I lost it in Court, there's a windmill that needs turned into kindling, and at long last I reveal all of the Mysteries of Freemasonry

OK, I confess that I have a distinctly surly attitude and demeanor this week, my legendary good nature has taken a beating and if I were a true Shawnee, I'd be raiding the settlements just for the hell of it today. (Read a fascinating account of the death of Captain Booth the other day in the local paper - killed by Shawnee while hoeing corn on some flatland by a creek near here.) (Damn, a 'hawk would feel good in my hands about now.) I got really iritated in Court today, and sort of lost it. It's a juvenile case, a 15 y.o. girl charged with domestic battery. Sort of boring case facts. But this young woman is drug dependent (I'm dead-bang certain), depressed (I'm almost sure) and has other serious diagnoses and I suspect what they are but am not smart enough to say with any confidence. She needs a full psychological and psychiatric evaluation and treatment plan, and that MUST be done by people who are qualified, not just some Master's level yahoos who churn cases. The f.ing politicians don't understand or particularly care about human needs and are totally clueless about the special needs of adolescents. The resources available are pitiful, and the best "we" can do is a facility far away in a month or so. In a hearing in the case in front of a Circuit Judge who's been a friend for 30 years, I just blew up and ranted and raged about the rotten way we "provide" for these youth. Mind you, often it is memorably poor parenting that has contributed a lot to these kids' problems, and society is DAMN weak there, too. But this is a proper place for government to provide services. Government is not a bad word. Government is supposed to do things that individuals cannot do on their own, and "provide for the common weal." Oh, the Judge took it in good humor, even when I went back to his chambers after the hearing (with the prosecutor) and was able to expand on my remarks with considerably richer vocabulary. I've had it up to here with mean-spirited, don't-give-a-shit, holier-than-thou (although maybe the latter can be said of me) people who abuse positions of authority.

My friend Dacey has warned me about what I write this evening. She's seen me when I'm irrational like this.

After I finish here, I'm going to compose a long, long letter to the County Commission (which is county government in WV). There are three commissioners, two of whom are friends -- one guy, I was in Boy Scouts with 40 years ago; the other is a former police chief who I've known for 30 years. I've talked about my EMS experiences. I can honestly claim that I was a decent paramedic - not great, not top 10%, not even real good, but decent given that I was coming out of a then-volunteer company. I was a much better administrator, have represented the state Department of Health Office of EMS, yadda, yadda, yadda. A fire department in a nearby village has asked the commission to approve their running an ambulance for EMS. (The County owns the 911 center. The Commission can't prohibit someone from buying a rig and running it, but they do determine who is where on the alarm list.) A further-out department did a midnight-requisition for approval a couple of weeks ago, and this is some sort of "me, too" phenomenon. This is a dumbass idea. It would be nice to have an EMS station and fire station on every street corner. But the cost would be ruinous and the call volume would be so low that nobody in the system would have enough work to maintain their skills. At my peak, I was doing 30 or 40 calls a month, and that wasn't anywhere near enough to keep my skills sharp. This little town has 15 to 20 emergency medical calls a month in their entire response area. I know that this sounds rather dull. Indeed, many organs of government and public service are invisible nearly all of the time. When you suddenly have to call 911, then you care deeply about the ability of the system to deal with the need, but it's just uncomfortable to worry about that in advance. Well, what ho, I'm in the exact frame of mind to spout some passion.

And at last, as promised, I am now prepared to reveal, right here, in a forthright manner never seen by me in any of the study I have done on the subject, all of the deepest, darkest, most intimate secrets of Freemasonry. Here we go. Are you ready? Really? The fundamental key to the secrets are . . . (Will I be assassinated for revealing this? Like the teaser at the end of a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon, am I on the Brink of Doom?) The key is . . .
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Google.

Yes, Google. Anybody who thinks that the Freemasons are a secret society is too stupid or too crazy to Google. Freemasonry has no secrets. Go to Google - Hell, I'll even tell you the search terms: "Masonic ritual" - You'll get hundreds and hundreds of hits, all of which purport to tell these so-called deep, dark secrets. Some of these sources are pure fantasy. (Hint: If the article mentions a strange diety by the name of "Baphomet," or talks about the symbols on the back of the dollar bill, you are reading the work of someone with severe mental problems.) Some of the articles were written by people who were probably Masons, but hadn't paid a whole lot of attention to what goes on. And some are spot on. Now, I won't tell you which is which - I have promised not to. I keep my promises. But there are millions of Masons worldwide, and you can't keep a secret among that many people. Some of these guys don't keep their promises. One of them is a Master Mason who was the lay-minister of a fringe church that last inhabited the building where No. 3 is located. He had some sort of religious epiphany, and went on TV on a local "Christian" station, and there attempted to recreate the lodge room and show these terrible secrets. He obviously hadn't learned much of the "work," what we call the ritual, and some of his performance was buffoonery. I regard him as an oath-breaker. I don't like oath-breakers. But unlike some claims, we don't chuck the oath-breakers off the South Side Bridge, we just never trust them again.

Some of the brothers are bothered by the fact that these "secrets" are so readily available. Personally, I absolutely don't care. First of all, the secrets aren't designed for much security. Masonry can be traced through documents going back to the 14th Century, and can be traced very well beginning in 1717. The "secrets" today are the same as they were 300 years ago - same words, same handgrips, same "signs." If the CIA didn't change code words for 300 years, do you think that they'd still be secret?

Second, read all you want on the net or at the public library, find the accurate resources, knock yourself out. I don't care. This poor scribe tries to string words together to paint pictures, and even a blind squirrel gets a nut now and then, so sometimes I get it right. Let's say that I were to write about sky-diving. I would talk about the butterflies in my stomach as I carefully checked every line and buckle on the parachute. I would describe the airplane with the open door, and watching the concrete of the runway speeding by as we take off, the painted lines getting more and more blurred. And the fear of standing in the doorway, and the terror of dropping away, followed by such wonderful freedom and laughing and . . . you get the drift. And then, if a member of the sporting/athletic fraternity were to ask me how many jumps I'd made, I would have to say, "None, do think I'm nuts?" That athlete would then know me to be an ignorant posseur, who might talk a good game but who had zero understanding of the real experience. Ditto for the ritual. Read it all you want. It is indescribably different to be a part of it, to experience it. Every time I see it or participate in it, I learn a little more, reflect a little more. Freemasonry is nothing sinister. It's an association of hopefully good men who want to be better men. It turns the thoughts inward. It is a place of "friendship, morality and brotherly love." The only requirement is that you not be an atheist - you gotta believe in God. Or Allah. Or Shiva. Or whoever. You do not discuss religion in lodge. You do not discuss politics in lodge. When I'm at the lodge, I'm not the fat guy. (Social interaction is a problem for one of my appearance.) I am one of the brothers. If I do only what I can (e.g., due to weight and a knee injury from high school wrestling, I cannot kneel), nobody comments, nobody cares.

There are lots of crazies out there who love to expose conspiracies. I mentioned the back of the dollar bill. It's not masonic in origin. The designer, Charles Thomson, was not a mason. The only Mason involved in that project was Benjamin Franklin, and if you recall, his strong preference for the turkey as the national symbol was ignored. The pyramid is just an unfinished pyramid. The is the All-Seeing Eye, a common symbol for God at that time. Look at the CBS logo - it's the All-seeing Eye. The Pinkerton Agency used the same symbol. So did the "Vigilance Committees." The crazies read the motton on the reverse of the dollar bill, "novus ordo seclorem," and translate it to "New World Order," the code word for world government by the Zionists and the black-helicopter-flying United Nationists. Unfortunately, they are lousy at Latin. They ignore that "seclorem" is plural and refers to "the ages." Well, that's what America was in the 18th Century, a new order for the ages, the first representative democracy, the first nation to secure and guarantee the rights of average folks. (Magna Carta only applied to the upper class.) Sometimes, the "anti-Masons" point to a very strange guy, Albert Pike, as proof of the conspiracy. Pike was a lawyer (who was undistinguished in the law), a Confederate infantry general (equally undistinguished in military matters) and a brillaint (if obscure) classical scholar. He spoke and wrote in Greek and Latin, and about just as obscurely when he was writing in English. The work that the crazies cite to is Morals and Dogma, which is a source document for the "Scottish Rite" of Freemasonry. I'm a Scottish Rite Mason. I have a copy of Morals and Dogma. It's stunningly dull, and I've not read all of it. There are minor portions which explain the libertarian views of Masonry as a whole - the lack of need for intercessors with Deity, the freedom of citizens. But it's dull, dull, dull. It's unfortunate that some folks spend loads of time looking for darkness and conspiracies. Life is just too short.

By the way, Pete, Dacey had to explain your comment about the jars. I was just way to dense.

Pippa passes. Mizpah.

R