Howdy, everybody! Reading through alt.freemasonry this morning, I came across a message by Bro Jim Dolan in a thread about "moon lodges". He quoted an article saying:
... In the early eighteen hundreds when Masonry in Vermont was still a new venture, the Green Mountain State was a wild and unsettled place. It is difficult for us to imagine the thoughts and feelings of a nineteenth century Vermont Mason stepping into the bitter cold of a winter night after a lodge meeting to pursue his travel homeward. For him, a trip of several miles at night after a lodge meeting was a major undertaking where even the task of finding one's way was formidable. For this reason, many of these early lodges in Vermont and other jurisdictions adopted the custom of holding their meetings during the week of the full moon. Hence, these lodges became referred to as "Moon Lodges."
I must say, after visiting Vermont last Christmas, I can attest to the depth of the cold they feel up there! I was amazed, but I loved it. Now with summer approaching, I find that I am missing the Vermont winter freeze more and more with each passing day. In any case, the full text of the quoted article has many more interesting things to say. It's good reading!
The latest Grand Lodge web page I've visited is that of the Grand Lodge of Croatia. It has a very nice layout, excellent colors, and some very good content. It looks as if it will be expanded in the future, as well. Make sure you also stop by to look at their long list of Masonic links, which seem to contain a link to every Grand Lodge they could find.
Tomorrow is the Lodge coffee get-together, and I'm looking forward to meeting with my mentor again. I'm hoping to get my memory work wrapped up fairly soon. There is a new petitioner working his way through the process right now and I am excited about the opportunity to sit in on his initiation. Many brothers have told me that watching another go through the same process is an entirely new experience in itself, and that one can learn a lot by doing this.
