To preface: No, I don’t have COVID-19 🙂
However.
As much as I am not inclined to panic over a virus that’s infected only a few people in my county, I’m still taking precautions because I’m in the demographic which is considered most at risk for complications from infection (over 60, diabetic, pre-existing respiratory issues).
As a result, I am cutting way back on excursions away from my home. Luckily I’m a permanent telecommuter at my day job, and I’ve worked from home for the past 24 years and counting, so that’s not new for me. My wife is still going to work, but where she works is closed to the public due to an executive order of the mayor, and they’ve cut staff way back. At this point, other than for her work, we’re really only venturing out to go to the grocery and to take things up to my mother, who lives in a senior community that’s close by.
How does this affect TMS? The post office that hosts our mailbox is in a completely different direction from our local grocery, my mother’s apartment, and my wife’s place of work. So that means a special trip to an area of town I rarely visit. Generally I get over there once a week and empty the mailbox, and take over anything I have to mail out that can’t go into the mailbox at our nearby shopping center (patents in their tubes, and other packages that aren’t allowed to be dropped in the mailbox; also magazines, because I don’t want them to get bent up by other things falling on them in the mailbox).
Because I’d like to minimize my potential COVID-19 exposure, I am not going to go to the post office every week for the foreseeable future. So dues cards, patents, back issue orders, and that sort of thing are not going to be mailed out as often. And of course I won’t be picking up mail as often, either, so dues payments coming in via postal mail won’t be handled as quickly. But I will get all of this taken care of as fast as possible (of course barring any further government prohibitions on individual movement, in which case nothing will happen until those prohibitions are lifted).
That being said, I am about to print and send out dues notices for the 2nd quarter of 2020. I would like to strongly recommend that members receiving dues notices after April 1, 2020, should please consider renewing online. You can do that right here. It’s faster, it’s more convenient, and it means I don’t have to take as many checks to the bank (which cuts out more trips away from home).
Please note also that we are considering sending out all dues notices by email starting in the 3rd quarter of 2020. This isn’t a COVID-19 response, but it is faster, much less expensive (free vs. 55 cents for a stamp plus whatever the envelope costs) and more convenient — primarily for me, since I’m one guy and there are many of you and that’s a lot of envelopes to stuff, seal, stamp, and mail every three months, but also for you, since the emailed notice will have an embedded direct link to the renewal form. If you have an email on file, we’ll use it. If you don’t, we’ll send a paper invoice this time, but we will request that you provide us an email address for future communications. Postage is just getting too expensive and with rare exception, everyone has email these days. (If there is absolutely no way for us to send you an email (and we do have a few people in that situation) we will continue to send a paper invoice.)
We’re also working on building a member portal where you won’t have to type in all your information when renewal time comes up; it will let you see what we have on file for you, and you can enter changes at the same time you pay your renewal. That’s probably not going to be ready for a while, but we are working on it.
Brethren, I hope and pray that this troubled time is soon past us, but in the meantime, I urge all of you — particularly those of you who share my category of risk — to keep your social distance, wash your hands, and stay well. If your Grand Lodge has shut down Masonic activity in your jurisdiction, and you’re looking for something Masonic to while away the time, I can do no better than to suggest taking a look at WBro. Chris Hodapp’s blog post, “Traveling Without Moving: Masonic Improvement During the COVID-19 Panic”.
As the MW Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York has exhorted his members, “Masonry Never Stops.”
So Mote It Be.
Fraternally,
Nathan C. Brindle, Secretary-Treasurer
The Masonic Society