MONTGOMERY-CORNERSTONE
LODGE NO. 195
A. F. & A. M.
Chartered November 22 1893
April 2015
ROCKVILLE MASONIC TEMPLE
612 GREAT FALLS ROAD
ROCKVILLE, MD 20850
(301) 762-3422
Regular Communications First and Third Tuesdays
Remember the Maryland Masonic Homes
With your gifts and in your will.
Weather Policy
If public schools are closed due to bad weather, the Lodge will be closed
Montgomery-Cornerstone Lodge #195 Trestle Board
March 2015
April
7
Tuesday
April
21
Tuesday
Stated Communication
► Lodge will open at 7:30pm for the conferral of the Fellowcraft degree on
multiple brothers.
► Lodge open to FCs and MMs only
Stated Communication
► Lodge will open at 7:30pm
Guest speaker Bro. Nick McIntosh on events on 9/11 at the Pentagon
► EAs and FCs are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Dates to Remember
April
11
Saturday
April
28
Tuesday
Rockville Masonic Temple Open House
612 Great Falls Rd, Rockville, MD 20850
Saturday April 11th, 2015 from 8am to 4pm (food & drinks)
Joint Master Mason degree at
Kensington-Bethesda Lodge No. 198
4315 Howard Avenue, Kensington, MD 20895
May
19
Stated Communication
Master Mason degree conferral
Tuesday
FROM THE SECRETARY’S DESK
Updating your contact information and/or notify us of deaths
Please notify our Lodge if you plan to move, change phone numbers, or know about any
of our brothers deaths, by contacting our Secretary, Bro. Romain Tweedy via email at:
[email protected]
Sunday Breakfast ($5.00 Donation)
Sunday Breakfast at the
Rockville Template
Made-to-order eggs are available
from 8:00 — 8:30am.
Bagels only after 8:30am
April
5
April
12
April
19
April
26
Have something to share or advertise on our next newsletter?
All material for must be submitted for approval by the 15th of every month to allow
enough time for reviewing. Please email Bro. Rod Olivares at [email protected]
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FROM THE EAST
Brethren,
On the heels of completing our first full month of meetings
this year, I want to thank everyone who came out to hear
our presentation on March 3rd by Brother Chuck Crossett
(despite the questionable weather) and our Entered
Apprentice degree conferral on March 17th where we
initiated three new brothers into the fraternity: Brothers
Yaw Pepra, Teddy Wellington, Jr., and Major Williams. I
thought our officers did an excellent job and I hope our
newest EAs enjoyed their introduction into the world of
Freemasonry. Thank you so much to those visiting brothers
in attendance for our EA degree conferral. It was a
wonderful and unexpected surprised to see so many of you
and I hope that you will join us again in the future! Additionally, a big thank you to our
PJW Scott Goldschein for organizing the dinner we had before our March 3rd meeting.
We are continuing our busy schedule into next month. At our first meeting on April 7th,
we will be conferring the Fellowcraft degree on several brothers and on April 21st we will
be hearing a presentation from Brother Nick McIntosh (purely coincidental, I promise) on
his experience at the Pentagon during the events surrounding 9/11. No dinner is planned
before either meeting as of right now and both are scheduled to start at the usual 7:30pm.
On a different note, I am pleased to be able to announce that our new website is up and
running. Please head over to mc195.org when you have a chance and take a look. It is
still in its early stages of development and will be a work in progress as we can continue
to compile content. Many thanks to brother Rodrigo Olivares for all of his extremely hard
work in this endeavor. We also have created a public Facebook (separate from our
current private page) and Twitter page in an attempt to cover all of our bases for those
seeking us (or Freemasonry in general) on the internet. These pages will be used mainly
for announcements and a means of being able to contact the lodge with questions or to
get more information. For those of you reading this electronically, there will be links at
the bottom of this page that will take you to both pages. Thanks to our Treasurer Tom
Graham for setting up both of these pages. We also have received our new “Square”
payment system which will now allow us to accept credit card payments instead of only
being able to pay in cash. Hopefully this will make it easier for many of you who don’t
normally carry cash (like me) to be able to pay for dinner/breakfast or make donations.
I am doing my best to move us into the 21st Century as a lodge and I couldn’t do it
without the help and support of so many of you. Thank you again.
Sincerely & Fraternally,
Ian McIntosh
Worshipful Master
facebook.com/mc195md
twitter.com/MCLodge195
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March 2015
Masonic Birthdays
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
Bro.
George
Harold
John
Raymond
Walter
Myer
Louis
James
Richard
Charles
Morris
Steven
Peter
Behrouz
Meredith
Armin
Robert
Peter
Paul
Robert
Clyton
David
Ian
Thomas
Dominic
Matthew
Robert
Patrick
Ramon
Rodrigo
Sonny
Alan
David
Gordon
Lee
Bartel
Mitchel
Richard
James
Henry
Jay
Thomas
Clyde
Kramer
Raymond
Ivan
R
Lamont
Karloff
Lee
Mathew
William
Antonio
Robert
Norman
Alan
Ignacio
Hanlen
Goldstein
Wharen
Brunner
Capel
Kahn
Numkin PM
Wilcox
McManis
Miller
Ebgi
Hatfill
Heister
Sarabi
Walters
Sarabi
Shaffer
Kotcher
Matukaitis
Benford
Collymore
Gellman
McIntosh
Musgrove Sr
Slavin
Willis
Blanken
Hyde
Izquierdo
Olivares
4/29/1957
4/5/1960
4/19/1961
4/8/1974
4/6/1982
4/6/1982
4/6/1982
4/26/1982
4/9/1987
4/13/1992
4/28/1997
4/28/1997
4/26/1999
4/1/2000
4/19/2001
4/20/2004
4/17/2007
4/23/2007
4/23/2007
4/14/2012
4/14/2012
4/14/2012
4/14/2012
4/14/2012
4/14/2012
4/14/2012
4/13/2013
4/13/2013
4/13/2013
4/15/2014
2015 Montgomery-Cornerstone Lodge
No. 195 Officers
Worshipful Master
Ian McIntosh
[email protected]
Senior Warden
Paul McFadden
[email protected]
Junior Warden
Robert Blanken
[email protected]
Secretary
Romain Tweedy
[email protected]
Treasurer
Thomas Graham
[email protected]
Senior Deacon
Barry Rosen, PM
[email protected]
Junior Deacon
Dominic Slavin
[email protected]
Senior Steward
David Holland
[email protected]
Junior Steward
Christopher Miller
[email protected]
Marshal
James D. Knight, PM
[email protected]
Chaplain
Louis M. Numkin, PM
[email protected]
Tyler
Thomas Marraffa, PM
[email protected]
Ritualist
Barry Rosen, PM
[email protected]
Grand Inspector
Dan B. Lane, PM, WPJGS [email protected]
Dep. Grand Lecturer
Harold A. Garren, PM
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[email protected]
CANDIDATE AND NEW MEMBER STATUS
Awaiting Investigative Report Results and/or Election
Kennedy, Eugene Merwyn
Kenneth, D. Lonogan
Awaiting Conferral of FC Degree
Hinkel, Christopher S. EA
Hinkel, Robert A. EA
Awaiting Conferral of MM Degree
Seiden Richard N. FC
Reed, Stephen FC
Awaiting EA Proficiency Completion
Abdoun, Seifed-Din
EA
Pepra, Yaw
EA
Afsharjavan, Artin
EA
Wellington, Teddy, Jr. EA
Beresniovas, Rokas EA
Jackson, James S.
EA
Congedo, Isaac
EA
Rabin, Howard A.
EA
Evans, John Z.
EA
Tajdar, Ali
EA
Fawole, Ezekiel A.
EA
Williams, Major A
EA
Awaiting FC Proficiency Completion
Agbale, Divine M.
FC
Rose, William
FC
Daniels, Michael
FC
Rumpke, Adam
MM
Solomon, Lawrence
FC
Awaiting MM Proficiency Completion
Pascual, Reginald
MM
Street, Ryan
MM
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The Copiale Cipher - A Fascinating Story
On March 3rd 2015, we had Brother Chuck Crossett from the Maryland Masonic
Research Society deliver an astonishing presentation about the Copiale Cipher – an
encrypted manuscript that (until recently) no expert had been able to decipher. Hidden
away for over two and a half centuries, the Copiale Cipher reveals a fascinating story.
Over the past few years it has received a great deal of attention, not only from popular
media and historians, but of course our masonic community as well. Why?
For those that were not able to attend the presentation, we wanted to share the essence
of this story with you.
_ _ _
On October 24th, 2011, The New York Times released an article about how revolutionary
tools helped crack a code dating back to around 1730. They were referring to the Copiale
Cipher, which had been sitting around for over four decades, since it was first uncovered
in eastern Germany in the 1970s.
The Copiale Cipher consists of 75,000 wonderfully crafted handwritten characters filling
around 100 pages. Throughout the entire book, only two phrases were clear; “Copiale 3”,
which was found at the beginning of the book and probably stands for copy #3; and
“Philipp 1866” found on the flyleaf who is believed to have been the owner of this copy,
sometime in the mid 19th century.
Christiane Schaefer, a philologist (expert in ancient written languages) was given dozens
of photocopies of this mystery book by a colleague back in 1998. She was then leaving
Germany and heading to Sweden, where she would spend the next thirteen years trying
to decode it, but to no avail.
Then in January of 2011 she met Kevin Knight, a professor at the University of Southern
California (Information Sciences Institute). They crossed paths after one of his lectures
where he was a featured speaker at the University of Uppsala. Kevin’s main area of
research, is natural language processing. He is a specialist in computer translation, where
the computer automatically translates text from one language to another.
Schaefer presented Kevin with the challenge she had been struggling with for so long.
Soon after their meeting, she mailed a copy of the manuscript to him, which would soon
demonstrate to have been a fulfilling decision for both.
Technology proved to be at the core of decrypting the coded manuscript. But what really
earned the attention of historians and the masonic community was what this book said.
At the center of their discovery they found it described a small secret society that
centered on early ophthalmological practices – the Oculists. Up to this point, the oculists
had been thought to be a “society” or group dedicated to the study of a burgeoning field of
science. The Oculists were possibly a kind of guild or scientific society, where the latest
practices were discussed, or standards of skill were judged and accredited. But hidden
deeper in the text they found an 18th century Germanic version of Masonic rituals. So why
are these rituals buried inside an encoded manuscript from the Great Enlightened Society
of Oculists? These and many other questions may never be answered or fully
understood, or at least not for now.
Chuck Crossett offers an insightful explanation of the different theories behind The
Copiale Cipher in his paper delivered on March 29th, 2014, and it is available to all
members of the Maryland Masonic Research Society (www.md-mrs.com). Membership is
open to all who have an interest in Freemasonry.
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Note from a Brother
Graditude from a Grateful Brother
James D. Knight, PM
Brethren, I know that I am a bit late with my acknowledgement of your
compassion, brotherly Love and words of encouragement following the death of my lovely
wife Sarah (Sally to most of you). I am still finding it extremely difficult to accept the lost of
this wonderful, loving partner of sixty-four years.
Without your assistance the
difficulty of this task would be many
times more difficult. Your kind words
of encouragement, gentle
hugs, pats on the back and
compassionate demeanor have helped
me greatly to overcome this terrible
loss.
I particularly want to thank
you all for the many Mass cards, Notes
of sympathy, the contribution to Sally’s
favorite charity and your attendance at
her service. Also, I can never re-pay
our Past Master, Michael Codori, for
his constant care and assistance. He
was always at the elbow of our family
members and myself throughout
the tragedy He is a prime example
of that Brotherly Love and affection we so often refer to in our Fraternity.
Thank you my Brothers and Sisters. I love you all.
Fraternally and Sincerely,
Jim
2015 Montgomery County School of Instruction
All County Schools of Instruction are held at 7:30 PM on the first Monday of the month at
the lodge hall of the host lodge except where noted. All officers are urged to attend,
members are welcome to attend. The next Montgomery County School of Instruction will
be held on Monday, April 6, 2015 at Montgomery-Cornerstone No. 195. Program will be
Master Mason degree.
The Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Maryland
Kenneth S. Wyvill, Jr - Most Worshipful Grand Master
341 International Circle Cockeysville, Maryland 21030
(410) 527-0600
www.mdmasons.org www.askamarylandmason.com
For a full list of Neighboring Lodges please visit www.mc195.org
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8
Dated Announcement
Please deliver by
March 31, 2015
Non Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit No. 2029
Suburban, MD
20898-9998
*For now you may still receive a copy of the print version through the mail
IMPORTANT: If you are interested in only receiving a digital copy of our monthly newsletter, please opt -in by going to:
www.mc195.org
CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED
Montgomery-Cornerstone Lodge
No. 195 A. F.& A.M.
612 Great Falls Road
Rockville, MD 20850-2829