who will watch us like hawks watch mice. Woe betide the Grand Officer who doesn't know which line to walk on or when to step out and on what foot. They are dooooooooooommed, dooooooooommed. So to give us the best possible chances of survival, we drill and drill and drill to get it just right. The school is also a great chance to get to know your soon to be new family. Even though you are totally excited about the process, it is very scary too. For those of us in our third or fourth year of this, we know what to expect. But when it is your first time, you are at the lowest tier of ignorance - You don't know what you don't know, so you don't even know what to ask. At one of the meals, I was sitting with three of the appointives and their escorts and I think we spent most of that time talking about tips and tricks for being on the road, what to expect when the year is over and The Three Things I Most Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was A First Timer. I wonder if they'll share the info with the others. :-) All in all it was a great weekend and we got a lot done, both in terms of perfecting our Ritual and in starting to get to know one another more fully. Now if I can just remember everyone's name, I will be two thumbs up. :-) Next weekend I am getting ready for Grand Chapter and leave for the session next Tuesday.

The House That Men Built

2010-10-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

As I said last week, I had an interesting conversation about a hot topic of contention in various parts of the state, which is the renting of Masonic Halls by Eastern Star Chapters. To provide some background, long ago, in the before time, Masonic Lodges had very steep initiation fees. Most of that money was used to purchase land and construct Masonic Halls all over the country. Here in California, many, if not most, towns have a Masonic Hall, usually located on what was the main street of the town, back in the before time. Some of these locations are still prime real estate, such as the Grand Lodge Building in San Francisco, which sits across the street from Grace Cathedral, and some of these locations have become the older and more tired part of town, especially in those areas that have not revitalized their downtown core over time. Most of these buildings were paid for long ago and are owned free and clear by the Lodge, which administers the building by means of a Temple Board, usually appointed by the Master of the Lodge. The Temple Board is responsible for setting and collecting rents, for the upkeep and maintenance of the property, for obtaining insurance and for doing all those other things that property managers usually do. So here is where recent conflict has arisen. I do not yet have all the facts on what was told to the Temple Boards by the Grand Lodge, so I may be missing some information, but I will try to be accurate on what I have heard. Evidently, some time in the recent past, a directive was passed down that Temple Boards should find out what the fair market rental value (FMRV) of their facilities is and make sure to charge that when they rent out their buildings. Presumably this is to fund ongoing maintenance and expenses, since most of the buildings are paid for. But there seems to be some disagreement whether a discount may be offered for groups that are part of the Masonic Family, as opposed to the rate charged to the public at large. Some people tell me that no discount is supposed to be given, regardless of any affiliation. Some people tell me that a discount from FMRV is allowed for youth groups but not for adult groups. And some people tell me that all Masonic Family groups, including yours truly's Order, should be allowed a discounted rate over that charged to the general public. So there is some confusion on what is and what is not allowed. A lot of Chapters are being told that their rent is going up. Of course in these economic times, any increase in expenses is going to be viewed with concern and dismay. But some Chapters seem to feel that they are not getting information on why the rent is going up. Most people can handle the fact that there are needs and expenses in connection with owning property, but it is frustrating to be told that you have to pay more without any understanding of the situation. The end result of the whole thing seems to be that there is a need for some better communication between the two groups on what is going on. Perhaps some of the Lodges with these issues could let the Chapter choose a representative to come to their Temple Board meetings, not just the Worthy Matron who may be too busy to attend, but any one member chosen by the Chapter, just so someone hears the discussion of how the rent is set and how the money is used and needed. And maybe the sacrifices made by the wives of all those men who paid in all those dues to build those buildings, many of whom are members of the Eastern Star, and the funds paid by Eastern Star members to furnish and fixture many of those Halls needs to somehow be acknowledged also. Next weekend I will be in Livermore and Hayward.

A Great Big Room with Trumpets

2010-09-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Annual Communication of the Grand Lodge of California, their statewide meeting, the counterpart to our Annual Session of Grand Chapter. Unlike our event, which has to move all over because we have to rent somewhere to hold it, the Grand Lodge holds its annual event in its own building, which is located in San Francisco. The lodge room where the official proceedings take place is the great big room, with seats laid out in a BIG U shape on the bottom floor and then a U-shaped balcony tier with even more seats. In the middle of the U is the stage area where they set up all the chairs and such. While much of the weekend session is closed to everyone except Master Masons in good standing, on Sunday is what is called the "public ceremonies" and these are open to others. I've been to these for three years in a row now and it seems to me that what happens on Sunday is that there is a little inspirational message from the Grand Chaplain, then there is a youth group thing where the five youth leaders show up and four of them speak and then they exchange gifts and pleasantries with the Grand Master while we all watch and clap at appropriate moments, then there is a little report on how the Grand Master's project went, then he gives a farewell speech, then they all go out and we take a break and then the install the new officers for the coming year. After the new officers are installed, the new Grand Master gives a speech about his plans and tells everyone what he has chosen for a project and then the guy who just finished his year gets a lot of presents and then the new Grand Master gets a lot of presents while we watch him try to get the stuff open, (all these guys in the room and not one of them can lend the Grand Master a pocket knife, what's up with that?), and then the new officers march out and we all wait in a honking long line to congratulate the new top four guys and then we wander outside starving because we started at 9:30 am and now its after 1:30 and that twenty minute break was great for stretching your legs and using the bathroom, but not long enough to eat anything and I fear by an Eastern Star standard, the reception refreshments are just not up to snuff. Of course it may not be fair to compare their cookies and punch to what gets put out at an event sponsored by the Order of the Eating Siblings. :-) The ceremonial stuff is quite beautiful and moving. They've got three trumpet guys who do fanfares and marches and stuff in addition to the Organist and assistant Organist, so the musical pieces are great. The regalia pieces are all nice and pretty and shiny so that is all nice too. And the ceremony itself is nice and short, even if the whole day is not. Someone made a comment to me that it was not fair that the Grand Lodge guys complained about our four and a half hour installation, but we were in their room for just as long. I admit that I didn't agree with that analysis because their installation didn't start until 11:00 am and it says the time in the program so if you are only coming for installation, you don't have to be there until 11:00 am. We came voluntarily to the youth session and there was a break, so I don't know that the total time from when we got there is a fair complaint. But what is a very fair complaint is that we spent forty minutes watching a grown man struggle to open packages and then we all were supposed to oooohh and aaaahh over the contents for an entire forty minutes. That sort of thing is fun when we were all nine because then, once the presents were open, we could all play with them. For adults it is less amusing. And when you've been sitting for hours, it is way less amusing. I confess that personally, I lean towards having a presentation table and letting people put their gifts there having the receiving line afterwards so those wanting to offer congratulations had their chance to do that also. But even if you want to give some presents, could you limit it to one or two or even three meaningful ones? Or if you must let them all go, couldn't you have a "present caddy" which is someone who opens the next present while the Grand Master is showing the current present to the crowd? That at least would save the opening time. So while there is no doubt in my mind that we need to streamline A LOT, like down to two hours max, there may be a few panes of glass that the stones are striking about Grand Installations. The other thing that struck me, which was a combination of a conversation I had on Friday night at a dinner and being in the BIG room all morning on Sunday, is about the hall ownerships and rents and temple boards. But that will have to be a topic for next Monday. This weekend I am home and will need to start getting ready for Grand Chapter.

de facto and de jure

2010-09-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

One of the things that makes the study of law so interesting is that you spend years learning all these cool Latin phrases and then you spend the first ten years of your law practice remembering how to speak in plain English. Some people never figure that out. But two phrases that sort of came to the forefront for me this weekend were de facto and de jure. De facto is defined as a past action or state of affairs that is not actually legal or legitimate, but which must be accepted for all practical purposes because that's just the way it is. De jure means a condition that is in total compliance with all requirements of law. For people who do not study law or Latin, you most often heard these phrases during the discussions of school segregation, where the courts made a distinction between de jure segregation, which was an actual law saying that the school had to be segregated, and de facto segregation, where there was no law, but just based on where people lived and the drawing of the school districts, the schools just sort of ended up mostly segregated. The application of this principle that hit me this weekend was a really, really tough question - When you find a situation that is not in accordance with the rules/laws, but which nevertheless has been going on for a long time, (therefore the de facto situation), when do you change what you are doing to match the law and when do you change the law to match the situation? What do you do when you can't change the law but people will hate you for changing the situation? As I was home this weekend, I started working on a couple of projects. One of them was my list of committees and appointments. To help me organize my thoughts on appointments and people who have volunteered and what I want from each committee, I made a list of all the positions for which I have to appoint people. This includes finding my guy, my most immediate task for next January and February, then finding some co-chairs for some committees, which have to be appointed a year from now, then finding my ten appointive Grand Officers, then finding my Deputies, which I estimate will be forty, then finding Grand Representatives (35), members for standing committees (100+), special committes (40+) and Grand Chapter Week committees (110+). I made the general list a long time ago, just to get a feel for the job, but this weekend, I got more specific and added to my list the length of term for each job, so when I ask people, I can tell them how long until they are "paroled" out of the job, and how many people that other people appointed will still be on the committee and so will need my expectations letters even though I am not the one asking them to serve, and how many people need to be asked early and how many people I need to get from people behind me for them to appoint early. Well, in making my list and checking it twice, I had to do a fair bit of reading in my Constitution and there I discovered that a lot of the people that we are appointing are really special committees and not actually required ones, and that some of the required ones are not being done in the way the book says. Now in some of these instances, what is being done is working fine but it is not what is written down, and in some instances, what is written down would work better but is not being done. So which way do you lean? Do you make the de facto the de jure by trying to change the rules or do you change the de facto to match the de jure? Of course, if people like me didn't read the darn books, we wouldn't have these problems, right? If we would just stick to what "everyone" knows, these problems wouldn't come up in the first place, right? In some instances, we've been doing the de facto for so long, no one can remember it any other way and if you told them that it is illegal, they would simply refuse to believe you. After all, everyone knows the world is flat, right? And the earth is the center of the universe, right? And if we don't dance in the evergreen groves on the winter solstice, the sun will never come back and we will all die, right? And illnesses are caused by evils spirits so if you need to let the bad spirits out, you drill holes in the person's head, right? And look what happened to the guys who challenged these notions - nothing good, that's for sure! So what is a person to do? It is especially a sticky wicket when you don't even have the choice on which way to conform. If you have the choice, then you can put out a proposed rules change and if people vote to change the rules to match the de facto, then you are home free and if they vote no on the change, then you know that you need to change the de facto to match the current law (the de jure). But when you have no right to change the law, you are stuck enforcing it even if people hate it and all you can do to help yourself is to try to explain the problem. We had this arise some years ago over what I call the bingo/bunco problem. In a rule that we have no power to change, Chapters can have bingo games as long as it is not gambling and we follow very strict rules to make sure it is not gambling. We cannot sell extra cards for example, and prizes have to be donated and a bunch of other rules. But Chapters are not allowed to have Bunco nights. We didn't make this rule up and we do not have the power to change it, but people didn't like hearing this and made quite the fuss. Well, my other project of the weekend, which involved starting to slot up my calendar so I can give some dates to people who want to start planning Chapter Anniversaries that fall during what I hope will be my year, led me to go over some stuff that I believe means that some really big "always done" items are very de facto and very not de jure. And to make things worse, these things are things that we cannot change, so I either have to tell people to change what they do or stick my head in the sand and pretend not to see what is going on around me constantly, a skill that I am not very good at, I confess. I tend to be a little more on the side of the rules, I fear. At least I have a year or more to think about it and by then I will have a man who can tell me how he feels about the placement of his head too, in the sand or in the noose. At least burning at the stake for heresy is no longer on the list of potential punishments. :-) Next weekend I am in San Francisco for the Grand Lodge's annual event.

An Intimate Dinner for 200

2010-09-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the joint reception for the Worthy Grand Matron and Worthy Grand Patron. Years ago, each of these officers would have their own, separate reception in their respective areas of the state, but ten or so years ago, many of the couples decided to have a joint reception to save time and travel. It is a reflection of changes in our Order that can be seen as a progression if you know the history of the thing. In the long ago before time, it was often the case that the Worthy Matron of a Chapter and the Worthy Patron of a Chapter were both married, but not to each other. :-) In many areas of the state, it was considered better if married couples did not serve together because that way you had four people to share the work and the expense. The two non-officer spouses would help out in lots of different ways and the four people would often become close friends from their shared projects. Of course, sometimes the two couples would never want to speak to each other when the year was over, but that is a story for another time. Your mileage may vary. Anyway, since husbands and wives often did not go through together, when you had a reception for the Worthy Grand Patron and the Worthy Patrons of California, the Worthy Patrons and their wives would go to that one and when you had a reception for the Worthy Grand Matron and the Worthy Matrons of California, the Worthy Matrons and their husbands would go to that one and never the twain need meet. But some time back, a lot of Chapters had less men and wives would often ask their husbands to serve with them, so if you had two receptions, the same couple would have to go to two receptions. Of course, since we have a fair number of single women and widows, there is always the fun of having a Conductress call you up and ask to borrow your husband to go through the line with her. I have to say borrow because renting might not be legal in this state. :-) The other advantage of sharing the reception of course is that in theory, you can share the cost and the work. However, oftentimes, one Chapter takes the lead and the brunt of the cost and the work and the other contributes more or less, depending on how involved the organizers make them. As with all things, sometimes the Chapters work together awesomely and sometimes perhaps not perfectly. The only down sides of the joint reception that I see are that they tend to be in Fresno and unless you are from Fresno, that means that all the local people that helped the WGM and the WGP through the years have to travel a fair way to attend and the other down side is that when you have speakers who are connected to each of the honorees, the reception can go three or I have even seen four and a half hours. Since I start fidgeting around two hours, get to shooting pains around three and can't stand up after four, this is not so good. But since I am told that it is often better for the members to have the joint reception, that new tradition is probably going to stick for a while. But what is really interesting is that the night before the reception, on Friday night, there has traditionally been a small dinner party. Well, small if your definition of small includes up to 200 people. This dinner party, which no one really hears about unless you've ever been invited to one, is for the Grand Officers and their Escorts and the Grand Pages and their Escorts and the Deputy Grand Matrons and their Escorts. So if you have eighteen Grand Officers, that is up to thirty-six people, anywhere from twenty-one to fifty Grand Pages with their escorts is another possible forty-two to one hundred and forty-eight deputies and their escorts is another possible ninety-six. So up to 200 or so, although this year may only have been about 100-150. The variation on the number of Pages depends on how many the WGM and WGP each choose, since their numbers are unlimited. At this dinner party, there are a host of traditional presentations made. The Grand Officers who didn't have receptions this year, which traditionally is the Associate Grand Matron, Associate Grand Patron and the Associate Grand Conductress every year, and the Grand Secretary every year except her last one, during which she usually does have a reception, so there are four officers in this group, receive love gifts from the North and South Deputy Grand Matrons, since all the other officers usually get these love gifts at their receptions. The Deputies as a whole group traditionally buy a briefcase or carryon bag for the Grand Marshal. I love mine, which has that awesome pocket for your laptop so you don't have to take it out of the bag at the airport, just unfold the flap, go through the screening machine and pop the flap back up and you are on your way! Now if we can just figure out how to keep our shoes on. . . And the Deputies usually have something, like a scrapbook or memory book of some kind for the WGM and WGP with a page from the official visit to each District. That is nice to have as the years go by. So we did all that last Friday, and then had the day free on Saturday until the joint reception Saturday night. Except for the fact that all such events go longer than I can sit, it was a very nich occasion. The music was completely awesome, provided by one of our most dedicated Sisters, who volunteers her time and amazing talent constantly. If only we had a Grand Chapter Service Award for members who just give and give and give at the state level, like we do for Chapter service, she would be on my nominee list for sure. And it was also very lovely that a good number of the Worthy Matrons and Worthy Patrons were able to attend. That always makes it more special for the Grand Officer. This next weekend I will be home.

Flying Lessons - Year One

2010-09-07T18:09:00.001-07:00

This past weekend was my first workshop for my girls. The theme was Flying Lessons - Year One. I am still amazed at how awesome it all came out. My Chapter and my service group really went above and beyond all reasonable expectations to do a phenomenal job. The workshop was single tracked, since this was the first one so we were not worried about people needing a choice because they'd already seen some stuff. Next year, we want to multi-track, both because we have less than half the time and because we want to offer some of the same stuff for people who didn't have a chance this year and because we want to offer some new stuff too. We opened with a welcome, a run through the agenda and then introductions for the participants. In the introductions, in addition to the regular stuff like name, home chapter, etc., we asked the attendees to tell us about the health of their Chapters and then some personal stuff, like what they did for a living, what they do for fun when they are not doing Star and something about themselves that others don't usually know but would find interesting. Of course, there were a couple of people whose only answers to the question on something else they do for fun was "There's other things people do?" I sure know that feeling right now myself. :-) We had four seminar slots and taught about communications, listening skills, event planning and how to find answers in our governing documents. I had presenters for the four seminars so I could run around putting out little logistics fires before anyone knew there was a snag and because my presenters are awesome at presenting this stuff! I could probably have done one of the bits, but I don't know how people manage to keep everything smooth when they do the presenting too. It seemed like every hour there was one more little teeny tiny thing that just needed a moment of my time and yet one more trip up and down the stairs. Why is it that the person you need to speak with is always on the other floor from where you are at the time? Is it like a butter side down thing or what? If it is karmic, then boy have I lifted my burden, unfortunately at the expense of my calves. Thank goodness that Monday was in the hotel, so it was all on one floor. Whew! I cannot wait for the contractor to finish the remodeling work on my jacuzzi! Between the seminars, we had breaks and meals with table topics. These were the idea of someone special to me back in 2007, but they haven't been done since that I know of and I really liked the idea, so we did four sessions of table topics. Table topics are where you hand out at the table, over lunch or dinner or a snack or something, a set of questions on a particular, relevant topic of interest and ask the table to discuss the questions and brainstorm about answers. The attendees told me that they loved the table topics for two reasons. First, it gave a table full of complete strangers a common conversation to which everyone was expected to contribute, so everyone got to talk comfortably even though they didn't know the people with whom they were sitting all that well. Second, it gave them a chance to talk about the issues and give me their ideas and impressions of current situations in our Order. They said that they really enjoyed that opportunity for them, as members, to tell me as a leader person, where they were coming from on the topics. We had two or three questions on each sheet and the right side of the room and the left side of the room had different ones, but all on the same topic. The table topics were Statewide Communications, should we have them, what purposes do they serve, what format/method of delivery did they like, how we should pay for such things, and so on. We had one talk about dress codes and whether we should conform across the state and what their Chapters were doing. Another topic was dealing with change and how their Chapters react to change and if they had new activities and if so, how those got started. And we ended with our Sunday dinner topic, Ritual Instruction and Men, discussing how people liked to get their ritual instruction, whether they felt Grand Officers needed to be involved in it and at what level, what the role of the Worthy Patron should be in ritual instruction and whether the Chapters were ready for men as Deputies, although we'd probably have to change the name from Deputy Grand Matron to perhaps District Deputy. :-) Each table reported back on their discussion at the end of each reporting period and there was a lot of consensus in the room on a lot of the issues. I was expecting a bit more disagreement, since I had people from just about everywhere except Los Angeles. There were two ladies from San Diego and one from San Fernando Valley, but no Greater LA people. And there were people from fairly far north too. I was also expecting more disagreement because I had completely new first timers mixed with people who have done it bunches and bunches, a mix of newer members and long time members too, yet they still seemed fairly uniform on where the opinions fell. I don't know for sure that we had a truly representative sample, but it was diverse. For each new table topic and break out group, we rotated who sat with whom. Almost no one got to sit with the person that came with them and few people in the same association got to sit with each other either. And with four rotations mixing up who went where, everyone got to meet almost everyone else, so that was nice too. We gave all the attendees a list of everyone who came to let them keep in touch with one another and I think that people made a lot of new friends. I also hope they got the idea that they are not alone in this. Lots of people have the same concerns and anxieties. Everyone said that they had learned something and went away with a whole to do list of things to study and try when they get back home. And they all promised to read their Ritual book cover to cover before they finish their Conductress year. Maybe there will have to be a quiz. :-) Next weekend I am in Fresno for events on Friday night and Saturday night and a meeting Sunday morning.

The Local Scene

2010-08-30T13:36:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, I had to stay home for various reasons, so I had the opportunity to attend a reception hosted by my Chapter for one of our members who is a current Grand Representative. It's sort a funny situation, with a move and a consolidation and an appointment and all sorts of other stuff mixed in. It's a little bit soap opera, but very interesting. Starting with consolidations, which I may not have mentioned before, consolidation is when two or more Chapters, for whatever reasons, decide to join together and be just one Chapter. It's a lot like an arranged marriage and it can work well or poorly depending on the attitude of the people involved and sometimes the reasons for the consolidation, just like a marriage. And some of the same strategies that work for marriages work for consolidations, but there are a lot less counseling services available and there is no divorce so you better make it work. :-) In the case of the Chapter in which I was initiated, we were losing our meeting place because the Board for our Hall decided to sell it to a developer who was willing to pay A LOT of money for the land to build houses. So we decided to consolidate with another Chapter rather than just finding a new place to meet. Once you decide to bite the bullet and take the plunge, there are all sorts of very intricate rules and voting requirements, but the part everyone cares about is that three of your people meet with three of their people and one member of the Grand Chapter Consolidation Committee and settle down on the horse blankets to dicker. Whose name will we keep or will we come up with a new name? Whose Chapter number will we keep? It's usually the lowest one, but not absolutely always. Where will we meet? What night will we meet? How many times a month will we meet? What will our dues be? Who will be our first officers, and so on. Sometimes it is a piece of cake because the answers are already pretty well known. In the case of that first consolidation, most of the answers were sort of known in advance. We were losing our hall, so it was going to be their place. Our number was a lot lower, so we'd hang on to that. Since both our place names were geographic, changing to something more generic made sense. Our dues were pretty close, so we went with the bigger number. Everything got done and there we were. But I would say that the harder part comes after the Consolidation is over. And again, sometimes people settle right in and have no trouble after they work out who gets the right sink and who gets the left sink and I do the dishes and you take out the trash. But every now and then, thankfully not too often I hope, you get people who feel violated. They feel that all of a sudden, their home has been invaded by Those People. They don't think like you. They don't understand Your Traditions. They want to do things Differently Than We've Always Done Them. . . and so on and so forth. One of the ones I detest is "they got more things their way than our way." Come on people, it is not a scoring contest! Maybe we should consider adding some requirement that the Grand Chapter member that helps with the paperwork sticks around for a few meetings and helps get the Chapter thinking as one. I think sometimes that they need the help after the wedding almost more than before it. It is so like a marriage without pre-marital counseling, the comparison is scary. When people get married and move in together, (okay, I know most people nowadays do it the other way around, but work with me here), they each have to toss out their notions of The Right Way and work together to find The Right Way For Us. For some people it is totally easy. For others it seems to be close to impossible. That first consolidation was a little hard and rocky for a couple of years, but we worked it all out and found the way to make the Chapter about all of us. We combined activities and traditions and figured out what worked and what did not. We started out on one meeting night and ended up moving to another, but that was all okay too. That was in 1999. By 2002 when I was Worthy Matron again, I would say that the kinks had worked themselves out and we were tooling along pretty good. We were having fun and everyone knew each other's name. Hurray! Then in 2008, another Chapter came along and wanted to join us. We went through the process again and again decided to jump the broom, but that one was a little tougher to get to work. I think that there were people in that one that didn't want to get married to each other, just like you may love your spouse, but not be totally thrilled with your in-laws. However, it is a package deal, so you accept that now you are all one family and move on. As it happened, we did it again in 2009, but that one seemed to be a cakewalk. That second one in 2008 is the one that brought this Grand Representative into my current Chapter. What makes it really convoluted is that this particular member had moved out of the area about eight years ago and joined a Chapter in the central valley. So he was not local when we consolidated and although a Past Patron of my Chapter several times over (because all the Past Matrons and Past Patrons of all the Chapters in consolidation become PMs and PPs of the consolidated Chapter), I never actually belonged to his Chapter while he was serving in the East. And many of our newer members had never had the privilege of meeting him before, which was their loss because he is a great guy with a slightly twisted sense of humor, but that works for me. So you may wonder how come the reception was at my Hall when he lives in the central valley and belongs to a Chapter there too. Well, when a member is appointed Grand Representative and belongs to two Chapters, one of those Chapters is identified as the Chapter "out of which they are appointed." It can be sort of important, because we have a rule that no one Chapter can have two Grand Representatives. So if you have two people who belong to the same two Chapters, you have to appoint one of them out of one Chapter and the other out of the other Chapter. So, primarily since this member had not yet served as Worthy Patron in his new area, he was appointed out of my Chapter, so the reception was at my Masonic Hall. I am actually glad it worked out that way because it was my pleasure and privilege to be there to honor him. It was a lovely reception with good food of course. The other thing that is interesting about the whole process is that I have been told, and again, your mileage may vary, but I have been told that Grand Officers are not supposed to attend receptions for Grand Representatives or Deputy Grand Matrons unless they are for your own District or a close personal friend, so as not to overshadow the honored member. So this last Saturday was the only day that I attended a local reception and will probably be the only one I make all year. Yet all the Chairmen are told nowadays to send the invitation to all the Grand Officers and Past Grands and not just the local ones and the ones that belong to the same Chapters as the honored members, so I still haven't figured that one out. Next weekend I will be in Los Altos and Milpitas as we put on my very first workshop for my girls. I can't wait!

Jam and Jelly

2010-08-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday was the annual Jam and Jelly Day. I have made this event three times now and there are few events with better food. That's saying a lot when you're considering events in the Order of the Eating Siblings. Unfortunately, the old TANSTAAFL rule still applies. (That's There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, which I learned from Robert Heinlein in The Moon is A Harsh Mistress, one of my favorite books.) Please understand, I love this event, but the logistics sometimes leave just a bit to be desired. As with most OES events, before you get to eat, there are certain preliminaries that must be followed. The usual order (your mileage may vary) is that there is a welcome speech or two, then a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance and usually the National Anthem is sung and then there is some escort and some introductions. That's all fine, but this event has some interesting tweaks. Let's start with a part that I like. Each Grand Officer, and a few other selected dignitaries, are given a special person to escort them into the hall. When you get to the front of the room, the Grand Officer introduces their special escort person and says a few words about them. You need to make sure that you meet the person ahead of time and get some information so that you have something to say about them other than just "what a very nice person this is" which may be true, but is not much of an introduction. Now in years past you had to know to show up with something to write on so you could ask some questions and take some notes. This year they made a great improvement by giving us an information sheet with some basic stuff already filled in. That is a great time saver because you can then ask about unusual or extra stuff to really liven up your presentation. This year I had the absolutely easiest time of anyone because my special person was a member of my Chapter and she and I had lots of history together so the tough part was choosing what not to say! We had a great time and I hope she gets to be my person next year too because I still have a bunch of great stuff saved up. So now let's go maybe not the best part. Because the Grand Officers and some dignitaries are going to be escorted in and introduced, they are lined up to do this, but they are lined up outside. We couldn't see or hear anything at all. Now I am told that if the speakers were working, we'd be able to hear, but we still couldn't see and here is this person giving a welcome speech and the guests that they are welcoming are all still outside. See the problem? I still had a good time because since we couldn't hear anyway, we amused ourselves by chatting while we waited and I probably had too good a time because a couple of times when we laughed, we got shushed and I am sorry if we disturbed anyone. But if we are the honored guests, how about doing that bit of escort and introductions first so we can see the rest of the program? On the other hand, I did have a lot of fun chatting, so maybe leaving us outside is okay. :-) Another not my favorite part is the number of self-introductions. Okay, I confess. I think the whole escort and introductions thing goes on too long. I can only sit for about two hours before my bottom falls asleep and I would rather be chatting and eating. It is true, mea culpa. But it is particularly frustrating when people are doing self introductions without a mike in a big room. You can hardly hear the introductions anyway and no one is quite sure when it is their turn, so there are pauses while people sort out who is going next. But eventually all of that is over and we can get back to the really fun part. You see at this event, the local Chapters each host a Grand Officer or two. The local Chapter members fix a picnic type meal, often full of home made goodies, and then you sit with that Chapter and eat whatever they brought. They always bring way too much so you have to pace yourself because everything is awesomely tasty and you don't want to run out of room. You can visit and eat and spend the most delightful time with the members. Of course if you are a real gourmand, (or perhaps glutton is a better word :-), then you go around to the other Chapters to say hello to the members and of course, they all offer you tastes of their goodies too, so you don't just get double or even triple desserts, more like four or five. It is also amazing to me how many of the Brothers in our Order cook. I had a pie slice made by one that was scrumptious and at another table, I had a fruit and rum mix inside a fried wonton wrapper with powdered sugar that was to die for also made by a Brother. Wow! Next weekend, I am going to some local receptions. I will not be in San Bernardino nor Buena Park.

A Little Lead Shot in the End of Your Baton

2010-08-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

A week ago, I attended the reception for my hopefully soon to be little sister, the current Grand Marshal. There is a current tradition in California Eastern Star, which may or may not change any time soon, based on some current discussions and legislation, but still in effect for now, that the Grand Marshal chosen by the Worthy Grand Matron is the election designee for the office of Associate Grand Conductress. That's how I got where I am now and how almost every, but not quite all, other Grand Line officers got into it also. But lots of things made that job, and this just past reception interesting for me. To understand how this works, you need to understand a little something about the job which the WGM expects the Grand Marshal to perform. The details vary from year to year and WGM to WGM, so your mileage may vary, but the usual essentials are to take charge of coordinating the activities of the Grand Family, particularly the Appointive Grand Officers. This includes putting together a monthly schedule of activities, finding out what is going on at the activities from the chairmen of them, getting hotel room blocks set up so the traveling Grand Officers have somewhere to stay, finding out what the chairmen would like the Grand Officers to wear to the event and then checking and coordinating that with what the WGM would like them to wear to the event, making reservations and arrangements for meals between events as needed, working out details on dress orders and Fiesta booths, getting birthday and anniversary presents for the WGM and WGP and if desired, making arrangements for their quilts and license plates. After you've made all the arrangements, you then have to coordinate things at the events themselves, including seating for the Grand Officers and their escorts, check lists for different set up and introduction things, collecting and distributing presents to the Grand Officers and such other gopher tasks as arise. You also learn to carry around a kit or box with anything you think you may need to help out any Grand Officer at any time. I think my best rescue in 2009 was made possible by my timely possession of a seam ripper and the ability to run in high heels. :-) There are other duties that vary from year to year. I understand that this year's Grand Marshal was responsible for coordinating with the Deputy Grand Matrons also. In my year, the WGM had a chairman of deputies who was in charge of that. But I was in charge of making the WGM's and WGP's hotel reservations and I am told that my big sister did not have to do that. Some years you get other gifts or arrange other celebratory events. It seems to go down the lines with each person sort of setting expectations based on what they did when it was their turn. So basically, if the WGM and the WGP are Mom and Dad to the Grand Family, the Grand Marshal gets to be the older sister who is put in charge of her younger siblings, the Appointive Grand Officers. The analogy works best if you think of the elected officers as the Grand Marshal's older siblings, whom she also helps out enormously, but for whom she is less answerable because we are supposed to know how to do what we are doing and for the most part have been to the events and such before. The Grand Marshal is still an invaluable resource for the elected officers, and it is important to accord her the courtesy of keeping her informed on where we are and when we are coming to what and such because she is supposed to know where all the Grand Officers are at any given time. Besides, each of us ladies has been there and done that and knowing how hard the job is, we wouldn't want to make it any tougher on our little sister than it already is. But herding cats into a room full of rocking chairs is easy compared to keeping track of thirty-four adults, all of whom have cars and ATM cards. The emblem of the Marshal is the baton and it is customary for the WGM and WGP to present their Grand Marshal with a baton of office for them to use and then keep. But there were times when I wish that someone had had the foresight to hollow out the ends of my baton and put a little lead shot in there. A baton with a little more heft and balance sure would have come in handy a time or two. Oh well. Sigh! Because the Grand Marshal does so very much for everyone in her Grand Family, there is something very special about her reception because you have an added sense of happiness and gratitude in seeing her get honored by the members of the Order. You know that she has really earned every kind remark and every bit of applause. I was lucky enough to get to make the gift presentation to the Grand Marshal (every Grand Officer picks another's name out of a hat at the beginning of the year to do this) and tell her how much all of us appreciate everything she has done all year, with another ten weeks or so to come. Of course in return for this year of constant work from the Grand Marshal, there is an expectation that those who chose her and the appointives who served with her will do all sorts of things for her during her journey up the Grand Line, like when I helped with my big sister's Pre-Revealing because I was an appointive officer in her Grand Family of 2008. After you've had a person take care of you for an entire year, you really do enjoy getting to help her out as her years of service go forward. That part is a lot of fun. It was also another juxaposition event for me between my Star world and my SCA world. There were three more SCA people at the Grand Marshal's reception that snagged me to say hello and greet the visiting Royal Peer. :-) I fear that the word has gotten out and has spread through the South. But more than that was the fact that for me, the Grand Marshal's job felt very familiar. In the SCA, when a new royal couple is going to ascend to the throne, they often choose a person to be in charge of those who will serve them as lords and ladies in waiting. This person is usually called the Head of Court or Chief Lady, depending on the region. As it happens, I have served as Head of Court five times, so many of the tasks associated with Grand Marshal were not totally new to me. Hotel room blocks, that was new, since SCA people camp in pavilions and tents, but on the other hand, I didn't have to keep a list of what size tent each person had to lay out the Royal Encampment. Restaurant reservations were also new but I didn't have to find a steward to cook meals for twenty and thirty people at a time, so I think that one was a wash. Keeping track of who was going to be at what events and when was not new. That one is the same for both. Getting presents was not new. I did the gift baskets for most of my royals during their reigns and using gift bags instead of baskets was awesome. Do you have any idea how much room in the car eight full gift baskets can take up? The whole back seat sometimes. Or what sort of a pain it is to transport fifteen dozen roses in buckets half full of water to a camp site so that they can be given out as tokens during a tournament without getting water on every floor surface in your car? It's bad enough getting them into the car and driving to the site, but some sites don't let you drive on the grass, so the last quarter mile can be the real killer. Even with the experience of having done similar things though, the job of Grand Marshal is one of those things that is totally rewarding to do well and absolutely nothing anyone would want to do a second time. This weekend I will be in Union City and Santa Maria.

Castles and Titles

2010-08-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

This weekend had several interesting events in Southern California. I started out by a visit to a Chapter that must have the shortest meetings I have ever seen in my life. Of course, they had no business to discuss and no topics of discussion in the meeting room, so it may have been shorter than usual, but they sure did go quick for the business part of the meeting. However, they also do a dinner each night and then have discussions in the dining room, so the total overall time for the "evening" is not any shorter than any other Chapter, but it is distributed differently. Because there is less time in the Chapter room, there is more time for social activities and I like that different ratio a lot. I wonder if other Chapters might give that model a shot just for maybe a meeting or two during the year rather than all meetings. Many Chapters used to have dinners three or four times a year and less of them do now because of the work involved in doing all the cooking and cleaning and such, but in a lot of areas there are some reasonably priced caterers who could come do the meal too. Doing one every meeting like this Chapter I visited does may be too expensive for some of our members, but an occasional meeting with dinner and more social time might be a great change of pace. Then on Saturday was an Association event and a Grand Officer reception. The Association event was held at Benedict's Castle in Riverside, and in addition to providing us with a great meal and lovely entertainment, holding it there benefitted Teen Challenge, a program that helps teens from troubled situations. It is always nice when our events can also do some good in the community. The dinner on Friday did that also. The theme of the afternoon event was medieval and of course pretty much everyone knows that when I am not doing Star, I do medieval re-creation in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), so my girls in the area were looking forward to seeing me in one of my fancy outfits and here I was in our red travel suit for the year. I understand that the Worthy Grand Matron probably wanted all the Grand Officers in their travel suits so that no one would feel left out if some people had medieval clothes and some did not, so I don't fault her decision on that. But in my medieval group, when someone shows up to an event in modern clothes, some people call that wandering around naked and it made for some very funny comments when I arrived. The medieval culture shock continued into the evening because when I arrived at the Saturday evening reception, one of the Associate Patrons from that area walked up to me and said hello and then said that he had just found out that he had been addressing me incorrectly. For a moment I was puzzled, thinking maybe he was trying to verify my title was Associate Grand Conductress and not some other Grand Office. But no, that wasn't it. I found out what he was talking about when the next thing he said to me was, "I hope you will forgive me, Your Excellency," which is my correct title in our medieval group, but one that I never expected to hear at an Eastern Star reception. The look on my face was probably most amusing. The kind gentleman, whose proper medieval title would have been Honorable Lord by the way, proceeded to tell me about his activities in the SCA and called over three other people in the room who are also SCA folk and proceeded to introduce them and had me tell them about my SCA activities, which are of course mostly on hold right now and for the next three or four years. This kind person and I had a lovely discussion about the amount of cross-over we have found between the Masonic Fraternity and our SCA folk. I have two friends that recently joined the Lodge and then Star who I have known for decades in SCA also and he knew several more than he had introduced to me. I can appreciate the cross-over because it is the result of shared values. In SCA, we value courtesy, chivalry and service. My SCA motto, in English since its on my banners in Latin, is Honor above all Else and the motto of my household is From each according to their Ability, To each according to their Need. (No, it wasn't a communist household, but everyone was expected to do whatever they could and cover for others where needed. :-) The Masonic ideals parallel these values very much. At an SCA event, I can set up an encampment, leave my stuff lying around, go do other things and know that nothing of mine will be touched or missing when I return. Honor would not permit otherwise. At an Eastern Star function, I find out which seat is mine, dump my purse and tote bag there and go talk to people without any thought or fear that anything of mine will be missing, (although it may be moved over if I've guessed the wrong seat. :-) Where else in this world can I safely do that? So that same sense of comfort that comes from being surrounded by honorable people is present in both of these worlds to which I have given many, many hours, (and many, many dollars, too. :-) What is also amusing and interesting is that in many ways, my current journey up the Grand Line is a parallel to the journey I made fourteen years ago to the throne of the Principality of the Mists in the Kingdom of the West and the Viscountess title I hold in the SCA. (I was already excellent before that, having been made a Court Baroness some years before and some people value my other peerage, the Order of the Pelican, which I earned for service, more that the title I got for reigning but those are ongoing debates in the SCA which are fun, but not relevant. :-) In both cases, I was given the opportunity to serve by the hand of another, in Star by my selection as Grand Marshal and in SCA by the victory over the Coronet Lists by my fighter. Having gained the opportunity, it was and is my responsibility to use it well and earn by my own hand the title and honors that go with the job. In both cases, you serve with a partner of the opposite sex who is your co-leader and co-decision maker who you have chosen as the person with whom to share this experience. Both cases have a ramp up period where you are next in line but not in the office yet, to give you a chance to make plans, ask people to serve with you, chart out a calendar, decide on colors and emblems and clothing styles and such. Of course in SCA, we had eight weeks of ramp up before a six month term and Star gives us three years before a one year term, but in both cases, there is never enough time and you scramble to get everything done, find all your people and curse the calendar that just doesn't have enough weekends in it! Both cases require you to make decisions on matters that are good and those that are not so fun, to uphold the dignity of the position and the office, to serve the members even while in charge of them by bending your wishes to the needs of your people, and to remember that honor is accorded to you automatically by virtue of your office while you hold it, but that when your time is over and you hand the titles and honors over to the next person, how you will be remembered and if you will be respected depend greatly on the job you did and not just that you did it. (And every person who did it before you has their own ideas of how it should be done and hope you do it the way they did it. :-) I must say though, that being Princess is probably easier. When your word is Law, you give everyone a chance to voice their opinion, then you make a decision, then you announce your decision and everyone says, "Yes, Your Highness" and there's no more arguing after that. Of course, if what you've decided to do is have latrines dug in the middle of the fighting field, no one may able to find the shovels for six months so they just don't get around to doing the digging until after you step down and then it's too late, but at least there's no arguing. :-) I had a wonderful time as Princess back in 96-97 and I am told that on the one to ten scale, my reign with my Prince scored an eight, which is just about as good as it gets. I hope I can do as well in my current role and I am keeping my fingers crossed on it. I think that a lot of the experience of it will actually cross over well, at least it has so far. Next weekend, I am not able to go to Bishop and Mammoth, so next week I will write about the final event we had this past weekend, the Grand Marshal's reception.

I Hear The Train A Comin'

2010-08-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

It's rolling round the bend, We're all on board committed till I don't know when. . . (With apologies to the late, great Johnny Cash - I do not care for country music, but I do like the work of the Man In Black, imagine that. :-) Okay, I was not really in prison, but I did do some hard time this weekend. Not because of the activities, which were actually very interesting and had some wonderful moments, but because we sat in chairs so long, I think I sprained the right side of my bottom. This past weekend was the Associate Matron/Associate Patron workshop. This is an annual event where the up and coming Grand Line Officers present a training and information events for their local officers from all over the state. It is usually held in the Associate Grand Matron's area or in a central location, depending on her preference. The theme for this one was All Aboard because of the train emblem being used by our Associate Grand Patron, which of course inspired my title today. I was invited to attend, along with the lady in line in front of me and all our subordinate officers. A few of mine signed up, but all but two of them were there for other reasons with other duties to do, so we didn't have a great deal of time to talk but I did have a nice chat during our break out session. I was familiar with most of the information presented, but the best part for me was the opportunity to see how it was presented, what people responded to positively, what things I would like to do the same someday and what I would want to do differently. One of the new features being presented was the idea of a discussion group activity after dinner in the dining room. A topic was proposed and a presenter/facilitator gave some bits of information on the topic to get the thought process going and then called on people to give their ideas and thoughts on the subject. There were some people in the room who expressed to me a measure of skepticism about this working. After all, they said, everyone is tired after a long day of sitting and you've just fed them a meal and now, at 8:00 pm, when they've been in one thing or another since 8:30 am, you want them to be interested? But it went very well and the moderator actually had to bring a halt to the discussion at 8:45 pm or I don't know how long we would have gone on. A friend of mine who expected it to work very well said that most everyone has an opinion on most everything and if you give them a chance to express it in a safe environment, they will all roll out, maybe even more than you want them to. I do think that the key to this working though, is having the right presenter/moderator. He was able to turn every comment into something positive and extract a lot of meaning out of each thing said. Knowing him fairly well (okay, I confess that he is a dear friend of mine and we were sitting together most of the weekend in the corner to be out of the way of the attendees), I could see where there was a time or two that he was thinking pretty furiously as he listened to the comments to come up not only with the positive spin on the thing, but how it tied into the comments that came before. You know, when you are talking about say football and someone pops into the discussion and says "I like blue" it takes you a minute to figure out what just happened and get back on track, but our moderator managed it, with only one or two torturous stretches to keep the conversation moving forward and in a positive way. He was so awesome at it that when our leaders were praising his skills and the work he had done, effusively but all completely deserved, I leaned over and asked if the job came with a cape and tights or if he had to bring his own. Some really exciting new ideas were proposed for next year and it was great to hear about them. It is always hard to be a leader in a time of transition because you try new things and you don't know how they will go, but the important thing is that you try them. If they go well, others can carry them forward. If they go badly, then those who come after have learned something useful for the Order for the future. The trying is all good, regardless of the results. But it does take enormous courage and I applaud those who take the chance. My marching music is The Impossible Dream and my favorite lines are at the end when the lyrics talk about how important it is to have tried and how we make the world better because we keep striving. And of course, I tell my girls that they are the dragon riders and to ride a dragon, you must be very, very brave!Of course, I am eager to see how it all comes out so that I can keep charting where my steps may go in the future. Next weekend, I am in Santa Monica, Riverside, Orange and back to Santa Monica.

A Day At The Races

2010-07-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the pre-reveal and Revealing of the Associate Grand Patron designee for the current Grand Conductress along with her reception. The themes of both the pre-reveal and the reception were based on horse races, as the lady's fun emblem is a horse and her man was known as the Horse Whisperer. The pre-reveal is a custom that I learned about second hand from a friend who was a Past Grand Matron and never experienced until I was a Grand Officer in 2008. The usual methodology is that the man the Grand Conductress has chosen is made available about four or five hours before the GC Reception begins, where everyone finds out who he is, for certain people to meet and greet and know about early. The tradition is that the Past Grand Matrons and Patrons and each family of Grand Officers with which the GC served is invited to this event. So this year, the PGMs and PGPs, the current Grand Family, and the 2009s and 2003s were invited. The GC's own family, from when she was Grand Marshal, in this case the 2008s, were in charge of putting together the event and doing all the work for it. Since I was Grand Warder in 2008, I got to help put this event on for my big sister. You start with at least two decent sized rooms, although sometimes three works better. You need to have a waiting area, (maybe holding pen is more accurate :-), because people tend to come early, even ones that should know better, and they have to wait for their specific time to go in and meet the guy. Some years the people are let in one at a time and some years in batches. Each person, or group, goes in to the next room, meets and greets the guy, sometimes takes a picture, and then is herded off for refreshments, (remember Order of the Eating Siblings - NO event without food!). Some years, the refreshment room is a third room. This year, the meet and greet room and the refreshment room were all one big room with a built up wall to shield the meet and greet area from the entry door. I was stationed at one end of the built up wall and it was a little funny to watch the people because as they came in the door to my left and waited their turn to go around me and the wall to my right, I swear that lots of people were growing extra long necks. They were trying to lean or stretch or do anything to see around the corner. You know, I find it amusing that people who have waited four or five months to find out the identity of this guy were having so much trouble waiting another five minutes. But I suppose that imminence is everything. :-) So after each group met the guy, we lined them up for a picture and then they got to sit down and start on some drinks and snacks. When all the people had processed through, we served paninis and salad and dessert. It was really nice having the meal and letting everyone sit and chat. That is a really fun part, less so when you are one of the people ferrying food one way and emptied plates the other way, but fun nevertheless. Then everyone was off to the hotel to change clothes for the reception later that evening, when everyone would find out about the man. Based on comments and experience, it seems that the hardest thing about your first pre-reveal experience is that you have to now spend two hours in the room with the guy and NOT LOOK AT HIM! I was actually at the designee's table, but being a trial attorney, I have lots of practice at not giving stuff away with looks or funny smiles (she made a great choice and grinning at him was what I wanted to do) or too many giggles. But there you are at the reception for two hours from the beginning until the big announcement, and almost one hundred of the four hundred people in the room know who the guy is already and you are not supposed to give him away to the other three hundred people! This is verboten! Of course, as soon as the guy is announced, Blackberries are happily spreading the news to all parts of the state near and far. I know this year at least one person actually took and sent out a picture about sixty seconds after the announcement. But that is your chance to take a deep breath and go whew, now everyone knows and the pressure is off. The pre-reveal was not done in 2009 because that year's lady did not want a formal reception or a pre-reveal, choosing instead to reveal her choice of man at a large local event. I can see the value of doing it that way since it saved her and her Chapter an awful lot of time, work and money, not having a reception, and also saved her 2007 family a fair bit of work too. I know almost exactly how much work now, having just done it this weekend. But a lot of people like the pre-reveal and the reception and I am told that my 2009 Grand Family is very excited about doing it, so I currently plan to have those events. Of course, first I have to find a man and the rumors are already flying. I have been told that there are already people watching which men from the south I talk to at events. I also wonder if it isn't nicer and easier to be the person on the door side of the wall than the person on the reveal side of the wall. One way or another, I will know in about fifty weeks. Next weekend, I will be in San Ramon.

Amaranth is Not Just a Type of Wheat

2010-07-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, a person very dear to me had a reception in his honor because he has become a very important officer in a different Masonic related body, the Order of the Amarath. Amaranth, like my Order, the Order of the Eastern Star, allows both men who are Masons and ladies with certain relationships to join as members. There are about twelve Amaranth Courts in California, I am told, in various parts of the state. Throughout all the Amaranth Courts in the world, the organization raises money for diabetes research and I understand that they donated over $450,000 last year. I thought that was great. But I have to admit that the event was a little long for me. I have trouble sitting for two hours and this thing, all in and all done, went about four hours. Luckily, the first half hour or so and the last half hour or so was standing up, for hors d'ouvres first and for some social time at the end, but three hours was a long tour of duty for me. It was helped a lot by being broken up by the serving of the meal and by a lovely entertainer who did songs from the fifties and sixties and did encourage some dancing so there was a break to get out of the chair for a bit, but the rest of the time was speeches and introductions. I realize that this is a different organization and I do not know their traditions at all, so I am not trying to judge what they do and don't do, but I can say that it was hard sit still and to watch. Maybe it would have been easier if I knew more. But I am pretty sure that every single person at the head table (there were ten or twelve of them) plus three or four people who weren't sitting up there were invited to the mike to made some remarks, some shorter and some longer. And all but one of them started their speech with a litany of titles to acknowledge all the dignitaries in the room. I understand why acknowledgement of these special guests, many of whom have traveled great distances, is important, but after the second or third time, it gets really boring, to be honest about it. So after the first time, is it really necessary? I know that there may have been a time that we did that same thing in Eastern Star, but for a long time we've had the rule that only the first speaker gives all the titles and after that you only thank the person who has invited you to the mike and now I totally and completely understand why. I am told as well that my friend the honoree may have broken with tradition a tad on the dress for the event. The dress code was Hawaiian or California summer casual and I wore my Hawaiian print dress (thank you Hilo Hattie's in Kona) and fit in just fine. I was still a bit warm, since it was nasty hot in the LA basin this past weekend, but manageable. However, I hear that these events are often held in formal wear and we would have just melted. I was in formal wear at a reception on Sunday, in fact, and I was worried that I was going to get heat stroke, because I have no heat tolerance at all and in a heavy dress with a full petticoat, all in nylon and polyester that does not breathe at all and sticks to you when you sweat, I was ready to keel over just to get somewhere that wasn't so hot. So seeing the event was great for two reasons. First, I was thrilled to be able to be there to honor my dear friend, who deserves every honor and opportunity. And second because it really gave me some good perspective on my own Order and perhaps some direction for the future. Eastern Star, in my view, does a better job about limiting the speakers and keeping some things a bit shorter, but we may be able to improve on that. And I have now seen just how off-putting it can be to sit and sit and sit. I confess that for Amaranth, about which I am almost entirely ignorant, meetings may be entirely different than receptions and probably are, and while their fund raisers and activities are certainly raising money for a great cause, that is near and dear to me because my father was diabetic, the length of the reception and the number of speeches and the repetitious title recitations did not excite me to join the Order even if I wasn't already busier than any three people ought to be. So I think that this experience has given me a very valuable perspective from which to think of things that Eastern Star can do to see to it that events that bring outsiders to us inspire those outsiders to join us. When non-members come to our social events and receptions, they are just as ignorant of our Order as I was about Amaranth and maybe we need to look at these sorts of events as not just being what they are, but also at least a little bit as membership opportunities. Even if the guests that come do not themselves join, it is a chance to put a few more people out in the world who know about our Order with a hopefully positive perspective. It will be interesting to see what we can do to make the most of those opportunities. Next weekend, I will be in Riverside, Ontario and San Diego.

Living in the Country

2010-07-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

This past weekend found me wandering hither and yon in the Sierra valley area of California. For those not familiar with this piece of lovely countryside, I will start by saying that there are parts of California where the best way to reach them is to go into Nevada and then turn around and drive back into California. As backwards as this sounds, anyone from Beckwourth, Portola, Vinton or Susanville will tell you that it is accurate. You go to Reno and then turn back into California. The logistics problem is that these places are on the other side of the mountains from the rest of California and the only interstate that goes through these northern mountains is Hwy 80, which takes you to Reno before you can realistically turn off to go somewhere else. Otherwise, you have to wind your way through the mountains on twisty little two lane roads, which are actually slower than taking the interstate and then coming back an hour or so into California. I don't know what Caltrans or its predecessors were thinking when they set it up this way, but I guess they figured that the ninety people who live in Vinton didn't have a big enough voting bloc to complain about it. I spent big chunks of my childhood traveling by car because my parents were both in education which means that we had gobs of summer time, but no money. So we drove everywhere, even across the country, to get to see things. This is how I know that it is one full day's drive from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Arizona border, another day across Arizona and New Mexico, one more day across Texas, yet another day to the edge of Florida or an Eastern seaboard state and a fifth day to get where you are going. Unless of course you are headed for a northern Eastern seaboard state, in which case it is one really long day from the Bay Area to Salt Lake City in Utah (there just isn't anywhere good to stop before that), another day to get to Nebraska, another day across Nebraska and Iowa, another day to the Ohio/Pennsylvania border and a fifth day for where you are going. You are welcome to test these times if you wish, but I assure you that after doing it more than ten times, I should be fairly accurate. :-) So having done this much road travel, I have learned rules that many people in California have never had to learn, but which came in handy this past weekend. When you are down to less than half a tank of gas and you are passing an exit with a gas sign, stop and get some. You do not want to run out of gas in the mountains, the desert or pretty much anywhere. Did you know that with a modern fuel injected car, if you run out of gas you can't always just put some in and go? Sometimes you have to take your car to the dealer and have him recharge the fuel injectors or even replace them. Do not ask how I know this, please, :-) Use the bathroom while you are there too, because sometimes the rest stop is closed and in many other states, there are no rest stops on any road other than the interstate. Yes, the bathrooms are often very scary, but men have the advantage over women on the side of the road shrub method of dealing with your business, so learn to cope. Your own supply of toilet seat covers and toilet paper is a very, very good thing. While desperate times may call for desperate measures, a gas station restroom is not a place you want to be desperate. When the sign says Next Gas 78 miles, believe it. Keep in mind that much of the rural outback still has no cell phone service and if you actually do manage to get through to someone, the cost of a tow truck if you don't have a plan is enough to give you a heart attack and then you're going to have to pay the ambulance costs too. There is no exception to the laws about murder for killing someone who keeps asking if you are there yet or who didn't use the bathroom at the last stop and wants to stop now. There really should be some sort of self-defense sanity rule type exception, but there isn't, so no killing. I understand that it is also illegal to tie the offending person to the roof, trunk or hood of the car, but if they live, I think the penalty is lower. The offsetting benefit of these drives, and yes, it really can make up for the total boredom and the thousands of repetitions of the same car songs and the same car games, is the opportunity to see incredible sights. The mountains and trees in the Sierra Valley area are just awe inspiring. You can spend a lot of time just staring out the window, hopefully not while you are driving. And you can stop places and see things that no one flying over the area will ever experience. It is also true, although I will probably get in trouble for saying so, that people in these small town areas are incredibly friendly and welcoming. They are so glad that you took the time to come see them that their hospitality is overwhelming. And that is the best part of all. Next weekend, I will be in Irvine and San Jose, but not Sacramento, Citrus Heights or Hayward.

Two Tin Cans and a Piece of String

2010-07-08T09:43:00.000-07:00

Since technical failures delayed this installment, instead of what I was going to write, I thought a word or two on technology might be in order. Let me start by reiterating my status as a dinosaur. RRRAAAARRRR! I am not a Luddite. I do not seek to destroy other people's technology. I just want it to leave me alone to wallow in my tar pit until I sink back down into the muck, someday to fuel an internal comubstion engine. I do not trust that technology will work and I am certain that it will fail when you need it most. The nice thing about two tin cans and a string is that it was a phone system that worked even when the power went out, even when the server was down, even when the contract wasn't set up correctly, and even when you couldn't remember the correct spelling for the e-mail address. I will also admit that I am convinced that the fall of Western Civilization began with the invention of the fax machine. Until the fax machine, nobody expected to get anything back for a week. You sent a letter and that took three days, then they would write you a letter back and send it and that would take another three to five days. The pace was manageable. But with the fax machine, everyone decided that if you got the fax today, you should respond this afternoon. When you told someone, the papers are in the mail, the person would say, well, just toss a copy in the fax machine so I can read them now and I will get the original when the mail comes. Of course, this has simply gotten progressively worse with e-mail, cell phones and of course now, the smartphone. I have been resisting the march of evil, but of course, no one can escape it completely. The use of e-mail at the office has increased steadily in the past ten years or so, to the point where the fax machine sits mostly idle, replaced by the scan and e-mail. In 2003, I succumbed to the 21st Century and got a cell phone, but it was just a phone, no camera, no special features. It made phone calls and held a phone directory in it. Alas, the screen on my cell phone died about three months ago and I could no longer use the phone directory, nor see who was calling, nor see the battery display to know how I was doing on charge. I could make and get calls, but without the rest, it was not very useful. So when I mentioned that I needed to get a new phone, the avalanche of opinion came down on me to get a Blackberry or other smartphone. Oh, you'll love it, everyone said. You'll find it so useful. To say that my skepticism was vast is an understatement. I was certain that it would be thirty foot Twinkie bad. (Ghostbusters ref.) But giving in to the pressure, I went and got the darn thing last Monday. So far, all my fears have come true. I lost three hours yesterday trying to get the thing to work with my computer, found out that the plan had been done incorrectly, found out that it takes an extra two days to set up after the plan was fixed, found out that deleting e-mail on the BB does not delete it on the computer so you get to do that twice and found out that typing on a teeny, tiny keyboard sucks. They say I will get used to it, but I usually avoid things that you have to work at to acquire the taste for them, like cigars and beer. So we will see if this snake I am now carrying in my purse is going to play nice and how long that will take. It particularly creates a conundrum for e-mail. Lots of members like to communicate with their Grand Line officers by e-mail. And lots of Grand Line officers and past ones have e-mails associated with their name and year that they set up on aol or yahoo or some other service where the e-mail addresses are free. Mostly they do that to segregate their Eastern Star stuff from their work stuff, so far as I can tell. I would rather not check two places (dinosaurs like to eat from one tree at a time, don't you know) so I have not created a new e-mail address yet. But it also seems that many Grand Line officers create a new e-mail so that it will be easier for the members to remember the address. The problem is that since there is no standardization for how to set up your new address, and really it can't be standardized because someone else might have taken the one you are supposed to use if it was standardized, I am not sure it really makes the remembering easier. Another group I belong to has e-mails set up on their organization domain with the various officers' titles. So for example, if you want to reach the current treasurer in that group, you just write to treasurer at XYZcompany dot org. Or if you want the president, it's president at XYZcompany dot org. Each year, the organization just sets a router that forwards all the e-mail for each title to the private e-mail address for that officer. They've done this for years and the best part is that I don't need to know who the current person is to reach them and the e-mail for the office doesn't change. Most domain names let you set up dozens of these alias e-mails for free, so there is no cost. But for some reason, some people seem unhappy with the thought of doing this for our group and I am not sure why. Perhaps they are worried that members won't remember which office you currently hold in the Grand Line and e-mails will get sent to the wrong people. Or maybe they are worried that when they are no longer a Grand Line officer, no one will know how to reach them. I am not sure. But I wonder if it would be helpful for the average member if we did this. Being the dinosaur that I am, I always wonder if the e-mail will arrive anyway, but making it easier for the members to at least try to send the darn things seems worth consideration. Next weekend, I am in Beckwourth and Portola.

Air Conditioning and Summer

2010-06-28T15:50:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, we visited some lovely seaside communities for Official Visits and I was introduced to Ocean Air Conditioning. That was when the lady in the Masonic Hall in Ventura explained to me that they had a manual air conditioning system. When I asked about it, I was informed that the air conditioning is the Pacific Ocean and that they open the windows by hand. So although the meeting itself was a lot of fun, it was a touch warm for me. Now I will be the first to admit that I am completely sun soluble. (Everyone knows that evil witches melt in water, well good witches melt in sunlight - go figure. :-) Heat and I are not friends and I have discovered after now almost three years of travel, that from June to September, most of California is rather quite warm. Some places are just uncomfortable and others let you cook your eggs in your car or on the hood without actually having to start the engine. Some places are absolutely lovely once the sun goes down, but of course it's not going down until 8:30 or so. So in putting together a calendar and in choosing spring clothes, heat seems to be an important factor. The problem is, there are just too many hot places to go. You just can't put them all on days that are not in the summer. So what I have to figure out is where can we go in the summer that has air conditioning that is not "manual" and then we can go there. As if putting a calendar together wasn't hard enough. Normally I wouldn't be worrying about this just yet, but I have some groups that are having anniversaries during what we all expect to be my year and they already want to discuss possible dates because halls and big meeting places get filled up and often book thirteen to twenty-four months ahead. This makes my head spin because I don't want to consider that I am just twenty-four months or so away from presenting a calendar. Oh my Beeeeeeeeeeeeep! AAAHHH! So in considering these anniversary dates, I have to ask myself if I can accommodate what the group wants, which is usually a date close to the anniversary and to figure that out, I have to consider when I can be in that group's area, flow of travel and temperature in their area, fixed event dates I can't change, like Grand Assembly for Rainbow and Grand Bethel for Job's Daughters, Grand Lodge, Grand York Rite etc., etc., and then how to mesh this date with other dates I can set, travel time from work if I need to take days off and the general availability of airports and flights. How does anyone actually get the calendar done?! I guess it must be like the dress selection. A quarter of the people will love their dates, a quarter of the people will hate their dates and the other half will just say oh and go along. I guess the secret is to make sure that the same quarter of the people is always the one hating what you do. :-) Of course, if the doomsayers are right and the world is going to end on December 21, 2012, then I just have to be installed, go to some Chapter installations, and have the Christmas Party at our Senior Living Community and forget the rest of the calendar for my year because the world will come to an end. But I am told that they expect me to put a calendar together anyway, just in case the world survives. That doesn't seem very fair. :-) Next weekend, we are off for Fourth of July. Wow, I wonder if I will get any of my house picked up? Probably not, but if you're going to dream, dream big!

Wild Blue Yonder

2010-06-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

The weather over the weekend started out good and then turned not so good unexpectedly, but it was good enough on Friday to allow me to fly myself up to Redding for the Official Visit. Flying is an important part of my ability to travel because I just can't sit in one spot for long enough to get to some of our events. There was a time, when I was younger and had better joints when I could climb into my car in Riverside and drive to San Jose without stopping, usually taking about five to five and a half hours to do it. But no more! Those days are long gone. Now, my car limit is about three to four hours. After that, I can't get up out of the seat. I am sure that seeing me folded into a permanent pretzel is probably pretty funny for the audience, less so for me. It falls into what some of my male friends call football in the crotch humor. They tell me that watching a football hit another guy right in the crotch and watching him fall over moaning is pretty funny ( the guys said - you wince while you laugh, but you still laugh) right up to the point where you are the guy. Some people can get out of the car for an hour or so and then get back in and get going, but that doesn't work for me. If we stop for a meal, that is more sitting and then another car stretch, pure agony. It's not like at work, where I can get up every hour or so and walk around. That I can do. But hours and hours in the car, OW! So when we go south of Santa Maria on the coast or Bakersfield inland or north past about Oroville, I prefer to fly. Now going south is easy. I can fly from San Jose to Burbank or Ontario or Santa Ana or San Diego and there's lots of flights and cheap prices. But going north can be very tough because there just isn't any good deals to do it unless you are going all the way to Portland, Oregon. Luckily for me, I have a touch of a wild card, a pilot's license and a great flight club. So this weekend, I was able to go from San Jose to Redding in my plane. It was only two hours to get there, but almost two and a half coming back because of the wind. You see, flying is one activity where it really can be uphill (or downhill) both ways. I had a great tailwind flying up the state, which boosted me along wonderfully, just like riding a bike down a really tall mountain, but a headwind coming back home, which is the uphill part. It is also more expensive to fly "uphill", because for an airplane, you don't measure the gas by the distance you can travel on a gallon the way you do in a car, you measure how many gallons an hour it takes to run the engine, so more hours equals more gallons. However, when you look at what it costs to fly to Redding or Eureka or any of those smaller northern airports, flying your own plane is very, very cost effective. While driving used to be far cheaper, as the price of gas climbs, the difference becomes less. So the plus side of flying yourself is that there are little airports everywhere and you can't be late because the plane won't take off without you. You also don't have to take off your shoes or unpack your laptop to get in the plane. Also, if you call ahead, the place where you park your plane can also arrange your rental car and they will bring it to you so you can just load your luggage and drive off. It is awesome! The down side of flying yourself is that you become very weather dependent and the weather is not often very predictable. I had to cut my trip north a bit short because unexpected thunderstorms were coming into northern California and a retired Navy flier friend of mine told me that there is no excuse for flying into a thunderstorm in peacetime. But usually in California in the summer, you can fly around pretty easily, unlike the other side of the Rockies, where it rains every day and twice on Sunday. Tornados and thunderstorms and hail, yuck! No wanna fly, no wanna fly! Next week, I will be in Santa Maria and Ventura. I will not be in Orland, Visalia or Tulare.