Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (July 18, 1918 - December 5, 2013)

Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 - 5 December 2013)

At the Healthcare.gov Meeting

Great Freemasons: Fred Pabst Jr. (November 3, 1869 - March 1, 1977)

"Fred Pabst Jr. was to skiing what Dr. Spock was to babies."
Gov. Thomas Salmon (Vermont)


Fred Pabst Jr. (November 3, 1869 - March 1, 1977) was the heir to the Pabst fortune, ski enthusiast and creator of several ski resorts.


http://www.newenglandskihistory.com/biographies/pabstfred.php


( Lafayette Lodge 265, Milwaukee)

I Used to Seek the Holy Grail Like You....

Great Freemasons: Francis Davis Millet (November 3, 1848 – April 15, 1912)

Francis Davis Millet (November 3, 1848 – April 15, 1912) was an American painter, sculptor, and writer who died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Davis_Millet

Reading the Story of Oenone (painting), The Detroit Institute of Arts, ca. 1883.

An Autumn Idyll

(Kane Lodge 454, NY)

Libertarian Jesus

Things Are Dangerous!

Happy Halloween!

Great Freemasons: Richard Dreyfuss (born October 29, 1947)

"I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance."
Richard Dreyfuss

Richard Stephen Dreyfuss (born October 29, 1947) is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s, including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Goodbye Girl.
Dreyfuss won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1977 for The Goodbye Girl, and was nominated in 1995 for Mr. Holland's Opus. He has also won a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and was nominated in 2002 for Screen Actors Guild Awards in the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries categories.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dreyfuss



On June 10, 2011, Dreyfuss was made a Master Mason by the Grand Master of Masons of the District of Columbia at the Washington DC Scottish Rite building, as well as a 32nd Degree Scottish Rite Mason and is a member of the Valley of the District of Columbia, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite

Great Freemasons: Cornelius Hedges (October 28, 1831 - April 29, 1907)

CORNELIUS HEDGES. Born in Westfield, Mass., Oct. 28, 1831; died in Helena, Mont., Apr. 29, 1907. A member of the 1870 Washburn party of Yellowstone explorers, proponent of the idea of reserving the Yellowstone region in the public interest (this was the third expression of the idea), and special correspondent for the Helena Herald.

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/haines1/iee4a.htm#hedges

(Helena City Lodge 10, Colorado)

C.S. Lewis

Let Me Lead You to Freedom

Great Freemasons: Alfred Paul Murrah (October 27, 1904 – October 30, 1975)

“Get a good education. Decide what you want to do. Whatever you like to do best is exactly the thing you are fitted for . . . be diligent and decent . . . don’t begrudge the fact that you have to work for what you get. The greatest rewards in living come from living outside and beyond one’s self . . . the greatest qualities a man can have are simplicity and humility.”
Alfred Paul Murrah (October 27, 1904 – October 30, 1975)


Alfred Paul Murrah (October 27, 1904 – October 30, 1975) was an American attorney and judge, best known for being the namesake of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was destroyed in the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Murrah


Capital City Lodge 518, OK

Cosplay at New York Comic Con 2013

Thanks to Fashion and Action for photos.

Motivational Speakers Cemetery

Great Freemasons: Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919)

You ask that Mr. Taft shall "let the world know what his religious belief is." This is purely his own private concern; it is a matter between him and his Maker, a matter for his own conscience; and to require it to be made public under penalty of political discrimination is to negative the first principles of our Government, which guarantee complete religious liberty, and the right to each to act in religious affairs as his own conscience dictates. Mr. Taft never asked my advice in the matter, but if he had asked it, I should have emphatically advised him against thus stating publicly his religious belief.

The demand for a statement of a candidate’s religious belief can have no meaning except that there may be discrimination for or against him because of that belief. Discrimination against the holder of one faith means retaliatory discrimination against men of other faiths. The inevitable result of entering upon such a practice would be an abandonment of our real freedom of conscience and a reversion to the dreadful conditions of religious dissension which in so many lands have proved fatal to true liberty, to true religion, and to all advance in civilization.

To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against that liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life. You are entitled to know whether a man seeking your suffrages is a man of clean and upright life, honorable in all of his dealings with his fellows, and fit by qualification and purpose to do well in the great office for which he is a candidate; but you are not entitled to know matters which lie purely between himself and his Maker. If it is proper or legitimate to oppose a man for being a Unitarian, as was John Quincy Adams, for instance, as is the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, at the present moment Chaplain of the Senate, and an American of whose life all good Americans are proud then it would be equally proper to support or oppose a man because of his views on justification by faith, or the method of administering the sacrament, or the gospel of salvation by works. If you once enter on such a career there is absolutely no limit at which you can legitimately stop.
Theodore Roosevelt,

LETTER TO MR. J. C. MARTIN CONCERNING RELIGION AND POLITICS 
November 6, 1908

http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/307.txt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt ( October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was the 26th President of the United States (1901–1909)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt


Matinecock Lodge No. 806, Oyster Bay, New York

I Got Burned Once.

My Religion

My Religion
author unknown

When talk turns to religion
I have notions of my own
Have my versions of the Bible
And things I think alone.

And I find them satisfying,
Find them comforting to me,
Though I wouldn't lose my temper
If you chose to disagree.

For religion as I see it
Is a pathway to the goal,
And its something to be settled
Between each man and his soul.

Now I'm not a Roman Catholic,
But I wouldn't go so far
As to fling away the friendship
Of the ones I know that are.

I've lived and neighbored with them
Come to love them through and through
I've respect and admiration
For the kindly things they do.

I've known Methodists, Baptists,
Scientists and Jews,
Whose friendship is a treasure
That I wouldn't want to lose.

So when the people talk religion,
I just settle back and see
Every helpful, loyal friend
Each Church has given me.

Great Freemasons: John North Willys (October 25, 1873 – August 26, 1935)

John North Willys (October 25, 1873 – August 26, 1935), father of the Willys Jeep, was an American automotive pioneer and statesman.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Willys


(Barton Smith Lodge 613, Toledo)

I Used To Be an Adventurer Like You....

Great Freemasons: Manly P. Hall

Great Freemasons: Ellsworth Milton (E.M.) Statler (October 26, 1863 – April 16, 1928)

Ellsworth Milton (E.M.) Statler (October 26, 1863 – April 16, 1928), founder of Statler Hotels, was an American hotel businessman born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellsworth_Milton_StatlerDeMolay Lodge 498, Buffalo, NY

Great Freemasons: Adlai Ewing Stevenson I (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914)

Laws are never as effective as habits.
Adlai Stevenson I


Adlai Ewing Stevenson I (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914) served as the 23rd Vice President of the United States (1893–1897). Previously, he served as a Congressman from Illinois in the late 1870s and early 1880s. After his subsequent appointment as Assistant Postmaster General of the United States during Grover Cleveland's first administration (1885–1889), he fired many Republican postal workers and replaced them with Southern Democrats. This earned him the enmity of the Republican-controlled Congress, but made him a favorite as Grover Cleveland's running mate in 1892, and he duly became 23rd Vice President of the United States.

In office, he supported the free-silver lobby against the gold-standard men like Cleveland, but was praised for ruling in a dignified, non-partisan manner.

In 1900, he ran for Vice President with William Jennings Bryan. Although unsuccessful, he was the first ex-Vice President ever to win re-nomination for that post with a different Presidential candidate. Stevenson was the grandfather of Adlai Stevenson II, a Governor of Illinois and twice Democratic Presidential candidate.



(Bloomington Lodge 43, Illinois)


Photo by Napoleon Sarony (1821–1896)

You can only be young once....

Mr. Krugman Told Me It Would Stimulate the Economy....

Excuse me sir....

I am a libertarian because....