Category Archive: News

R.I.P. T.M.S. – The Masonic Society Officially Announces Closure

By Christopher Hodapp, Director, Editor Emeritus

After a prolonged public silence, the officers and directors of the Masonic Society have regretfully issued the following official statement:

Sunday April 27, 2025

Greetings all members, Fellows and friends of the Masonic Society,

It is with great difficulty and sadness that we, as the members of the TMS Board of Directors, inform you that we have officially closed all operations of The Masonic Society, Inc and have ceased publication for the foreseeable future. This decision was not an easy one. Over recent years, the leadership of TMS has been working steadfastly behind the scenes to maintain the viability of the organization while addressing a multitude of issues and concerns including having to mitigate prior management actions and breaches that inflicted irrevocable damage.

Central to these efforts has been our commitment to honoring the vision that resulted in the very creation of TMS. This dedication to Masonic Education first and foremost fueled the resolve to do our very best to meet the interests of our subscribers and members while ensuring compliance with all applicable laws, regulations and ethical standards. Throughout this experience, we operated from a perspective of simply doing the right thing and living up to our Masonic values and duties as the Board of Directors.

We are eternally grateful for all those who volunteered to serve in their various capacities during our period of restructuring. A special thank you goes to our Secretary Bro. Driver and Treasurer Bro. Doxsee who stepped in to help pick us up the pieces for what often felt like thankless work. However, the increasing costs of producing a print journal, the shift of available and sustainable resources to support the journal and an unrelenting series of administrative burdens have overcome our earnest intent and capabilities.

The Board is forever indebted and appreciative of Bro. Matt Dupee for helping to facilitate charitable donations in 2022 from the Edward and Lois Fowler Charitable Trust and in 2023 from the Robert and Margaret Cathers Charitable Trust which assisted TMS in meeting several of its critical operations and producing the last TMS journal sent to our subscribers. In full transparency, the Board made every good faith effort to prevent this outcome including the confidential exploration of a transfer of assets to another interested party to keep the Masonic Society name and journal alive, however those negotiations closed unsuccessfully.

During the time of its activity, TMS benefited from the expertise of many authors, reviewers, editors, production staff, leaders, readers and others who contributed to creating and sharing content about this important Masonic area. Thank you cannot be expressed enough. Prospective authors are encouraged to seek alternative publication venues.

As we complete the remaining logistical steps for the shuttering of our doors, we encourage you to always cherish with pride the TMS patents, content, literature and ephemera that represents an important slice of Masonic history. What started as a dream, manifested into a reality and progressed through the very stages of mortality that we reflect upon within the very symbolism of our Craft.

Sincerely and Fraternally,

Oscar Alleyne, Board member & Past President
Mason Russell, Board member
Kevin Wardally, Board member
Aaron Shoemaker, Board member
Mark Robbins, Board member
Reed Fanning, Board member
Michael Doxsee, Board Treasurer
Shamus Driver, Board Secretary
John Bridegroom, Board member
Chris Hodapp, Founding Board member & Editor Emeritus

It’s an unhappy epitaph, but epitaphs always are. I will simply add that this was a point none of us ever wanted to reach. As one of the three blabbermouths who sat at the Hilton Alexandria bar one night in February of 2008 and said, “We should start our own organization and publish our own magazine!” everyone involved has my heartfelt gratitude. Or maybe it’s apologies I owe.

Almost two years of public silence has gone on while all of our board members pursued every possible avenue to find responsible parties to support the Society and its biggest expense, the publication of the Journal. My deepest personal thanks to all of the officers and directors for their efforts in these last couple of years for trying to keep TMS alive, and especially to Oscar Alleyne for his herculean efforts behind the scenes to raise money and bail us out of the hole in which we found ourselves.

The reality is that, when we started TMS, we suffered from the very same birth defect so many other publications have shared for more than three centuries: the complete lack of a professional, long-range business plan that would have at least attempted to deal properly with rising production and postage costs. Like countless groups before us, we started with an almost Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney-esque “We can put on a show!” naivety. But that doesn’t pay bills.

We wanted from the start to raise the quality level of Masonic publications by producing a physically beautiful journal with high-quality, full color photography and original artwork. As the founding editor, the TMS Journal was always an exhausting, labor-intensive job — especially the way I designed it at first — and illness eventually forced me to hand off my monstrous creation to art director John Bridegroom and a new editor, Michael Halleran, out of exhaustion. Michael Poll later took on the editor’s role, and he and John did a masterful job with the magazine in subsequent years.

 
Our mission was to create a place in which every Brother could have a chance at publishing their original writings, be they research, essays, poems, or other items that didn’t always fit into the other existing Masonic publications at the time. We felt that too much good material was being created by individuals who maybe read their work out in lodge, or at a single Masonic gathering, then vanished into obscurity. I think we successfully accomplished those things, and more. We lasted longer than so many others who have attempted it in the past, and we left behind a beautiful corpse. So for that, I’m grateful.
 


The other effect we had was to raise the level of expectations for other Masonic publications. Before TMS, so many state and national Masonic magazines looked homemade, two steps above being run off on a mimeograph machine in the church basement. In the wake of the TMS Journal’s premiere, countless magazines vastly improved their formats, taking full advantage of the latest publishing tools available, as we did.

To those who will doubtless ask why we didn’t simply dump the printed, dead-tree format and just publish an e-magazine, we did discuss that possibility. The sad reality is that e-magazines simply do not get read, and certainly don’t get kept around for future perusal. Magazines that have switched to an all-online format are historically just postponing their inevitable death. Worse, the proliferation of online blogs, Patreon sites, Facebook pages, Reddit discussions, podcasts, and more have only fractured the audience for Masonic publications further, making it almost impossible to reach more than a tiny niche of the Masonic world with any sort of publication. Like newspapers and network television, the world has atomized, which makes finding a large-scale audience for a work like ours difficult, at best.

 


But we were also a membership organization, over and above the content of the Journal. Our hand-stamped patents were unlike any that anyone had ever seen before. From the start, we held our annual meetings at Masonic Week in Alexandria with great speakers, and we spent many years having a second gathering throughout the country – even venturing into the U.K. early on. Our membership drives at Masonic Week, along with our hospitality suites, were extremely popular and well-received. Our Quarry Projects generated an extremely useful and logical Masonic writing style manual that needs to be more widely adopted, to avoid unintelligible conventions, acronyms, and abbreviations that litter so many grand lodge, research lodge and local lodge publications. In short, TMS had everything going for it from the beginning, except perhaps business acumen.

So, as the band strikes up for one last melancholy chorus of “Nearer My God To Thee” and our stern silently slips below the waves, to the officers, directors, Fellows, members, and friends of the Masonic Society, it’s been an honor to go down on this ship together.

 
 
Requiescat In Pace.

President’s Message January 2023

 

Greetings Members of The Masonic Society,

 

John Ruskin wrote the following in his 1849 book The Seven Lamps of Architecture:

“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, “See! This our father did for us.””

 

Ruskin illustrates how the right words can motivate, inspire, and even change lives.  This is especially important as we have entered a new year with the experience of the past still fresh on our minds.  

 

There is no question that this past year has presented a great number of challenges as well as highlights.  The Masonic Society, while not being immune from these experiences, remains resolute and resilient.  We are focused on our commitment to deliver quality to our members.

 

As such, here are several important updates:

 

New Secretary

Brother Shamus Driver PhD has been elected as the new Secretary in November. Brother Driver is a senior scientist for a scientific instrument company.  A United States Navy veteran, he is also a very active Freemason. He travels for work, affording him many opportunities to learn and work with Masonic Brethren around the country. Teaching and learning are his passion, and since being raised, he has given Masonic Education lectures and presentations around his home state of Indiana and around the country.   He has taken the goal of modernizing our membership and communication systems to task.  Under his watch, you will experience improved communications and completed administrative functions (i.e: membership patents, orders and answered emails).

 

Double Journal Issue

Recovering from the financial impacts of the pandemic is a shared reality for all of us.  At the start of 2022, I underscored that looking forward, we were going to think and act strategically.  The Board made the recent fiscal and operational decision to delay the printing of our winter 2022 journal. Instead, we will provide a double issue No 59 in the spring of 2023.   Rest assured you will be getting our flagship Journal in your hands, so while you wait, we hope you prepare to digest twice the educational content with moderation!

 

New Renewal Model

The Board has also evaluated our current membership renewal structure for optimization.  Be on the lookout for a notice informing you of our transition to a calendar membership renewal model instead of a rolling membership model.  The details will be explained in our new invoices while ensuring that those who have recently renewed will be provided flexible options.  

 

Leadership Update

We have some leadership changes to report.   My dear Brother Greg Knott announced his resignation as our 1st Vice President and while    it was an unfortunate loss, I emphatically thank Brother Knott for his service and time in leadership on the Board. The Board has elected Brother Mark Robbins as the 1st Vice President and Brother Mason Russell as our 2nd Vice President of the Board.

 

Masonic Week 2023

We look forward to seeing you in Alexandria, Virginia at our Annual Masonic Society Dinner on Friday, February 10th, 2023.  Our guest speaker will be Brother Robert Dupel who is the Sovereign Grand Master of the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees of Canada as well as the Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Quebec.  The title of his talk is “It’s About Me” which promises to be a refreshing approach to a tantalizing subject.    

 

We say that The Masonic Society is a research society whose goal is not just to look backward at the history of Freemasonry, but to foster the intellectual, spiritual, and social growth of the modern Masonic fraternity.   A modern Masonic fraternity that has recently suffered the loss of great mentors in research and education such as Brothers Rex Hutchens and Alain Bernheim.  With that in mind as we write their names on history’s page, let us all remember that “when we build, let us think that we build forever.”

 

Fraternally and Sincerely, 

 

Brother Oscar Alleyne, FMS

President, The Masonic Society

Changes Now In Progress At The Masonic Society

Greetings All!

The Masonic Society (TMS) has remained steadfast in service to Freemasonry over the past fourteen years. Our aim is simple: Provide high quality historic, artistic, and educational masonic content in the form of our Journal.

The pandemic has created clear challenges for many individuals and businesses across the world. TMS was not exempted from those challenges. Understandably, some members have even decided to postpone renewing with TMS to cut down their expenses. We cannot thank our members enough for your overall support through every stage of our growth. The Journal of The Masonic Society will continue to be published for many years to come because of you!

As part of our current strategic plan, TMS will be undergoing a few changes in the coming months with the goal of improving our operations and processes while building and improving communication with our members. Some of the changes may be noticeable and some may not. We are constructing a new website and reviewing our procedures for processing new memberships. We also acknowledge that the post-Covid economy has burdened us with rising costs for printing, materials, and postage, but we are dedicated to responding to subscription and customer service issues as quickly and efficiently as possible.

 

We humbly ask for your continued patience as these changes are implemented and express a sincere gratitude for your role in nurturing and cultivating what TMS has become. Our commitment to excellence and service to Freemasonry is unwavered.

Thank you.

E. Oscar Alleyne, FMS

President, The Masonic Society

 

 

President’s Message, October of 2022

Greetings All,

My name is Brother Oscar Alleyne, and I am newly elected as the President of The Masonic Society.  Since 2015, I have served as one of your Board of Directors of The Masonic Society with vigor, excitement, and joy. For that, I thank each of you for your kind words of support and encouragement along the way.  I also salute our Immediate Past President Brother Jay Hochberg for keeping us on a steady course ahead especially during COVID with implications that none of us ever imagined or anticipated.

We are in a moment in our time where we have gathered momentum to pursue continued growth with our flagship Journal.  We rally around a desire to improve the collective canvas of Masonic education and research through you, our membership. The Masonic Society is a research society whose goal is not just to look backward at the history of Freemasonry, but to foster the intellectual, spiritual and social growth of the modern Masonic fraternity

That is the advantage of seeing the possible.   This possible is reflected in one of my favorite quotes: “It is far better to dare mighty deeds, win glorious triumphs though they may be checkered with failure than to rank among those that neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in that twilight that neither knows victory nor defeat.”

Our Compasses teach us to limit our desires and that rising to eminence by merit we may live respected and die regretted. My vision as your new President is defined by the aims and goals of The Masonic Society.   We will continue to be a trusted partner on Masonic education and research and deliver a quality Journal to the world. We will collaborate with other colleagues engaging in international, national, State and local Masonic education and research.

We are excited to announce the Quarry Project 3 is slated for September 2023.  This event is a joint venture with the Masonic Museum and Library Association and will be held at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial and Museum in Alexandria, Virginia.  Stay tuned for more details as our topics will cover research, writing, museum and library resources, and a focus on the digital strategies used to modernize the Masonic experience.

Looking forward, we are making the decision to think and act strategically.  Our leadership is committed to planning for TMS’s future while learning from our past. We will benefit by developing our talents towards preparing TMS with a framework for success not by entitlement or coercion but by real service, established knowledge of the Craft and proven abilities of successful and respected leadership inside and outside of Freemasonry.

It is a great pleasure to be able to work with the entire leadership, but I am excited to be partnered with Brothers Greg Knott and Mark Robbins as the 1st and 2nd Vice Presidents of TMS.  In addition, we have welcomed two new members to our Board of Directors: Brother Kevin Wardally from the MW Prince Hall Grand Lodge of New York and Brother Mason Russell from the Grand Lodge of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Before you are Brothers who are fully capable of helping our Board and The Masonic Society in managing the business of our Society as well as embracing the soul of our business: Fraternal Education.

As we consider the future of TMS, it is without question that we have inherited a powerful opportunity given our humble beginnings when the founders aspired to make a difference.  This next generation of leadership humbly thank the Past Presidents, founders and Past Boards, members, and friends of TMS as we confidently step up to the plate to execute what we have been trained our entire lives to do.

See you all in the Quarries!

Brother Oscar Alleyne, FMS

President, The Masonic Society

 

President’s Message, January 2022

By Jay Hochberg, FMS
President of The Masonic Society

Brethren, this is my final President’s Message to you. I wish I had come to this job at a different time, not only to avoid the problems of the pandemic, but actually at another stage of life when I might have been better able to perform. Or maybe that “best time” is not an objective reality. As we learn repeatedly in Freemasonry, we are given time, but what we do with it is what makes a life. Now I feel even worse. (Just between you and me, Bro. Oscar, our incoming President, tackles the Twelve Labors of Hercules every couple of hours, but you never see so much as his bowtie askew. Amazing.) Freemasonry teaches how time is a subjective reality. We are handed the Working Tool symbolic of how best to divide the day; later we are admonished to keep an eye on the Hourglass. I suppose we can be flexible in precisely how to interpret the Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge in practical daily application, but there’s no negotiating with that Hourglass. That’s as objective a reality as they come.

My journey with the Masonic Society is not finished. I simply am stepping outside the leadership team to join the Past Presidents—a tiny club of Masonic thought leaders whose limitless sagacity isn’t tapped nearly enough. Having been named to the Board of Directors on Day One in 2008, it will be strange to no longer be around full time. One of the obvious strengths of the Masonic Society is in how its leadership, both Directors and Officers, is chosen from various stations and places in the fraternity. Our Past Presidents are brethren I admire greatly: Roger VanGorden, Michael Poll, the late Bo Cline, Jim Dillman, Ken Davis, and Patrick Craddock.

And there’s a stellar crew moving up. My sincerest thanks to First Vice President Oscar Alleyne and Second Vice President Greg Knott. The coming four years for the Masonic Society will be a golden age simply for having these fine Masons at the helm. Also to Mike Poll and John Bridegroom, who create the most accessible and best looking magazine in the English-speaking Masonic world. I know I’ve driven you both crazy occasionally. I’m sorry. I have to invoke the “bygones clause” of Masonic brotherhood. (I think it’s one of the Furthermores in one of the obligations.) And Nathan Brindle? Our Secretary-Treasurer extraordinaire? I’m not sure we’d even still exist if not for his steady hand at headquarters. There was this one time he was on the phone teaching the IRS how to do its job while simultaneously applying the molten red wax to the membership parchments. Well, that’s the legend, anyway.

To the A-Team that is our current and recent Directors: John Bizzack, John Bridegroom, Eric Diamond, Reed Fanning, Gregg Hall, Chris Hodapp, (Chris, I don’t have words. God bless ya.) Mark Robbins, and Aaron Shoemaker: Thank you for your energy and input in steering the Masonic Society. I hope each of you advances up the officer line.

Many have come and gone through our team during these fourteen years. I do not intend to neglect anyone, but I must salute: Ron Blaisdell, Andrew Hammer, Jim Hogg, Mark Tabbert, and Randy Williams.

Cheers to others on the editorial team, past and present: Tyler Anderson, Christian Christensen, Mike Moran, Chris Rodkey, and Shawn Eyer. Hope I didn’t miss anyone.

But most especially, I thank all of you members of the Masonic Society. Of course without you there would be no Masonic Society. When I took office, we had 775 members, and I had hopes of rebuilding that number to more than 1,300, which was how many we had several years ago. I put the arm on many old friends and unfamiliar brethren alike in asking that they rejoin us. Many did, but not the hundreds I had daydreamed about. That only makes me even more grateful for all of you who support what we do here. When it comes to lodge, I am a small numbers guy, but for a group like the Masonic Society, a big membership translates directly into more action, like giving membership jewels to everybody to mark our fifth anniversary, or hosting that stunning weekend of discussions and festivities four years ago in Kentucky. We have plans in the files to support scholars who would research subjects in Freemasonry and travel to lodges presenting their papers, and if we succeed in rebuilding our membership we will have the funds to do that and more. Please tell your lodge brethren about us.

I don’t think I’ll attend Masonic Week beyond next month. My first was 2002, and I think twenty years is an apt time to exit quietly and allow someone new to have that seat in the audience, so I might not see some of you again. My main Masonic activities henceforth will concern my two research lodges. Please feel free to check my website—The Magpie Mason—if you’re ever curious about my whereabouts. I wish you all the best in life. Don’t ignore the Hourglass.

 

President’s Message, October 2021

At my lodge’s September meeting, I decided to take home our cloth aprons and gloves for a well earned laundering. I’ve never poured so much bleach in my life! Naturally, this activity prompts contemplation of what it all says to the Masonic mind. Gloves are not worn in all Masonic lodges; actually, I think gloveless lodges outnumber we gloved lodges. What do they mean?

We in New York remember, from the lecture of the Hiramic Legend, how during the search for our Operative Grand Master, a dozen Fellow Craft Masons wearing white gloves and aprons, as symbolic of innocence, confessed their conspiracy to King Solomon. During the ensuing search for the Ruffians, it was learned that they too had clothed themselves in white gloves and aprons in making their escape. Suddenly, these garments don’t seem exactly emblematic of good and purity, so what are we to do?

It has been a contentious subject here and there in Masonic history. I bet every grand lodge has in its leadership some officer or cadre of officers or a committee or something that studies the rituals and orations, looking for imperfections and ways to improve the language and understanding of it all. In 1906 Michigan, it was decided to delete mention of gloves from the above part of the Third Degree because it was thought, incorrectly, that gloves did not exist in ancient times. The word “garments” was substituted, but the lodges rejected the whole proposition, so the switch was abandoned.

In 1734 London, Swalwell Lodge’s Master and Wardens decreed that any brother attending lodge without his gloves and apron would be fined one shilling. Of course, my lodge has these white aprons and gloves for its brethren and for visitors alike—which is good, because we don’t have shillings.

My suggestion is to regard our white gloves as lessons in equality and unity. Whether a brother toils all day in industry, or labors in law, serves in sales, or anything else, we in lodge assembled are workmen of like mind and shared ambition: to improve ourselves and to better the condition of mankind. One brother’s hands could be calloused and cracked, and another’s could be soft and manicured, but both Masons meet together on the Level, laboring in our gentle Craft.

You should have seen the aprons when they came out of the wash. You know how a three-fold cord is not easily broken? Try defeating the Gordian Knot of thirty aprons’ drawstrings tangled into one hellish mass. Thanks to Bro. Chad, Past Master of Arts and Sciences Lodge 792, now I know about delicates bags. The right tool for that job.

In closing, if you are in or near New York City, join us on Thursday, October 28 for the meeting of The American Lodge of Research. That’s Masonic Hall on 23rd Street in the French Doric Room on the tenth floor at 7 p.m. Masonic Society Founding Fellow Piers Vaughan and myself will be among the presenters. Hope to see you there.

President’s Message, September 2021

(Secretary-Treasurer’s note:  My fault for getting this posted late.  We just spent six weeks moving house.  Mea culpa.)

Of course the huge news in Freemasonry in the United States these days emanates from the Scottish Rite Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, which hosted its biannual session in Cleveland at the end of August.

The biggest announcement, of course, concerns the abrupt change in leadership. Masonic Society Member Peter J. Samiec, who has been with us since 2009, is the new Sovereign Grand Commander of the NMJ! (Bro. Samiec is a New York Mason, so although I’m not a Scottish Rite member, I’m proud to see one of us in the Big Chair.) Congratulations, Illustrious Sir! I don’t envy you, but, seriously, good luck!

Also, and this was reported two years ago in the pages of The Journal of the Masonic Society, Greg Knott, a Founding Member of the Masonic Society who has served on our Board for many years and currently is the Second Vice President, was coroneted a 33° Mason. Well deserved, Bro. Greg!

I’m sure there are other Masonic Society brethren who either received the Thirty-Third and Last Degree or who were elected to be coroneted in 2023, or who maybe were honored in other ways, but I failed to find the information among the social media platforms. Please, if you know of other names in the news, send me the info.

And, in other headlines, Masonic Society Fellow John Bridegroom has been tapped to fill the Grand Tyler station on the Grand Council of Allied Masonic Degrees of the USA. Wonderful news! John has been with the Masonic Society since Day One way back in 2008. He serves on our Board of Directors and is the creative talent that designs The Journal, ensuring it remains the most attractive and accessible of all Masonic periodicals.

One of my favorite Grand Lodges in the Northeast (second only to my New York) is Pennsylvania, where it has been announced that Masonic Society Member Yasser Al-Khatib is the new District Deputy Grand Master of the Sixth District. If you know, or know of, Bro. Yasser, you probably are scratching your head pondering how he finds time for his many Masonic duties, but he always makes it work. Oh, he also is the Master of Pennsylvania Lodge of Research. I’m tired just from typing all that.

Speaking of Masonic research, I’m no longer vexed by the claims posted in social media about alleged Masonic facts and biographies. I’m inoculated. Immune. Bemused. Case in point:

Around July 21 every year, the anniversary of man’s first steps on the moon, there always are messages of Masonic pride because astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second to walk on the lunar surface, is a Freemason. Fair enough. We do like our famous Masons! The only version of events concerning Aldrin’s Master Mason Degree that I’ve heard in my twenty-four years in the Craft puts the future moon-walker inside Montclair Lodge 144, located in his hometown of Montclair, New Jersey. That’s how it’s written up in various books of history and trivia. Heck, many years ago, that night in 1956 was described to me personally by brethren of that lodge who had received the account as a sacred history of their (now defunct) beloved lodge.

So, around July 21, I see a post in social media in which a Brother Mason says Aldrin was raised in, and is a member of, a lodge in Colorado. Hmmph! I replied with the fact that Aldrin was raised at this Montclair Lodge in Jersey. He answered coolly with a repetition of what he believes is correct.

What’s a Masonic researcher to do? (To his credit, the Brother didn’t say “Educate yourself,” to which I only could have answered “I am literally shaking!”)

I follow Aldrin on a different social media platform, so I tweeted the question to him: “Bro. Aldrin, can you clarify a point of history that is confused? Did you receive the Third Degree of Freemasonry at Montclair Lodge 144 in your old hometown, or at Greenleaf Lodge 169 in Colorado? Both make the claim.”

I figured I’d have this wrapped up in about fifteen minutes, at which time I would savor my victory won on behalf of facts, logic, and reason. Aldrin still hasn’t answered. So much for the prestige of being President of the Masonic Society.

But I’ll tell you a secret: About twenty years ago, Bro. Gerald Reilly, over in the United Kingdom, one of my fellow seekers in the old Masonic Light Yahoo! Group, asked the assemblage if we knew where Aldrin was at labor. Having known that Montclair story, I answered him, explaining how that lodge is no longer extant, but that its successor lodge is accessible—and that I’d ask. I emailed the secretary about it, only to be surprised by his answer. I paraphrase: Bro. Aldrin didn’t pay his Montclair Lodge dues for many years, and the lodge carried him on the rolls for the whole time because, you know, he’s the second human to walk on the moon. But, after an inexcusable duration of never hearing from him, the lodge suspended him for non-payment of dues.

So, perhaps he parked his membership in Colorado, but was raised in New Jersey in a courtesy degree. Of course, if he was NPD’d by the New Jersey lodge, he forfeited his membership in Colorado, per Masonic custom. Oh well.

Now, on to that Charlie Watts-is-a-Mason nonsense.

President’s Message, August 2021

Brethren, with the arrival of August, I begin the fourth quarter of my two-year term as the Masonic Society’s president. There was so much I wanted to accomplish, and the clock’s ticking is egregiously loud now. Anyway, this message is more of an administrative update.

First, I want you to know that Masonic Week 2022 will be a live, in-person event! That means the Masonic Society’s annual banquet will resume its rightful place as the premier affair of the five days of festivities. Update your calendar and plan to be with us on Friday, February 11 at 7 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia. No word yet on the menu, dining fee, etc., and we are seeking a brilliant after dinner speaker. More on all that later this year, after the Masonic Week Planning Committee finalizes the logistics. (Also, last month, the voting members of the Grand Council of Allied Masonic Degrees, meeting virtually, elected to continue hosting Masonic Week at the Hyatt Regency for three additional years, so we all will be meeting there through February 2025.)

And at our meeting next February, you will meet our eighth president: Bro. Oscar Alleyne of New York. Oscar is well known about the apartments of the Temple, serving as a valued and indefatigable leader all around the fraternity, and he recently was elected to membership in Quatuor Coronati Lodge 2076 in London. How ’bout that?!

In the nearer future, you can catch me speaking at a few Masonic venues in and around New York City. Currently, I am finishing a presentation titled “How to Research a Masonic Subject,” which I’ll share with the brethren at my two research lodges and AMD council.

Saturday, September 11 at 10 a.m. – New Jersey Lodge of Masonic Research and Education 1786, meeting at Hightstown Lodge 41 in Hightstown, New Jersey. Plan to arrive by 9:30 for coffee—and to ensure we don’t accidentally lock you out of the building!

That very night and in that very same place, I’ll do it again for J. William Gronning Council 83 of Allied Masonic Degrees. Only AMD brethren may attend. Council opens at 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, October 28 at 7 p.m. – The American Lodge of Research, meeting in the Colonial Room (tenth floor) of Masonic Hall in New York City. Yes, The ALR is back at labor! After a period of confusion (don’t ask), we installed a new officer line in June, and we resume our regular labors. (And Bro. Oscar was key to getting us reorganized.)

If you cannot join us for any of these meetings, don’t despair! I’ll submit the paper to Bro. Michael Poll, editor in chief of The Journal of the Masonic Society, for possible publication.

President’s Message, July 2021

Here in the United States, our Independence Day is upon us, and while I don’t feel right passing off someone else’s words in my messages to you, I have to share the following. It’s just that we don’t hear oratory like this anymore. I’ll refrain from editorializing on why we typically do not hear rhetoric of this nature from today’s Masonic leaders, and will only point out that what you are about to read is thematically consistent with two messages printed in the pages of The Journal of the Masonic Society. The first, in Issue 41 (Summer 2018), was the text of the after dinner remarks by Bro. Eric Diamond, one of our Board members, at our annual meeting several months earlier. The second, from this February, was delivered by our guest speaker, MW Bro. Akram Elias, and is summarized in Issue 52 (Spring 2021). But this is excerpted from remarks at the cornerstone ceremony of the Rocky Mountain Scottish Rite Consistory in Colorado in November 1921.

Masonic Lodges are a confederacy of moral republics—her temples, centers of law and order, citadels of stability—for aside from its spiritual, altruistic significance, a Masonic Temple has its utility side. It is as practical as a soldier’s ration. It has to do with government and with the home. It is an auxiliary in the State house, to the church, to legislation, and an active partner to any institution or cause whose aim is the uplift and betterment of man. This Temple will be a college of manhood, a university where Americanization will be fostered, a home of brotherhood and fellowship, and a sanctuary of friendship and a school of patriotism and liberty. It is the reserve line in every battle for free government, good citizenship, civic virtue, and education. It has enemies, as all have who aggressively fight ignorance, bigotry, and wrong. They affect our purposes no more than winds against granite rock, and to those enemies Freemasonry sends its challenge:

“Hammer away, ye hostile hands,
Your hammers break, God’s anvil stands.”

When completed, there will be built within this Temple an altar; upon the altar, a Bible; draping both, an American flag. Upon their knees, with hands upon these symbols of faith, every Mason must pledge his loyalty to God, country, home, and his fellow men. In Masonic Temples, creed is optional, loyalty to country and God imperative. All in all, Masonry is organized righteousness—mobilized patriotism.

Those words were spoken by Bro. Alva Adams, who served three non-consecutive terms as governor of Colorado. He also was prominent in Freemasonry there, having been Grand Lecturer of the Grand Lodge, and also the Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite at that time. The couplet at the conclusion comes from the poem “Hammer and Anvil” by Samuel Valentine Cole, which I recommend to you.

If your lodge is reducing Independence Day to a cookout and maybe participation in a local parade, remember Adams’ clarion for a moral republic and a college of manhood.

 

President’s Message, June 2021

Believe it or not, there is great diversity in Masonic rituals. What is worked in my lodge in New York does not match perfectly with rituals in neighboring jurisdictions, something noticed instantly when visiting a lodge in Pennsylvania or Massachusetts. In addition to the official published rituals, lectures, and charges, there are other pieces that sometimes can be added to your degrees and meetings. Perhaps you have joined a Chain of Union after lodge is closed. Maybe you have been lucky to hear the “Canadian Charge” (it goes by several names) after a Master Mason Degree. Some European forms of Freemasonry even have ceremonies in lodge for weddings and baptisms. That’s a bit much for my tastes, but here is an item I found while researching for a paper I’m writing. In the pages of the April 1915 issue of The Builder, the magazine published by the National Masonic Research Society, is an oration authored by brethren of Lyons Lodge 93 in Iowa. It is a charge a brother delivered to his son upon being raised to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason. Happy Fathers Day!

My son: Tonight you become a member of an order—not only of friends, but of brothers. In your life, as you master its teachings and experience its good influences, you will have a great mental growth.

Masonry fosters only the right doers; its principles, its teachings, its mysteries all tend to the elevation of man. Masonry gives maturity to the good character, and character may be likened to a universal bank. The deposits that are made in the bank of character bear an eternal interest. No thief can steal them; no panic can dissipate them.

The life of him who is pure, just, honorable and noble, finds within the tenets of Masonry loyal protection “from the evil intentions of our enemies.” We believe that you will be true and faithful to the teachings of Masonry, and we trust that you will so live that your words and your actions will be such as to brighten the memory of all the good men who have stood where you and I now stand—amid friends and amid brothers.

You are the son of a Mason who reveres Masonry’s teachings and stands uncovered in the presence of its sublime mysteries. If you will have your conduct in harmony with the principles of Masonry, you will aid my remaining years to pass in peaceful satisfaction.

You are not only my son, but you are also my brother. Believing that you will always prove yourself as being worthy of having been this evening “raised to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason,” I hope to be steadied by your arm as my son and as my brother when I depart on the journey whose goal is the realm of silence.

Even the All-Seeing Eye has a tear after that. Please feel free to keep this handy if you or a lodge brother ever comes to enjoy the honor of seeing a son become a brother.

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