WM Patrick led us this week in a discussion of our next couple months. We’ve voted to go dark in July and August, so we talked about some potential fellowship events for those months. We made an outline for Liberty and Hamburgers, our July BBQ, and our Lodge Retreat in September.
On Sunday we had what will hopefully become a yearly fixture for our Lodge, the PDX Masters and Wardens BBQ. We invited the Masters and Wardens from every Portland masonic lodge, and saw a pretty good turnout! We had representatives from 6 different Portland lodges, as well as the Scottish Rite and the Widow’s Sons. There were burgers, brats, beer, sodas and all of the fixins. We discussed the upcoming Grand Lodge in Pendleton, and now we’ll all recognize each other when we get there. A huge thanks to all of the Brethren for the set-up, for the cooking, and the clean-up afterwards. It wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the many hands making light work.
The Brethren have been very good sports about whipping our space back into shape. We also took all our remaining documentation out of the Secretary’s Office in the Temple to be fully moved into our space in the Clubhouse we have on street level. During that, we found a number of interesting articles, namely a set of Limestone gavels that a Brother presented to the Lodge a number of years passed, and an old, hand-drawn sign we found really neat. We also got our very heavy filing cabinets downstairs, and are really settling into our new space. Everyone is really excited for our BBQ on Sunday, and we look forward to welcoming our Portland Brethren over for some fun, food, and fellowship!
Unfortunately tragedy has hit the Kenton Masonic Temple, and the basement has flooded! Luckily, we had much of our property out of the basement already, but we had to undertake some serious action to remove the rest of it. After many, many trips in and out of the basement we got all of our plates, furniture and various other belongings out of the basement and into our Clubhouse. We’re going to have a lot more work next week to get things in order, but there’s nothing to it but to do it!
This month brought about a deluge of business for the Lodge. The first piece was an Amendment to our By-Laws to change our Dues structure which was read and laid over until next month when we will vote on it. We also saw the formal creation of the Clubhouse committee to manage our property, and our rented space. Brother Kevin was appointed the Chair, with Brothers Hunter, Kent and Kyle joining as members at large. We also voted to go dark in July and August, but don’t let that get you down because we are planning to have Lodge outings in place of meetings! Mini-golf was one such activity that was thrown around. We continued the evening with Fellowship downstairs in our Clubhouse with a discussion of the latest section of The Silk Road, a book we are all reading together.
