The North Carolina Mason

January/February 2020 The North Carolina Mason Page 11 TravelinG the tar heel state DUNN – Palmyra #147 has started a Rainbow Girls auxilliary and is organizing a DeMolay chapter. Master Jerry Lee Honeycutt II says the idea came from a random conversation with Brother Carl Underwood about how Underwood loved Ma- sonry and first got involved through DeMolay. He came to lodge and told his story and about the impact DeMolay had on his life. Not long after that, Honeycutt ran into Bill McMillan and his wife Mandy. Bill, who was becoming a Shriner, mentioned they were involved with Rainbow Girls. They, too, came to Palmyra to talk about the organization. The lodge readily agreed to take action to start a chapter of each organization. Within a few months, almost 18 girls were recruited and in November, the lodge initiated the girls. Work is under way on a DeMolay chapter. Six boys have been recruited so far. More are expected. SOUTHERN PINES – Brothers donned historic garb to welcome two En- tered Apprentices in January. The Southern Pines #484 degree team wore colonial attire for the ritual welcoming Brian Campton and Bradley Whitaker. The degree team consisted of Southern Pines officers and two others from the 21st District. By omas Pope Stedman #730 So, your lodge has a file cabinet(s) full of minutes, Records of Doings, photos, correspondence, and so on. What's one to do with all that stuff ? Here's one option every lodge should strongly consider: Digitize all those items, and more, and provide the Grand Lodge with a copy for archival purposes. "at's the history of the lodge," Grand Secretary Walt Clapp said. "at's recorded history." ink about it: Wouldn't your lodge want to leave behind a legacy that can be studied for generations of future Masons, historians and researchers? Wouldn't you want to have a backup copy of everything that's been important to your lodge's existence someplace other than a file cabinet? It's not difficult to digitize this kind of material. Anyone with access to a scanner and a computer can handle the job. It's just a matter of devoting the time to the endeavor. It can even become a lodge project if several people can agree on "naming conventions" – that is, how the files will be named for uniformity. Lodges wanting to digitize their historical documents should stick to a few basics. Minutes, letters, lodge histories, installation bulletins and such are best saved as PDF (Portable Document Format) files, as that allows the sharing of files between computers and across operating systems. "e history of a lodge is some- thing you'd want to digitize, as is correspondence," said Jonathan Underwood, assistant grand secre- tary. "People don't write letters the way they used to, but if there is something of interest, consider scanning that. Letters from DDGMs, DDGLs, the Grand Lodge; that kind of thing." Scanned photographs are best saved in .jpg or .tif formats, he added. What's the best way to get those digitized files to the Grand Lodge for safekeeping? A thumb drive is fine, or they can be transmitted via applications such as Dropbox. Use of a DVD or CD works, too. If your lodge doesn't have access to a scanner, there's a solution for that: the Grand Lodge office in Raleigh has them. Lodges that are willing can bring their documents there, drop them off for processing, then return at a designated time to retrieve them. "If lodges feel like it's daunting to try to tackle it themselves," Under- wood said, "we'll help them any way we can and write them a receipt." When in doubt, best solution is to always digitize lodge records REMINDER: Time to opt Out! If you're holding this issue of the newspaper in your hands, here's your chance to save some trees and bucks. Join your brothers who have begun reading the Mason online, via the link on the Grand Lodge web page every month. We thank you for reading the Mason, in any form, of course! We are happy to bring it to all in both forms for as long as there are brothers out there who read the paper. And we invite your stories and photos via our dedicated email address: ncmason@glnc.us. But for those who prefer online reading and don't want to get a paper version in the mail, you're just a few clicks away from setting that up. Send an email to ncmason@glnc.us with your name, mailing address, lodge and the words: "OPT OUT." That's all you need to do. Then go to www.Grandlodge-nc.org and link to the NC Mason via the big blue tab on the left, halfway down the homepage. On the right side of that page, you will see this blue tab: SUBSCRIBE. That guarantees that we will send you an automatically generated email when a new issue is posted online. Again, thanks for reading the Mason!

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