Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that you have a most wonderful holiday

Thanksgiving is always an awesome holiday, but for us anyway, the guest list continually changes. Last year we had so many people come that it overwhelmed our house. Extended family, along with extended family members extended families. I remember I got trapped in a corner of the living room because we were so packed in that moving out of my corner was seemingly impossible.

So, this year we arranged to rent the Lodge, to have our family Thanksgiving there. Then we asked who was coming. A lot less this year. A lot of the people who came last year seem to be flying elsewhere this year.

We ditched the reservation of the Lodge, and are instead having a smaller gathering at our daughter’s home.

It’ll be great, and I hope that your Thanksgiving is equally great!

Photo by Meelika Marzzarella on Unsplash

OK, now that I’m halfway through my chatter about Thanksgiving, I must acknowledge that Emeth is read by Freemasons in 121 countries around the world, and only a touch over half of its subscribers live in the United States.

For all of you who don’t celebrate this holiday, or who celebrate it on a different day, sorry if this post seems odd or out of place.

But here, this is a day for giving Thanks.

And today, with this post, I’d like to give Thanks to all of you!

Thank you to everyone who reads Emeth! If it weren’t for you reading these words, they would be utterly meaningless. A writer without readers is nothing.

Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to Emeth with your email address! I’ll never abuse the trust you’ve shown in me. By providing me with your email, I can be assured that I will always be able to get Emeth to you, no matter what social media platforms or search engines do to change the way content is delivered.

Thank you to everyone who comments on the posts here! The vast knowledge that you share is helpful to me, but more importantly it is helpful to Freemasons in 121 countries throughout the world. Your taking the time to share your knowledge helps in our shared quest to create truly Legendary Freemasonry.

Thank you to everyone who shares these posts! In order to make a profoundly positive impact on our Craft we need to reach enough Masons. Your sharing helps us do just that.

A huge Thank you to everyone who has purchased a paid subscription to Emeth! None of this would be possible without your financial support. You have my deepest gratitude.

Finally, Thank you to my long suffering wife Melinda, who supports this endeavor, and indeed all of my Masonic endeavors with her paycheck each and every month.

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It seems unfair to leave this post here, for half of you are not in the United States, and you want something good to read from me!

So I offer you some superb links. Great essays written by others that I’ve truly enjoyed, and I hope that you do too.

Summer Brennan

is a true artist with words, never failing to put a smile on my face when I see her post something new:

Castaway

I found this essay from

Anna Codrea-Rado

to resonate deeply with me:

My art teacher cut up my final project. Why am I still mad about it?

Local writer

Sherman Alexie

never fails to delight, and these tiny essays are gems:

Exits & Entrances

Ted Gioia

argues that we may be on the cusp of a new Romanticism. I think that would be quite wonderful for Freemasonry, and the literature of our Craft:

Notes Toward a New Romanticism

Giles Crouch

thinks deeply about technology and society:

Our Digital Disillusionment and Hope

Thomas J Bevan

writes powerfully about the creation of art and culture:

The Internet is Boring

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If you would enjoy reading essays curated by me, please know that I post links to essays that I find interesting almost every day. You can find those links in Emeth’s Chat. There’s a link to get into that Chat right at the top of Emeth’s homepage: emeth.substack.com

You can also find it if you read with the Substack app. I don’t use the Notes feature much, but I use Chat a great deal.

Here’s a handy link:

If you don’t have the app, but want it, its available for iOS and Android. Here’s another handy link:

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Well, this has grown much longer than expected, but before I go, I have a question for you:

As you’ve no doubt noticed, I do my best to promote everyone who writes about Freemasonry on Substack. I list the active writers in my Recommendations, try to post links into most of their essays either in Chat, on Facebook or Twitter, and all the like.

I do this because I think it is really important that we get quality Masonic writing distributed as widely as possible.

But recently I’ve come to suspect that one of the writers I’ve been promoting may not actually be writing his essays. That he may be generating them with Ai instead. To my mind, this seems like a cheat to me, for Ai creates no new thought, it simply distills existing thought.

So I wonder.

Should I continue promoting those essays given what I suspect?

Please let me know what you think.