Kevin Miller-Conley

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!

A wonderful start to April for our Lodge. We opened on the MM Degree to welcome and receive the Right Worshipful Brother Adam Bayer, our favorite District Deputy. We were also happy to be visited by Brother Mike from Kenton 145, as well our a couple of our Brothers Russ and Scott, who came to lodge for the first time in a while much to all of our delight. We had much to discuss in terms of our planned Master and Wardens BBQ coming up next month, as well as the St Johns Parade that same month. RWB Bayer also graced us with some lovely remarks about our lodge, masonry, and philosophy which we all found enlightening. After we completed our Stated Meeting, we retired to our Clubhouse downstairs to enjoy some refreshment and a lively conversation about the Book we’re all reading.

We met this week to discuss the next Month of our Masonic Planning. We’re getting ready for our District Deputy’s visit next Month, and Grand Lodge the month after! We’re also applying to walk in the St Johns parade and hoping to host a BBQ in May. Lots of fun things to come!

Congratulations to Matt, our newest EA and our second initiate in 2024! It was a wonderful evening in Milwaukie with a lot of fun and interesting twists and turns. Because of Matt’s previous familiarity with our Lodge and with Prince Hall Masonry, we surprised him by taking him to a completely different lodge building! Speaking of which, a HUGE thanks to Milwaukie lodge for loaning us their beautiful building for the evening. A hearty thanks as well to Past Masters Chris, Kent, and Walter for their contributions to the degree.