Click here to read Frelon Jesse Babcock’s Story
If you’ve missed any of Br. Robinson’s articles you can check out the previous publications here: https://oregonscottishrite.wordpress.com/history-papers-articles/
News
New Dates for RiteCare Conference in St. Louis, May 19-21, 2021!
RiteCare Children’s Language & Literacy Conference
It is with an abundance of caution for our community’s health and safety that we reschedule the 2020 Children’s Language & Literacy Conference in St. Louis, Missouri originally scheduled for September 9th-11th, 2020.
Please mark your calendars for the NEW (and improved!) date, Wednesday, May 19th to Friday, May 21, 2021 in St. Louis, Missouri.
We hear the call, more than ever before, to gather as a community again next Spring to retool and repurpose this historic gathering of our Northern Masonic and Southern Masonic Scottish Rite Children’s Charity programs. These times we are living through will have many stories to share and impactful learning tools to implement as we redefine and build an even greater service horizon together.
If you have any further questions or concerns please visit:
www.2021conference.moritecare.org
We look forward to seeing you in 2021!
Portland Valley Sentinel Newsletter Vol. 13 for May-June 2020
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.
THE IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS ON THE OREGON SCOTTISH RITE SPEECH AND LANGUAGE CHARITY, April 2020
It is heartwarming to be part of the Oregon Scottish Rite and to know during these unsettling times of the coronavirus that our Speech and Language Charity is continuing to assist Oregon children.
While most Universities across our country who provided Speech therapy have closed their doors, this was never required nor considered by the Oregon Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Speech & Language Clinic at Portland State University.
All clinic services have been moved to a Telepractice format and, according to PSU staff, not one single child has been abandoned. In fact, they report that clinic service has even expanded to assist more children than ever.
This inspiring result has been made possible, in no small part, by the funding over the past years of research in Teletherapy by Dr. Megann McGill, a professor at the PSU Speech and Language department. Only with the support of your Scottish Rite Speech & Language Charity, Dr. McGill has developed the techniques, training, and technical structure necessary to now provide this service on a larger scale.
Dr. McGill and Scottish Rite Clinic director Professor Claudia Meyer have been able to train all 41 Speech Graduate students on how to conduct therapy sessions via Tablet or Computer, making possible the continued aid to all clinic children. Clinic Director Meyer stated, “All the children are doing great, even those 4 years old and younger. The children and their families have adapted and are finding the new format motivating.”
Every child receiving clinic services gets them for free with the help provide by your Oregon Scottish Rite Speech & Language Charity. Professor Meyer indicated that the gratitude expressed by the families has been overwhelming.
Remember your Oregon Speech & Language Charity is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and 100% of your donation stays in Oregon. Speech Charity Donation Form 2019-fillable
Bill Anton, 33°
Orient Personal Representative & Past President
Oregon Scottish Rite Speech & Language Board
Update to COVID 19 Orient-wide restrictions 04-16-2020
Greetings my Brethren!
I hope all of you are doing well, and your significant others are doing well also.
Here is where I stand on the future with closer of our buildings and meetings. First: We must follow Federal, State, County, and City laws. Second: Our Grand Master has put out an edict on meetings and it must be followed. Third: Common sense.
With these in mind, after June 30th, 2020 every Valley in Oregon, with the approval of the Personal Representative and his advisory group may decide if they will meet, rent, etc. There is always an exception, Portland is the exception in this case; because of the population and also that I live in the Portland area. (Lucky Portland, huh) Our leadership elsewhere knows how things are going in each of their communities, so I am leaving it up to them to make these important decisions.
This is being posted to the Orient Blog-site but your Valley’s should also use methods of communicating with their membership at this time as well.
Thank you for your leadership and God bless you all!
Gary Kuney, 33°
Grand Chamberlain &
S.G.I.G. in Oregon
Oregon_Grand_Masters_Edict_COVID_March-27-2020
Executive Order No. 20-12 eo_20-12
Update & Greetings to my Brethren, April 14th, 2020
Hello Brethren!
I hope this message finds all of you and your families in good health.
This Covid 19 has people scared, but at the same time I see our Brothers stepping up and doing great things for others. Thank you!
Talking to my colleagues at Supreme, listening and reading the news, and talking to our members; I believe Covid 19 will be around throughout the summer. This is the reason I have made the following decision.
Portland Valley will remain closed until August 1st, 2020. GoToMeeting will be used for necessary meetings of the Rite. I base this decision on the philosophy it is better to be safe than being sorry.
We will evaluate the situation with our rentals come July 15th, 2020. If something happens in the meantime we can and will reevaluate this timeline.
God bless all of you, and stay safe and healthy.
Gary Kuney, 33°
Grand Chamberlain &
S.G.I.G. in Oregon
971-645-1272
For the edutainment of the Craft, Benjamin Franklin, The Mason
For Masonic Edutainment
Br. Michael Robinson, 32°, KCCH, presents a paper by Br. Wallace McCamant titled Benjamin Franklin, The Mason
For the Edutainment of the Craft, Br. Nate Neff presents The Lodge and Beehive in Freemasonry
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
Supreme Council The Tyler’s Place Podcast April 2020
Art de Hoyos and Maynard Edwards discuss how the fraternity has handled pandemics of the past.
For the edutainment and education of the Craft, Br. Michael Robinson presents the Story of Capt. Lemuel Lyon
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