I had a great time at Advance Lodge in Queens yesterday at Quest XXIX. Many thanks to Jay and all of the brethren there for their kind hospitality and their warm welcome. And I thoroughly enjoyed Richard Eberle's presentation on the Templars and the GL of New York's acquisition of the Vatican's reprint of the Chinon Parchment.
I spent the afternoon over at Flushing Meadows Corona Park looking for my lost youth—the site of the 1964 Word's Fair. I was last there when I was 6. Apart from the incredible Unisphere built for the fair, and the crumbling New York Pavilion (destroyed in the end of Men In Black), the Atlas and Titan rockets at the Hall of Science, along with the acres of non-functioning fountains, there is not much to recognize from my day at the Fair. The Terrace restaurant overlooking the park is also still there. I recall that it had a heliport on the roof, back in the days when Pan Am operated helicopter service from their roof in Manhattan. Life was so much more futuristic in 1964.
But the intrepid Mason will find the statue of George Washington in Masonic regalia, erected by the Masons of New York and appropriately surrounded by blossoming cherry trees. And in the stylized tile map of the fairgrounds that still exists to the east of the Unisphere, good eyes will spot the square and compasses.
