I recommended this to my father over a year ago and he loves it.  It never occured to me until the other day when he was asking me about it… Every morning he get's up and goes to the computer.  A message is waiting for him telling him his files have been backed-up.  He is reassured that if somethign goes wrong that day he has the manner to get just about everything back.  At under $5 a month he thought it was a steal and I was happy because he doesn't call me every night asking how to back-up the computer. That doesn't get me off on all Tech service calls to my parents house but it's progress.

It would work to back-up lodge files also…

If your interested here is the sign-up page.

Revolutionary War hero. Father of our country. Master distiller? George Washington boasted many honorifics in his life, but owning the country's largest and most successful whiskey distillery in the late 1700s is perhaps one of the least known accomplishments of the first president. Washington-the-entrepreneur was an early American success story. At his sizeable Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia, some 15 miles south of Washington DC, the general had a lucrative distillery, fishery, meat processing facility, gristmill, blacksmith shop, textiles production and seized opportunities in farming— making his plantation nearly selfsufficient and creating enough goods to turn a profit.

In April, the Mount Vernon distillery and adjacent gristmill will open to the public for the season. And for the first time in nearly 200 years, liquor fans will soon be able to purchase whiskey made in the distillery, following Washington's own recipe." There's nowhere else in the country you can see what a distillery was like in the 18th century," said Dennis Pogue, Mount Vernon's associate director of preservation who oversaw the distillery's reconstruction. And the experience shows visitors an intriguing side of George Washington. "It's an opportunity to talk about different aspects of Washington's career that most people don't know about," he said.

Whiskey was one of Washington's most important business ventures at Mount Vernon. At peak production, the distillery used five stills and a boiler and produced 11,000 gallons of whiskey. With sales of $7,500 in 1799, it was the country's largest distillery at the time. Today it is the only distillery in North America that demonstrates the 18th-century distillation process.

"The science doesn't change, it's the application of the science that's different," said Dave Pickerell, a master distiller and former vice president of operations for Maker's Mark who oversaw the distilling of Washington's recipe for Mount Vernon.

In the 18th century, water was brought into the distillery by wooden channels, there were no thermometers to assist in measuring alcohol content and knowing when chemical reactions took place, and the role of yeast's fermentation wasn't quite understood, Pickerell said. Early distillers used "lots of visual and olfactory cues you can go by to get to the same point, but it took a lot more experience."

Pickerell and a few helpers distilled about 100 gallons of Washington's whiskey in late February, the first time since the early 1800s that Washington's recipe was made. The gristmill processed the grain, allowing the two buildings to operate together as they did in Washington's day. Mount Vernon workers empty a finished pot of whiskey into a jug for storage. The whiskey is clear until it is aged.

WASHINGTON HOOCH

A $2.1 million grant from the Distilled Spirits Council and the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America allowed for the excavation, research and reconstruction of the distillery. The archeological investigation began in 1997 and the distillery opened to the public in March 2007. Surprisingly detailed documentation about Washington's operation allows historians to know which families frequented the distillery, quantities and prices paid for the whiskey and a record of the distillery's construction and operation.

"There is no better way to showcase the industry's proud heritage and shine a light on it than show the important role George Washington played in the industry," said Peter Cressy, president of the Distilled Spirits Council. Just as Washington sold his spirits immediately –not aging his whiskey as is the standard practice today –the first bottles of whiskey will be for sale around June at the estate's gift shop. Washington's whiskey will be noticeably clear, as it is the barrel-aging process gives whiskey its darker color.

The former president's consent to start the business came with a push from his plantation manager James Anderson, a Scottish man with distilling experience, and from practicality — his gristmill had leftover ground wheat, corn and rye that was unsellable.The distillery was originally built in 1797 and burned to the ground in 1814. Washington's death in 1799 curtailed its quick success. Visitors to the distillery, about three miles down the road from the Mount Vernon estate, can watch costumed distillers demonstrate daily between April and October how whiskey is made, though the distillers are actually using water.

The distillery also has a storage cellar, office and two furnished bedrooms where the site manager and assistant would have lived. The adjacent gristmill is a four-floor water-powered mill which produced, among other things, flour that was exported around the world. "Everything he did set a precedent," Cressy said. "It's extraordinary.

The author is a Mason & Sr. DeMolay - as (pardon the immodesty) am I. In any case, your readers may enjoy it, especially 'the rest of the story'.

Fraternally, Gerald A Edgar Mosaic #125 AF&AM, Dubuque IA Allen Chapter - Order of DeMolay, Dubuque IA

Recently most Americans lost a dear friend we never met but whose voice we anticipated for years and welcomed into our kitchens and automobiles. For the "greatest generation" such as my parents, it was the "Noon News with Paul Harvey". In the 1950s Dad would come home every weekday for lunch (as did my sisters and I from school in Dubuque). Mom always made sure the radio station was tuned in at the stroke of noon. Whether a summary of major news stories, a humorous tidbit or his stupid criminal stories, we finished lunch with a smile on our face and a clearer understanding of what was going on outside eastern Iowa. When we went on trips, Dad would always find Paul somewhere in the radio dial so no matter where we went, his reassuring voice reminded us the world, as battered as it might be, was still there under Paul's watchful eye. No one else had a voice like Paul Harvey's and no one could use it better. His well-timed pauses, inflection and expression could take the most mundane news and make it memorable.

Serving in the Air Force in the early 70s, I listened to his show on Armed Forces Radio in Japan. As a young adult in the 80s I listened to his morning show as I fought the Chicago rush hour. Although away from home hundreds or even thousands of miles, there was that same voice and somehow I was still "home”.

Our children, now young adults themselves, looked forward to his unique 'Rest of the Story'. Much of what my wife & I experienced as kids, we could not replicate with our children yet one part of our youth was still there for our kids: Paul Harvey. They could sit at the kitchen table at noon and be just as entranced as we had been thirty years before.

The bridge of common experience from my 90 year old parents to our 22 year old daughter was Paul Harvey. Yes, he updated his news, continued to bring unique words to our vocabulary but there was still the reassuring "Paul Harvey… Good day" at the end of the broadcast.

However there has to be a "rest of the story" and there is. In high school I was fortunate to have success in State Speech competition in no small part due to Paul Harvey's influence. I did not have his unique voice but could learn his phrasing and expression. At age fourteen I had become an active member of the Order of DeMolay for Boys, a service fraternity sponsored by Masonic groups. I was able to take part in the little dramas used during initiations to inculcate moral values.

Although national in scope since 1919, DeMolay boys are few in number but gain an inordinate amount of speaking ability that serves them well in adulthood. They also learn of Jacques DeMolay, the namesake of the fraternity, whom when seized with his fellow Knights Templar by King Philip the Fair of France on a Friday the 13th in 1314, inadvertently created the superstition of bad luck attributed to that date ever since. Every year during at least one Friday the 13th broadcast, Paul Harvey would explain the story of Jacques DeMolay and his tie to that common superstition. What Paul didn't say was that he, Walter Cronkite, John Wayne, Mel Blanc, Dan Rather, Fred MacMurray, William Holden, Willard Scott, Walt Disney, Bill Clinton and Burl Ives, had all been DeMolay boys.

Now you know the rest of the story! Thank, Paul and may God bless you and your family.

A Few Famous DeMolays

The Old Tiler Talks

Hep! Hep!
From the Old Tiler's Talk - by Carl H. Claudy, The Temple Publishers

Thank you for tiling," smiled the Old Tiler, as he resumed his sword after a trip for ice water. "What are they doing in there now?''

"Fighting like a lot of snarling puppies!" responded the New Brother disgustedly. ''My idea of Masonry is not a red-hot discussion every meeting, as to whether or not Jim Jones is or isn't, or we ought or ought not, to spend eleven dollars for something or other."

"Go on, tell me what your idea of Masonry is!" The Old Tiler's voice was sardonic.

The New Brother had crossed swords with the Old Tiler before. ''Not much I won't, and have you blow my ideas full of air holes!" he retorted. "But you tell me why some lodges pull so well together, have such harmonious conception of their goal, and others, like ours, are always fighting. "

''Did you ever see I do-fight, with only one dog?" asked the Old Tiler. ''Did you ever see a boiler explode without too much steam and not enough water in it? Did you ever see a team of horses take a heavy load uphill all pulling different ways?

"A lodge can't fight unless it has something to quarrel about. We are having a series of floor fusses because we have about three or eleven alleged brothers who don't know anything about military drill! If they had heard an old drill sergeant say, ‘hep, hep, hep,’ a few thousand times, they'd get 'hep' to themselves. At first they'd be like the soldier son of the proud old Irish mother watching her boy parade and saying, ‘Ah, do yez moind, they is all out o’ step but him!’ After a while they'd learn that they couldn't keep in step by going as they pleased -- they'd learn to watch the fellow to the right and the chap to the left.

"In a lodge there are brothers who won't stay in step, not because they can't, but because they are too busy watching their feet to see the other fellow's shoes. Take Biggsby, now; Biggsby is the big fellow with the overgrown grip on a nickel, who is forever and always blocking business by insisting on a detailed explanation of every appropriation. He isn't in step. Our lodge is rich enough to spend some money without worrying. Biggsby thinks that if we don't pinch ten cent pieces until they coppers, we are going to the Masonic Home!

"Isn't it right to have someone watch the appropriations?" interrupted the New Brother.

"Watch 'em by all means," answered the Old Tiler, "and kick if anyone tries to slip something over. But watching is one thing and objecting to the wishes of the majority because of private beliefs regarding the sacredness of two-bit pieces is another. No one cares if Biggsby wears out a dollar's worth of shoes saving a ten-cent car ride. They are Biggsby's shoes and that's Biggsby's business. But in lodge he should get in step and not object to lodge expenditures on personal grounds.

"There should be no politics in Masonry, but there never was a lodge that didn't have politics in its elections. If Jim Jones lobbies trying to get Bob Smith elected, and Frank. Robinson spends time and effort to get Bill Brown elected, no special harm is done, unless they keep up their fight after it is won and lost. 'Some people never know when they are licked' is not always a compliment. In a lodge with real spirit, Bill forgets after he loses his fight and works for the successful candidate. In a lodge where Bill isn't 'hep' to his Masonry or himself, he carries a grouch, tries to make the successful chap unhappy, gets in the way of the machinery and generally stirs up trouble.

"You are just beginning in Masonry. You have joined a good lodge. What’s happening in there is just a phase. Those fellows will learn, in time, that when ten or forty or four hundred men form a real Masonic lodge, as a body they are something bigger and better than ten or forty or four hundred times the bigness and goodness of the individuals. A true lodge spirit provides a lot of give and not much take. When every member is ‘hep’ to the other fellows’ ideas – when every member makes a distinction between conduct for himself and what his organization should do – when each of us thinks of his fellow-member as his brother in heart as well as in organization, then your lodge develops real lodge spirit and stops foolish fighting."

"I see," answered the New Brother. "A lodge, like a piece of machinery, squeaks if it isn’t well oiled. If any part of it is out of order, the whole suffers. And because Masons are human beings, we are not perfect and so no lodge is ever perfect. But we can make our lodges better by sinking individual desires for the good of the organization."

"Well, well!" said the Old Tiler. "Almost do you persuade me you have the makings of a real good . . . "

But then there were three raps, and the New Brother is still wondering what the Old Tiler meant to say "fellow" or "Mason" or "officer!"

Copyright © 2009 Waller Masonic Lodge #808 AF & AM.