· Sunday April 2nd PM Roast and Awards Dinner, Fox Hills 6pm. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pm-roast-and-awards-dinner-tickets-557758208817?fbclid=IwAR01xap3fbadz_VyAK69sfGj0899Uo1DoCB4AJkg8HdcbSuzUTHqXftezvA
· Wednesday April 5th: Regular Communication Passover Observance Dinner 6pm
· Sunday April 9th Easter
· Tuesday April 11th Masonic Workshop
· Friday April 21 Eid al-Fitr
· Saturday April 22nd Fellow Craft Degree Detroit Masonic Temple 11am
· Wednesday April 26th Master’s Table Blue Tractor 207 E Washington St, Ann Arbor, MI 7pm
While April this year represents many things, Spring, good weather, a month of Abrahamic Holidays, and important to a lot of people just to be able to enjoy the outside again. But April also means something else to me. April is Autism Awareness Month. For those of you who don’t know your Worshipful Master is Autistic. I’m definitely not the first Autistic WM this lodge has had, but probably the most vocal about it. Freemasonry has a lot to offer an Autistic person. A niche interest, rituals, while being surrounded by other people, who take me as I am, my voice doesn’t get lost because we don’t generally speak over each other. And best of all with all the education our lodge does I can info dump on obscure masonic topics and not be seen weird. Except for having to wear a hat, it's pretty good.
Here comes the counter intuitive part. I am going to ask you not to support the group “Autism Speaks” Don’t put a puzzle piece filter on your Facebook profile picture, or a puzzle piece ribbon on your car. I know that “Autism Speaks” is the most prolific and well-known Autistic group out there, but they are at heart Anti-Autistic. They seek to end us by any means necessary whether by developing tests to tell if your fetus may be autistic so you can terminate the pregnancy, or ABA therapy which is often harmful to autistic children’s emotional wellbeing. The puzzle piece is insulting to autistic people, a part of me isn’t missing, not part of my intellect and not part of my soul. I am a whole person. So, who should you support? ASAN “Autistic Self Advocacy Network” is as it sounds an awareness and advocacy group run by the people they represent. What symbol should I use to show my support? We like the rainbow and the gold infinity symbols. The rainbow infinity symbol represents neuro diversity as a whole, ADHD Autism, Tourette’s, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and so on. The golden infinity symbol, created by an Autistic artist represents Autism on its own. The chemical symbol for gold is Au the first two letters in Autism