Kevin Miller-Conley

We had a lively and enjoyable meeting in the second week of June. Our stated was pushed back to accommodate the Grand Lodge Annual Communication. We had a vote to increase our dues and lifetime membership fee which passed unanimously. We also discussed our summer programming including our plan to have our 4th of July celebration the first weekend of July. Most importantly, our Brother Entered Apprentice Burgos gave his proficiency for the EA degree tonight and passed with flying colors. We will hopefully be looking to perform his FC degree next month.

Our Worshipful Master Patrick, Senior Warden Kevin, Secretary Jim, and Tyler Jimmie all took a little journey over to Pendleton to attend the Grand Lodge Annual Communication. We stayed in the Red Lion Inn, and had a spirited time enjoying some Fellowship with each other, and with the Brothers of Oregon. WB Patrick was lucky enough that when all the WMs of Oregon were called up to the front to be honored, he got to stand front and center! While the Grand Lodge meals are delicious, we opted for a lovely Steak Dinner at Cimmiyotti’s. There were lots of speeches made, issues discussed, and resolutions voted on. After it was all said and done, we made a report to the Lodge on Slack, and I’m sure we will discuss the transpirings next week as well.

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.

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.

As usual, we held our Officer’s Meeting for the last Wednesday of the Month. Our main topics of discussion were our next few months of programming, taking us through the summer. This year we’re looking at mixing things up a little and instead of just not having our Stated Meetings for July and August, we’re planning on replacing them with some events like Mini-golf and a BBQ for the Brethren. We also discussed a Dues and Lifetime Membership increase, which has been a long time coming. Given the amount of discussed topics, our May Stated is likely to contain a lot of Lodge discussion.

We decided to just have some fellowship this week, but due to unforeseen circumstances, and a splash of Covid, a number of us had to pull out. Thanks to Brothers Hunter and Matt for holding down the fort and enjoying some Fellowship together though!

Our Lodge enjoyed another Board Game night and played some Adventure Time Munchkin. This week we enjoyed the company of Bro EA Carlos’s son, who hung out with us for the first time. Hopefully the first of many!