Creatures of the Grand Lodge

Transmundane Tuesday

Hi, slowpokes. It’s the first Tuesday of the month. Draw this and, if you’d like to share your work, post it on Instagram and tag it #foodieinbuckleshoeswithascepter and #transmundanetuesdays.

(If you don’t know what this is all about, find out more here.)

Arts & Entertainment

Last week I spent a night at the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove, Oregon with my teenager, Hank. It’s an old manor house, once a Masonic and Eastern Star headquarters, that was renovated into a hotel by McMenamins. The Grand Lodge has a lot of Masonic art and ephemera, a secret passageway in the attic decorated with riddles from The Hobbit in black light paint, and, supposedly, a ghost. Hank loves it there. I didn’t see any ghosts but I did see a haunted-looking alcove in the basement that was familiar to me.

When the Decemberists were starting out, they naturally played some sad, under-attended shows. My favorite of these, so sad it was funny, was in the hallway of a hotel basement. I don’t remember if there was anyone in the audience. It may have just been me. I do remember that people in white bathrobes kept wandering by on the way to their rooms, a comic touch. And I also remember that it was a good gig in spite of it all because McMenamins paid well.

This old rug and green curtain was that venue. I hadn’t seen it in twenty years but recognized it instantly. It turns out that it’s next to the spa and the soaking pool, and, while I stood there reminiscing, people in white bathrobes wandered by like ghosts of this fabled show.

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I did a lot of drawing at the Grand Lodge. I was really behind on Transmundane Tuesday prompts (like a year behind) but I got partly caught up. I channeled weird Mason vibes; the claustrophobia of the tiny, cell-like room where we slept in bunk beds; the crazy true crime thing that happened in the lobby where I was hanging out late at night that is too intense to relate here; the saddest, funniest Decemberist show; the hotel’s lovely gardens; and its supposed ghost into a bunch of drawings. Here they are, creatures of the Grand Lodge:

#stomachfacecorrespondentinsnowshoes

#helmetedserpentheadbreakfaster

#glovedglowingelder (Is this accidentally Joan Didion?)

#electricclimberinagoldwatch

#bearinahatandachair

#longhairedserpentinacap

#skatingelephantplayingahorn

Ta ta,
Carson