Keeping up with a yearly Friendship tradition, we met at Kent’s house yesterday for Liberty and Hamburgers to celebrate America’s Birthday. There was a good spread with burgers, brats, and all the fixins. Chris and Hunter went undefeated in 5 rounds of Cornhole, putting everyone to shame. Partway through, our Senior Warden presented Worshipful Master Patrick with a Olive Wood Gavel from Greece to celebrate his year in the east. On the handle, we had an inscription carved in Greek saying, “I can’t say I deserve better” which is a famous quote from our WM. All in all a fantastic day for Fellowship.

This year we decided to try something a little different. We went dark for the summer as usual, but we chose, instead, to go on some summer outings in place of our business meetings. For this first one, we went to Bullwinkles in Wilsonville! We had some fun in the arcade while we waited for everyone to arrive, and then we played 18 holes of minigolf. Afterwards, some of us split off for some late night grub. Everyone had a wonderful time, and we all agreed we should do it again next year!

Since we’re going dark (skipping our business meetings) for July and August, we had a very informal Officer’s Meeting. We discussed the upcoming summer events including our 4th of July BBQ and a possible outing to go minigolfing!

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.