Internet Junkie I Am

Since my last blog entry I have be riding up and down the road attending various Shrine Club officer installations taking pictures for the Potentate. I am trying to do a good job as temple photo-grapher this year. The good part is we have a Potentate that has three grandchildren who have been Shriners Hospital patients. He knows what Shriners are really all about. A Shrine Temple is a group organization which requires more than one person to make it successful.

There is a move on-going to move the Temple out of Meridian into Marion which is just above Meridian so basically they aren’t moving the temple more centrally located in the Hamasa territory. This may cause a problem internally in Hamasa members, not all of the members but some main players. I have decided to become neutral in this issue. I am active and live in the North and I have been to several meeting with members from the South in the North but we can’t get members in the North to attend anything in Meridian. I don’t have the answers. Some believe that once Hamasa moves into a new building and the money gained on the sale of the old building, Hamasa will go under. Some believe that moving into a new building will allow us to be back on our own. Many card holders really don’t care. If Hamasa was a college football team more people would care.

I didn’t write an article for this month’s newsletter but I did make an editorial note:

Editorial Note: I receive e-mail news alerts on published articles with the word “Shriners” included. Several times a week I see stories children being helped by Shriners Hospitals, whether it’s a burn victim or a child with orthopedic needs; I see reports of your philanthropy making a difference in the world. Shriners sent a medical team to the fire disaster at the daycare center in Mexico City and now we have a team helping in Haiti. This is you. This is every man that owns a fez, every woman married to Shriner and every child with parents involved in Shriners. You are making a difference in our world. You are improving the lives of thousands daily. This is not a self-serving fraternity, this is a world serving fraternity making a difference and the more we have involved, the bigger difference we make. Don’t just believe me, look for yourself and you will see what being a Shriner really all is about.

Maybe someone will read this and realize what our true purpose is as a fraternity. Too many people are narcissistic nowadays, only looking at things from the prospective of what they can get out of it for themselves. “I” want a title or “I’ want an award or “I” want everyone to look up to me. The biggest disharmony we have originates from people wanting to be someone they aren’t. I get tired of it, I wish all the titles, pomp and circumstance were removed and members all had the same position. But it didn’t work for communism and without individual achievement recognition no one would participate at all. If the good leadership refuses to step up, the bad leaders will happily do so and that leads to our failure.

Moving on….My wife calls me an Internet Junkie. I guess I am. “Internet Junkie” is a new term we all hear more about now. It is easy to get involved with Internet games and social networks. Now with the smart phone you can stay playing no matter where you go. I was riding to Louisville for a Shrine meeting and playing My Town on my iPhone. The traveling gave me new places to check-in with on the game. What confuses me is how people get into trouble using the Internet.

I am on the Internet all the time and I don’t come across any pornography. I also don’t look for it. Recently I saw a news story about some MSU football players that got in trouble for going to a strip club. How it was found out about them going to a strip club was they wrote about it on their blogs. That was just plain dumb. I realize that this blog doesn’t have that many followers and I don’t post but a couple of times a month, but it is still public. I have ridden by this strip club probably a hundred times and when it is open the parking lot is usually full, but we don’t stop. Why? The people I am with and I have no interest in going to such a place. Now if it was a knife shop, I would have stopped several times. I am not going to lie; I have been to a strip club. Two blocks from the White House in Washington, DC. Women dancing wearing nothing but shoes on the stage and I was bored. I have also been to a club in New Jersey that was the club from the show “The Sopranos.” At least these women were wearing clothes and all of them were NYU grad students according to them. I got bored and told these girls I was the Lt. Governor of Mississippi. That was fun. Still I don’t look for or find porn and the people that get arrested for having kiddy porn on their computer must be really stupid. Obviously they don’t watch the news and hear stories of all the people getting caught.

I know there are kids that are allowing their grades to slip because they spend too much time on the Internet. My question is this the same percentage of kids that would be smoking pot or drinking if they weren’t so involved with on-line activities? Facebook is a big factor now specially with all the games. Farmtown, Farmville, Fish World, Fishville and many many more seem to occupy the time of millions. Now with my iPhone I can play Tap Farm or My Town sucking the power of my battery as fast as I can recharge it. I can see how people get so involved. These games show success, don’t create personal drama and aren’t making you feel bad or accusing you if anything.

Now I have to get busy, run a few errands and get busy editing photographs and e-mail them off. Time to get busy; take care and don’t blog any criminal or embarrassing activity. I have been sitting on the couch watching TV and drinking coffee. I did have marble rye toast though. I hope that wasn’t politically incorrect. I need to check My Town first….junkie junkie junkie….

Being a Shriner

Tonight was the annual installation of officers and board members of the Lee County Shrine Club. We were pleased to have the new Hamasa Potentate-Elect drive up along with five of the seven 2010 Hamasa Divan members. I like the new Potentate-Elect and I think he understands more about what being a Shriner is all about than many preceding him. Leadership in the Shriners is a “service” rather than an “authority” and those that understand make the difference. I have a positive outlook for Hamasa Shriners in 2010.

As people we often are so bombarded with words and terms associated with a group or a topic, we allow the definition of these words to be taken for granted. Shriners are human and like all things human we also take some things for granted. The words, “Hospital” and “Children” get mentioned a lot in a Shrine event or meeting. Unfortunately many of our Shriners have never visited a Shriners Hospital or participated in transporting a child to a hospital. I understand that some men are unable to take two days out of their lives and drive a child to a hospital. They can be just as beneficial Shriners if they contribute the time and energy that can give and cause no unrest or disharmony. Shiners were born out of “fun” and “philanthropy” and trying to make it something else doesn’t work.

You can’t be a real Shriner unless you actually like children and have a desire to lend aid to someone that needs what we can do to help them. Since 1922, Shriners of North America, now known as Shriners International have helped hundreds of thousands of children with a vast range of orthopedic problems and burn injuries. No matter how small or how large. One of the things I particularly like out the Shriners Hospitals for Children is the acceptance requirements. A child must be between the ages of birth and eighteen and have a medical condition we can treat. Just that simple without complications; we actually seek children to help. I have seen more than once a child treated after their eighteenth birthday simply because our hospitals truly care about these children. One of our problems is that Shriners Hospital appears to be too good to be true.

I was reminded at the installation of an event that happened in January 2003. It was the day of Milton Collier being installed at Potentate of Hamasa Shriners. Milton loved being a Shriner and loved children more than anyone I have ever known. We definitely lost Milton way too early and could sure use him back among us. In spite of all the work that was needed to be done that day, Milton insisted we all load up and head out to an airstrip in Meridian to meet a special ambulance plane that came to transport a young man to our spinal cord unit in Chicago. I remember Milton being asked about the cost of this special plane and Milton saying he didn’t care about the cost. Helping that child was more important than anything else. This young man had a diving accident resulting in a broken neck. When I first saw him he was a total quadriplegic. I quickly remembered being confined to bed flat of my back for several months and to see this person, especially this young, paralyzed was extremely heart breaking. No local doctor or hospital could help him and he was on a stretcher with a metal “halo” screwed into his skull. One of the things I was reminded of tonight was that a local doctor had said that with God’s help and the Shriners he may be able to walk again. We watched that young man be loaded onto that plane, it departed and we continued on with our evening event. Three months later we hear that not only has the Chicago Spinal Cord unit has helped him, but he actually walked out of the hospital. The following November he got up out of a wheelchair and walked across the Temple Theater stage. We played a photo array on the screen that included photographs I had taken that day in January. We, as Shriners, witnessed an actual miracle. Without the Shriners, this young man could have been experiencing his seventh year as a quadriplegic. Now he returns to Chicago as a volunteer to help others that have suffered a spinal cord injury. God and the Shriners didn’t let us down.

I have also witnessed more than one parent in tears because finally their child was getting the help that was needed. It’s not about the money, even though Shriners Hospitals for Children don’t charge, it about getting the help a child with an orthopedic or burn injury needs. The misconception that care at a Shriners Hospital is free is not true. This medical treatment is not free; it costs plenty, over two million dollars a day. The reality is that since 1922, Shriners have amassed a sum of money that allows our hospitals the privilege of not having to charge. Of course with the most recent economic times our financial status has required new concepts like third-party pay, taking Medicaid/Medicare, collaborations with teaching universities and budget realignments. But all twenty-two of the Shriners Hospitals for Children are still in business helping children, at no charge to the patient. Shriners Hospitals provide top quality care.

Prospective is key to be a Shriner. You have to keep those images of these children in your head always as a reminder of why you do what you do and why you tolerate what you tolerate. It is still a fraternity with all the trappings of a Masonic order and affiliation. Except being a Shriner is different, it is not really about “You.” You have to have a true empathy for these Shrine children. I can tell if a Noble has any experience with our hospitals or not. You see a child with no legs or no arm or confined to a wheelchair it makes you realize how lucky you are and how much people take for granted on a daily basis. I have had more than one orthopedic surgery, my first at age eighteen, so I know firsthand the level of pain involved. To think a five year old having that same awful experience is horrible. I am not taking about a few minutes or even a few hours of pain, orthopedic pain in months and years of pain; deep crippling serious pain. I have known daily pain since January 19th, 1975. As an adult I can deal with it, but think about the children that also have to deal with a lifetime of pain. Some people, even Shriners don’t think about it.

Another aspect of orthopedics is the lack of abilities that most people take for granted. Long time ago before political correctness it was Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. “Crippled” is a term that is still prevalent in the minds and hearts of someone with a physical disability. People can make you feel “crippled” by simply walking faster than you can. They don’t realize it, because they don’t have a disability and it doesn’t occur to them. It requires a certain attitude you have to maintain. I usually like to classify it as two types of disabled people, ones with a positive outlook not allowing a disability to control their lives. Then there are the ones that become total assholes because they feel like they have to prove something to everyone; that they are as normal as the next guy and even better in their own eyes. You can see it in their eyes they envy they feel of the ones that have no infirmity. This desire for self-worth damages them as a person.

Somehow, someone recognized this factor and the attitude of the hospital staff at a Shriners Hospital is that of we don’t tell a child he or she can’t do something. The child life programs and the way staff members act and react with our children infuses a positive attitude in these children. This positive reinforcement works. I have a lot of respect for Shriners Hospital staff because of the attitude they have towards our children. You have to love children to make it work. Peer pressure is just as prevalent among disabled children as among non-disabled children. Nobles working with these children have to do what they can to make a simple trip to a hospital a fun uplifting experience. Narcissism does not work, but Shriners are human and humans are fallible.

Now that I have made a trip to a burn center, my Shriner experience has grown. Horrific, extremely painful disfiguring burn injuries are very much heart breaking. If you can visit a Shrine burn center and sit in the clinic waiting room without tears forming, you have a serious problem my friend.

We can’t forget or assume what being a Shriner is all about. Being a Shriner is about being of service to others. I have high hopes for 2010, being that our new potentate elect is the grandfather of a Shriners Hospital patient.

www.shrinershospitals.org

If you know of a child we might be able to help, please call our toll-free patient referral line:
In the U.S.: 800.237.5055
In Canada: 800.361.7256

Shriners Hospitals for Children is an international health care system dedicated to improving the lives of children by providing specialty pediatric care, innovative research and outstanding teaching Programs. Children up to the age of 18 with orthopaedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries and cleft lip and palate are eligible for admission and receive all care in a family-centered environment with no financial obligation to patients or families.