Guest Article: Visiting the Washington Masonic Memorial

Brother Nick Schlossmacher is a good friend of mine who is extremely dedicated to the Craft. He participates in a long list of activities in Freemasonry. I have witnessed him performing degree work and participating in Lodge meetings, including Sir Winston Churchill Lodge No. 351 and Braden Lodge #168. Brother Nick is a prime example of the future of Freemasonry. He has kindly written an article for this site about his trip to the GWMM in Alexandria. You can follow him on Twitter @njschloss

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First of all, I would like to say thank you to WB Nick Johnson for running such a great blog. He is truly one of the most dedicated masons I know, and I feel honored to be able to contribute.

One of the great privileges that we enjoy as Masons is the ability to visit other lodges. It’s a great way to go and meet people from all walks of life, and gives us an opportunity to sample the different varieties of Masonry. I have always made it a point to try and attend a lodge meeting, or do some Masonic sight seeing when traveling. Recently I got to visit Washington D.C., and had an amazing experience there. Everyone knows that there is an immense amount of stuff to see in our nation’s capitol. You can walk around on the mall and see the monuments, spend a week walking around in the Smithsonian museums (and still not see everything), or even take a day trip to Mount Vernon. As a Mason though, the one place you have to go is the George Washington Masonic memorial.


If you ever find yourself in D.C. with some time to spare, hop on a blue or yellow line metro and take it to the King Street station in Alexandria. About a block away from the station is the George Washington Masonic Memorial. It stands 333 feet tall, and was built to resemble the ancient Egyptian lighthouse of Alexandria. It has ten stories inside, and is truly an amazing building.


The tour of the building was fantastic, from the main lobby with the 17 foot tall statue of George Washington, all the way to the observation deck on the top floor. The first stop on the guided tour is a museum dedicated to George Washington, sponsored by the Scottish Rite. It contains a lot of artifacts including Washington’s Masonic bible. The other floors on the guided tour are all sponsored by appendant bodies of masonry consisting of the orders of the York Rite, and the Tall Cedars of Lebanon. I could write about it forever, or you could go take an online tour of the building at http://www.gwmemorial.org, and see for yourself (they’re much better at it than I am anyway).

I got the pleasure of meeting the curator of the museum, WB Mark Tabbert. He showed us around to some other parts of the building that aren’t on the tour. We also got to see a storage room where they had grand lodge proceedings from all around the country. Some of these dated as far back as the 1700s, and they are currently working on converting them to digital format and creating a massive electronic Masonic archive.

There are also two lodge rooms in the memorial, and we got to attend a meeting at Alexandria-Washington lodge no. 22. This lodge was originally founded in 1783 in Pennsylvania, and moved its charter to Virginia in 1788 when George Washington was master of the lodge. It is one of the oldest active lodges in the country, and is full of rich Masonic history. The night we were there we got to see a presentation by an English Masonic author named Julian Rees. He gave a talk about his most recent work, titled “So you want to be a Freemason?”, and how as Masons we need to focus more about getting back to our Masonic roots. The meeting came to a close, and after spending nearly the whole day at the memorial, it was time to say goodbye.

I want to give a special thank you to WB Mark Tabbert for taking the time out of his day to show us around and being so hospitable. I also want to extend a special thank you to WM Andrew Hammer of Alexandria-Washington 22 for welcoming us into the lodge, and for presenting me with an AW22 pin.

I highly recommend anyone who is visiting the D.C. area to go and visit the memorial, whether you’re a Mason or not. There’s something for everyone to see there, and the tours are free.

Sir Winston Churchill 3rd Degree

I was present at a truly amazing event for Minnesota Masonic history, the first raising of one of the newest Lodges in this jurisdiction, Sir Winston Churchill Lodge No. 351. The ranks of the Lodge are filled with many brilliant and distinguished brothers of this state including Past Grand Masters, Monitors of the Ritual Work, Past Masters of many Lodges, and some of the brightest minds in Minnesota Masonry. The Lodge is built upon the traditions of British Masonry, hence it's patron being the great British politician and Brother, Sir Winston Churchill. The Lodge, however, performs the Minnesota work, our own variation of Preston-Webb, which they performed last night in perfect form.

The Lodge moved its charter to the Minneapolis Valley Scottish Rite Temple to perform this Third Degree. The Minneapolis Valley is one of the few Valleys in this country that performs all 29 degrees of the Scottish Rite. I am not a member of the Scottish Rite, but visiting this beautiful and intriguing building has begun to whet my appetite for more Masonic participation. The building is epic, filled with a maze of different rooms and caverns. Strange implements of degrees I haven't taken a part. The library was amazing and the main room raised a canopy like those of heaven, just a beautiful sight to behold.

The idea of putting on this degree in the cavernous confines of the sacred space, with its various Masonic and Scottish Rite adornments defining the experience to be had within. How beautiful and fitting to confer the last and highest degree of Ancient Craft Masonry in this Temple dedicated to our highest aspirations and duties as Freemasons.

The degree work was done with great care and skill, led by Most Worshipful Brother Tom Jackson in the East. The entire degree work was performed, including the lectures, in handsome form. The lectures were crazy well-done by Bob and Doug, the Second lecture by Dan and the full third lecture by John. I really feel that the candidate got something from it. The brothers of this Lodge know their stuff and I was totally impressed. After the degree was conferred, I met with my friend and Brother, Nick, who had just returned from Washington, D.C. and was fortunate enough to sit in George Washington's home Lodge, Alexandria-Washington No. 22, and he returned with a gift for me, a pin from its Worshipful Master for this year. Nick is an extremely well-traveled brother with, dare I say (dare, dare) more knowledge of the Craft than me.

I'll try to get pictures of the event and publish them below.

The Lodge Website

I know I've been away from writing for far too long. Apparently, I had no idea just how strong the hat can pull you away from everything but Lodge business. As a way to segue of comparing my duties as Master of my Lodge, my Lodge has put together a wonderful new website. You can visit the site at corinthian67.org. The Lodge site is an incredibly important tool for Lodges in terms of recruitment but more especially, for retention. I'm going to reveal a few secrets so that other Lodges can take them and utilize them in their own websites. And yes, I may run this website but that does not mean I have any technical skills with "compruters."

First, use an easy to update Content Management Service or CMS. During my time in the East, I said that although free options are available, I wanted to look at the full gamut of CMSes that we could use. We finally arrived at SquareSpace. SquareSpace is an amazing way to present a website. We required little to no training to get the website off the ground. We can update the content on the fly and if we are bold, we can even use the iPhone application to update. Also, the backend is flexible and allows us to try all kinds of different looks, feels, and logical arrangements of content. It is well worth the money you will pay.

Second, if you publish a newsletter, you can recycle the articles used on the site for the newsletter. And obviously, put your newsletter on the web as a way to get brothers to click and look at the full color option, thereby saving money on a color printing. You can even offer your newsletter as an email to those brothers with email while sending out a newsletter to brothers that don't.

Third, have a box for sending messages easily accessible. Ours is within one click of any page. This means that the curious reader, or person looking for information can easily research through our site and then hit us with an email to ask a question.

Fourth, create Lodge specific emails for all officers. Therefore, if you're looking for a specific officer, you can easily send them an email with little to no effort. Therefore if someone sends a message to master (at) corinthian67 (dot) org, that email will come to me only. If a person is curious about what is being served, they can write an email to srsteward or jrsteward. To talk to the secretary it's just secretary (at). This makes the flow of emails manageable. Also, if some event needs the attention of a few of the officers, you can mix and match who you will be sending the message to. Setting this up is easy and free through Google Apps. And yes, it is free. Included in Google Apps is the ability to use and to place a Google Calendar for your Lodge on your site. Another really great Lodge site is for Accacia Lodge and specifically their use of the calendar. Unlike most Lodges, Accacia is a moon lodge which means it meets on the Wednesday during the week of the full moon. How can brothers find out when they meet? By checking the Google calendar right on the site. A brilliant use for an important need. (Also, check out the rest of Accacia site, it looks amazing. Brother Greg, awesome job.)

Fifth, create a MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter page for your Lodge. You may ask why you would do something like this if you already have a website up? The reason you would put up these types of sites is to complete the circle. Men are looking for our Lodges in every corner of Internet and you need a presence at every location you can. Additionally, these services are free. My Lodge has a Facebook and MySpace to post upcoming events while our Twitter account posts the content from either of these sites for more mass consumption. On Facebook, brothers can be invited to upcoming events and it can give you a better sense of the number of brothers who will be coming. On Facebook, the concept of Fan page is incredible. Brothers and friends can see when some event, pictures or other content is posted on their news feeds and can then be shared even further out. It's that old commercial of telling two friends and their friends and so on and so on.

Sixth, make sure to check with your Grand Lodge to find out what they expect from your site. In Minnesota, a site is presented to the Grand Lodge and they approve it. If it is approved, a message is to be displayed at the bottom of the site showing that this site has been approved. After the site has been approved, the added benefit in Minnesota is that the site is included in the Lodge's general listing on the Grand Lodge site.

Finally, you need to be willing to keep up the content. That is you're number one job. If the content is not adequately up-to-date, people will think that you are irrelevant. You need to make sure that all of your officers' names are up on the site and up-to-date. No one wants to see Officers 2005-2006. Just like the ritual, if we don't present our website content well, the petitioners and candidates won't take us seriously either.

I have to give credit where credit is due. Our current Senior Steward and newly awarded Mason of the Year for Corinthian Lodge, Dan laid out our site and helps keep it up to date. He has done an incredible job and I want to applaud just how well he has done this task.

What ideas do you have for Lodge websites, how do you make them look good, and what hosting service do you use? Leave a comment so that we can make all our Lodge website look as good as we possibly can.

Past Grand Master Tom McCarthy's Farewell Address

This is the farewell address from our immediate Past Grand Master Tom McCarthy, a brother who has shown great leadership for Minnesota Masonry. Thank you, Most Worshipful Brother Tom and you are welcome in Farmington anytime.

Grand Orient of France to Now Admit Women

It has been reported in Le Figaro, that on Friday, April 9, the Grand Orient of France will now allow individual Lodges to admit female members, essentially making it a Co-Masonic body. The Grand Orient has, according to Le Figaro, been debating this change for years. Some GOdF Lodges have already admitted women into their ranks in what were called "des initiations 'sauvages'" or wild initiations.

The Grand Orient of France has dabbled in admitting women in Freemasonry for centuries, first by recognizing the Adopted Masonic bodies that began forming in the middle of the 18th century. Obviously, the above presented information is only an overview and you can find more online.

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As a counterpoint, I would like to point all my readers to an interview on "The Art of Manliness" with a very wise and imminent brother, Worshipful Brother Robert Davis, FPS, which focused on Masonry as a rite of passage into manhood. I am in agreement with WB Davis' thoughts about what our Craft does for men. It's a great interview with many salient points made.