Leaving The Kitchen Table

The Three Links Odd Cast

Take one seventy-year Odd Fellow, his great grandson, a twenty-year Odd Fellow from Indiana, a guy from the neighborhood looking for a "thirty-year project" and a few other new folks and put them together and you have the recipe for reviving a lodge that had become profoundly inactive as they retreated from the community and membership had shrunk. They had become a "kitchen-table lodge," content to meet casually around the kitchen table. With the involvement of the new members and the guidance of the older ones, the lodge has successfully moved from being complacent to vibrant. Now a hive of activity, Queen City Lodge #1 of Burlington, Vermont is the place to be for all kinds of activities, from collecting food for the food bank to tabletop gaming. We talk with Ryon, Alex, Everett, Brandin, and Dylan about how they remade the lodge culture and took what was otherwise a nondescript lodge and made it a hub for community participation. Along the way they brought back the ritual and regalia (and are still looking for Third-Degree collars for all their new members) and are now functioning as a traditional Odd Fellows lodge. There's no Shoutout for this episode but we did want to share the fundraiser by Osage Lodge #712 in Pennsylvania. They are selling bicentennial pins for the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania. They can be ordered be emailing [email protected]. This episode's Odd Podge has Alex telling a classic fraternal joke, Ryon complimenting Alex on being appointed District Deputy Grand Master, Toby talking about presenting a scholarship on behalf of the Grand Lodge and Rebekah Assembly of Washington, Ainslie previewing his lodge's garbage pickup and movie night, and Mike talking about an upcoming wedding with a lot of Odd Fellows involvement. PS—in case anyone has collars to donate to Queen City Lodge #1, email Alex at [email protected].