Well, the Jambo was the first event where we really have seen the evaporation of lodge numbers. Two years ago the National OA committee, at the request of the National BSA, did away with lodge numbers. The numbers historically were issued in the order of the lodge charters. But, with all of the mergers over the years the meaning of then numbers became skewed and lost this historical significance. Now lodges are only known by the National BSA according to their council’s number. Thus we have Tisquantum 249 out of Massachusetts which is still the same lodge as Tisquantum 164. Tisquantum though was the result of several mergers including Tisquantum 518 and Manomet 164. I am sure their council number is 249 and thus Tisquantum 249 which is not to be confused with active lodge Spe Le Yai 249 out of California. There are still lodges using their number but several didn’t for this event. It will be interesting to see what happens come next year’s NOAC.

Someone asked me about what affect this will have on OA collecting. Well, CSPs have been collected by name ever since they started so OA can be collected the same way. It will make collecting OA harder. I always thought that one of the appeals to collecting OA was that it was easy to make a needs list. Just write down all of the numbers from 1 to 578 (and later to 619). You did not need to know if all of the numbers have an issue (some don’t) but at least you could get started and check things off as you went. You won’t be able to do this now.

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