Appeal for Relief in New Mexico

CONTACT Richard E. Fletcher, 1- 301- 588- 4010

Wildfires have caused severe damage in New Mexico. There are many people there who have lost everything as a result to this disastrous fire.

Your help is needed!

Please forward to the MSA such funds as you feel will be appropriate to help our devastated Brethren in this stricken jurisdiction.


DONATIONS ARE TAX DEDUCTIBLE

Please make checks payable to:

MSA Disaster Relief Fund

mail to:

The Masonic Service Association
Suite 203
8120 Fenton Street
Silver Spring, MD 20910-4785.

Thank you very much for your help!

Most sincerely and fraternally,

RICHARD E. FLETCHER, PGM
Executive Secretary

This is just a short note to thank everyone for the very kind mails I have received. I really appreciate them. We are working hard to continue the success of GoMasonry, but we need your support. If you have or know of a Masonic related site that is not listed in GoMasonry, please list it. It is only though your efforts that GoMasonry can be of the most value to all. If you have any questions or problems, please write us. If you wish to add a site, but simply can not figure out how to do it, just send us an e-mail with the site name, URL, category you wish the site added and description. We will be happy to add it for you. Please make sure that the description closely represents what the viewer will find on your site. Be creative and brag on your sites. You want others to find and see the great work you have done! Thanks again and please find peace in all your travels.

Michael Poll

As many of you have noticed, things have been a bit slow around GoMasonry for the last few months. Some of you have expressed fear that GoMasonry will close. While GoMasonry, is, most certainly, not closing, an explanation for the lack of site activity and upkeep is in order.

I should first point out that GoMasonry is by no means a commercial venture. It was created by Brother Martin Barbedor from his vision and realization of the need of a Masonic "Yahoo" type site to assist all Masons in navigating the many, many Masonic and Masonic related web sites on the internet. The vision, the design and the creation were all from the talents of Bro. Martin without a thought of one cent in return for his countless hours of hard work. His was a gift of true Masonic love. His was also an incredible, time consuming and, at times, frustrating task. His reward has been to see his vision come to life and see it so very appreciated by the many Masons around the world who benefit from his efforts.

While Bro. Martin has received assistance, from time to time, from Masons (including myself), the bulk of the duties and responsibilities have been shouldered by Bro. Martin alone. Bro. Martin's personal and professional life began to demand more attention and he was in something of a dilemma. There was simply not enough hours in the day to devote to GoMasonry and his chosen profession. Last week Bro. Martin asked me if I would assume the responsibilities of the administration of GoMasonry for a time to assure its continued service to all Masonry. I agreed and am honored to do so.

All pending site additions have been resolved and the backlog of mail is now being answered. I ask for your patience and understanding during the time that things are returning to normal. If you have questions, suggestions or problems, please let us know. We need you to be successful. Thank you for your continued support of GoMasonry. WE ARE BACK!

Michael Poll

Ok, first and foremost, let me apologize for all these weeks of inactivity on the site (and slow email response time). We won't go into details here, but the most important is that GOMASONRY IS BACK TO LIFE!... This is thanks to Michael Poll, who will be taking care of GoMasonry while I will still need to concentrate on other projects for some time.

I'm very grateful to him for his help on this, as I'm sure all GoMasonry users are.

Please bear with us a couple of more days while we are going through the mail backlog, and dealing with your questions. Thank you.

If you have any question about the site, please write to mpoll@gomasonry.com, or martin@gomasonry.com to reach me; although I will read all emails I can't garantee a response time (as some of you have experienced lately).

The "big changes" announced a couple of months ago here had to be postponed, as close as they were to be completed. More news about this as soon as possible, but for now GOMASONRY IS BACK!

Thank you for your support!

-- Martin Barbedor

As we are working to the final step of the new version, our email response time may be slowed down due to the global work load on the upgrade. Please bear with us. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thank you for your understanding.

From the front end, GoMasonry seems quiet... but you shouldn't judge on appearances, as this only reflects our being VERY busy in the back end, to bring you some major changes in GoMasonry; both as itself (much improved search and navigation, new layout etc.), and in that GoMasonry will soon be one part of a much bigger apparatus integrating some other important web services intended to make internet life easier, more enjoyable and enlightening to mmbers of Fraternal Bodies.

We won't reveal much more at this point, as we want to leave the "surprise" intact... but we are confident that you will enjoy all we're currently working on when we're done, that is hopefully soon.

Stay tuned, and thank you for your interest in GoMasonry!

The new GoMasonry version (dued mid Febuary 2000) will allow us to provide visitors with multiple language environments; and making GoMasonry available regardless of languages is a very important goal for us.

Are you fluent in a non-English language? It can be Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, or even Russian, Dutch, or another one.

We are looking for (skilled) good wills, who would help us translate the directory part of GoMasonry into several languages, in order to make GoMasonry available to non English speaking visitors.

If this is something you can and are willing to do, please contact us at translations@gomasonry.com, precising what is your second language, and when you would be available to do this. It would require to translate the GoMasonry intro page (not the current one as we are planning on to write a new one, but about the same amount of text), and then all the GoMasonry "interface", i.e. all prompts, fields name on all pages. This does not refer to content pages (like our Webmaster section), but all pages involved inthe directory management, i.e. pages where visitors search, browse, add a site, vote for a site, etc.).

Thank you very much in advance for your help in making GoMasonry the truly international online directory that Freemasonry deserves.

We have remained more silent in the last couple of weeks, however... that doesn't mean we have been ignoring GoMasonry... it's the contrary!

We have been busy preparing a new version of the directory that will *really* make a difference (as well as working on a new site that will be announced soon).

To mention a few changes, search will be (much) faster, and return much more relevant results thanks to a new search result "scoring" system we will be using.
Also we found a way to combine smaller categories to avoid having to browse down and up and down and up again... while still maintaining a very precise directory structure (this one is a bit harder to explain that to demonstrate, but trust us... it'll be a huge improvement).

In another vein, we will be introducing a "Guides" program, comparable to which of go.com or Open Directory, meaning that volunteers will be responsible for each of the GoMasonry directory categories.

We are also considering reworking the page layout for something more simple... (although there is a text version already available -- in fact, I knew it was time to change when I started to like the text only version bette than the graphic one... :-)

Last, we are moving to a new (nearly dedicated) server that will be much faster and controllable than our current virtual account.

This is only to mention a few of the changes being worked on for GoMasonry... we haven't even gotten into new features..... stay tuned both for new exciting features on GoMasonry, and for an upcoming major announcement, regarding a new site within the GoMasonry network...

As always, we greatly value your support and interest in GoMasonry... Thank!

PS: The new version of the directory can be expected for mid febuary.

Do you need clipart and graphics for your site?

Visit fraterweb.com, and feel free to use fraterweb's large selection of fraternal and general purpose clipart and graphics.

Don't miss the great selection of animated Christmas and Holidays graphics!

Enjoy!

GoMasonry is proud to announce a new site within the GoMasonry Network:

fraterweb.com

Fraterweb will be a site dedicated to providing services and tools to webmasters of fraternal web sites, including but not limited to, sites representing a Masonic Lodge, a Youth Group Chapter, an Appendant Body Chapter, or even a personal page from a member of any of these (and more).

For more information about the services and tools soon to be offered on fraterweb.com, please visit:

fraterweb.com.

If you have questions or comments about this new site, please don't hesitate to write to: admin@fraterweb.com.

Do you own or maintain a web page or site?

If yes, then maybe you want to check out GoMasonry's free submission service. Using our free service, you can submit your page or site to 22 of the main search engines! All it takes is a few clicks... Our search engine data base was just updated to keep up with recent changes.

Please visit:

http://gomasonry.com/webmaster/meta_submit.html

Also be sure to visit out Webmaster resource page for many more free services and resources, like our free Meta tags generator. Don't know what meta tags are? No problem, just stop by our Meta tags tutorial page, and learn how properly maintaining meta tags on your pages can greatly improve how search engines rank your site, and thus make it more easy for web surfers to find your site.

Happy site building and maintaining!

More than 200 sites related to the York Rite of Freemasonry have recently been added to the directory.

We would like to thank Dan Pushee for his precious help on this.

To learn more about the York Rite, start with Dan Pushee's information site at:

http://members.aol.com/YorkRiteFM/HomePage.html.

"2B1ASK1..."

For non Masons, this may not sound as familiar as for all English speaking Masons. If you read each letter, it will sound like "to be one (Mason) ask one (Mason)," this refers to the fact that Masons are not supposed to proselytize about Masonry.

And in fact, Freemasonry does not need proselytizing... if someone is going to become a Mason, listening to and reading from Masons should be enough for them to determine whether or not Masonry can bring to them what it brings to millions of Masons every day; whether Masonry is where they will find fulfilment.

GoMasonry is proud to announce the cration of a new site: YRU1.

If you are not a Mason, you may be interested in reading more from Masons on what Freemasonry means to them.

If you are a Mason, please stop by YRU1, and share with the World what it means to you "2B1"... and you may very well inspire someone to "ASK1."

http://gomasonry.com/YRU1

If you are participating in our TOP 10 program we wanted to inform you that we have designed a new GoMasonry Top 10 button that only consist in oe (3k) gif image, so the code is much simpler.

Here is what the new button looks like:



If you would like to use the new button instead of the code you are using now, please send a mail to support@gomasonry.com, please be sure to include the code you are currently using.

Thank you.

Do you have a web site? Would you like your visitors to be able to search GoMasonry right from your site?

We've made it easy for you.

Simply enter your email address below, and you will receive a free (about 30K) zip file containing 8 examples of great looking GoMasonry search boxes to use on your site!

 

You can check out how the search boxes look in our Webmaster resources section

The package also contains fast loading yet colorful new GoMasonry buttons that you can use on your site to support GoMasonry.

Please direct any question you may have about this to support@gomasonry.com.

We greatly appreciate your support and your interest in GoMasonry.

We are glad to announce our brand new "Webmaster Resources" section.

This area was designed to help Masons and members of the Masonic community build maintain and enhance their internet presence.

Do you need to build a web site? Would you like to add new features to your site (a guestbook, a counter, etc.)? Have you already submitted your site to major search engines? Are your meta tags correctly set?

If you need help in any of these areas and more, our Webmaster Resources section should be of help. Visit it at:

http://www.gomasonry.com/webmaster

Please let us know what you think, and how we could improve it to better fit your needs and expectations.

Enjoy, and happy site building!

Today is September 18th. What are the events that happen to have occured on this date, year after year, throughout History? BTW, do you remember what was happening in the world on your wedding day? On your birth day?? ...probably not. :)

The GoMasonry Team is thrilled to announce yet another exciting new feature:

"GoMasonry's Today in History"

With GoMasonry's today in History, it is now easy to find out what happened on a particular date of the year throughout History, from year 00 up to the 90's...

Wondering what Historical Events, Famous Birthdays and/or Famous Deaths occured, on that particular day in your life? Simply give us the month,JanuaryFebruaryMarchApril MayJuneJulyAugustSeptember OctoberNovemberDecember the day, 12345678 9101112131415 16171819202122 23242526272829 3031 now the , and we'll to you!... ;)

And that's not all, since GoMasonry's Today in History, let's you search its 10MB database for any combination of historical events, famous births and famous deaths, on any day, month or year!

On what precise date did Lafayette die? What was Albert Pike's birth date? GoMasonry's Today in History, will let you find out in seconds...
Within a "Happy Birthday" email, send a friend or a Brother a detailed summary of what happened in history on their birth date (just save the HTML result page, and attach it to the mail).

These are only a few examples of what you can enjoy GoMasonry's Today in History for. Beware though... once you've started to play around with it a bit, it can become highly addictive ;)

Be sure to bookmark the page, as you'll probably want to make frequent if not daily stops...

http://www.gomasonry.com/local/today.shtml

Enjoy!

PS: Of course, as for all services brought to you by GoMasonry, this feature is totally free.

When we started the Top 10, in May 1999, there were only 100 sites listed in GoMasonry; there are now over 650 sites, and the GoMasonry database is intended to grow much bigger than this within the next couple of months.

Until the database size gets stabilized, we decided that it was not fair to new sites added to let the count run from the initial launch. The reason is simple: imagine your site was added last week, and gets the same amount of weekly votes than a site that was added 4 months ago, there is simply no way your site can make up the difference...

So, to be fair to all new additions, and give the Top 10 an opportunity to reflect the votes count at different stage of the GoMasonry database development, the Top 10 count is now being reset on a quarterly basis.
However, we want to be fair with long time GoMasonry listings' webmasters who made all efforts to raise their Top 10 ranking, and thus we will take a snapshot of the Top 10 listings right before we reset the count every quarter, and make these archives available on the Top 10 page.

Congratulations to the sites which made it to the GoMasonry Top 10 for the third Quarter of 1999! ... and especially to Teddy Goldstein for his number one ranking.
You can consult the list here.

The current Top 10 results are here, the count was rest today.

Last, to be totally honnest, this decision occured after something went wrong with the server, resulting in the Top 10 data getting corrupt. However, we are somehow glad this was an opportunity to take what we believe is a fair decision, that will make the GoMasonry Top 10 even more interesting and fun.

Thank you for your interest in GoMasonry.

Click..... click..... click..... click..... click.....

Don't you sometimes feel like just watching the web?

Introducing a new GoMasonry exclusive great feature: WebCruiser.

WebCruiser was designed to let you randomly "Zap" through Masonic sites listed in GoMasonry, and WebCruiser's "AutoZap" feature will even load a new site for you every 45 seconds!

From now on, whenever you need to give your wrist a break, and still feel like visiting great Masonic sites worldwide, point your browser to our WebCruiser page:

http://www.gomasonry.com/local/webcruiser.html

Sit back, relax, enjoy; and let us know what you think!

Do you ever come across phrases or expressions that you know originated in the Bible, but you simply can't remember the book and verse? Have you ever wondered where a particular word is used in the Bible?Wonder no more ... now you can just type gomasonry.com in your browser, and you'll find your answer in seconds...

GoMasonry is happy to announce a brand new feature - the Bible Search. We know the important role the Holy Bible plays in Masonry. While Masonry has its doors open to those of all faiths and creeds, it is clear that many aspects of the Masonic degrees have a foundation in the teachings and tradition of the Bible.

The Bible search feature on GoMasonry will allow you to search your favorite text of the Bible or search words or phrases to see their use in the Bible (King James version, Old and New Testaments).

Try it below, or at:

http://www.gomasonry.com/local/biblesearch.html

GoMasonry Bible Search

Any WordsExact PhraseAllOTNT

Why a Bible search feature in GoMasonry? Find out in this article by Michael L. Segall whom we would like to thank for his valuable contribution.

Do you use a slower connection to access GoMasonry? GoMasonry pages include actually very few graphics which size all have been highly optimized for the web. However, as a professional directory GoMasonry is glad to provide users with an additional lightening fast Text Only version.

Give it a try at:

http://www.gomasonry.com/textindex.shtml

Please note that local content pages are only available in their graphic version.

Enjoy!

If your site was added within last week, please take the confirmation message you received from us and send a copy of it to support@gomasonry.com, we need to check something about your listing before it appears in the directory.

Thank you very much for your cooperation.

The following story was forwarded to us today, and we wanted to share it we GoMasonry visitors. We don't know yet of it's a true story (if you do, let us know), but it's definitely inspiring. Pass it on!



--------------------
Just DO IT!

His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.

There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved. "I want to repay you," said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life." "No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied, waving off the offer.

At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel. "Is that your son?" the nobleman asked. "Yes," the farmer replied proudly. "I'll make you a deal. Let me take him and give him a good education. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll grow to a man you can be proud of."

And that he did. In time, Farmer Fleming's son graduated from St.Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.

Years afterward, the nobleman's son was stricken with pneumonia.

What saved him? Penicillin.

The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill.

His son's name? Sir Winston Churchill.

Someone once said: What goes around comes around.

1. Work like you don't need the money.
2. Love like you've never been hurt.
3. Dance like nobody's watching.

It's National Friendship Week

Send this to everyone you consider a FRIEND.

Pass this on, and brighten someone's day. Nothing will happen if you do not decide to pass it along. The only thing that will happen, if you DO pass it on, is that someone might smile (because of you).

-------------
Note from GoMasonry: Both the Churchill (father and son) and Alexander Flemming were Masons.

In order to complete some needed work on Gomasonry, a couple of features will be unoperational for a short time. The work will result in a better, faster GoMasonry, so we decided it was worth the inconvenience, which we will make as short as possible.

One noticeable fact is that the "GoMasonry Top 10" isn't reflecting the current vote count. If your site participates in the "Top 10" all votes are still being tracked, so don't worry.

If you have any questions regarding this issue or any othr related to GoMasonry, don't hesistate to ask!

Thank you for your support.

Have you noticed the "Post Comments" link, next to each listing found on GoMasonry?

One of the great features available on GoMasonry is the fact that any visitor may leave comments about a particular site, right on GoMasonry. The posted comments will be both sent to the site's webmaster, and available for all visitors to read.

Posting comments about the sites you like will greatly help webmasters tailor their sites to better fit visitors expectations, as well as sometimes make it more easy for GoMasonry visitors to find the right information.

Next time you visit a site you like from GoMasonry, and after closing the site's window; be sure to click on the "Post Comments" link, next to the given listing; let the site's webmaster and GoMasonry visitors know why you liked that site; they'll be grateful you did.

Thanks for your support.

Given all the great sites submitted to GoMasonry every day, we decided to periodically spotlight one selected Masonic web site, and feature it on GoMasonry's main page.

From now on, the GoMasonry team will pick one site every week, which will be featured on the main page during that whole week.

Sites will be selected based on criteria such as content richness and maintainance consistency, layout, functionalities, ease of use, usefulness to the community; also special events or announcement web sites may be selected based on topicality.

Lest we be unclear, let us state that if your web site is not initially selected, that doesn't necessarily mean the site does not comply to the above criteria! With one site per week, it will take years to feature all the great Masonic sites available on the Internet, so... bear with us.



Congratulations to the web site team of the George Washington Masonic Memorial for building such a great web site, which was selected by the GoMasonry Team to be the very first "GoMasonry site of the Week!"


We hope you appreciate this new feature as much as we are delighted to bring it to you.

Thank you for your support.

GoMasonry was officially launched less than one month ago (May 10th), and we must say it's doing pretty well so far.
As part of a constant effort to improve our service, we are currently doing some work in the back end which causes the main page categories to be a bit upset; especially, not all sub categories are listed under each main Category. This won't last long; meanwhile, be sure to click on the main Category link itself ("Grand Lodges," "Lodges," "Personal Pages," etc) to see everything in that Category.



We apologize for the inconvenience, this will be taken care of shortly.

If you have a "GoMasonry Top 10" button on yout site(s), please read (if your site is not listed in GoMasonry -- it should be though!-) -- or if your site is listed but you didn't put the "GoMasonry Top 10" button on your pages, what follows doesn't affect you).

Despite great care taken, it seems that there is probably a small error in the code of the "GoMasonry Top 10" link that was sent to you as part of the acceptance/notification email.

This error does NOT affect your site ranking or votes tracking in any way, it only causes older browser version to not diplay the text prompt "Vote for this site..." correctly -- the GIF button is not affected, and neither are links.

To have a message sent to you explaining the issue and easy ways to deal with it, pease provide your email address below and press "Send."

We apologize in advance for any possible inconvenience. Please, send any question to support@gomasonry.com

Thanks to Bro. Touvia Goldstein for bringing this to our attention.

The GoMasonry Top 10 is really picking up; it may be time for your to allow your visitors to vote for your site.

See the current "GoMasonry Top 10" results at:

http://www.gomasonry.com/cgibin/vote.cgi

Look up the acceptance/notification email we sent you when your site was added to GoMasonry for more info on how to participate in the "GoMasonry Top 10"; or visit our Top 10 page at:

http://www.gomasonry.com/local/top10.html

Of course, we are assuming that your site is already listed in GoMasonry (otherwise you can't participate in the "Top 10"). It is NOT??!-) Well, then submit it right now, it's not too late...

We sincerely appreciate your support.

No more excuses to not put a link back to GoMasonry on your pages!... ;)

We just added a great new feature to our "Link Back" page, that lets you simply enter your email address to receive the GoMasonry link HTML code snippet directly in your mailbox (using an auto responder)! Enter your email; click "Send;" check your mail, the code snippet is there; cut and paste into your pages and you're there. As simple as that. See by yourself at:

http://www.gomasonry.com/local/linkback.html

Also, we will be adding more material to the "Link Back" page in the very near future, so be sure to check back soon.

We greatly appreciate your support.

Ok, we wanted you to be able to use GoMasonry as your starting point to the Internet (the rest of it that is), and came up with this new powerful Meta Search feature (If you haven't done so yet, be sure to visit our Internet Search page).

In the process of putting together GoMasonry, we have been browsing hundreds of webmaster resources sites on the web. And now, what we are up to, is a GREAT webmaster utilities and free services page. So if you maintain a Masonic site, and care about it, this page will be for you. It will contain the best of what we came back with, including a meta tag generator, a free search engine submission service and much more... Also if you are wondering what we are talking about here, don't worry as a bunch of tips, tutorials and tools will be progressively added as well, to help Masonic webmasters make their web sites even more enjoyable, so that we can all make the Masonic Internet an even greater experience for Masons and non-Masons alike!

Webmasters stay tuned... ;)

GoMasonry is glad to bring the Internet at your fingertips, with a new extended Internet Search Page.
Meta Internet Search: a great "meta" starting point to the internet; Freemasonry related Usenet newsgroups search and read: great to familiarize yourself with Usenet (through Dejanews' friendly interface); Direct Internet Search: direct access to all major search engines and directories, plus shareware search, and more; ALL in one convenient location:

http://www.gomasonry.com/local/websearch.html

We hope you find this new service useful, and please don't hesitate to let us know what you think of it.

Stay tuned for upcoming features and services on GoMasonry!

As many new services will be made available on GoMasonry, we have created this news system so that you can easily stay tuned. From now on, watch for latest announcements on the main GoMasonry page. Don't hesitate to send us a mail if you have any question or comment about GoMasonry. Simply click on the author's name below, or visit our feedback page at: http://www.gomasonry.com/local/feedback.html