I'm preparing for the first big general meeting I'll preside over as Chairman of the Board this Saturday, and boning up on Robert's Rules of Order.  It's not exactly my idea of a good time, but it's important to get it right. 

There have been a number of interesting things so far to serving on the board, meetings not being one of them.  Not that the meetings have been dreadful — it's just that people change when there's that call to order, don't they? 

But then that's the point, really, isn't it?

There's no doubt we're better off with Robert's Rules than without them.  But it feels a little like ill-fitting formal-wear when you're using it at a meeting.  A little stiff, a little scratchy, tight under the arms and in the crotch. 

In the last executive board meeting the treasurer, who was the Senior VP of Administration last year, was advising the new Senior VP of Administration, who will have to read his minutes at this year's meeting.

"Aw, don't worry about it — you can do what I did last year," he said.  "Just wing it."

His just winging it last year is still whispered about by the membership.  It was more scandalous in hindsight than all of the shenanigans of the VP of the Park, whose homophobic rants in the last board election prompted entreaties for civility in the local press.  People, it turns out, are more scandalized by lost minutes than lack of decorum.

Or are they?  Lost minutes is lack of decorum, isn't it? 

And that's what Robert's Rules is all about.  Setting the stage.  It's a kind of theater in which we suspend our disbelief and try to accomplish something through constructive debate.  Which is no mean feat.

I mean, considering the madness of crowds, right? 

And madness has many faces.

I went to a grant award ceremony last year and was amazed at how seemingly normal people when placed in front of other seemingly normal people seem to totally lose their sense of normal. 

Their off-switch is usually the first thing to malfunction. 

At the recent BNAN Gardeners Gathering the Mayor's definitely malfunctioned.  He mumbled on and on about God knows what all for, like, FOREVER.  And every time you thought he was done, he'd take a gurgly little  breath and start up again.  This is a man who's been in public office as long as most of us can remember.  He doesn't seem to know when to stop. 

Which is one of the most important things, as everyone knows, that anyone can know when to do.

It is the essence of decorum.