December 23, 2024 • 35 mins
The Festive Board, a cherished tradition after Lodge meetings, holds a special place in Masonic fellowship. RW Samuel Lloyd Kinsey, Chairman of the Custodians of the Work of the Grand Lodge of New York, is our guest this week as we explore the history, symbolism, and significance of the Festive Board in fostering camaraderie and strengthening the bonds of Brotherhood.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Commons. Opinions and views shared during this program are
of those individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official
position of a Grand Lodge, Concordant Body, a pendant Body,
Masonic authority, or Craftsman Online dot Com. Welcome to the
(00:27):
Craftsman Online Podcast, the only five star rated Masonic podcast
endorsed by the Grand Lodge of New York.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hey, welcome back. It's right worship of Brother Michael Arce
and you've joined us for an episode on the role
of the Festive Board and Freemasonry. But before we get
to this conversation, a reminder, Yeah, we're just one week
away from my favorite year and tradition here on the
Craftsman Online Podcast. Yes, our countdown of the top ten
biggest episodes of the year. We're going to be backing
(01:00):
up all of the guests and topics we had for
twenty twenty four and counting them down to find out
who has the number one spot for season number four
of the podcast that kicks off next Monday, right here. Well,
I hope you didn't come hungry to this episode because
you're telling me may star growling as we get into
(01:22):
the Festive Board, just what is that?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
It's a cherished tradition normally that's held after lodge meetings,
and it holds a very special place to our brothers
in the fraternity. We are lucky to welcome back right
Worshipful Brother Samuel Lloyd Kinsey, who is the Chairman of
the Custodians of the Work of the Grand Lodge of
New York, to explore some of the history, symbolism, and
significance of the festive board. Welcome back to the Craftsman
(01:46):
Online Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Brother sam always happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I want to get kind of your take on this
because we know you as a ritual guy. What makes
a festive board different to you than a typical feast
or lodge dinner.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
It's nice to have, right tradition, and it's nice to
you know, we're very big in masonry on ceremonializing things
and having to give you know, toasts and those sorts
of things, and I just think that that makes it
(02:19):
more interesting, right I mean, so you know, the Army
and the Navy and the Marines. You know, they have,
for example, their own traditions of sort of this normalized
dining sort of ceremonies and rituals, if you will, and
I think it's just something that make the dinner sort
(02:40):
of more special, more fun, more interesting. It can be
something that's done, you know, once a year as sort
of a big event, or it can be something that's
really kind of done on a pretty regular basis. I
mean this, you know, the sky is sort of the
limit as far as like how that context can be used.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
You're a member of Mariner's Lodge number sixty seven in
New York. They have one of the most famous festive boards.
We're going to be getting to we'll talk about the
beefsteak dinner that's coming up and how people can get
tickets and be a part of this year's event as
part of our New York Massonic con a weekend January
and twenty twenty five. But first I wanted to get
to like the impression that you kind of put there,
(03:23):
because I was thinking about all the formal dinners like
galas or banquets before I joined Freemasonry that I would
have sat down and attended. These are your typical black
tie affair. The first time I went to a Festa board,
it was completely different than anything I'd ever been a
part of before. Just like a lot of what we
do in freemasonry. What was your initial experience when you
(03:43):
first attended a festive board at Mariners.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
I really have to back up, because the first festive
board that I ever attended wasn't at Mariners Lodge. It
was Independent Royal Large Lodge number two. And you can't
really talk about festive boards slash table lodges. And we'll
get into that in a minute, I'm sure in the
United States without talking about a Pan Royal Large Lodge
number two, and in particular non montfiliar to as a
(04:09):
path master of that pot. And so that was really
a tradition that had largely kind of died out in
the United States. People like really weren't doing it, and
so John you know, did a whole bunch of research
and sort of wrote a paper and then started doing
these one in the fall and one in the spring
(04:32):
table lodges. And it's actually interesting. So it's a table
lodge of instruction, right, So we'll sort of get into
why that is. But that's really the sort of og
of American festive boards. And I would say really pretty
close to one hundred percent of test of boards in
(04:54):
the United States are in some way derivative or or
you know, oh, a great deal to the work that
he did in creating that. And so at that time
they had a member of the lodge that worked at
the Yale Club, and so they had these things in
this like cool room up in the Yale Club and
(05:15):
I just thought, you know, I mean, look, it's it
was just fun. It was interesting, right. There were these
weird toasts that everybody was doing. You know, people were
getting up and giving responses and there was sort of
ex temporaneous talking, and there was just this idea that like, hey,
this is like a special cool thing that we're doing
as Masons.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I want to get to the history of it, because
you talk a lot about ritual and you're touching in
the comeback, I guess is the new generation, the modern Masons,
wanted to start bringing this back for me. My mother
Lodge Saint George's Number six. They are known in the
Albany area for their festive board, which is amazing. It's
like a seven course dinner practically with a cocktail hour.
(05:56):
There's the reception time. The years that I've tended, they
have done the meal planned around a menu that would
have been something that George Washington would have ate it's
held at the Stockade and Schenectady. Yeah, it's a two
hundred year old meal and you basically are going to
spend all day eating and drinking for what it would
cost to take your lady out to a very nice restaurant.
(06:18):
But it's just you as the Mason that gets to
participate in this. But they would tell tale of Johnstown
Saint Patrick's Lodge, which is another very close lodge to
us in Upstate of Back in the day when brothers
would travel to go to lodges, it was by horse
or by foot, and there'd be days to get there.
They would have the meeting, then they would eat and
(06:39):
then usually sleep in the lodge. How much of the
history of these table lodges or these festive boards can
you separate from some of the myth and the lore
that's started to become late lately.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Well, so I think that there is some interesting history there.
You can look at their sort of three in my opinion,
important books that are unfortunately out of print, so they're
not easy to find that anybody who has kind of
an interest in the history and development of Masonic ritual
(07:13):
and ceremony should have. And there's one called Early Masonic catechisms.
There's another one with the French exposures, and there's another
one with later on English exposures. The early Masonic catechisms
also have some manuscripts, and you know, exposures were actually
(07:35):
a very important vector of sort of sending out in
ritual innovations and things like that in the Masonic community
during the eighteenth century. And you can really look actually
at the French exposures where you start seeing all of
these things of what we would sort of consider to
(07:55):
be a table lodge with specialized you know, toasting and
the these sorts of things. And so, you know, we're
talking seventeen forties or something like that, these things kind
of started to evolve. And then I think if you start,
you know, when you come to the United States, I mean,
one of the things that you can start to understand
(08:18):
is that, you know, let's say you have a lodge
when you're meeting in a tavern or tavern like accommodation,
and most likely the proprietor was a Mason, and it
would sort of you know, you'd have the making of
the Mason park, you know, would happen in a back
room with the designs of the degree drawn and chalk
(08:38):
and charcoal on the clay tiled floor that presumably will
resonate with the Masons that may be listening. And then
afterwards you'd kind of come out and you know, hey,
we might as well take advantage of the stuff that
the proprietor has offer and everybody would kind of gather
around a table and the you know, the three great
(08:58):
lights and the Campbell's sort of be set in front
of the master, and you know, the newly made brother
would be seated at his right, and you know, people
would take refreshment and they would sort of do the
degree catechisms around the table, which would be a way
of communicating the symbolic material of the degree to the
(09:19):
new brother, which is, by the way, why we call
our meetings communication. And so I can certainly imagine that
you could have a colonial era lodge in the United
States that was that was doing dining as sort of
part of what they did as Masons, perhaps during a
(09:42):
tiled portion of the meeting. Whether or not they were
doing something that we would recognize today as being a
table lodge or a festive board, I'm not sure. A
lot of the things that you see as far as
you know, oh, the red wine is gunpowder and the
white wine is right. I mean that traces right back
(10:05):
to a French exposure that had that explanation in it,
so you know, if that's something. And by the way,
the English exposers that come later in the seventeen sixties
to my recollection, have no mention of that kind of stuff,
so you can imagine that that it. You know, it
(10:26):
sort of took a while for these things to percolate
over here, so you know, some lodges that are saying,
you know, hey man, we've been doing these festive boards,
you know since seventeen, you know, seventy. You know, look,
that's one of the beautiful things of masonry is that
if you say something is true for five years, let's
(10:48):
say it becomes true and listen. I mean, that's that's
exactly what we did with the festive board. Parents.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I want to talk about that because this is the
first time I've actually ever read searched festive boards for
this podcast episode, and I have purchased my ticket. I
want to make sure that everyone's aware how to do this.
You can go to our Grand Lodge website, or you
can visit New York Masoniccon dot com as the Mariners
Festival Board this year is now part of the New
(11:17):
York Masonic Con experience as we celebrate our first ever
Masonic Con. It's going to be a Friday night. I
believe it is a January seventeen, seventeenth. See I knew,
you knew. Held in one of the most iconic places,
the Grand Loune of New York. And when I went
to look at the history of it, I was a
little nervous because this originally started on like barrels and
(11:40):
they would eat with their bare hands. Is am I
getting that part of the history correct to.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Really kind of get into, you know, what Mariners Lodge does.
When I first became worshipul Master of Mariners Loge, one
of the things about Masonic Hall here in New York
City that's maybe not the greatest thing in the world,
is compared to let's say suburban and rural lodge is
(12:04):
not that easy to do dining in the building, right,
I mean, it takes a lot of work. And so
one of the things that I did, which I basically
created a bespoke festive board ritual for our lodge, you know,
referencing a lot of maritime symbolism, and you know, we
(12:26):
liked you know, red and green lanterns on the port
starboard sides, and you know, all of these sorts of things.
And that was absolutely you know, inspired by and largely
following the framework of the Independent Royal Arch Lodge Festive Board.
But one of the things that I did is I
just tried to say, okay, so here's this unit that
(12:48):
does this. This is what this does. And you can
think about like the opening of a lodge, you know,
going around in New York, you know, and taking the
pathword from a well, the purpose of that is to
make sure that everybody who's there is allowed to be there.
And there's a lot of different ways you can do that,
right you go to certain places and they'll just say,
you know, brethren, satisfy yourselves at all present, are entitled
(13:10):
to remain other places, you know, do other things. And
so I tried to come up with like different ways
of doing these things. And then I also took a
lot of inspiration at that time. There was this restaurant
in New York City called Beacon that had this a
beefsteak every year, And a beef steak is an old
(13:32):
New York City, you know, nineteenth century basically political event,
you know, dealing going back to the Tammany Hall type
days where there would write, you know, everybody would be
wearing a butcher's apron and you'd come in and there
would just be platter after flower of you know, sort
(13:52):
of roasted meat and schooners of beer and they would say, Michael,
it's your turn to go out and vote, and here's
what you're voting for, and like, you go out and
vote for that guy, right, and then you'd come back.
You'd maybe have some more stake or they'd something and
they'd be like, do you're turning in now? You're going
to go out still voting for these guys early and.
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(15:17):
first order. Your event has two things that I would
say are iconic. One is the photo that seems to
(15:37):
be taken every year as and perhaps you could expand
a little bit more on the story. And I have
to get permission to actually have the dinner in the
Grand Ladge room, but there's always that shot from the
balcony where you see literally hundreds of brothers wearing their aprons,
like looking up and waving and hoisting. But then there's
you know, old lang Zine gets sung. There's the they
(16:01):
get to wear the aprons this year. There's a commemorative
glass that I went in for on my ticket because
I've only heard tale of brothers at least from upstate
New York that would travel down to New York to
be a part of this event. And I was so
excited to get to attend this year. So can you
expand a little bit more, maybe take us behind the
scenes on how you make this such a dynamic event?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I mean, so, look, part of it is you just
have to start growing things, right, you know. The first
one of these that we did, I don't know, maybe
forty people came to it, and then they just sort
of got bigger and bigger and they actually then created
so it used to be that we'd have our dinners
and we did these festive boards up on the nineteenth
floor of Masonic Hall, which doesn't exist anymore. I mean
(16:47):
the floor exists, but it's been completely given over to
something else. And you know, there was a couple of
electric stoves, there was no hot water, there was no dishwasher,
you know, and so but then they these they have
a really nice bank of rooms now that they have
on the eighth floor and I think the twelfth floor,
(17:08):
maybe the tenth floor, I can't remember one of those
other floors. And so we were able to start, you know,
doing our monthly, our regular sort of short form best
of boards there and we were invited to pair up
with another lodge, which I think was a Harrius Truman Lodge,
(17:29):
and to do basically the inaugural festive board of the
Jacobean Room, which is on the eighth floor. It's on
a call and so that you know, was about one
hundred and ten people, right, and so you know that
started to be people were sort of like, this is
pretty cool, and you know then you know word spreads, right,
(17:52):
I mean, you'd like to have these things sell out.
We definitely you know, max capacity on that room is
really probably cirka one hundred people. So you know, it's
always nice. You always know you're doing something right if
you get people five days before begging you for tickets
and there's just no way. And so then when when
(18:16):
it was during the term of Grandmaster Williamson, was the
first time that they had this international Grand Lecturist Convention.
A lot of people don't know, but there's around fifty
jurisdictions around the world that practice the standard work of
the Grand Lager of New York and so we invited
them all here to sort of, you know, talk about
how to do it right. And so I remember that.
(18:40):
I looked at the data that thing and I was like, well,
that's kind of a bummer. You know, this is cross
scheduled with when we had the beefsteak. What's going to be.
I guess we'll have to schedule that on another date.
And so I'm talking to the Grand Master. I was
one of his district deputies, and he was like, no, no, no, no, no.
We scheduled on that day on purpose. And I was
like what he says, yay, yeah, man, we want to
(19:01):
do this thing in the Grand Lodge room. And so
I thought, all right, you know, like let's do this.
Let's and so, you know, we had quite a few
people from the obviously we've probably had you know, one
hundred and fifty of the people there were delegates to
the Grand Leucturist convention. So there was I don't know,
you know, ten Grand Masters of various different Grand Lodges
(19:22):
around the world there, and then there was another you know,
I mean, total attendance was you know, in the high
three hundreds. And that's just cool. I mean, you know,
you look at these things and you see a bunch
of guys in tuxedos, you know, wearing Butcher's aprons, holding
up big glasses of beer, and everyone is, you know,
(19:43):
singing our lodge sea shanty together, and it's it's just
a cool event.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I can only imagine. I mean, I've planned two table
or festive boards from my lodge here in DC, and
I literally do that kicking and scream because I know
the amount of work that goes into it, and the
reward is always great that evening. But it is like
planning a private party at your house. You really as
the host. Sometimes you don't really get to enjoy everything
you're hoping that the company does. But in this instance, Friday,
(20:14):
January seventeenth, the food starts at six point thirty with
the event. It's the Mariners Festive Board and Beefsteak Dinner.
You can get tickets to two places. You can go
to the Mariner's Lodge website or you can get them
through the New York Maasoniccon dot com website. Either way,
we hope to see you there Friday, January seventeenth at
the Grand Lodge Building. Brother Sam, I want to talk
(20:36):
to you about something we got into a little bit earlier,
and I don't know how much of a sticking point
this is but I'm one of those guys that am
constantly correcting people. Is there a difference between a table
lodge and a festive board or should I just drop it?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I would say yes and no. I mean I most
people would tell you that a table lodge is tiled,
festive board is not. That may be a fairly modern distinction.
I think that certainly people would say, you know that
(21:12):
the brethren gathered around the festive table or whatever. Right,
I know that, as I say, independent oral large lodge
calls their event a table lodge, but during the ceremonies
of opening it, they say it's a table lodge of instruction,
and so it's not tiled. That can actually be confusing
(21:33):
to people, right who would say that a table lodge
has to be tiled because people refer to that event
as the table lodge.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Back to the role of the table lodge or festive
board in freemasonry. I think it's interesting, and we also
touched on this earlier as well, like basically it's making
a comeback, and I credit a lot of it to
like the boomer generation, especially here in d C. Most
Worshipful Joseph of Courshiat he's really into doing these but
also doing them right. And I'm sure that there's brothers
(22:05):
that are listening right now, going well, gosh, I wish
my lodge could do a table lodge, or I wish
we could do a Fessi board, But you know, we
barely have enough guys that are showing up as it is,
or there's too much cost, or nobody wants to do
the work. Can you talk a little bit about the
importance of this is I think a great opportunity to
travel to a lodge where they do it right, and
that's a cool part of a tradition.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
You know. One of the things that I did when
I became massive Mariners for the first time, we had
and we have a relationship with a lodge Adelphic Union
Lodge number fourteen and the most horseful printall Grand Lodge here.
And when you invite those guys to come, I mean,
they show up. And so there was a meeting when
I was senior warden where it was just like, you know,
(22:48):
it was just like, oh man, there's like forty five
people in the room for this meeting, you know, and
that was exciting. It didn't matter that you know, only
twenty of them were all guys, right, because guess what
and the next meeting, more than twenty of our guys
showed up, right, And so that certainly is you know,
(23:08):
you'd like for people from all over to be able
to come to an event. I mean that to me
was always in doing this beefsteak that's a board, you know.
It not a fundraiser, it's not. It was really just
meant to be, Hey, let's do a kick ass Masonic
dinner that a bunch of people are gonna come to
(23:29):
and they're gonna have a great time, and it's going
to be some unique stuff about our lodge. And I
also think that one of the best things that a
lodge can do, like to revitalize if maybe they don't
have a lot of attendance or these sorts of things,
is go to lodges that are doing it right and
steal their ideas. And you know it's listen, you know
(23:55):
you do that idea, You get this one lodge that
does this cool thing, and you're gonna you're like, I
like that idea. We're not going to do exactly what
they do, and so it's going to be I mean, listen, frankly,
the whole point of doing this festive board in the
first place is an idea that I got from independent
royal art. And you know a lot of people would
sort of look at what we do and wouldn't even
(24:17):
necessarily know that the two of the things are related
because I just sort of rewrote everything extensively.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Well, you saw it was possible from an event, but
you would have never had the gem of that idea
or the germ of that idea unless you went to
independent real arch first.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
You know, I did a lot of research from maybe
formal dining traditions and sort of went into some of
the old legends of masonry to try to find some
stuff that I could repurpose.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
That was my next question, because I've had to produce
some of this before. My lodge here in DC we
did a joint event, and this is you know, something
else that would preach to brothers or incoming masters whoever
may be listening, is that if you're thinking, I'd really
like to do this, but I don't have the resources,
whether it's you know, money, time, people to help with hands,
(25:04):
even people to help attend, think about doing joint events
with other lodges and maybe four lodges get together and
put together one great event instead of you know, four
lesser ones. But I basically had to take the what
exists for the Washington d C brand, launched jurisdiction festive
board script and then kind of marry or merge that
(25:25):
with the bethel that came to visit, the job's daughter's
Bethel that came to visit and talk about interesting all references,
all alcohol out. We couldn't have any of that at
an event with young ladies. They refer to each other
as sisters, so we had to find a way to
you know, make that work as well. But we were
(25:45):
literally writing the ritual not on the spot that day,
but like a month or so beforehand, and going you know,
between the two to make sure. And it was a
really unique experience.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
And that is a thing that I encourage really all
lodges to do, UH is to and I've helped a
lot of lodges with this to sort of make you know,
bespoke festive board ceremonies for them. I remember that there
was a Grand Master's DMLA day that happened up in
(26:18):
Utica one year and I was asked by UH most
Fortunble Bill Sardone who was a grand Master of DMLA
at that time, to help create a DMLA festive board
that we did. So they had all the DMLA boys
were actually sort of in the tables and they were
doing the ceremonies and then all there was all these
kind of rand tables around the outside that the parents
(26:41):
and the families and people like that sat out. You know,
our our grand master kicked off the first sort of
just on the festive board for the metropolitan area last year.
I think now why I say it was I created
that ceremony of them. And I think that if you're
(27:05):
a lodge who feels like that they this might be
a lot of work, or it might be difficult or
whatever it is, at least from the ceremonial standpoint, you know,
gale it down, do whatever it is that you want
to do. Like there's no you know a lot of
people feel like, oh, well, you know, the festive board
has to have the seven obligatory toasts and they have
(27:28):
to be followed by a response, and they have to
as who you know, we do we if I say,
we do a short form once a month in our lodge,
and you know what that consists of is we do
we do the opening the same opening that we do
for the beef Sake festive board. Everybody starts eating at
(27:51):
some point, there may be one or two toasts that
are done. Those are done completely ling proviso. The way
that then the toast is given afterwards is sort of
the same way. And you know, it's one of these
sort of weird things, right, which was cool about Fessor boards.
And then there's a ceremonial closing, you know, when we're
(28:14):
getting ready to go home for the night. And so
there's definitely been times when it's been one toast and
there's nothing. There's everything right about that. Actually, it makes
the evening special. It gives the brethren a reason to
stick around, and it gives guests a reason to want
to come to experience that.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I wanted to ask you about that. I'd like to
refer to this as a SAME's book for those that
are not familiar the standard working lecture of the Grand
Lodge of New York.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
It's always embarrassing if I forget some of the stuff
on there, because I'm like, yeah, I did curate that
entire book.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
You go looking through this and there's no ritual. As
you mentioned, there's nothing written down as far as a
script for a festive board. A lot of brothers turn
to the internet. I've heard of brothers say, oh, we
got this from the Grand Lodge of Wisconsin or wherever else.
Some resources that you would recommend if guys were just
looking for structure of how to put together this event,
at least when it comes to the ritual side of it.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Look, I guarantee you that if you find two or
three of these things, eventually you're going to find one
that is either just a direct copy of or highly
derivative of the independent Royal Large Table Lodge. And then
what I would suggest is to start pulling those things
apart figure out how can we do this in a
(29:29):
way that life works for us. I actually think that
every lodge really should have some unique and distinctive dining
customs that work for that lodge in a variety of contexts.
And you know, look, I don't necessarily think that it
(29:53):
would work for very many lodges to do what we
do and have like a short form best to board
once a month. That is a lot of work. Yeah,
we have a lot of stewards all of our you know,
we have an extended degree cycle, so usually you've you know,
it takes a couple of years before you're a master mason.
And guess what the ended apprentices and fellocrafts get to
(30:15):
do during the fosto boards. And I mean I do
those things too. You never ask somebody to do something
you wouldn't do yourself. When we first started doing those
my first year in the East, I also cooked all
of the dinners. But I think you just look around
and you say to yourself, Okay, so here's this thing
(30:39):
that's done. How is a way for that to like
work for me? And I would also say, certainly, if
it's something that you're going to do, like on a
regular basis, you can choose some other sorts of stuff,
some kind of cool toast that's done, or some kind
of of something that you could even do in a restaurant.
That's that's that's not you know, wouldn't necessarily disturb a
(31:04):
lot of the other people there. Right, You're not going
to sing songs, stand up and do toasts. But I
you know, one of the things that I that I saw,
which I thought was you know, kind of a cool
idea that I didn't end up appropriating was looking at
some of the I want to say, it's either a
Navy or a marine tradition in there, what it's called
dining in where there's this whole sort of ceremonial like
(31:28):
bringing a platter with the roast in, you know, and
bringing it to you know, the senior officer or whoever's
am seeing the thing or whatever it is, you know,
who sort of tastes it a little bit, you know,
cuts off a piece and tastes it and says, okay,
this is good. I declare it good, you know, and
so then they you know, there's been a few times
(31:48):
at opening of the beefsteaks that we've done a ceremonial
purging of the lodge of vegetarians and vegan which I
will say was suggested by a member of the lodge
who was a vegeta, and he's like, man, can I
just show up to this thing and like have a
couple of beers and then you can like bound me
out of the room.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
So right, worshipfulson, time has passed since we kicked off
this conversation. I'm hoping that while we've been talking, somebody
was like, hey, I got a hip pause, open up
the podcast notes, so I can get my browser open,
go to New York massonicon dot com so I can
get tickets to be a part of this, or you're
like me, you've already got yours. You've triple checked in
your Apple wallet that the ticket is there and ready,
(32:27):
so that you can be a part of this monumentous
event on Friday night, January seventeenth, at the Grand Lounge
of New York and New York City again, dinnertime is
at six thirty. For those of us that are going
for the first time, I'm selfishly asking this question. I've
taken notes. Don't eat every meat that comes to you.
This is a marathon, not a race. I don't have
(32:48):
to worry about eating with my hands, which is a
good thing. What advice do you have for the first
time or what do you want them to kind of
be prepared with before we show up.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
If you want to drink something that's not beer, bring
it that. What we provide is, you know, one of
our members is one of the owners of the Bronx Buhl,
so you know it's it's draft beer, locally produced, you know,
different brands of beer, and and that's that's what we
offer it's a meat and beer event. Come hungry and
(33:18):
well arrested. The other thing that we wanted to evoke.
You'll see sometimes these old pictures from let's say the
forties and the fifties of like you know, a first
Manhattan District, you know, dinner dance or something like that,
and you'll look at this room and it's just, you know,
all of these guys and you know, tuxedos and their
wives are dressed to the nines, and you know, the
(33:41):
tables are arranging a certain way, and you're just like, man,
that just looks so cool. You know, it would just
be great if we could have like a giant thing
like that. And you know, look, if you go on
YouTube and you do a search for Mariners Lodge Sea Shanty,
you'll be able to see, you know, circa four hundred
people all in tuxedos and Butcher's aprons, you know, singing
(34:04):
the song, and that'll give you a good idea of
what it's going to look like and what the experience
is going to be.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to
this Friday night, January seventeenth, Mariner's Lodge, number sixty seven
festive board and beefsteak dinner. I am so proud to
be able to say I get to attend this for
the first time, and we'll be looking for you. It's
going to be cool, right, Worshipful Samuellloyd Kenzie, Thank you
so much for taking time and talking about this great
(34:35):
event with us, and I look forward to seeing you
when this episode airs next month in New York City.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Right on, I'll see you soon.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Big thanks again to write Worshipful Samueloyd Kenzie for joining
us this week. If you want to join us for
dinner in just a few weeks during the New York
Massonic Con at the Mariner's Lodge Maritime Beefsteak Banquet. Does
that sound good? Get the details on how to get
your tickets and the notes for this episode. Speaking of which,
if you've enjoyed it, make sure you follow the Craftsman
(35:08):
Online podcast on Spotify and subscribe on Apple Podcasts to
get our latest episode every Monday morning. This is right
worship for Brother Michael Ars. Until next time, Peace and
harmony prevail.
The Commons. Opinions and views shared during this program are
of those individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official
position of a Grand Lodge, Concordant Body, a pendant Body,
Masonic authority, or Craftsman Online dot Com. Welcome to the
(00:27):
Craftsman Online Podcast, the only five star rated Masonic podcast
endorsed by the Grand Lodge of New York.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hey, welcome back. It's right worship of Brother Michael Arce
and you've joined us for an episode on the role
of the Festive Board and Freemasonry. But before we get
to this conversation, a reminder, Yeah, we're just one week
away from my favorite year and tradition here on the
Craftsman Online Podcast. Yes, our countdown of the top ten
biggest episodes of the year. We're going to be backing
(01:00):
up all of the guests and topics we had for
twenty twenty four and counting them down to find out
who has the number one spot for season number four
of the podcast that kicks off next Monday, right here. Well,
I hope you didn't come hungry to this episode because
you're telling me may star growling as we get into
(01:22):
the Festive Board, just what is that?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
It's a cherished tradition normally that's held after lodge meetings,
and it holds a very special place to our brothers
in the fraternity. We are lucky to welcome back right
Worshipful Brother Samuel Lloyd Kinsey, who is the Chairman of
the Custodians of the Work of the Grand Lodge of
New York, to explore some of the history, symbolism, and
significance of the festive board. Welcome back to the Craftsman
(01:46):
Online Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Brother sam always happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I want to get kind of your take on this
because we know you as a ritual guy. What makes
a festive board different to you than a typical feast
or lodge dinner.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
It's nice to have, right tradition, and it's nice to
you know, we're very big in masonry on ceremonializing things
and having to give you know, toasts and those sorts
of things, and I just think that that makes it
(02:19):
more interesting, right I mean, so you know, the Army
and the Navy and the Marines. You know, they have,
for example, their own traditions of sort of this normalized
dining sort of ceremonies and rituals, if you will, and
I think it's just something that make the dinner sort
(02:40):
of more special, more fun, more interesting. It can be
something that's done, you know, once a year as sort
of a big event, or it can be something that's
really kind of done on a pretty regular basis. I
mean this, you know, the sky is sort of the
limit as far as like how that context can be used.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
You're a member of Mariner's Lodge number sixty seven in
New York. They have one of the most famous festive boards.
We're going to be getting to we'll talk about the
beefsteak dinner that's coming up and how people can get
tickets and be a part of this year's event as
part of our New York Massonic con a weekend January
and twenty twenty five. But first I wanted to get
to like the impression that you kind of put there,
(03:23):
because I was thinking about all the formal dinners like
galas or banquets before I joined Freemasonry that I would
have sat down and attended. These are your typical black
tie affair. The first time I went to a Festa board,
it was completely different than anything I'd ever been a
part of before. Just like a lot of what we
do in freemasonry. What was your initial experience when you
(03:43):
first attended a festive board at Mariners.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
I really have to back up, because the first festive
board that I ever attended wasn't at Mariners Lodge. It
was Independent Royal Large Lodge number two. And you can't
really talk about festive boards slash table lodges. And we'll
get into that in a minute, I'm sure in the
United States without talking about a Pan Royal Large Lodge
number two, and in particular non montfiliar to as a
(04:09):
path master of that pot. And so that was really
a tradition that had largely kind of died out in
the United States. People like really weren't doing it, and
so John you know, did a whole bunch of research
and sort of wrote a paper and then started doing
these one in the fall and one in the spring
(04:32):
table lodges. And it's actually interesting. So it's a table
lodge of instruction, right, So we'll sort of get into
why that is. But that's really the sort of og
of American festive boards. And I would say really pretty
close to one hundred percent of test of boards in
(04:54):
the United States are in some way derivative or or
you know, oh, a great deal to the work that
he did in creating that. And so at that time
they had a member of the lodge that worked at
the Yale Club, and so they had these things in
this like cool room up in the Yale Club and
(05:15):
I just thought, you know, I mean, look, it's it
was just fun. It was interesting, right. There were these
weird toasts that everybody was doing. You know, people were
getting up and giving responses and there was sort of
ex temporaneous talking, and there was just this idea that like, hey,
this is like a special cool thing that we're doing
as Masons.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I want to get to the history of it, because
you talk a lot about ritual and you're touching in
the comeback, I guess is the new generation, the modern Masons,
wanted to start bringing this back for me. My mother
Lodge Saint George's Number six. They are known in the
Albany area for their festive board, which is amazing. It's
like a seven course dinner practically with a cocktail hour.
(05:56):
There's the reception time. The years that I've tended, they
have done the meal planned around a menu that would
have been something that George Washington would have ate it's
held at the Stockade and Schenectady. Yeah, it's a two
hundred year old meal and you basically are going to
spend all day eating and drinking for what it would
cost to take your lady out to a very nice restaurant.
(06:18):
But it's just you as the Mason that gets to
participate in this. But they would tell tale of Johnstown
Saint Patrick's Lodge, which is another very close lodge to
us in Upstate of Back in the day when brothers
would travel to go to lodges, it was by horse
or by foot, and there'd be days to get there.
They would have the meeting, then they would eat and
(06:39):
then usually sleep in the lodge. How much of the
history of these table lodges or these festive boards can
you separate from some of the myth and the lore
that's started to become late lately.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Well, so I think that there is some interesting history there.
You can look at their sort of three in my opinion,
important books that are unfortunately out of print, so they're
not easy to find that anybody who has kind of
an interest in the history and development of Masonic ritual
(07:13):
and ceremony should have. And there's one called Early Masonic catechisms.
There's another one with the French exposures, and there's another
one with later on English exposures. The early Masonic catechisms
also have some manuscripts, and you know, exposures were actually
(07:35):
a very important vector of sort of sending out in
ritual innovations and things like that in the Masonic community
during the eighteenth century. And you can really look actually
at the French exposures where you start seeing all of
these things of what we would sort of consider to
(07:55):
be a table lodge with specialized you know, toasting and
the these sorts of things. And so, you know, we're
talking seventeen forties or something like that, these things kind
of started to evolve. And then I think if you start,
you know, when you come to the United States, I mean,
one of the things that you can start to understand
(08:18):
is that, you know, let's say you have a lodge
when you're meeting in a tavern or tavern like accommodation,
and most likely the proprietor was a Mason, and it
would sort of you know, you'd have the making of
the Mason park, you know, would happen in a back
room with the designs of the degree drawn and chalk
(08:38):
and charcoal on the clay tiled floor that presumably will
resonate with the Masons that may be listening. And then
afterwards you'd kind of come out and you know, hey,
we might as well take advantage of the stuff that
the proprietor has offer and everybody would kind of gather
around a table and the you know, the three great
(08:58):
lights and the Campbell's sort of be set in front
of the master, and you know, the newly made brother
would be seated at his right, and you know, people
would take refreshment and they would sort of do the
degree catechisms around the table, which would be a way
of communicating the symbolic material of the degree to the
(09:19):
new brother, which is, by the way, why we call
our meetings communication. And so I can certainly imagine that
you could have a colonial era lodge in the United
States that was that was doing dining as sort of
part of what they did as Masons, perhaps during a
(09:42):
tiled portion of the meeting. Whether or not they were
doing something that we would recognize today as being a
table lodge or a festive board, I'm not sure. A
lot of the things that you see as far as
you know, oh, the red wine is gunpowder and the
white wine is right. I mean that traces right back
(10:05):
to a French exposure that had that explanation in it,
so you know, if that's something. And by the way,
the English exposers that come later in the seventeen sixties
to my recollection, have no mention of that kind of stuff,
so you can imagine that that it. You know, it
(10:26):
sort of took a while for these things to percolate
over here, so you know, some lodges that are saying,
you know, hey man, we've been doing these festive boards,
you know since seventeen, you know, seventy. You know, look,
that's one of the beautiful things of masonry is that
if you say something is true for five years, let's
(10:48):
say it becomes true and listen. I mean, that's that's
exactly what we did with the festive board. Parents.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I want to talk about that because this is the
first time I've actually ever read searched festive boards for
this podcast episode, and I have purchased my ticket. I
want to make sure that everyone's aware how to do this.
You can go to our Grand Lodge website, or you
can visit New York Masoniccon dot com as the Mariners
Festival Board this year is now part of the New
(11:17):
York Masonic Con experience as we celebrate our first ever
Masonic Con. It's going to be a Friday night. I
believe it is a January seventeen, seventeenth. See I knew,
you knew. Held in one of the most iconic places,
the Grand Loune of New York. And when I went
to look at the history of it, I was a
little nervous because this originally started on like barrels and
(11:40):
they would eat with their bare hands. Is am I
getting that part of the history correct to.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Really kind of get into, you know, what Mariners Lodge does.
When I first became worshipul Master of Mariners Loge, one
of the things about Masonic Hall here in New York
City that's maybe not the greatest thing in the world,
is compared to let's say suburban and rural lodge is
(12:04):
not that easy to do dining in the building, right,
I mean, it takes a lot of work. And so
one of the things that I did, which I basically
created a bespoke festive board ritual for our lodge, you know,
referencing a lot of maritime symbolism, and you know, we
(12:26):
liked you know, red and green lanterns on the port
starboard sides, and you know, all of these sorts of things.
And that was absolutely you know, inspired by and largely
following the framework of the Independent Royal Arch Lodge Festive Board.
But one of the things that I did is I
just tried to say, okay, so here's this unit that
(12:48):
does this. This is what this does. And you can
think about like the opening of a lodge, you know,
going around in New York, you know, and taking the
pathword from a well, the purpose of that is to
make sure that everybody who's there is allowed to be there.
And there's a lot of different ways you can do that,
right you go to certain places and they'll just say,
you know, brethren, satisfy yourselves at all present, are entitled
(13:10):
to remain other places, you know, do other things. And
so I tried to come up with like different ways
of doing these things. And then I also took a
lot of inspiration at that time. There was this restaurant
in New York City called Beacon that had this a
beefsteak every year, And a beef steak is an old
(13:32):
New York City, you know, nineteenth century basically political event,
you know, dealing going back to the Tammany Hall type
days where there would write, you know, everybody would be
wearing a butcher's apron and you'd come in and there
would just be platter after flower of you know, sort
(13:52):
of roasted meat and schooners of beer and they would say, Michael,
it's your turn to go out and vote, and here's
what you're voting for, and like, you go out and
vote for that guy, right, and then you'd come back.
You'd maybe have some more stake or they'd something and
they'd be like, do you're turning in now? You're going
to go out still voting for these guys early and.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
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(15:17):
first order. Your event has two things that I would
say are iconic. One is the photo that seems to
(15:37):
be taken every year as and perhaps you could expand
a little bit more on the story. And I have
to get permission to actually have the dinner in the
Grand Ladge room, but there's always that shot from the
balcony where you see literally hundreds of brothers wearing their aprons,
like looking up and waving and hoisting. But then there's
you know, old lang Zine gets sung. There's the they
(16:01):
get to wear the aprons this year. There's a commemorative
glass that I went in for on my ticket because
I've only heard tale of brothers at least from upstate
New York that would travel down to New York to
be a part of this event. And I was so
excited to get to attend this year. So can you
expand a little bit more, maybe take us behind the
scenes on how you make this such a dynamic event?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I mean, so, look, part of it is you just
have to start growing things, right, you know. The first
one of these that we did, I don't know, maybe
forty people came to it, and then they just sort
of got bigger and bigger and they actually then created
so it used to be that we'd have our dinners
and we did these festive boards up on the nineteenth
floor of Masonic Hall, which doesn't exist anymore. I mean
(16:47):
the floor exists, but it's been completely given over to
something else. And you know, there was a couple of
electric stoves, there was no hot water, there was no dishwasher,
you know, and so but then they these they have
a really nice bank of rooms now that they have
on the eighth floor and I think the twelfth floor,
(17:08):
maybe the tenth floor, I can't remember one of those
other floors. And so we were able to start, you know,
doing our monthly, our regular sort of short form best
of boards there and we were invited to pair up
with another lodge, which I think was a Harrius Truman Lodge,
(17:29):
and to do basically the inaugural festive board of the
Jacobean Room, which is on the eighth floor. It's on
a call and so that you know, was about one
hundred and ten people, right, and so you know that
started to be people were sort of like, this is
pretty cool, and you know then you know word spreads, right,
(17:52):
I mean, you'd like to have these things sell out.
We definitely you know, max capacity on that room is
really probably cirka one hundred people. So you know, it's
always nice. You always know you're doing something right if
you get people five days before begging you for tickets
and there's just no way. And so then when when
(18:16):
it was during the term of Grandmaster Williamson, was the
first time that they had this international Grand Lecturist Convention.
A lot of people don't know, but there's around fifty
jurisdictions around the world that practice the standard work of
the Grand Lager of New York and so we invited
them all here to sort of, you know, talk about
how to do it right. And so I remember that.
(18:40):
I looked at the data that thing and I was like, well,
that's kind of a bummer. You know, this is cross
scheduled with when we had the beefsteak. What's going to be.
I guess we'll have to schedule that on another date.
And so I'm talking to the Grand Master. I was
one of his district deputies, and he was like, no, no, no, no, no.
We scheduled on that day on purpose. And I was
like what he says, yay, yeah, man, we want to
(19:01):
do this thing in the Grand Lodge room. And so
I thought, all right, you know, like let's do this.
Let's and so, you know, we had quite a few
people from the obviously we've probably had you know, one
hundred and fifty of the people there were delegates to
the Grand Leucturist convention. So there was I don't know,
you know, ten Grand Masters of various different Grand Lodges
(19:22):
around the world there, and then there was another you know,
I mean, total attendance was you know, in the high
three hundreds. And that's just cool. I mean, you know,
you look at these things and you see a bunch
of guys in tuxedos, you know, wearing Butcher's aprons, holding
up big glasses of beer, and everyone is, you know,
(19:43):
singing our lodge sea shanty together, and it's it's just
a cool event.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I can only imagine. I mean, I've planned two table
or festive boards from my lodge here in DC, and
I literally do that kicking and scream because I know
the amount of work that goes into it, and the
reward is always great that evening. But it is like
planning a private party at your house. You really as
the host. Sometimes you don't really get to enjoy everything
you're hoping that the company does. But in this instance, Friday,
(20:14):
January seventeenth, the food starts at six point thirty with
the event. It's the Mariners Festive Board and Beefsteak Dinner.
You can get tickets to two places. You can go
to the Mariner's Lodge website or you can get them
through the New York Maasoniccon dot com website. Either way,
we hope to see you there Friday, January seventeenth at
the Grand Lodge Building. Brother Sam, I want to talk
(20:36):
to you about something we got into a little bit earlier,
and I don't know how much of a sticking point
this is but I'm one of those guys that am
constantly correcting people. Is there a difference between a table
lodge and a festive board or should I just drop it?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I would say yes and no. I mean I most
people would tell you that a table lodge is tiled,
festive board is not. That may be a fairly modern distinction.
I think that certainly people would say, you know that
(21:12):
the brethren gathered around the festive table or whatever. Right,
I know that, as I say, independent oral large lodge
calls their event a table lodge, but during the ceremonies
of opening it, they say it's a table lodge of instruction,
and so it's not tiled. That can actually be confusing
(21:33):
to people, right who would say that a table lodge
has to be tiled because people refer to that event
as the table lodge.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Back to the role of the table lodge or festive
board in freemasonry. I think it's interesting, and we also
touched on this earlier as well, like basically it's making
a comeback, and I credit a lot of it to
like the boomer generation, especially here in d C. Most
Worshipful Joseph of Courshiat he's really into doing these but
also doing them right. And I'm sure that there's brothers
(22:05):
that are listening right now, going well, gosh, I wish
my lodge could do a table lodge, or I wish
we could do a Fessi board, But you know, we
barely have enough guys that are showing up as it is,
or there's too much cost, or nobody wants to do
the work. Can you talk a little bit about the
importance of this is I think a great opportunity to
travel to a lodge where they do it right, and
that's a cool part of a tradition.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
You know. One of the things that I did when
I became massive Mariners for the first time, we had
and we have a relationship with a lodge Adelphic Union
Lodge number fourteen and the most horseful printall Grand Lodge here.
And when you invite those guys to come, I mean,
they show up. And so there was a meeting when
I was senior warden where it was just like, you know,
(22:48):
it was just like, oh man, there's like forty five
people in the room for this meeting, you know, and
that was exciting. It didn't matter that you know, only
twenty of them were all guys, right, because guess what
and the next meeting, more than twenty of our guys
showed up, right, And so that certainly is you know,
(23:08):
you'd like for people from all over to be able
to come to an event. I mean that to me
was always in doing this beefsteak that's a board, you know.
It not a fundraiser, it's not. It was really just
meant to be, Hey, let's do a kick ass Masonic
dinner that a bunch of people are gonna come to
(23:29):
and they're gonna have a great time, and it's going
to be some unique stuff about our lodge. And I
also think that one of the best things that a
lodge can do, like to revitalize if maybe they don't
have a lot of attendance or these sorts of things,
is go to lodges that are doing it right and
steal their ideas. And you know it's listen, you know
(23:55):
you do that idea, You get this one lodge that
does this cool thing, and you're gonna you're like, I
like that idea. We're not going to do exactly what
they do, and so it's going to be I mean, listen, frankly,
the whole point of doing this festive board in the
first place is an idea that I got from independent
royal art. And you know a lot of people would
sort of look at what we do and wouldn't even
(24:17):
necessarily know that the two of the things are related
because I just sort of rewrote everything extensively.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Well, you saw it was possible from an event, but
you would have never had the gem of that idea
or the germ of that idea unless you went to
independent real arch first.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
You know, I did a lot of research from maybe
formal dining traditions and sort of went into some of
the old legends of masonry to try to find some
stuff that I could repurpose.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
That was my next question, because I've had to produce
some of this before. My lodge here in DC we
did a joint event, and this is you know, something
else that would preach to brothers or incoming masters whoever
may be listening, is that if you're thinking, I'd really
like to do this, but I don't have the resources,
whether it's you know, money, time, people to help with hands,
(25:04):
even people to help attend, think about doing joint events
with other lodges and maybe four lodges get together and
put together one great event instead of you know, four
lesser ones. But I basically had to take the what
exists for the Washington d C brand, launched jurisdiction festive
board script and then kind of marry or merge that
(25:25):
with the bethel that came to visit, the job's daughter's
Bethel that came to visit and talk about interesting all references,
all alcohol out. We couldn't have any of that at
an event with young ladies. They refer to each other
as sisters, so we had to find a way to
you know, make that work as well. But we were
(25:45):
literally writing the ritual not on the spot that day,
but like a month or so beforehand, and going you know,
between the two to make sure. And it was a
really unique experience.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
And that is a thing that I encourage really all
lodges to do, UH is to and I've helped a
lot of lodges with this to sort of make you know,
bespoke festive board ceremonies for them. I remember that there
was a Grand Master's DMLA day that happened up in
(26:18):
Utica one year and I was asked by UH most
Fortunble Bill Sardone who was a grand Master of DMLA
at that time, to help create a DMLA festive board
that we did. So they had all the DMLA boys
were actually sort of in the tables and they were
doing the ceremonies and then all there was all these
kind of rand tables around the outside that the parents
(26:41):
and the families and people like that sat out. You know,
our our grand master kicked off the first sort of
just on the festive board for the metropolitan area last year.
I think now why I say it was I created
that ceremony of them. And I think that if you're
(27:05):
a lodge who feels like that they this might be
a lot of work, or it might be difficult or
whatever it is, at least from the ceremonial standpoint, you know,
gale it down, do whatever it is that you want
to do. Like there's no you know a lot of
people feel like, oh, well, you know, the festive board
has to have the seven obligatory toasts and they have
(27:28):
to be followed by a response, and they have to
as who you know, we do we if I say,
we do a short form once a month in our lodge,
and you know what that consists of is we do
we do the opening the same opening that we do
for the beef Sake festive board. Everybody starts eating at
(27:51):
some point, there may be one or two toasts that
are done. Those are done completely ling proviso. The way
that then the toast is given afterwards is sort of
the same way. And you know, it's one of these
sort of weird things, right, which was cool about Fessor boards.
And then there's a ceremonial closing, you know, when we're
(28:14):
getting ready to go home for the night. And so
there's definitely been times when it's been one toast and
there's nothing. There's everything right about that. Actually, it makes
the evening special. It gives the brethren a reason to
stick around, and it gives guests a reason to want
to come to experience that.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I wanted to ask you about that. I'd like to
refer to this as a SAME's book for those that
are not familiar the standard working lecture of the Grand
Lodge of New York.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
It's always embarrassing if I forget some of the stuff
on there, because I'm like, yeah, I did curate that
entire book.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
You go looking through this and there's no ritual. As
you mentioned, there's nothing written down as far as a
script for a festive board. A lot of brothers turn
to the internet. I've heard of brothers say, oh, we
got this from the Grand Lodge of Wisconsin or wherever else.
Some resources that you would recommend if guys were just
looking for structure of how to put together this event,
at least when it comes to the ritual side of it.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Look, I guarantee you that if you find two or
three of these things, eventually you're going to find one
that is either just a direct copy of or highly
derivative of the independent Royal Large Table Lodge. And then
what I would suggest is to start pulling those things
apart figure out how can we do this in a
(29:29):
way that life works for us. I actually think that
every lodge really should have some unique and distinctive dining
customs that work for that lodge in a variety of contexts.
And you know, look, I don't necessarily think that it
(29:53):
would work for very many lodges to do what we
do and have like a short form best to board
once a month. That is a lot of work. Yeah,
we have a lot of stewards all of our you know,
we have an extended degree cycle, so usually you've you know,
it takes a couple of years before you're a master mason.
And guess what the ended apprentices and fellocrafts get to
(30:15):
do during the fosto boards. And I mean I do
those things too. You never ask somebody to do something
you wouldn't do yourself. When we first started doing those
my first year in the East, I also cooked all
of the dinners. But I think you just look around
and you say to yourself, Okay, so here's this thing
(30:39):
that's done. How is a way for that to like
work for me? And I would also say, certainly, if
it's something that you're going to do, like on a
regular basis, you can choose some other sorts of stuff,
some kind of cool toast that's done, or some kind
of of something that you could even do in a restaurant.
That's that's that's not you know, wouldn't necessarily disturb a
(31:04):
lot of the other people there. Right, You're not going
to sing songs, stand up and do toasts. But I
you know, one of the things that I that I saw,
which I thought was you know, kind of a cool
idea that I didn't end up appropriating was looking at
some of the I want to say, it's either a
Navy or a marine tradition in there, what it's called
dining in where there's this whole sort of ceremonial like
(31:28):
bringing a platter with the roast in, you know, and
bringing it to you know, the senior officer or whoever's
am seeing the thing or whatever it is, you know,
who sort of tastes it a little bit, you know,
cuts off a piece and tastes it and says, okay,
this is good. I declare it good, you know, and
so then they you know, there's been a few times
(31:48):
at opening of the beefsteaks that we've done a ceremonial
purging of the lodge of vegetarians and vegan which I
will say was suggested by a member of the lodge
who was a vegeta, and he's like, man, can I
just show up to this thing and like have a
couple of beers and then you can like bound me
out of the room.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
So right, worshipfulson, time has passed since we kicked off
this conversation. I'm hoping that while we've been talking, somebody
was like, hey, I got a hip pause, open up
the podcast notes, so I can get my browser open,
go to New York massonicon dot com so I can
get tickets to be a part of this, or you're
like me, you've already got yours. You've triple checked in
your Apple wallet that the ticket is there and ready,
(32:27):
so that you can be a part of this monumentous
event on Friday night, January seventeenth, at the Grand Lounge
of New York and New York City again, dinnertime is
at six thirty. For those of us that are going
for the first time, I'm selfishly asking this question. I've
taken notes. Don't eat every meat that comes to you.
This is a marathon, not a race. I don't have
(32:48):
to worry about eating with my hands, which is a
good thing. What advice do you have for the first
time or what do you want them to kind of
be prepared with before we show up.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
If you want to drink something that's not beer, bring
it that. What we provide is, you know, one of
our members is one of the owners of the Bronx Buhl,
so you know it's it's draft beer, locally produced, you know,
different brands of beer, and and that's that's what we
offer it's a meat and beer event. Come hungry and
(33:18):
well arrested. The other thing that we wanted to evoke.
You'll see sometimes these old pictures from let's say the
forties and the fifties of like you know, a first
Manhattan District, you know, dinner dance or something like that,
and you'll look at this room and it's just, you know,
all of these guys and you know, tuxedos and their
wives are dressed to the nines, and you know, the
(33:41):
tables are arranging a certain way, and you're just like, man,
that just looks so cool. You know, it would just
be great if we could have like a giant thing
like that. And you know, look, if you go on
YouTube and you do a search for Mariners Lodge Sea Shanty,
you'll be able to see, you know, circa four hundred
people all in tuxedos and Butcher's aprons, you know, singing
(34:04):
the song, and that'll give you a good idea of
what it's going to look like and what the experience
is going to be.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to
this Friday night, January seventeenth, Mariner's Lodge, number sixty seven
festive board and beefsteak dinner. I am so proud to
be able to say I get to attend this for
the first time, and we'll be looking for you. It's
going to be cool, right, Worshipful Samuellloyd Kenzie, Thank you
so much for taking time and talking about this great
(34:35):
event with us, and I look forward to seeing you
when this episode airs next month in New York City.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Right on, I'll see you soon.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Big thanks again to write Worshipful Samueloyd Kenzie for joining
us this week. If you want to join us for
dinner in just a few weeks during the New York
Massonic Con at the Mariner's Lodge Maritime Beefsteak Banquet. Does
that sound good? Get the details on how to get
your tickets and the notes for this episode. Speaking of which,
if you've enjoyed it, make sure you follow the Craftsman
(35:08):
Online podcast on Spotify and subscribe on Apple Podcasts to
get our latest episode every Monday morning. This is right
worship for Brother Michael Ars. Until next time, Peace and
harmony prevail.
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