John Ratcliff's Weblog

I had a fun and full weekend. On Friday night I took all of my neighbors to the Moolah Shrine Circus. Here is a picture of me in my Shriners hat holding Shelly Solomon. I really enjoyed the Circus and look forward to being more involved in it next year. On Saturday we were planning on attending a fair at the Daniel Boone home, but it was rained out. Instead I spent the day at home getting all of our DeMolay materials organized. On Saturday evening we had our friends the Solomons over for dinner. After dinner we watched one of my favorite movies "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". This morning I tried getting all of our DeMolay photographs organized. At 11am I took 13 people to a Saint Louis Cardinals baseball game. It was my first time at the new stadium. The family had a great time and the Cardinals blew out the Washington Nationals 9-2. This evening I started setting up a weblog for Troy DeMolay . So far all I have done is upload some photographs. In the up...

A Recycled Post Today's post I did not write. At least not the me that is in this part of time and space. The Internet is an amazing thing. About 20 years ago, when my brother first got a 300 baud modem at work and showed me how you could log onto computers and exchange messages, I caught the bug. Over the course of decades I have posted thousands of messages containing random shit that would wander into my head. Most of that is lost. Not just from my own memory but also the bit stream of the interent that didn't' really exist at the time. Prior to the Internet, or at least before it became mainstream, we had pay services like Compuserve and Genie. Well, a bunch of the messages that flowed on those services did end up in Internet archives and live on today. I searched Google this evening on my name. I do that from time to time to see where the links have travelled. I ran across the following message. Apparently, late one night after many beers, I posted the following messa...

Too often it happens that a Society with high ideals and worthy objectives becomes completely absorbed in the secondary interest of perpetuating itself. It is not seeking for light in the interest of reaching its objectives, but for those proofs that will support its claim to validity as an organization. My study of religion, as it has developed across the centuries, compels the conclusion that sometimes that which began as a positive faith in something big, and compelling, and universal, degenerated into a negative prejudice against all other beliefs. Instead of seeking for clearer truth, the organization has become absorbed in establishing its claim to infallibility as the source and custodian of all truth. We are not interested in keeping Freemasonry alive as an organization, just for the sake of keeping it alive. We are not interested in trying to justify our right to live today because of something that happened a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. Rather are we intereste...

What a surprising coincidence . My friend Adam Moravanszky stumbled across a parade in Zurich this weekend and po sted pictures on his website . As chance would have it, today I was *in* my first parade ever as a Shriner . The Moolah Shriner's Circus Parade was today. I drove my BMW convertible with the DeMolay Sweetheart Destiny Hall, and the Associate Sweetheart Jessica Fox. It was a lot of fun and my wife took some pictures. In fact, I just transferred all of the pictures from my camera this evening and I decided to bump my recently depressing posts with some happier memories of things, people, and activities in my life. Our Moolah Shrine Sweetheart wearing my Shriner's hat and sitting on the back of my car, Chelsea Thomasson is also the Worthy Advisor of Wentzville Rainbow Assembly sponsored by my lodge . I don't know the name of the young man sitting next to her, and wearing her crown, but I will revise the post when I find out. Here I am in the parade with our Sweet...

Curtis Cannell Curtis was so proud of getting the cover of PC Gamer. He did the high resolution soldier artwork and the battle scene below. Some of the first press for Planetside using artwork by Curtis Cannell This was my second very long day this week. Today I attended the funeral of my good friend Curtis Cannell. I have known Curtis for many years. First we worked together at Simutronics and later, when I set up the Sony Online Entertainment office in St. Louis, I brought him on there. Curtis was a brilliant artist, as you can see from the image scan above. Here is a link to the full resolution image of the drawing. This was just a drawing Curtis did for fun one evening. When he left St. Louis I asked him if I could have a drawing to remember him by and he gave me this. It was one of his favorite pieces but I assured him how much it would mean to me. I'm glad I have it to remember him by. If you have photographs, paintings, or drawings of Curtis that you would like to share, p...

"Good Morning America" did a piece on Freemasonry yesterday morning. You can view the video by following this link . The story featured members of the Supreme Council of the 33rd degree Scottish Rite in Washington D.C. If you ignored the scary music, lurid images, and over the top teasers that GMA ran, the story itself was well balanced and presented the Fraternity in a very positive light. I was especially impressed with how well the two brothers spoke. My favorite part was when the brother refused to allow the commentator to paint declining membership in the Fraternity as if it were caused by our adherence to tradition. He pointed out, quite clearly, that membership is declining nationwide in all service organizations, period. Apparently the average American has plenty of time to watch 'American Idol' or take their children to fifty soccer matches or swim team practices but can't bring themselves to give a few hours a month back to their community. Do these ki...

Yesterday was a very long day, and I'm glad it is over. I took the day off of work to help my father settle his affairs. At 7:30am I drove from my home in Lake Saint Louis to Hermann Missouri to meet my father at the bank there. Between 9am and 10am we closed out two outstanding loans that he had, and signed some paperwork. Next I drove to Jefferson City and met with my Mom. We took Mom up to a local bank and got more paperwork signed and notarized. I had this much taken care of by noon. I spent a lot of time talking to both my mother and father before I left them for the day. Next I drove *back* to Hermann Missouri from Jefferson City. There I filed paperwork with the recorder of deeds. I wrapped that up at around 1pm. Fortunately the day was beautiful, hovering around 80 degrees and sunny most of the time. I put the top down on my convertible and at least enjoyed the drive through the countryside as I took care of my errands. The next stop was Owensville, Missouri where I met wit...

I figure I might as well make a post about what is really going on in my life; otherwise, when I look back here in a year I will feel terrible that I didn't make a single note about what is going on. Yesterday a very dear friend of mine died suddenly of a heart attack. His name is Curtis Cannell and he was only 37 years old. Curtis was a brilliant artist who I had the good fortune of working with for many years. We had a mutual friend, Jeff Dobson, and their greatest goal was that they would be able to work together again. Recently Curtis was able to join a team with Jeff, and he was extremely happy down in Austin, Texas. Today it was such a shock to absolutely everyone. Curtis was mowing the lawn on Sunday and began to feel some chest pain. He assumed he was just getting overheated so, he finished mowing the lawn and then went inside. He called his good friend Drew and said he might need to go to the hospital. On the way to the hospital he had a heart attack and died before he arr...

This is a potentially controversial post. Or, at least 'off topic' at the worst. That said, I haven't posted anything new in a while so I figure I might as well make a cross-post at least. On 'another forum' there was a lengthy discussion as to whether a Buddhist could, or could not, be a Freemason. The tone of the thread quite bothered me. In my view it was purely a question of semantics. If a Brother professes a belief in 'God' that is all we can ask him. We *cannot require he believe in a specific definition of deity*! We simply cannot do that. If the candidate says he puts his trust in God, that is the end of it. We cannot ask him, which God do you believe in? We cannot ask him what church do you attend? We cannot give him a litmus test of any particular flavor of Christianity or some other world (or more likely) personal religion. More to the point, for a bunch of Freemasons to argue over who 'can or cannot' be a Freemason because we do, or do ...

I died adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition..... Voltaire ~ Voltair was initiated into Freemasonry on this day in 1778 in the Lodge of the Nine Sisters, in Paris, France. He was escorted into the lodge by Benjamin Franklin and the Count de Gebelin. The presiding officer was Joseph La Lande, famous astronomer; the wardens were the Comte de Stroganoff (Court Chamberlain to the Empress Catherine of Russia) and Colonel de la Roches. The Voltaire Society of America

For over the three years I have had this web log I have avoided talking about my job here. In fact, I am still avoiding it. However, in doing so, I have also avoided talking about one of my passions which is computer programming. Recently I started a new web log just to talk about computer programming stuff and, when I'm not posting here, it often means I'm posting there. I'm working on something I think it 'really cool' right now and just posted a progress update tonight. So, if you are curious what I'm doing when I'm not being a Freemason-Shriner-DeMolay dude, you can read about it here .

Ok, so I admit it is a weak blog entry just to embed another funny Google Video. Nevertheless, if you haven't seen it yet, this one is great. Some might find it sacreligous so please view it in the spirit of levity.

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF MASONRY Freemasonry unites men who, in brotherly formations and through honorable and ritualistic methods, endeavor to achieve spiritual understanding and moral refinement. Universal Charity, Brotherhood, Beneficence and Education toward these and everything which benefits humanity are its main purposes, Freedom or religion, of conscience, and of thought are Freemasonry's highest goal. Freemasonry accepts without religious, racial, national or political prejudice or without regard to station in life, upright and moral men as Brothers. Freemasonry recognizes in the structure of the World in all that lives in the inner consciousness of man a divine Creator-Spirit, full of Wisdom, strength and Beauty, and reveres Him as the Great Architect of the Universe. Freemasonry is a moral, not a political order and takes no part in political or religious disputes. It is not a religious society, not a secret alliance, demands no unlawful secrecy and imparts no magical informa...