Nice article! It's not a totally positive spin article for us in Western Ny state BUT not a bad one either! At least not for the younger open minded folks. I've fowarded it to some of the folks that have email and we'll see what kind of discussion it stimulates. As Jr Past Master (for a few more weeks) I can say that the men we've raised in the last 4 years have all been young and most have remained as active as their home lives have allowed. We've not had a huge number beating on the doors BUT the ones that have are active. Tattoos have replaced elderly surgery scars in the candidates prep room. They aren't the norm in our area yet and we are preppared to deal with various peircings too. LOL! We will be conferring the EA next Tuesday on a Website contact and I've just this week had another contact from the website. Not fast a furious BUT they are seeking the light thru a few mouse clicks. We are trying to offer more than the regular "business" meetings now too. It's a slow process but it's coming along. The more we get the more help we have to do more too! We are working on an upward spiral I feel.

A friend of mine, Dick Pierce, in the Culver City lodge told me that he knows Zulu from the article. He told me that he is a very gentle man despite his appearances. Overall I liked the article. Granted I'm still only an Entered Apprentice, I still am very happy to see at least some attention being paid to this amazing group of men.

A nice article to be sure. While our lodge's average age is still well above 50, since I was raised last September I've seen so many new brothers coming in that I wonder if our walls will explode from the pressure some nights. Since then, I've participated in 90% of the degree work that has gone on in our lodge, and it has been a hectic schedule. I owe a lot of that to our website, which isn't the most flashy, but gives us a presence in the community and easy access for interested men.

I am told that last year we did 64 nights of degree work which resulted in 31 new Master Masons. We are on track to beat that figure this year. The average age of new brothers has been low-mid 30's. We have a wide cross-section of men, not all of whom are originally from this area. We don't have a wide representation of various distinct religions, but we do need to pull various holy books out from time to time.

We eat well and often. One thing to be said is that Masons are usually well-fed and will come out of the woodwork for a dinner.

We set a nice milestone last year as the GL of Kansas was able to make a contribution to the Kansas Masonic Cancer Research Hospital in excess of $15 million thanks to the donations of our brothers across the state. That's donations from just a single year. We've set a goal to beat that this year at $20 million.

I agree with the article that we are getting more diverse and that it seems to be one of the last bastions of male freedom of speech. Where we can be the kind of men we want to be or become, in company of other men who share that vision, but bring so much experience from outside your own that you can't help but gain a more open-minded view of the world.

Now if only we had stripper nights, eh? (Just kidding......)