The Tao of Masonry

Those of you following my Twitter or my Facebook accounts know that I’ve spent a lot of time working over the summer. Either I’m working at my business, trying to keep things running in this economy (and I’m fortunate to have a few excellent and dedicated people with me); working around the house, taking care of repairs and maintenance that I hadn’t gotten around to during the spring (and how the hell can I have so many trees and bushes to be cut down? Where do those things come from?); and working on myself, not in the esoteric sense, but physically, by exercising my butt off — or more correctly, trying to exercise that last 15 pounds of middle-aged gut that has taken up residence and refuses to leave.

Really, for the last couple of months I’ve put most thoughts about the fraternity out of my head; not for any particular reason, except that, as A.C. points out:

“The Masonic summer break restores that sense of renewal that we all used to enjoy as students… when we go out into the real world, life often turns into a 365-day-a-year grind.While you still don’t get a summer break from your day job (unless you happen to be a teacher,) taking a couple of months away from the Lodge gives you a nice opportunity to reflect on the proceedings of the preceding year, and contemplate the upcoming one.”

So, on Tuesday, I reminded my wife (who had been enjoying my summer hiatus) that the lodge meetings were going to be starting up again. On Wednesday — the first Wednesday of the month — I happened to glance at my Google calendar and saw that the space for Wednesday evening was blank. Dang, I must have accidentally deleted the items for the rest of the year, instead of just the summer. I re-entered the deleted items, and set a reminder to leave work early; a reminder to which I actually paid attention. No, really.

I made it home, and decided to forgo the Ice Cream Vendor Grand Lodge uniform, and changed into business casual. I grabbed my keys and noted the time — only 7:01, plenty of time to socialize beforehand — and as I walked to to my car, I contemplated the probability of a parking space in the middle of the week.

No, wait. Something’s wrong. There haven’t been any parking issues all spring. Why was I thinking about that now? With Southington’s Music on the Green, and the new restaurants on the block, why didn’t I have any trouble parking a few months ago? What changed? Why…

Oh dang! I’d put all thoughts so far out of my mind that I’d completely forgotten that back in January we changed our meeting nights to the 1st and 3rd Mondays.

Well, it wasn’t a total loss. I spent some extra time with my lovely wife (we went grocery shopping), and had some time to think about some of the things I need to do for the upcoming year.

Hopefully, I’ll remember what they are when the time comes.

Vacation,
All I ever wanted.
Vacation,
Had to get away
Vacation,
Meant to be spent alone. . .

– Vacation, The Go-gos

It’s customary for bloggers – especially celebrity bloggers – to apologize for extended periods with no posts, offering up explanations to the effect of work, family life, Masonic obligations, or perhaps computer problems.

Not me. The mundane fact is that I’ve just been too lazy.

Not idly lazy, mind you. It’s just that the summer here in southern New England has been exceptionally nice, and I’ve been enjoying the clemencies of the season. Last year at this time it was 95º in the shade with humidity approaching that of a Roman bath. This year, the evening temperatures in the 70s and the periodic rains have kept my lawn in need of continuous mowing, and I’ve been able to sleep with the windows thrown wide open, obviating the need for the central air-conditioning that ran almost non-stop last year. Accordingly, I’ve spent a lot more time outside, engaged in both home maintenance chores and in the pursuit of healthy exercise.

Yes, exercise. The practice of actually doing something, instead of simply reading about it on Wiki. A job that has kept me increasingly behind a desk for the last 8 or 10 years, coupled with the excellent cooking for which Friendship Lodge is known, has contributed in some ways to cause my own Masonic figure to resemble less the proportions of an Doric column, and more one of the objects that sits atop the pillars at the entrance. While the weather is nice, I’ve been trying to bike between 15 and 30 miles per week, and I’ve been working on various exercises in between. We took a family vacation to the beaches of North Carolina, and I took both my bike and my laptop. I rode over 100 miles in 6 days, and spent a lot of time just web surfing. Some bloggers – especially the celebrity bloggers – might call it “researching future articles.”

Not me. It’s vacation. I’m allowed a bit of goofing off on vacation. That’s what it’s for – a chance to vacate my brain for a bit in order to – hopefully – reorganize and gain some perspective. Those who enjoy socializing all the time, and who revel in the non-stop camaraderie sometimes don’t understand the reasons why others just drop out for a while. When I had realized that I had about 20 articles unfinished, I knew it was time to take a break.

In the Northeast US, lodges typically do not meet in the summer months; some have no meetings at all, some have only specific committee meetings (building, finance, etc.) and a very few have one or two meetings over the summer. I’ve read and heard from some of my brothers who get a bit sad over the summer break, and wish that they could continue to meet with their friends every week, or every other week. I used to feel that way, too, but I remember in my year as WM, I couldn’t wait for June to be over – and with it, the meetings, committees, and visiting. Not, obviously, because I don’t like my brother Masons; it’s just that some of us need some quiet time to recharge.

Masonically speaking, I haven’t been totally vacant, of course. For the sake of gaining some insights and perspective, I did a lot of lurking at the web sites and forums in which I generally don’t get to spend much time. I’ve done a lot of reading over the last few weeks, getting caught up on the Masonic news around the US and UK – and of course, right here in Connecticut. I’ve also been working on a completely new version of the 25 year old Master’s Achievement Award form, which we are hoping to put into service for the end of 2008 or beginning of 2009. I was away when we had our annual Trowel Club picnic, but we’ve got another get-together dinner coming up later this week, and I’ve started to organize the annual Past Master’s Dinner for later in the year.

So I’m hoping that all of you have had a similar opportunity this summer, to recharge, to gain some perspective, and ready to get back to work rested and refreshed in a few more weeks. By then, I know I’ll be looking forward to it.

Inasmuch that once made a Mason, one can never really separate all of the other aspects of one’s life from the Masonic, it seems fair to say that pretty much everything in my life is fair game for this blog.

That, and the fact that I just got back from vacation and wanted to brag about it.

A week an a half ago, my wife and I left for the Napa Valley wine country on the first child-free vacation we’ve had in over 15 years. That means that we left the 95ºF temps in southern New England for the 110º+ temps in central California. We landed at Oakland airport (92º), got the rental car (96º), and headed north where the temperature slowly but steadily climbed: 98º, 102º, 106º… until at some point I thought that the thermometer on the car must be broken. We pulled into the hotel at Calistoga, in the north end of the Napa Valley and just east across the mountains from the Sonoma Valley, at late afternoon and the gauge read 115º! Opening the door of the car we were greeted with what smelled like slow-roasting wood, the kind of aroma one associates with a sauna.

But that’s okay – it’s a dry heat, right?

Calistoga is a small town with a main drag about a half mile long and looking as it it belongs in a Western film… if you ignore the fantastic upscale restaurants, the delis, the angled parking spaces, and the several people on Segways scooting back and forth from the various businesses. The name of the town supposedly comes from one of the early local entrepreneurs who became enamored of the hot springs and geysers and wanted to turn the area into a resort town like the ones he knew in upstate New York. According to legend, Mr. Brannan was a bit in his cups when he declared his intention to make it “the Saratoga of California,” and so it came out as “the Calistoga of Sarafornia.”

I have not checked the veracity of that tale, but it’s one of those items that if it’s not true, well, then it should be.

My wife had us booked into a spa hotel so we could take advantage of the “couples” spa treatments that are becoming all the rage. One can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a hot mineral spring or a day spa, and we found ourselves registered in a pleasant, rustic old spa on the outskirts of town; “rustic” in this case meaning “no phones or internet access.” Since this was supposed to be a vacation, the white-knuckled feelings that normally accomany my lack of internet access only lasted a couple of days, and we attributed the other symptoms (sweatiness, listlessness, incoherent mumbling, and fainting spells) the the heat wave.

And I can’t speak highly enough about the trips to the little wineries that we made. On the way up in the car we passed not merely acres, but entire square miles of plantings. We stopped at the small wineries, the ones with labels we would never see back East. Whereas the major labels like Kenwood or Ravenswood might sell upwards of 500,000 or 600,000 cases a year, we checked out the places that were maybe 5,000 or 1,500 cases.

And while I’m sure that the locals were laughing with me and not at me, take my advice and learn that they are called “vineyards” and not “grape orchards, and that the plantings are called “root stock” and not “wine trees.”

We found that it was impossible to get a bad glass of wine anywhere in Napa Valley, and believe me, we tried. Not that we tried to get a bad glass, but one would think that just the statistical probability of it happening based on how many we sampled would have found at least one. Naturally I am not condoning turning the period of refreshment into one of intemperance and excess; however one of the precepts of Taoism is “moderation in all things… including moderation. For those so inclined, however, there are limousined tours if nobody in your party wants to be a designated driver.

I’m not going to bore you with the details of the “couples spa treatment” except to say that the mud bath is really some kind of potting soil mixed with peat moss and heated with the natural hot mineral spring water. Twenty minutes of that, then you get to hose each other down and jump into a warm hot tub, after which you are treated to about a half hour of a warm herbal wrap, followed by a professional massage. Only a cynic would point out that one is planted, watered and then treated like the ingredients of a pita wrap sandwich.

I’m not really big on general sight-seeing, but I do enjoy having something interesting to explore on a trip, and I’d come back to Calistoga again. I enjoyed staying in the rustic town more than I would have enjoyed staying in the busier small city of Napa itself. We took a few side trips, notably to visit a local “Old Faithful” geyser (not as impressive as the one in Yellowstone National Park, but a nice way to kill an hour or so).

We also visited the Petrified Forest, where we learned that a volcanic eruption 3.4 million years ago blasted most of the local redwood trees into toothpicks, leaving some scattered trunks under the ashes, where time and nature leached the organic compounds, replacing them with minerals.

We only had a few days there before we had to leave for parts south of San Francisco. Not having a phone book in the room, I didn’t get to look for the local Masonic lodge (something that I do wherever I go), so I was surprised to see on our last night there a familiar symbol on the roofline of one of the buildings on the main street. The building was being remodeled, so we didn’t get an opportunity to check it out before we left. We did, though, get a chance to check out the Grand Lodge of California building in San Francisco later on in the week. But that’s a story for another day.

Freemasonry | Masonry | Calistoga | Napa Valley | Wine | Vacation