‘The Masonic Con with a mission’

    

The Grand Lodge of New York’s first Masonic Con is about four weeks away, so buy your tickets now. Masonic Con New York will examine Freemasonry in the 21st Century: Self and Society—a look at where our fraternity should go as modern America suffers from an epidemic of male loneliness, as documented in the recent study from the U.S. Surgeon General.

Click here.

Freemasonry, as a path of self-development, as a social network, and as an influential and history-making institution, bears the potential to remedy the crisis facing so many American men. Come here our speakers discuss the ideas behind this Masonic Con with a mission:

Keynote Speaker

Maj. Gen. William Green, Jr.

Chief of Chaplains

U.S. Army

—with—

 

Dr. Heather K. Calloway

Executive Director

Center for Fraternal Collections

and Research, Indiana University

Bro. Chuck Dunning

Educator and Author

Bro. Bull Garlington

Author and Attorney

Bro. Michael LaRocco

Executive Director

Chancellor Robert R. Livingston

Masonic Library

Bro. Jim Loporto

On “The Elephant in the Room”

This day of Masonic and social studies is open to the public, except for Bro. Loporto’s presentation at day’s end, which will be restricted to regular Freemasons, with an emphasis on seating Apprentices, Fellows, and new Master Masons.

Mariners 67

The weekend will begin Friday, January 17 with the famous Mariners Lodge 67’s Maritime Festive Board and Beefsteak Banquet. That’s a separate ticket for a magnificent meal in an unforgettable ambiance of feast and song. This is the kick-off of the lodge’s bicentennial celebration.

The speakers program awaits you on Saturday the 18th, also featuring tours of Masonic Hall, plenty of vendors, and other attractions.

Click here.

Afterward, the 1781 Society welcomes you for cocktails and socializing with our speakers and with Grand Master Steven A. Rubin and our Grand Lodge leadership. (This too requires a separate ticket.)

There are group rate hotel accommodations and special rate parking as well.

Questions? Contact me here.

     

‘Lawyer advocates for Masonic remedy for loneliness’

    

Dall-e/attorneyatwork.com

Last August, columnist Bull Garlington wrote a piece for Medium that expresses his alarm at the isolation and loneliness confronting the young people of Generation Z—and that prescribes membership in Freemasonry as a fix. He published a modified version of this essay yesterday in Attorney at Work, where he also is on the masthead, and this version has been circulating on social media, which is how I found it.

Bro. Bull Garlington

“I was talking to my therapist about how I worry that my adult kids are so isolated,” he begins yesterday’s column. “I told him that all of them—my nieces and nephews too, that whole generation—are the loneliest people I’ve ever seen. Turns out I’m late to the party. Or total lack of a party.”

He links to a few studies that illustrate his point before revealing how joining an unidentified Masonic lodge “saved my lonely ass.” In brief, there came a point in life when he left the workforce to raise the children while Mrs. Garlington became a lawyer and the family’s provider, and they relocated to a different part of the country. Losing his social circle, Bull was at risk of going “completely bonkers.”

He phoned an uncle to talk about the crisis of having no friends or family nearby; Uncle said “You need to get the hell out of the house. Find a lodge.”

I’ll stop here and leave it to you to read the familiar description that you probably could write yourselves. Click here for yesterday’s column. Click here for the August 2023 original.