The New Masonic Temple 80 Year Anniversary

On this past Thursday, October 19th, I gave an open presentation at the New Masonic Temple in the third floor Blue Lodge room where Napthali meets. We received about thirty guests for the event which was respectable in the fact that it was also game 7 of the National Leauge Championship series.

I have been working on this presentation for over six months. In the past week I spent over three days full time trying to finalize the slides and text. In fact, I took Wednesday and Thursday off of work as paid vacation time just to complete it.

It is such a relief that it is over now, and the presentation can now just be a record for future reference. I suppose I may give the lecture a few times for different lodges in the area if they express an interest. Meanwhile, I have decided to just place it online for anyone who wishes to learn more about this incredible building.

I cannot really explain how I have become so emotional about a building. It's not simply that the building is incredible but more importantly why and by whom it was built. Some of the more fascinating material in my presentation refer to portions of the building which were planned, but never completed. Especially the dining room which was going to provide formal setting for 3,000 simultaneously!

Much of the text in the presentation is actually in 'future tense' since I copied it directly from Masonic publications before the Temple was completed.

For the first time in as long as I can recall I have a week schedule that is pretty much wide open. I'm really going to need it, to get caught back up at work after having taken some time off, and just to recharge my batteries. This past week was exhausting.

On Friday night I had my movie showing of Baraka at Patrick's home. It was a lot of fun transforming his living room into an intimate movie theatre on an 11ft diagonal movie screen. I used my new 1,000 watt dolby surround sound system, with subwoofer, for the first time. The sound in the room was almost more amazing than the images on the screen. At one point there was a giant thunderbolt in the movie and when the subwoofer kicked in I am pretty sure everyone in the room nearly jumped out of their seats. Patrick was extremely appreciative of the film.

Last night I want to our neighbor's house to watch the Saint Louis Cardinals take the first game of the World Series over the Tigers. Tonight my neighbors are all coming to my house for game two.

I really don't have much else to talk about. In the past week I watched as much Saint Louis Cardinals baseball as I could, I attended a Lions Club meeting with my wife, I attended a lodge meeting where we conferred two Entered Apprentice degrees and I gave the charge, on Thursday my presentation, and on Friday the Baraka movie showing.

I'm looking forward to taking a break, maybe read some books, and clear my head.

Here is the link to my presentation in HTML where you can browse it online. The bulk of the presentation is in the 'notes' section, since the slides are mostly showing pictures from the temple.

If you don't want to fuss with the online version, I have just uploaded the Powerpoint Slides directly. Read the notes section of the slides to get the spoken text that should go with it. I suppose I could have recorded my voice and embedded a narration but, to be honest, I'm not going to do that any time soon. Of course, if I did, I suppose people could give the presentation at a meeting even without me being there...

The oline presentation is here.
The power point slides are here.

It's roughly 28mb or so, because there are a lot of pictures. I compressed the pictures, but still wanted to keep as much visual quality as a I could.


Meryl Jannusch, member of the Temple Board Association, showing off the Happy Birthday cake I bought for the celebration.