Above the Mason-Dixon Line: Part 2
After my adventures in New York City, it was time to get down to serious business. My boys and I rolled into New Haven, Connecticut and checked into the Knights of Columbus conference.
So, short story, Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal organization that has councils located all over the world. The basic mission of each Knights council is to help the surrounding community in any way possible. It an organization built upon the pillars of unity, charity, fraternity and patriotism. They had invited all the college councils to come to New Haven, the place where it was founded, to take part in workshops in order to improve our individual councils.
Friday night was mainly filled with introductions, dinner and an award banquet. Our council, Council 15020, did not win any awards. The voting must have been rigged. Friday night ended with a trip to a local pub where apparently THE George Washington visited at one point. We were truly living out the fourth pillar of the Knights of Columbus: Patriotism.
The entire day Saturday was filled with workshops after workshops where we were advised on how to run a better council. I learned throughout the day how much better other councils were compared to us, but I was ready to take up on the challenge of improving our council to meet their levels. The only workshop that I paid clear attention to was the social media one where you can clearly see I was paying lots of attention.
But, in all seriousness, I did learn a lot especially in that workshop. In fact, I even revamped our old facebook page. You should go Like it because I’m trying to beat all the other councils since we all know Facebook is the only proper way to measure one’s popularity and success in life.
Later that night, we met up with the Knights from the University of Tennessee council and we went out to do karaoke. I was getting along with them pretty well since I had known some of them previously but all our friendship went downhill when they started singing Rocky Top. And since that day, Rocky Top has been stuck in my head. And I know, the only way to get a song out of my head is to actually listen to the song. But, it would be a sin for me to willingly listen to that song on my own.
By Sunday, it was finally time to head back south. We hopped on our train back to NYC where we took our flights back to Nashville, TN. I tried to be productive on the train by writing a talk I have to give at an upcoming retreat. (You should sign up to go to Awakening!) But instead sleep sounded like a more fun option.
All in all, it was a very tiring weekend trip. 2 days of travel for 1 day of conference but it was an experience that was completely worth it where I met many of my other brother Knights from other colleges. I can’t say I will be returning above the Mason-Dixon line anytime soon, but perhaps one day in the future.