‘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.

     

‘Tomorrow night: Guarding the Arcane’

    

Sorry for the late notice, but Heather Calloway will be the speaker tomorrow night, being hosted by the Masonic Renewal Committee. She will present “Guarding the Arcane: The Quest to Preserve Fraternal History” via Zoom and courtesy of the Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction. Click here to register. From the publicity:

Engage 2023

Masonic Renewal Committee

MRC Engage Conferences are exactly what the name implies: opportunities for the Masonic leader to engage with knowledgeable presenters on a range of topics important to the success of our fraternity. MRC Engage Conferences are delivered via Zoom. Each is one hour of information to make you a better, more informed leader.

Guarding the Arcane:

The Quest to Conserve

Fraternal History

with Dr. Heather Calloway

Thursday, September 28

8 p.m. Eastern

Heather K. Calloway, MTS, MLS, Ed.D., is Executive Director of University Collections, Indiana University; Director, Center for Fraternal Collections; Research Lecturer, IUB Curatorship, and IUPUI Museum Studies.

Dr. Heather Calloway

Drawing upon a professional background as an archivist spanning more than twenty years, Dr. Calloway has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the preservation of archival, museum, and library holdings. She will talk about strategies and best practices to preserve your fraternal history. Heather holds a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where her dissertation focused on preserving Masonic grand lodge libraries, archives, and museums. Prior to moving to higher education, she spent fourteen years at the House of the Temple in Washington, D.C.

     

‘Skeletons in the Lodge Hall’

     

Click to enlarge.

If you think I know where Freemasonry’s skeletons are buried, wait until you hear from Heather! The perfect choice for the Sankey Lecture, Heather Calloway is the Executive Director of Indiana University’s Center for Fraternal Collections and Research.

She’s got a million stories. Attend the lecture in person or online. Don’t cost nothin’.

     

‘Scottish Freemasonry Symposium, Part III’

    

One of many slides, packed with dazzling facts, on the screen.

I’ll wrap up an enjoyable year with this overdue post on the George Washington Masonic National Memorial’s Scottish Freemasonry in America Symposium (the title seems to vary here and there, so I’m going with what’s on the front cover of the program) eight weeks ago. An enjoyable year mostly because of the more-than-the-usual travel, compensating, I guess, for the period of pandemic lockdown. There was Masonic Week in Virginia in February; Royal Arch Grand Chapter in Utica in March; the Railroad Degree in Delaware in April; Masonic Con in New Hampshire in June; and back to Virginia for this conference on November 5—which happened to have been the twenty-fifth anniversary of my Master Mason Degree. That whole weekend was the perfect way to celebrate the milestone.

This actually is the third in a series of Magpie posts about the events, and there are sidebars also, if you care to scroll through the posts from November. Pardon the poor quality of the photographs. So, here we go.

At the Washington Memorial, introductions, welcomes, and remarks were tendered by Executive Director George Seghers, President Claire Tusch, and Director of Archives and Events Mark Tabbert. The roster of presenters was a balance of Masonic and non-Masonic speakers who gave explanations of how Scots impacted British North America by emigrating to the colonies and bringing their Freemasonry with them. I think it is a neglected subject thanks to our anglocentric understanding of early American history. We think of things “Anglo-American” at the exclusion of the Scottish people, philosophies, religion, and more that also came to the American colonies.

Professor Ned Landsman

Professor Emeritus Ned Landsman, of SUNY-Stony Brook, discussed “Mobility and Stability in Scottish Society and Culture in the Eighteenth Century.” The Scottish influx into North America was not as large as England’s, he explained, mostly because the Scots were as likely to emigrate to Ireland and other destinations, and many who did cross the Atlantic were apt to return home after earning some money. But shifting economic and political fortunes in Scotland prompted enough to make the journey to find work, to trade, and to secure greater freedom. In the eighteenth century, it was Highlanders mostly, representing a “broad segment of intellectual life” (including a number of medical doctors) who established in America societies for sociable, charitable, and convivial pursuits.

Professor Hans Schwartz

Professor Hans Schwartz of Northeastern University in Boston presented “Migration and Scots Freemasonry in America, from the Stamp Act to the Revolution.” Schwartz is a Freemason and, more importantly, he is the liveliest and funniest lecturer I possibly have ever seen. I don’t know his availability to travel to lodges, but if you can book him, you’ll be a hero in your lodge. He explained how Scots lodges in British America were fewer than English lodges, but the Scots were influential beyond their numbers. George Washington’s lodge, Fredericksburg, was a Scottish lodge, as were others in Virginia, such as Port Royal and Blandford. The rolls of their memberships in the 1700s and beyond are filled with Scottish names. In Boston, Lodge of St. Andrew, which met in the Green Dragon Tavern, was the first lodge in British North America chartered by the Grand Lodge of Scotland. In only Fredericksburg and St. Andrew, you have George Washington, Hugh Mercer, Paul Revere, Joseph Warren, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and a host of lesser known revolutionary patriots and local heroes. And there were Scottish lodges on the length of the Atlantic seaboard, even down into the Caribbean.

Bro. Bob Cooper

Bob Cooper was next, but sadly his talk was cut short. We learned later that he was in pain (his bad knee) and had to get off his feet. From what I can recollect about his talk from eight Saturdays ago, he spoke of the importance of there being a Grand Lodge of Scotland after the union of Scottish and English parliaments as Great Britain in 1707, and that the Grand Lodge served as something of an extension of Scottish nationhood, particularly when it issued warrants to lodges in America.

Next up was Jim Ambuske from the Center for Digital History, Washington’s Library, at Mount Vernon, who brought to light an aspect of American Revolution history unknown to most. He explained the War of Independence as a civil war among Scots living in America. Citing a family named McCall as an example, Ambuske explained how Archibald McCall settled in Virginia in the 1750s and became a successful merchant and farmer. Politically, he sometimes sided with Washington and Jefferson, but he also supported the Stamp Act. When the war started, he placed himself on the side of the Loyalists, and so the rebels deemed him a traitor and eventually seized his properties. McCall appears to have been a supporter of Lord Dunmore who, of Scottish heritage, was colonial governor of Virginia and a very active agent of British policy. (When Patrick Henry said “Give me liberty or give me death,” he was speaking at Dunmore.) This was bad enough, but it also put him in the uniquely shameful position of asking the Crown for financial relief due to the loss of his wealth and income. As I understand it, he spent the rest of his life trying to square away these financial disasters, but, in death, he was able to bequeath his daughter two plantations.

Bro. Gordon Michie

The fifth speaker was Gordon Michie, another Mason, who spelled out the migration of Freemasonry to the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. I scribbled some notes, but most of what he told us is well known Masonic history so I won’t transcribe it here. I think the important historical information from Michie’s talk comes from Scottish Masonic Records, 1736-1950 by George Draffen, if you can lay hands on it.

And that was it for Saturday. There was a black tie banquet with a whisky tasting later, but I skipped it, preferring to get downtown for a meal and to duck into John Crouch Tobacconist, Alexandria’s oldest cigar and pipe shop, established 1967. I haven’t been there in ages, and somehow it looks like a smaller shop now that all the floor space is cleared of the Scottish souvenirs and tchotchkes. I bought some pipe tobacco: two ounces of Virginia Currency and, keeping with the Scottish theme, two ounces of Hebrides, a Latakia-heavy mixture that I’m smoking right now.

The conference resumed Sunday morning with Heather Calloway, Executive Director of Indiana University’s Center for Fraternal Collections and Research, who spoke on “Aye, Right Beyond the Haggis Dinners, Old Nessie, and Yonder in America.”

Dr. Heather Calloway

Speaking from not only a Masonic perspective, but from a broader American fraternalism outlook, she told of how Scottish culture was filtered into America through certain fraternal orders, like the Benevolent Order of Scottish Clans, the Daughters of Scotia, and others. (Back in the day, there were more than 300 fraternal societies in this country, with aggregate membership of about 6 million, she said.) Heather shared a few anecdotes, including one of a visit to Federal Lodge 1 in the District of Columbia, which invited her to look at some “cool old stuff.” The lodge didn’t know it had one particular item they found in a closet: the Bible used at George Washington’s funeral.

Bro. Ewan Rutherford

And the final presentation brought to the lectern Ewan Rutherford, Deputy Grand Master of the Royal Order of Scotland, who gave a Scottish history of Freemasonry. Beginning in 1475, with the incorporation of masons in Edinburgh, and continuing through more familiar facts about William Schaw, the Mary’s Chapel minute book, and to the Royal Order of Scotland, Rutherford brought the affair to a tidy conclusion, making clear how Scotland has been central to the identity of Freemasonry.

It was a great event that Claire Tusch, the Memorial Association’s President, said he hoped could be the first of more such conferences. And I agree! (Easy for me to say. I don’t have to do any of the work.) But I’ll be back in Alexandria in February for the Memorial’s centennial anniversary celebration. More on that later.

I’m sorry for the lack of content and detail on the presentations, and, as always, any errors or omissions are attributable to me.

Happy New Year!

     

‘Check out the Pennsylvania Academy in October’

     
The Pennsylvania Academy of Masonic Knowledge has announced the line-up of speakers for its October session. From the publicity:

Pennsylvania Academy

of Masonic Knowledge

Presents

Heather Calloway

Christopher Murphy

John Hairston

Saturday, October 15

Freemasons Cultural Center

Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania

Check back for topic information and biographies, coming soon!

The next session of the Academy of Masonic Knowledge will be held October 15, 2016, in the Deike Auditorium of the Freemasons Cultural Center on the campus of the Masonic Village in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Registration will open at 8:30 a.m. with the program beginning at 9:30 a.m. A lunch (requested contribution of $10) will be served at noon, and the program will be completed by 3 p.m. All Masons are welcome to attend. Dress is coat and tie.

Pre-registration is required.

To pre-register, please send your name, address, Lodge name and number, and telephone here.

Please recognize that a cost is incurred to the program for your registration. If you pre-register and subsequently determine that you will be unable to attend, please have the Masonic courtesy to cancel your reservation by the same method and providing the same information.


As noted above, the Academy will follow-up with the speakers’ bios and topics, but in the meantime, I can explain the little that I know.

Heather Calloway

Heather Calloway is Archivist & Special Collections Librarian and an Assistant Professor at George Washington College in Maryland. Her connection to Freemasonry runs deep, as she served the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (Southern Jurisdiction) as Director of Programming, as the Museum Curator, and as the Digital Media Director at the House of the Temple in Washington, DC. Freemasonry runs in her family as well. You may have heard of Danny Calloway, a Past Grand Master of Masons in New Mexico. Heather is a favorite speaker among those of us who get around to such events. I look forward to hearing her again.

Chris Murphy

Christopher Murphy is the Charter Junior Warden of Fibonacci Lodge 112, the first Observant Lodge chartered by the Grand Lodge of Vermont. He is a full member of Vermont Lodge of Research 110, and is a member of the Philalethes Society. I think I saw somewhere on Facebook that he is to present his paper “The Tavern Myth” at the Academy. He has had this published in The Philalethes, but I do not know what it entails. I am wondering if it complements what Shawn Eyer has been saying for several years, and I am really eager to hear it for myself.

John Hairston

John Hairston is at labor in Harmony Lodge 2 under the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Washington, and is the author of Landmarks of Our Fathers: The Critical Analysis of the Start and Origin of African Lodge No. 1. It’s not just that he wrote a book. This brother wrote a book that cites research that could turn everything we think we know about African Lodge upside down. A compelling thesis I want to hear directly from the writer!

Let me also say it is not necessary to be a Pennsylvania Mason to attend the Academy’s sessions. Just follow the directions for registration and follow the directions on GPS, and you’ll be fine. I’ve been attending on and off for about seven years, and it’s always a great time. I don’t even mind the six-hour, 300-mile roundtrip. It’s that worthwhile.
     

Heather Calloway

‘Vivat!’ – The wait staff at Bloomfield Steak and Seafood House didn’t know what to make of this party of 25 and its seven ritualistic toasts, but the food kept coming: platters of stuffed mushrooms, pasta, calamari, clams, mussels; bowls of salad; plates of steak, salmon, chicken; pitchers of Sam Adams Winter Lager; bottles of wine; trays of desserts; pots of coffee.... We’ll get used to them, if they get used to us.

Another Worshipful Master in New Jersey who is exiting office on a high note is W. Bro. Franklin Suco at Nutley Lodge No. 25. Franklin is a Mason who works hard to broaden the horizons of his brethren by shedding light on ritual and symbol to communicate the meaning of Masonry. And he isn’t afraid of borrowing from other Masonic rites to enhance these lessons. His year in the East included about ten lecturers, the last of whom was Heather K. Calloway, Director of Special Programs for the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, at the House of the Temple in Washington.

Heather, with laptop and projector at hand, screened her Powerpoint presentation titled “The Masonic Traveler,” taking us on a busy tour of significant Masonic sites and sights from Britain to Bluefield, West Virginia. (With good humor, her first photo showed... Nutley Lodge. This dinner-lecture was a fundraiser for the lodge’s building fund.) These unique locations vary in their reasons for importance – architecture, history, collections of artifacts and archives, je ne sais quoi, etc. – yet are equals, like dots just waiting to be connected in the travelogue of... well, a Masonic traveler. And travel broadens one’s horizons, ergo her presence.

Our tour included a pint or three at Freemason’s Arms, coincidentally located across the street from the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England in Covent Garden. I wonder if the brethren go there.

Some of the brethren are still bending their elbows at the restaurant as this late night edition of The Magpie Mason goes to press, but your correspondent is dutifully at the keyboard, not even meekly curious about the Two Large he invested this afternoon in Miguel Cotto’s unstoppable career!

It was a great night. Calloway took us to the grand lodges of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York, since these three are the first logical destinations of Masons in this area. But we soon found ourselves in New Mexico (her native state) at the grand lodge, and also in Taos for a quick tour of Bent Lodge No. 42. This lodge room has a beautiful Southwestern décor, making the room simultaneously look otherworldly but still as instantly recognizable as any lodge appointed in a federal style. This was Kit Carson’s lodge, and a sizable collection of Carson memorabilia is on hand here.

Heather’s Masonic journey began during her childhood in New Mexico. Her grandfather was a Mason, and her dad was Grand Master in 1991 and serves as Grand Secretary now, instilling an interest in the Masonic Order that she brought to college, adding the study of Freemasonry to her theology course load. And conversely, her various university degrees, including a Master’s in Library Science, make her ideally suited for her career at the House of the Temple where, in true non-profit fashion, she fills multiple roles that have nothing in common except that somebody has to do them. (Exactly the kind of opportunity The Magpie Mason covets, except I know they’d never let me smoke in there.)

We’re still in New Mexico, now at the Scottish Rite Valley of Santa Fe (Sean Graystone’s Valley), where Heather’s wedding was held. Pretty cool. Next, it’s the Valley of Denver, then on to Guthrie, Oklahoma where she once abandoned her father during a visit, so enthralled was she by the endless sights to see at the Valley famous for conferring 29 A&ASR degrees in exhausting four-day marathons.

Junior Warden Dave, left, and Senior Warden Dalton debate the architectural style of the pillars lining the Valley of Guthrie. ‘They’re Ironic, I tells ya.’ ‘No, you murgatroyd, dey’re Adoric!’

Then we’re in El Paso, followed by the Grand Lodge of California in San Francisco. Suddenly we’re on Great Queen Street in London before heading north to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. Turns out there’s a little Masonic lodge just down the road from the Sinclairs’ famous enigma. Then, it’s on to Hibbing, Minnesota; and New Orleans; and Coos Bay, Oregon. Before we could even think of unpacking, we had arrived at the House of the Temple, John Russell Pope’s recreation of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

A Past Most Wise Master myself, I had to shoot a photo of this Rose Croix apron Heather showed us from the House of the Temple collections. Below: an apron from the 1790s, one of the oldest on hand at H.O.T. (That’s Thurman in the foreground.)

The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is undertaking a $70 million fundraising campaign to finance massive renovations and modernizations to the House of the Temple. Individuals, lodges, valleys, foundations – everyone – can make gifts in support of this urgent effort to ensure this priceless landmark and national treasure will be inherited by generations yet to be born. Bequests are great, but the funds are needed now so please make a timely impact.

Pythagoras taught that standing to drink and sitting to eat allowed for proper digestion, a practice adopted at Nutley Lodge...

...although I am at a loss to explain why Tiler Clarence is standing on his chair.

Right: Past Master Anthony demonstrates correct chair usage, sometimes called ‘The Secrets of the Chair.’

‘Why, I oughtta...’ – Heather fields another question from Dave.

Utterly ignoring The Magpie Mason’s staff photographer, Franklin presents Heather a recognition award in thanks for her hard work tonight.

Franklin, congratulations on a wonderful year! Heather it was great seeing you in New Jersey and having a chance to chat. Cannot wait for Masonic Week!

Heather Calloway to speak

The terrific series of lectures hosted by Nutley Lodge No. 25 continues next month with Heather Calloway visiting to speak on Buildings of Masonic Significance in the United States. Appropriately, the lecture will take place at a dinner-fundraiser to benefit the lodge’s effort to make capital improvements to its own home. Calloway is director of Special Programs at the House of the Temple, the headquarters of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. She has been published in the Scottish Rite Journal and Heredom and elsewhere I’m sure.



The announcement above speaks for itself. See you there.