The Past Bastard

Springfield, MA -- Massachusetts has always been on the forefront of innovation in Freemasonry, so it was no surprise when the Grand Lodge announced that they are ready to release a modernized second section, or "staircase" lecture for 2020.

"See, everybody knows that Masonic historian and lecturer Ezra Pound added the staircase lectures to the Fellowcraft degree as a way to add some educational material so the new merchant class members could have some idea of what the more educated brothers were talking about," said Grand Lecturer RW Jeff Kroger. "So he added some basics, like Architecture, Grammar, Astrology, things like that. Those might have been important in the old days, but now that everyone pretty much has the same liberal arts education, we've decided that it's time to make the educational staircase lecture more relevant. More high tech, you know?"

RW Kroger went on to explain that the entire lecture was not being changed. "No, see, it's just the really outdated stuff that we're changing," he told The Past Bastard. "For example, nobody needs any of that astrology stuff, since you could just look it up on Google sky view or whatever. So, we're going to take that out and replace it with this cool esoteric piece about computers. I mean, learning about computers is a lot more useful than learning about the stars and planets and stuff, isn't it?"

The Past Bastard asked how much of the old lecturers were going to remain.

"Oh, a lot of it's still there," RW Kroger told us. "I mean, like that grammar stuff is still there, 'cos it's pretty important to be able to speak right. Oh, and music is still there, although we snuck in a little bit about Elvis, mainly because the Custodians of the Work are fans. Let's see, we're keeping the Geography stuff in there, 'cos we Masons are totally about geography, right? But we decided to replace rhetoric with something about home economics, since we decided that it's more important to know how to grocery shop, cook, pay bills, things like that. "

"Oh, and we're not changing the classical architectural columns stuff," he told us. "But we're thinking about adding something about Bauhaus, since postmodernism is still a thing, and nobody uses Composite columns anymore. They're far too ornate for refined contemporary tastes."