Good brothers and sisters of fraternalness

Was at a pot luck dinner thing with my dad last night. It was at a meeting for a fraternal organization that usually gives him some money to do drug, alcohol and safe driving programs at his school. We brought the bean salad and yes, it was delicious.

Usually he would take my mother to these sorts of things but we shipped her off to Mexico so I get to fill in for her. My primary function at one of these things is to walk around with him and introduce myself to people so they will say their names because like me, my father is completely incapable of remembering people's names.

The organization itself was apparently started up by a group of travelling salesmen and did a lot of insurance stuff to help each other out. Now it appears to be made of a lot of pleasant old people who raise lots of money and then give it away to charities, play bingo and go to the horse races together.

From what I've heard, the same organization offers affordable health insurance and subsidizes the cost of perscription drugs for its members in the United States because like Rwanda and the Sudan, the US doesn't have socialized medicine. Sounds strangely communist for something coming out of the States, but benevolence is a good thing regardless of the name or the reason.

After dinner, they awarded cheques to some people there. One for the Surrey Special Olympics, the Salvation Army, the local hospice, hockey and soccer teams they sponsor and other worthy causes.

Then they had their elections. Some sort of supreme chancellor person was visiting from Alabama? Arkinsas? Oklahoma? I can't rememember. He read out the names of all the people nominated to all the positions and they all sounded weird, not like say, president, treasurer and secretary. "Y'all line up against the wall there," he said, "These are the people you've chosen for the positions. Any objections?" He repeated that three times and then they were all elected to their strange sounding positions.

It was a unique cultural experience, to say the least.

They're nice people, so I feel like linking em.

That is all.