The Tao of Masonry

The Grand Lodge in Connecticut has been pushing the idea of a state-wide “open house” for the public. Not for them to visit the Grand Lodge itself, which, until this week was still under construction (that’s right – Connecticut did not have a Grand Lodge building, meeting instead in one of the several large Masonic temples around the state, or in a hotel conference center). The open house is supposed to take place this Saturday, October 27th. Almost two dozen lodges have committed to opening and having tour guides or something of interest to the public, including Friendship Lodge, and my affiliate lodge, Sequin-Level No. 140. One of the committees, I think it’s Masonry in Action (I’m sure I’ll be corrected on the name) managed to contact a reporter for one of the “alternative” newspapers, who agreed to write up a little article to help promote this.

Accordingly, last week I exchanged a few emails with Adam Bulger of the Hartford Advocate, who called and chatted with me for a good half hour about Freemasonry. Unfortunately, Mr. Bulgar’s views may have been colored by first reading this blog. Yes, our big chance to make a good first impression, and of all things for him to research he reads random posts on The Tao of Masonry. While the article is not about me, of course, there’s no mistaking the author’s perspective when he writes:

“In addition to being the District Grand Lecturer for the Hartford-area district, [Tom] Accuosti writes the blog The Tao of Masonry.

Accuosti’s blog is written in a lighthearted, jokey manner — he calls himself the “Exalted Keeper of the Secrets of Freemasonarianism” and “Crop Circle Planning & Zoning Commissioner.” Other Connecticut Mason blogs, including Movable Jewel, written by an officer in Middletown and New Haven Mason Charles Tirrell’s Masonic Renaissance, take the order more seriously. (emphasis mine)

My first reaction was “Lighthearted and jokey? Where the hell would he get that idea?”

Then I remembered the email I sent off to him, which said, in part:

“Masons having some innate love for assigning fancy titles, I now answer to “Very Worshipful,” which entitles me to as much respect as, say, an ‘assistant to the editor.’”

and

“[...] unfortunately, there are still a number of people who are under the impression that we are actually sitting on the Temple of King Solomon or hiding the Treasure of the Templars, or acting as advance scouts for the Illuminati (or the CFR, Bilderbergs, Zeta-Reticulans, etc.)”

Oh.

*ahem*

Yes, well, anyway, the online article features a nice shot of WB Dave Edman, PM of Friendship, and one of the brothers spearheading this publicity event; flanked by WB Jim VanderEyk (currently Chaplain at Friendship) and Ed Lawson, the Chaplain at Fredrick-Franklin No. 14 in Plainville. All were on hand to answer questions for the Advocate photographer.

Most impressive to me, though, was that the reporter was actually deferential in asking questions, and clearly was hesitant to ask something that might be overly personal or inappropriate about the Craft. I think I helped to set his mind at ease by explaining that the “secrets” of Masonry are not the ones written in the books – or as the case may be, all over various web sites.

I have no idea how helpful this article will be in terms of getting people to the lodges on a nice Saturday afternoon. But I certainly hope that it presents a new perspective for people who either have never thought about the Freemasons, or who only know us because their grandfather might have been a member.

Anyone who has not picked up a copy of the free weekly arts & entertainment journal can read the online article. And remember to leave a comment telling Mr. Bulger how pleased you are with his writing.

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What a difference a year makes! Last year Friendship Lodge finished up one of the best Apple Harvest fund raisers in recent memory, all the while dodging the rocks and ruts of the construction going on at the front of our building. This year we sold slightly more fried apple wedgies than last year – by 5:30 pm on Sunday we actually sold out of the 1,000 Cortlands that we’d bought. The word it definitely getting around about our delicious, tasty apple treats. We had an impressive number of repeat customers – some of them within a half hour of their first purchase!

Unfortunately, we had quite a bit of chopped steak left over, both cooked and defrosted. Ironically, we think that this is because the weather on Saturday was so nice – as in warm in the mid-80s – that people were too hot to eat regular food, and instead merely snacked on apple treats. Since the meat had already been paid for, some of the brothers on clean-up detail took it home (I’ve got a couple of bags in the freezer, just waiting for me to add it to a nice tomato sauce), and some of it was donated to the soup kitchen that uses our lodge hall during the day. This is the first year that we haven’t donated any healthy apples to them.

Although our profits weren’t as high as they were last year, we’re pleased that our expenses for the year are more under control. We’ve done a lot of repair and maintenance work, both inside and out in the last year, and the little bit that we have to go requires more time and sweat than actual money, so overall we’re in pretty good shape.

Here are some pictures of the 2007 Apple Harvest, along with a nice shot of the completed front of the building.

And once again the thanks go out to the unsung (‘cos I’m not singing) heroes of the annual festival. We’d get nowhere without the usual dozen or so people who come down every morning to open up or stay until late to clean up. Again, great work and I’m sure that all of the members of Friendship Lodge thank you and your wives and/or partners for the hours that you put in. We certainly could not have made it a success without you.

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Town and county fairs are a New England tradition, and Southington – a town in the Quinnipiac River Valley and known for its orchards and farms – holds a town event called the Apple Harvest Festival . It’s grown to a two-weekend event, and hosts the usual assortment of crafters, souvenir hawkers, baby-kissing politicians, and of course, an assortment of foods. Times being what they are, we seem to see fewer apple-related treats and more of the “deep-fried ice cream” or the “chicken-on-a-stick” genre. We don’t mind, though, because it’s all delicious. Diets take a back seat to deep-fried donuts, fritters, and of course, to the now-famous Friendship Lodge “Apple Wedgies.”

Hey, wait a minute… I wrote this last year!

The usual gang of overworked and underpaid craftsmen persons were on hand, starting with putting down the floor and putting up the tent on Wednesday evening, then setting up the grills on Thursday, and cooking up shaved steak on Friday, and (barely) waking up on Saturday morning to put in a full day of doing it for the rest of the weekend.

Being a Past Master, I was on hand in a purely supervisory capacity. More correctly, people were supervising me to make sure that I didn’t wander off or get in the way of people doing the heavy lifting. Very important to stay out of the way of those who do the real work.

Sales were a bit slower than last year, although several of the booths that regularly hit the fairs mentioned the same thing. Too many fairs and festivals get crammed into September and October, which makes a virtual competition out of drawing in the crowds for each weekend. Southington runs the festival for two weekends, which helps to mitigate the problem of several large and well-attended agricultural fairs that always occur at the same time. Nonetheless, by Sunday night we had gone through several hundred pounds of steak, and almost 500 tart, tasty Macintosh apples.

Sunday morning saw great weather, which meant that the Apple Harvest parade would proceed as per schedule. Last year, a morning downpour forced the parade to be postponed until the next weekend, which meant that few outfits could march, as some had commitments elsewhere. The parade always elicits groans from some of the marchers – it’s a short route, but waiting in the lineup for almost 2 hours to march for 30 minutes is frustrating, especially when you can smell the various aromas wafting from the food areas. But as usual, thousands mobbed the streets to watch and wave us on. More encouraging, some people even seemed to recognize us as “The Masons,” which is much better than in past years where I’ve heard people ask a neighbor “Who are those guys in the suits?”

Actually, every year is a fun, exciting time – a little bit the same, a little bit different. The rush of getting food out during hungry periods, the story-swapping during the lulls, the complaining during the evening cleanup are all part of the experience – corporate HR departments spent thousands of dollars for team-building exercises that aren’t nearly as much fun, nor do they leave you with the satisfaction of a job well done.

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A decade ago, the term “mission creep” passed into the vernacular; it describes the all-too-common situation in which various elements are added to a project, until at some point one realizes that the original concept of the project is no longer relevant. This usually happens when one person after another suggests that it would be a good idea to add “just this one little thing” until all the resources are drained and the project itself becomes virtually unmanageable. I suspect that this is what happened with our own Grand Lodge website development.

I wasn’t in on the concept from the start, so I can only guess as to how it happened; but I have a suspicion that the idea to give all of the lodges in Connecticut their own website, and then to link them all started out as something pretty simple. I do know that several Masons put a lot of their own time, money, and energy into getting the project off the ground, and for that I salute them. It could not have been easy to explain to the various non-Internet savvy committee members along the way how things could or should work. Even those of us with some computer background are surprised by the number of obstacles to a smooth transition – after all, most of us merely see the web pages, and have no idea about the underlying code, the layers of protection, the database linking, and the updating of a hundred different websites.

I do know that last year at this time I was pretty disgusted with the Friendship Lodge website; several crashes had taken out all of our trestleboard data (the various dates and descriptions of events). In mid-summer, the Grand Lodge site was hacked, and even more data was lost. Worse, some of the computer geeks in Friendship had modified our site by adding things to the template that all of the lodges were using, and each crash meant that the modifications had to be re-created. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I started blogging because I wanted a place to announce events, put up pictures, and keep the members of the craft informed.

Fortunately, the Grand Lodge website problems have been resolved, and for the last several months the administrators have been doing a fantastic job of keeping things running. They’ve added some useful features, like a search function for the various lodge activities, and online copies of our newsletter The Connecticut Freemason. They have polls, and a section where one can download various policies and procedures, and tons of contact information, and links of various Masonic interest. That they have not linked to The Tao of Masonry is surely an oversight. Excellent work, brothers!

One of the few nits left to pick, however, is that all of the lodges use the same template; with a few exceptions, the site for each lodge looks exactly like the others. This has been the source of much aggravation and many sleepless nights to the l33t h4xx0rs at Friendship Lodge – a cadre of men in their 20′s who have been wanting to upgrade the plain-vanilla site. So, over the last week they formed a committee and launched a new site: www.friendshiplodge33.org. Our Junior Warden Eric Charette heads up the committee, and is joined by his brother Kyle, and two of our newest members, Bill Reyor and Eric Tetreault.

While there is still some fine-tuning to be done, they have done a fantastic job of getting the new site up and running. They’ve been using Joomla content management software, mainly because that’s what our own Grand Lodge site is using – we’re looking down the road to where we can (hopefully!) replace the standard template with the new site. The new site has a calendar that’s fed from the GL Friendship 33 calendar, a place for members to post news and event articles, a photo gallery, a user forum (including a “tiled” section) and they promised me that they would soon have our own Wiki module set up. I can foresee setting up a forum group for the DeMolay chapter and Rainbow chapter that meet in our lodge, too.

Right now the site is being hosted on Bro. Kyle’s own server, so some of the content loads more slowly than we’d like. But I’d like all of my readers to stop by and give us some feedback, especially those of you from Connecticut. If nothing else, stop to share a joke at the Humor forum.

www.friendshiplodge33.org

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Masons membership begins to grow again

Here’s an interesting article in the Wednesday June 20, 2007 edition of the Meriden Record Journal, a newspaper that supports the central Connecticut region.

The article plays on some of the more interesting preconceptions and stereotypes of the fraternity. For example:

“They are painted equally with the brush of geriatric decrepitude and secret handshakes. They ride around in little cars for charity, but their origins are rumored to lie in the soaring cathedrals of Europe, or even the pyramids of Egypt.”

I found it interesting that while most people don’t seem to associate the Freemason with the Shriners, this reporter manages to make a connection.

Even more ironic was this:

“Few people know a Mason, but everyone’s grandfather seemed to be one. “

If I were editing this, I think that I would change it to read “Few people realize that they know a Mason…”

On the more positive side, the article did mention some of the great work that we’ve been doing here in Connecticut over the past few years. Eagle-eyed observers will note that the article does mention Worshipful Master David Hubbs of Friendship Lodge No. 33 - my own mother lodge – and the collections for the troops overseas that we have spearheaded for the Year of Giving.

“One of the major activities of the Masons is charity on the local level, such as the 3.5 tons of personal items collected for U.S. troops overseas by the Southington temple, but they also involve themselves in large-scale donations and projects like funding Masonicare in Wallingford, which is considered one of the finest senior healthcare facilities in the country, and the $2 million they donate every day to charities worldwide.

“Masonicare, which services the general public, was started with an original investment of $332 in 1895. What was then a home for a few dozen people on a working farm has become a facility that produces $128 million in revenue every year and assists 3,000 patients a day. “

I know that some Masons object to this kind of publicity because it makes our fraternity look to be merely a charity or benevolent society. However, we must admit that the charitable acts are generally the first, if not the only facet of Freemasonry that most people ever see; not that we, as Masons, need to justify our actions to anyone. But if we are to continue to attract members, I’d certainly want the people in my neighborhood noticing an article like this, as opposed to, for example, articles about the mistreatment of animals at a Shriner’s circus.

The article, though, does point out that in many lodges membership is indeed growing. Friendship Lodge has added about sixteen new members in the last six months, most of them younger men who are joining because they are looking for a solid, established community organization and recognize the serious nature of the fraternity. While some lodges in the hinterlands of the state are still not doing as well as we would like to see, lodges in the more populated areas have been showing similar growth. I’m hoping that this will lead to a new generation of men “discovering” Masonry.

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