…is a Starfury.

(Ok, so it’s probably been done before. Details, details…)

Andreas Katsulas, known for such roles as Commander Tomalak on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the one-armed man opposite Harrison Ford in The Fugitive, and Babylon 5’s Ambassador G’Kar died yesterday of lung cancer at age 59.

Way too damned soon.

He and his opposite number on B5, Peter Jurasik, performed a play for Seeing Ear Theater called George and the Red Giant. Enjoy.

I want.

Joe Straczynski (JMS) is publishing all of the Babylon 5 scripts.

Last week, Donna and I were installed as Worthy Matron and Patron of Golden Rod Chapter #22, Order of the Eastern Star. It’s our third time as presiding officers of our Chapters: one time for each Chapter. We previously served Tuscan #148 in Bangor, ME, and Unity #14 in Riverside, RI. This year, Donna chose the lighthouse as her emblem for the year, and I chose Babylon 5.

After I was installed, of course, I had to come up with something semi-intelligent to say.

Thank you, Worthy Matron.

And thank you, sisters and brothers, for the opportunity to serve you in the East this year. I hope to prove worthy of your trust — just because it’s my third time through doesn’t mean I’ve figured out what I’m doing yet.

When I chose Babylon 5 as my emblem for this year, I hadn’t fully considered what I was doing. However, this past week, I finally realized that it tied in very nicely with Donna’s theme. As Commander Jeffrey Sinclair says at the beginning of the first season episodes:

“The Babylon Project was a dream, given form. Its goal: to prevent another war, by creating a place where humans and aliens can work out their differences peacefully. It’s a port of call — home away from home — for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers.”

In other words, a lighthouse. And the fact that it looks just like the charter has nothing to do with anything. (Note to readers: our charter is kept in a shiny metal tube.)

While I first became involved with Freemasonry, it was so that I could work more closely with Donna. As I became more involved, though, I embraced it for what it was: among many other things, a place where men of all faiths could address God together, without arguing about “which God” (a question I personally find meaningless). In one of the early episodes, there is a religious festival, where each of the races represented on Babylon 5 performs a ceremony representative of their dominant belief system. Sinclair agonizes all episode over what he, as the Earth representative, will do. At the end, he brings the other ambassadors into a room, and starts introducing the 250 people there — each of a different religious faith. In the Babylon 5 world, Earth is a world of tolerance and diversity. So may it be with us.

In closing, I would like to share a last quotation from Babylon 5.

“There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way.

The war we fight is not against powers and principalities — it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.

The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.

No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.”

Sisters and brothers, never surrender. Thank you.

In a previous blog entry, I mentioned the Lurkers’s Guide to Babylon 5. At the time, it was only available on VHS and LD, and many episodes were never released on tape. However, the series is now coming out on DVD. Season 1 released late last year, and Season 2 is coming out in a month or two. Gotta start saving those pennies….