333 Winter Banquet patch issued

Wahunsenakah Lodge held their annual Winter Banquet on Saturday, December 13, at Chestnut United Methodist Church in Newport News, and issued a colorful 3" round patch to mark the occasion.

The special guest speaker for this year's banquet was Admiral Joel R. Whitehead, United States Coast Guard Commander of the Eighth Coast Guard District, New Orleans. Back in 1970-71 he was better known by his nickname of "Corky" and his title was Chief of Kecoughtan Lodge 463.

In keeping with this year's "cartoon duck" theme the solid-embroidered patch design features three yellow ducks around a candy-cane striped "North Pole." The W's on this patch are ghosted into the design so well you will need to look hard to find them all (they are located at 3, 6, and 9 o'clock positions).

This makes the tenth consecutive year that Lodge 333 has issued 5 activity patches during the calendar year. In 1997 and 1998 (the first two years of the Lodge's existence) the Lodge did not hold a Fall Fellowship event, so only 4 activity patches were issued during those years.

Thanks once again to Larry Johnson for contributing the picture of this patch.

SE-1 Chatter newsletters now online

While scouring a long-stored hard drive I came across scans I made back in April, 2007 of 5 editions of the Section SE-1 Chatter newsletter. I've created PDF versions of each and they are now available on the SE-1 emblems page for your reading pleasure.

The following issues are included in the archive so far:

• August 1977
• September 1978
• November 1978
• February 1979
• April 1979

Thanks to former Kecoughtan Lodge Chief Morris Friedman who generously loaned me the copies of the SE-1 Chatter newsletters (along with several editions of the Kecoughtan Kryer) to scan and make available on this web site.

Wahunsenakah Fall Fellowship patch added

Larry Johnson just returned from the Wahunsenakah Fall Fellowship, held October 24-26 at Bayport Scout Reservation, and sent me a nice image of the patch issued for that event. The emblem continues to feature the "cartoon" yellow duck from the earlier 2008 activity patches, this time in a rope swing suspended from a tree with few remaining leaves. You can view this patch and all of the Lodge 333 activity patches, on the Wahunsenakah Lodge Activity emblems page.

After uploading the image to the site I discovered that many of my PHP scripts were no longer working so the nice zooming and lightbox picture effects were broken. My web site host upgraded their servers awhile back to PHP5 and recently removed PHP4 entirely, so I need to do a little housekeeping to get everything back in working order.

New Colonial Virginia Council pages

I've revised the shoulder patch pages for Colonial Virginia Council to include thumbnail pictures of each emblem and to split the Jamboree shoulder patches onto their own page separate from the CSPs and SAPs. JSP's aren't included in An Aid To Collecting Selected Council Shoulder Patches With Valuation Guide 2008 Edition by Austin, Ellis, & Jones, so it only made sense to give them a page of their own.

The new pages feature the ability to click on the thumbnail image to view a larger picture of the patch, and even allow you to zoom multiple images to compare them for differences. Eventually I plan to revise all of the patch pages to include thumbnail pictures to make patch identification and comparisons much easier. Let me know if you spot any typos or can contribute any additional information to make the data provided more complete!

2008 SR-7A Conclave item photos added

Michael McCaughan of Blue Heron Lodge kindly sent me pictures of items issued at the recent SR-7A conclave, hosted by Shenandoah Lodge at Camp Shenandoah from April 25-27. In addition to the participant pocket patch you will find images of the jacket patch, pocket patch, pin, passport booklet cover, and embroidered neckerchief on the SR-7A Emblems web page.

The impact of the recent economic downturn was evident when I originally sought pictures of these items from several conclave attendees and was told by each that they decided to reduce on their usual conclave memento purchases after high priced gasoline made traveling to the conclave so much more expensive.

The design of the patch includes a clever insertion of the "WWW" found on Order of the Arrow flaps. Look closely and you'll find it in the flaming arrow tips.