Thursday, July 3, 2014

The World is a Magical Place....


Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Great Freemasons: Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794)

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.
That a plan of confed
eration be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

~Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794), known as the Lee Resolution, or the Resolution of Independence, voted and agreed upon by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, 1776
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Resolution

Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794) was an American statesman from Virginia best known for the motion in the Second Continental Congress calling for the colonies' independence from Great Britain. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation and his famous resolution of June 1776 led to the United States Declaration of Independence, which Lee signed. He also served a one-year term as the President of the Continental Congress, and was a United States Senator from Virginia from 1789 to 1792, serving during part of that time as one of the first Presidents pro tempore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Henry_Lee

(It is not definite he was a Freemason, but it is likely. Hiram Lodge No. 59, Westmoreland County, Virginia)

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Happy Canada Day!


"I read in a newspaper that I was to be received with all the honors customarily rendered to a foreign ruler. I am grateful for the honors; but something within me rebelled at that word 'foreign'. I say this because when I have been in Canada, I have never heard a Canadian refer to an American as a 'foreigner'. He is just an 'American'. And, in the same way, in the United States, Canadians are not 'foreigners', they are 'Canadians'. That simple little distinction illustrates to me better than anything else the relationship between our two countries."
"On both sides of the line, we are so accustomed to an undefended boundary three thousand miles long that we are inclined perhaps to minimize its vast importance, not only to our own continuing relations but also to the example which it sets to the other nations of the world."
- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Visit to Quebec, July 31, 1936


(Photo President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1936 Pierce Arrow Convertible, in Quebec, Canada, August, 1936)

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Great Freemasons: James Buchanan, Jr. (April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868)


I feel that my duty has been faithfully, though it may be imperfectly, performed, and, whatever the result may be, I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for my country.
James Buchanan, Jr. (April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868)

James Buchanan, Jr. was the 15th President of the United States (1857–1861), serving immediately prior to the American Civil War.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Buchanan


(Initiated: December 1l, 1816, Lodge No. 43, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Brother Buchanan became Worshipful Master of Lodge No. 43 1822-1823; and in 1824 was appointed District Deputy Grand Master for the Counties of Lancaster, Lebanon and York.)

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Opening Day

"If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles." - Doug Larson
(Art by Pascal Campion Art)

Happy Easter!


(Alexander Ivanov Apparition of Christ to Mary Magdalen)


John 20:1-18

20Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ 3Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. 4The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10Then the disciples returned to their homes.

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look* into the tomb; 12and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ 14When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ 16Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew,* ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). 17Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ 18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Great Freemasons: William Pinkney (March 17, 1764 – February 25, 1822)

The generous mind, that has adequate ideas of the inherent rights of mankind and knows the value of them, must feel its indignation rise against the shameful traffic that introduces slavery into a country which seems to have been designed by providence as an asylum for those whom the arm of power had persecuted and not as a nursery for wretches stripped of every privilege which heaven intended for its rational creatures, and reduced to a level with—nay, become themselves—the mere goods and chattels of their masters. 3
Sir, by the eternal principles of natural justice, no master in the State has a right to hold his slave in bondage for a single hour; but the law of the land, which (however oppressive and unjust, however inconsistent with the great groundwork of the late Revolution and our present frame of government) we can not in prudence or from a regard to individual rights abolish, has authorized a slavery as bad or perhaps worse than the most absolute, unconditional servitude that ever England knew in the early ages of its empire, under the tyrannical policy of the Danes, the feudal tenures of the Saxons, or the pure villanage of the Normans.

William Pinkney (March 17, 1764 – February 25, 1822)

http://www.bartleby.com/268/8/19.html

William Pinkney (March 17, 1764 – February 25, 1822) was an American statesman and diplomat, and the seventh U.S. Attorney General.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pinkney
(Amanda Lodge 12, Annapolis, MD)


Thursday, February 20, 2014

Dwayne McDuffie (February 20, 1962 – February 21, 2011)

“I’m conscious of race whenever I’m writing, just as I’m conscious of class, religion, human psychology, politics — everything that makes up the human experience. I don’t think I can do a good job if I’m not paying attention to what’s meaningful to people, and in American culture, there isn’t anything that informs human interaction more than the idea of race.”
Duane McDuffie (February 20, 1962 – February 21, 2011)