Join us in this episode, recorded on April 4, 2009, as Greg and Dean welcomes brothers Beaux Pettys and Mike Bjelajac of Gate City Lodge No 2. from the beautiful city of Atlanta, in the state of Georgia. In the episode, we dig into the antebellum origins of the lodge and its present-day revival in a city known for its diversity of population in one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in America. In the show we talk about what makes a lodge successful?
What makes a lodge successful? Is it the energy behind the lodge, the people that create it? And, does that energy come at a cost? Is there a social capital that is bartered in an invisible exchange that at times reflects a huge value where at others it challenges its very existence.
One such lodge happens to be a nexus for this very question, and has had a year to barter and trade on its own social capital building a reputation amongst its community and amongst its peers. And this development has not been free of cost. Gate City Lodge in Atlanta Georgia has had a dynamic year, from a public forum on Catholicism and Masonry to a feature article about them in the New York Times. All in all, Gate city is not unaccustomed to controversy or at least some growing pains since its founding in 1887.
Since then, Gate City has suffered war, fire, growth and decline, all of which are no strangers to lodges of this age, yet Gate City has re-awoken as a cosmopolitan styled lodge, progressive in its ideas (even if they do not see themselves as such) and yet still as traditional as the day they fought to become the 4th lodges in the already crowded Georgian capital.
More on the Gate City Lodge saga:
- More Peach Publicity – The Gates Are Open – June 20, 2009
- My Brother’s Keeper – Open Racism in Georgia Freemasonry – June 21, 2009
- Georgia: Not Such A Peachy Masonic State – June 21, 2009
- Losing the Battle After the First Volley – June 24, 2009
- Georgia News, Georgia Blues – June 29, 2009
- Realizing The Opportunity – July 18, 2009
- Georgia speaks. Grand Master Jennings on the Georgia Affair – Aug. 20, 2009
- Georgia Black Mainstream Mason Is Black Balled Again For The Second Time In His Masonic Journey – Oct. 27, 2011
- Georgia Gate City Lodge Persecutor Honored By Scottish Rite – Oct. 31, 2011
- Georgia Turned Down An Opportunity To Adopt Non Discriminatory Statutes in 2009 – Nov. 1, 2011
- Brothers Often Talked To, Never Seen – Mar. 11, 2013