The Traveling Ashlar Weekly Trestleboard | Edition 0006 | Week of September 28, 2026 · A.L. 6026

California Freemasons have now contributed more than $3 million through Masons4Mitts, the Grand Lodge of California's youth baseball initiative.

The 2026 campaign raised $345,000, enough to provide 17,250 baseball mitts through partnerships connected with the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Angels. The Grand Lodge also announced a record contribution connected with Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow, pushing the Giants Community Fund partnership alone beyond $1.6 million.

Masons4Mitts is a particularly visible form of Masonic charity because the result is wonderfully uncomplicated. Twenty dollars becomes a glove. A glove goes to a child. Thousands of relatively small gifts accumulate into something measurable.

For a fraternity that sometimes struggles to explain exactly what it does outside the Lodge room, 17,250 baseball mitts make a fairly good visual aid.

Freemasons in England have committed £50,000 toward emergency assistance following catastrophic flooding in Nepal.

The grant will help provide emergency supplies to survivors as disaster recovery continues. The Provincial Grand Lodge of Lincolnshire reported the contribution among its Masonic relief news this week, with the money directed through the British Red Cross to support Nepal Red Cross relief on the ground.

International disaster relief has long been one of the quieter ways Masonic charity moves beyond jurisdictional boundaries. The recipient may never see a Lodge room, recognize an apron or know much about the organization that helped fund the supplies.

That is rather beside the point.

Relief remains relief whether anyone sees the Square and Compasses attached to it.

Boston Freemason Rob Wright and a team of charity cyclists reached Land's End after riding nearly 950 miles and climbing roughly 55,000 vertical feet along the way.

By the finish, the effort had raised £10,290 for Brake, the road safety charity.

Anyone who has driven the length of Britain may reasonably conclude that riding it instead requires either admirable determination or a temporary misunderstanding of bicycles.

The important number, however, is not 950.

It is £10,290.

Masonic fundraising often looks exactly like this. A Brother chooses something difficult, other Brothers decide he has gone too far to stop now, and eventually a charity receives a check.

The Johnstown Masonic Event and Conference Center spent the weekend hosting the fourth annual Western Pennsylvania Cryptid and Supernatural Expo.

The two-day gathering brought experts, guests, vendors, craftspeople, food trucks and enthusiasts of cryptids, unexplained phenomena and the supernatural into the Masonic facility at 130 Valley Pike.

There is something particularly American about a Masonic building serving one weekend as a Lodge home and another as headquarters for people discussing Bigfoot.

Historically, Masonic halls were rarely used only for Masonry. They became lecture halls, banquet rooms, civic meeting spaces, theaters and gathering places. Renting them to the community was practical then and remains practical now.

Whether the old minutes contain many references to Sasquatch is another matter entirely.

Members of Lodge No. 2 met Saturday morning at Front Street Cafe in Philadelphia for brunch, fellowship and Masonic ritual rehearsal.

The Lodge described the gathering as an opportunity to take Freemasonry "back to its roots" by combining a hard day's work with time at the local pub. Front Street Cafe is owned by Brother Liam Larkin and managed by Brother O. Steven Schneider Jr.

Lodge No. 2 has been meeting for almost 250 years and today meets at the Philadelphia Masonic Temple.

The setting may appear informal compared with the extraordinary architecture at 1 North Broad Street, but the arrangement would not have seemed particularly strange to early speculative Masons. Taverns and public houses were central meeting places for early Lodges on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sometimes returning to the roots of the Craft simply requires finding a table large enough for everybody.

Tonight, an organization with roots stretching back more than a century will gather inside Oriental Hall at the Philadelphia Masonic Temple.

The Ye Antient, Olde & Original Joshua Association scheduled dinner for 6 p.m. followed by a 7 p.m. meeting. New members are expected to receive the wonderfully named Knife & Fork Degree.

The association is not a modern revival carrying an antique name. Records cited by Masonic writer Christopher Hodapp's Magpie Mason trace Philadelphia's Joshua Association to roughly 1907. In a 1917 Grand Chapter address, Grand High Priest Thomas McConnell Jr. described it as a voluntary association of High Priests that visited Chapters, supported ritual work and helped strengthen Royal Arch Masonry around Philadelphia.

Two years later, Grand High Priest David J. Davis again praised the association's service and fraternal spirit. Today its purpose is largely social, with membership extending beyond Pennsylvania into New Jersey and Delaware. Other Joshua Associations remain active elsewhere in Pennsylvania as well.

Masonic history is often presented through objects behind museum glass.

This particular piece of it is apparently having dinner at 5:45.

The United Grand Lodge of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory is preparing for an unusual September Quarterly Communication.

Grand Lodge says the gathering will mark the first time in its 138-year history that September will not include either the installation or proclamation of a Grand Master. The change follows the introduction of a guaranteed three-year tenure for the office. Grand Officers elected and appointed earlier this year are instead scheduled to be invested during the public portion of the gathering.

Administrative changes rarely make dramatic Masonic history, but institutions frequently reveal themselves in small procedural alterations. Ceremonies repeated annually for generations develop a rhythm of their own. Change the rhythm and people notice.

One hundred thirty-eight years is a fairly respectable streak.