Millennial Masons Make Meetings in New Digs

Chicopee, MA - Massachusetts has always been on the forefront of Masonic innovation, so Worshipful Brother Kyle Renn was confident that his idea for a new lodge would be approved.

“A bunch of us felt uncomfortable in those lodges in the Springfield area,” Kyle told The Past Bastard. “Nothing major, but we’re all in our 20s and 30s, and we just can’t get into feeling like a part of these old, historic lodges. Well, it’s not just the lodges, it’s the older members. Nothing against the older guys, but on one hand they’re complaining about the roof leaking, or the fridge that needs to be replaced, or how they have the same thing for dinner every meeting. But on the other hand, whenever you propose moving the dues up from, say, sixty or seventy bucks a year to a couple of hundred, they whine and howl about that.”

Brother Renn met up with a number of other younger members during district meetings, and they came up with an idea.

“We decided that it was just too much work to change the culture of the older lodges, so we wanted to start our own. We don’t have much money, but we figured we could meet in some free or very inexpensive places, and not worry about having the buildings falling down around us,” he told The Past Bastard. “We found a spot, got some agreements, and contacted the Grand Lodge for permission. There was surprisingly very little pushback, and we got a working charter right away. We’ve been meeting for the last six months, and I expect that we’ll get the formal charter for McDonald Lodge at the next Grand Lodge session.”

Worshipful Brother Renn and a dozen of so other brothers from around the area hold their meetings twice a month at a McDonald’s Restaurant at a shopping plaza in Chicopee. The Past Bastard asked Worshipful Brother Renn about their decision.

McDonald Lodge (Under Dispensation) is the newest
lodge chartered by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts.

“I know what you’re thinking, but for us, it made perfect sense.There’s a few tables in the back corner that are perfect for seating a small group. We are intentionally keeping our lodge small; there’s about ten or twelve of us, so it’s not overly crowded,” he explained. “When you consider that half the lodges in the area barely get enough members to open, we think that this is a workable number.”

“Also, at seven to eight o’clock in the evening, it’s never crowded, and since we don’t have to discuss fixing the roof, or painting the siding, or replacing the furnace, or any of those things that take up eighty percent of the time in our old lodges, we can have a meeting, then some nice discussion, and we’re done in an hour,” Worshipful Brother Renn told The Past Bastard.  “Plus, they have wifi, the coffee is decent, and we can have a festive board that won’t break our budgets.”

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Silicon Valley Lodge Bans Wearbles from Stated Meetings

San Jose, California - San Jose Lodge No 10 in San Jose, California has banned all wearable technology from Lodge meetings effective immediately, according to the sitting Worshipful Master, Steve Gates.  Although the rest of this Silicon Valley town is very progressive on culture as well as technology, Worshipful Gates has cited privacy and security concerns as reasons for the ruling.

"It's not the fact that the Brothers carry audio and recording devices into the Lodge room," Worshipful Gates explains, "we can kindly ask the brothers to turn those off.  The challenge arises when you take into account that it records your every move."

He continues to state that the accelerometers used in these devices can accurately record masonic signs and hand gestures, as shown in the figure below.

The ban will be effective until the Worshipful Master's successor has been elected and installed.  The Senior Warden plans on continuing this tradition until more information is available.

Last year, Luddite Lodge #1899 in Vortex, Kentucky had a similar ban on fitness wearables.  Although no significant security benefits have been realized to date, the Lodge has noticed an average member weight gain of 12.4 pounds since the ban.

-Knight Kadeuch, Kennedy MacFaulty, 69˚ of the Mediocre Elu

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Pennsylvania Lodge to offer different styled communications

Altoona, PA -- In an effort to appeal to the younger demographics, several lodges around Pennsylvania will be offering different types of stated communications.

“We got the idea from some of the local churches that offer different worship times. You know, classic services at 8, contemporary services at 10, stuff like that,” said WB John Wayne Gracey, the master of Corinthian Lodge No 274. “So we decided that we would have a traditional communication at 6:30 for the older guys, and a more contemporary style communication at 7:30. You know, like casual dress, short form open and closing, and light music during the business portion.”

While the membership at first seemed hesitant to embrace the changes, after a few months they started to see a definite difference in the meetings.

“We had the older guys going to the traditional meetings, and they were happy to get out earlier. The contemporary meetings drew the guys with kids at home, who were able to pop out after dinner.”

The different services… communications became so popular that Corinthian Lodge began offering a later communication, aimed at Millennials.

“Yeah, the Millennial communication was more for the 20 and 30 year old guys who prefer the later hours. We don’t read minutes at that meeting, we broadcast them to their mobile devices. Also, the opening and closing are done on a big screen TV that we set up on the north wall. They do most of the business while texting, and after the meeting closes, we head downstairs for snacks and stuff.”

WB Gracey noted that the Millennial communication, while popular with the younger guys, also had a few of the older guys who frequently showed up.

“Yeah, it’s surprising that so many of the older guys were early adopters of much of the technology that we see now. Except that they aren’t quite as quick when using those flip phones,” he said. 

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Grand York Rite Bodies Announce Sweeping Website Upgrades; Unveil Partnership with GeoCities

Greenfield, IN - On Monday, the General Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons, in concert with the General Grand Council of Cryptic Masons International and the Grand Encampment of the Knights Templar, announced their intention to modernize a collection of over twenty York Rite-related websites in order to better reach young Masons across the United States. These Grand York Rite bodies also announced, as part of this modernization plan, their intention to move past utilizing HTML editor to build their websites by partnering with GeoCities.

Bro. Joe Snow, spokesperson for the General Grand Chapter, explained the announcement further: "We have realized that the key to the future of our organizations lay with the masses of young Masons on the world wide web. That's why we've taken such a drastic measure to make sure that the glory of the York Rite is showcased as much as possible; we can't think of any better way to do just that than to partner with GeoCities for all of our future webdesign needs."

When asked why the Grand York Rite bodies chose GeoCities vice other webdesign applications such as WordPress or Dream Weaver, Bro Snow replied that it was the longstanding York Rite webmaster's idea. "We approached our webmaster about modernizing our websites using FrontPage 97, but he didn't feel that most Masons would be able to navigate a page constructed by such an advanced program. He was adamant that GeoCities should be the way of the future as far as York Rite websites are concerned, and we wholeheartedly agree." 
 

While the Grand York Rite bodies are looking to modernize their websites in the short term, they are also looking to expand their social media footprint. Bro Snow continued, "We're working on creating a social media presence next. We toyed around with the idea of Friendster, but our webmaster informed us that the best place on the information superhighway to reach young people today is Myspace, and we're looking forward to joining that community as soon as possible!"

-SK Bro. Mason Burhmaster

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