Greetings Brethren,

The Grand Master has requested the Portland Valley cancel the event for next week that was to be held in his honor. If the opportunity to reschedule comes up the Valley will be notified.

In lieu of that event the Oregon Consistory No. 1 will present an online event via Zoom at 7pm on Tuesday the 1st, on The Circular Throughout Two Hemispheres or the 1802 Manifesto by Right Worshipful Brother Adam Bayer, Past Master of Research Lodge of Oregon No. 198, Past Master of Portland Lodge No. 55, & Current District Deputy of District No. 4 of the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of AF&AM of Oregon

In this presentation Brother Adam discusses the origins of the Scottish Rite from the mid-1700s up through when the Supreme Council announced itself to the Masonic world by publishing an exceptional document known as the Manifesto of 1802. Through this presentation RWBr. Bayer will expounded upon the relationship of the higher degrees of Masonry and the genealogy of the Rite from Illustrious Brother, Frederick the 2nd, King of Prussia, to Brother Etienne Morin and the establishment of the current Supreme Council (Mother Council of the World) of the Inspectors General Knights Commanders of the House of the Temple of Solomon of the Thirty-third Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America. This talk is presented on behalf of Research Lodge of Oregon No. 198 to the Portland Valley of Scottish Rite.

This event will be hosted via Zoom, for registered Zoom users, and via live streaming on the Orient of Oregon’s Facebook group on Tuesday, September 1st, 2020 at 7 o’clock pm, Brother Adam will be available afterwards for a Q&A. The Zoom event will start shortly before 7:00pm and be locked by 7:05pm. A video should be available of the recording from the event for those that cannot make it.

Please email officemanager@portlandsr.com with your membership info to get a link to join the Zoom meeting.

Brethren,

The role of the workman has been called and, one Master Mason, Brother Earl D. Swenson, 32°, KCCH, has not answered to his name. He has laid down the working tools of life and with them has left that mortal part for which he no longer has use. His labors here below have taught him to divest his heart and conscience of the vices and superfluity of life, thereby fitting his mind as a living stone for that spiritual building, that house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Strengthened in his labors here by faith in God, and confident of expectation of immortality, he has been granted admission to the Celestial Lodge above. His Brethren mourn the passing of a great man and Mason.

Worshipful Brother Earl David Swenson, 32°, Knight Commander of the Court of Honour, was born on March 9th, 1923 in Boone, Iowa and passed to the Celestial Lodge in his 97th year on August 26th, 2020 in Portland, Oregon. He served in the United States Military and was Raised a Master Mason in at the age of 22 and maintained active membership for 75 years in the Fraternity. He was a member of Parkrose Masonic Lodge No. 179 A.F. & A.M. of Oregon where he served as Worshipful Master, and he was also a member of East Gate Lodge No. 155, and Beaverton Lodge No. 100. He received the Scottish Rite degrees on May 21st, 2005 in the Portland Valley in the Orient of Oregon; he was a Knight of Saint Andrew and invested as a Knight Commander of the Court of Honour on November 2nd, 2013. He was also a Noble member of the Al Kader Shrine Temple in Wilsonville, Oregon. Brother Earl had a smile and energy that could brighten any room, he will be truly missed. Funeral and memorial arrangements are unknown at this time.

Click here or the image to open The Portland Valley Sentinel Volume 13 May-June, 2020

Additionally if you haven’t recently looked around the Orient Website you should take a look around the various page links at the top of the page. New pages have been added with History Articles and Educational Papers, as well as new pages for both the Orient’s Charities and each Valley has also had content added to their pages. 

Greetings Brethren,

I hope this message finds you, your families and loved ones in good health and great spirits.

In my evening freetime I have been reviewing Oregon Newspaper articles and Masonic texts searching for wisdom from the past to share from our Masonic Ancestors.

I hope this article shares a bit of light, love and hope for you all. I look forward to seeing you all at a Scottish Rite function in the near future.

Fraternally,
Br. Nathan Neff, 32º, KCCH

Nathan Neff The Lodge and Beehive in Freemasonry

CLICK HERE TO READ Michael Robinson_Lemuel Lyon Bio

MWB, RWB, WB Brethren and Brethren All,

In this difficult time, as I work to recovery from recent surgery, I thought that I would share this article for the edification of the Craft and your entertainment.

Introduction:
I sometimes find it strange where I end up while researching Oregon Masonic History, and if my special talent for inadvertently making my projects as complicated as I can might require medical intervention. At the last Grand Lodge session there was a vote on an expanded Masonic News. I don’t believe the brethren understood the benefits this might bring and it was voted down. In hopes that those benefits might be illustrated there was talk of a sample version being published this spring. Be that as it may, I began looking into what I might be able to offer to this project. My attention to detail, or perhaps obsessive desire to find the whole story, makes it impossible to offer the kinds of articles I would like to submit in our current system, and my apparent long winded approach would make even the expanded version a challenge. While copying volumes of the old Oregon Masonic Analyst I found an article in 1923 which talked about the origin of our ritual and cipher. It was a reasonable size and I thought that would be great. However, I decided that I would look back into the Proceedings for more prospective. From the stand point of brevity that was probably a mistake. I quickly noted that the short article failed to capture the complexity of the situation and was not quite accurate; it gave some interesting perspective for the immediate decade and then a bunch of statistics of minor interest. It no longer seemed a good choice. The project had now gone off the rails. As I gathered more and more data on the Uniform Work in Oregon it quickly became apparent that this was not an article but a book; which I am working to have finished by the Grand Lodge Session in June. Having by that time extracted 30 pages of information from the proceedings and that rapidly increasing, I stumbled upon an article in the appendix of the History of Oregon Masonry by John Wilkinson (the first Grand Lodge Historian 1951-1975) concerning the Uniform Work. At first I thought maybe I had wasted my time and the story was already done, but upon further examination I had found many things he had missed, and he had found a few things I had missed. So I ventured on. I have spent a lot of time over the years building a digital archive of pictures. Ever one to complicate the issue, I decided to add pictures where I could of the men involved. After the mention of Lemuel Lyon appeared a few times, I set out to complicate the issue further by putting together bios of the main players in this story. Lemuel Lyon was the first and so far most extensive. Very little was written about him, a few paragraphs in the Lyon Lodge History, some mentions in the Proceedings. But the further I looked the more interesting his story became, and so the harder I dove in. Tracking his genealogy I was able to find resources online from the Grand Lodges of Massachusetts, California, Oregon and Japan. With the sponsorship of the Eugene Valley Scottish Rite, I had gotten a subscription to Newspapers.com where I could find original articles from the 1850-60s. With that, details gleaned from Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com began to unearth a rich story of a fascinating man and Mason. So I now present the Story of Capt. Lemuel Lyon. And yes I am aware that my introduction would already be considered a long article even for the expanded newsletter.

Sincerely and Fraternally,
WB Michael D. Robinson, 32°, K.C.C.H.
Orient of Oregon Historian, A&A Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Grand Historian of the Grand Lodge AF&AM of Oregon

Greetings my Brethren,

I am officially postponing our Spring Reunion for the Portland Valley. At this point I say postponing, but I believe from indications of health officials that the virus will be too active throughout June to reschedule in the near future.

Please take this time to communicate with those you haven’t seen at your meetings for a while and ask if they need anything. Also take care of yourself and your loved ones.

If you are in a Valley that rents to outside groups, tell them the building (Valleys) will be closed through May 1st, 2020. I will update everyone periodically on the status of the effects from the virus, on our facility operations, and when we will consider resuming meetings.

We have the ability to meet electronically and over the phone.

Take care and God bless.

Fraternally,

Gary Kuney, 33°
Grand Chamberlain &
S.G.I.G. in Oregon

Meal: Braised brisket & brown mushroom gravy, roasted parsnip and squash with cipollini onion confit, waldorf Salad, bread & butter, coffee, and cake for desert. [For our Brother’s widows, their meals are complementary, for members and general attendees dinner is just $15]

Invited Guests of Scottish Rite Members as well as all Masons of any degree and their loved one are welcome, the preferred attire for the occasion is formal. As with all our events this is not open to the public.

Please RSVP for you and your guest if you plan to attend dinner by Email at officemanager@portlandsr.com.