Category: Education
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THE MEMBER WHO NEVER CAME BACK
It amuses me now to think that your organizations spend so much time looking for new members when I was there all the time. Do you remember me? I’m the fellow who came into every meeting but nobody paid any attention to me. I tried several times to be friendly, but everyone seemed to have…
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41 MILLION MEN – MILLENNIALS AND MASONRY
Last June, I had the rare treat of locking a large group of America’s various grand lodge officers in a room for the Northeast Conference of Grand Masters and browbeating them for 25 minutes or so. They actually took it pretty well, and the North Carolina contingent got so excited that they stood on their…
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WHAT A LEADER SHOULD DO WHEN PEOPLE AREN’T LISTENING
Every leader encounters a time when despite their best efforts to inspire others to buy-in to their vision, they don’t feel enough people are paying attention. When this occurs it is time to stop, reevaluate, realign, re-prioritize and begin anew with a positive attitude. However, if may be difficult to motivate yourself because the prevailing thought…
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WILLIAM HARRISON “JACK” DEMPSEY WAS AN AMERICAN BOXER
Dempsey was born William Harrison Dempsey in Manassa, Colorado on June 24th, 1895. His family was poor and they moved around quite often so his father could find work. His parents converted to Mormonism and at the age of eight he was baptized in the Church of Latter Day Saints. Dempsey dropped out of school…
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NORMAN KEITH COLLINS “SAILOR JERRY”
Sailor Jerry was born Norman Keith Collins, but chose to define himself on his own terms. He simply wasn’t one of those people born to live a middle-of-the-road life and he knew it. Back in the 1920’s, when Collins came of age, tattooing was an expression that belonged to an emerging American counterculture. It was a…
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WHAT REALLY MAKES A SUCCESSFUL LODGE?
For years I have been studying how to make a successful, vibrant, growing Lodge and trying my best to implement it. This subject has interested me ever since I served as Worshipful Master at Plymouth Lodge, Plymouth, Massachusetts in one Masonic District in 1994 and then again in another Masonic District at Paul Revere Lodge,…
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HOW TO RESPOND WHEN YOU HEAR “BUT WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY”
I own this button I received from Stephen Wright who is a Past District Deputy Grand Master and used it when he was a member of the Masonic Education Committee for the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma as a reward for creative thinking. One of my favorite quotations which is frequently attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson…
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NEW YEAR’S LEADERSHIP RESOLUTIONS
In Dr. John Maxwell’s “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” The Law of Navigation tells us that planning is an essential part of being an effective leader. A navigational leader determines where his organization is (reality) and where it needs to go (vision). To communicate how to achieve the vision a good leader lays out a detailed…
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COULD MASONRY BE SUFFERING FROM “THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS?”
“The Tragedy of the Commons” is a concept introduced by the economist and ecologist Garrett Hardin. The Tragedy of the Commons states that in a system where a common resource is shared, with no individual responsible for the well-being of the resource, it will tend to be depleted over time. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle…