OAImages Blog

Dick Pryor, from Ku-Ni-Eh lodge, recently wrote me about the listings on this site for this lodge.   He had patches that were not included on the site and also questioned how some items were listed.   They were all good questions and I appreciate his help.  It gives me a chance to explain an aspect of the taxonomic nomenclature behind Blue Book.

For years it had the practice of those cataloging OA patches on a national level to exclude items issued by the national OA, sections, regions, chapters and those patches issued specifically for lodge and chapter events.   This goes back to the days of Dwight Bischel’s 1958 Blue Book.   This precedent was firmly esconced with Albertus Hoogeveen’s Arapaho 2. The original editors of today’s Blue Book stretched this a bit.   Some events items were added when they were first flaps, the only item from a lodge, or historically significant in some other way.  

However, in spite of the practice to not list events pieces, some such patches did creep into the lodge listings.   This happened in many instances where lodge issued flaps for their events.   Some named no event on the patch so are, strictly speaking, “just” a lodge flap (eg. the Ku-Ni-Eh lodge flap at the top of this post).   Others named events and should not have been listed as lodge issues.  But a flap as an event patch was a new idea so these were listed as flaps in accordance with various local customs.   Lodges so affected included Wauna La-Mon’Tay 442, Ku-Ni-Eh 145, Lakota 175 and Cuyahoga 17.

Later on Blue Book chose to list lodge and chapter events issues.   A different nomenclature was established.   All events issues began with “e“.   In many cases events flaps were relisted as eF and eS issues but, for whatever reason, some remained in the body of lodge issues.   The 145 S60 pictured to the left is an example of this. This creates an inconsistency.   That bothers me in a small way, but since I don’t write the numbers, I must live with it.

If Blue Book was to become consistent all patches that name a lodge event would be listed as events issues (ie. starting with prefixes like eA, eX, eS, eF…).  Flaps issued for a lodge event — not regional or national events like NOAC or section conclaves — would not be excluded from this rule and would be listed as eS or eF issues depending on whether or not the flap was fully embroidered.

I will not revise what has already been listed, but I will try to follow this rule consistently as a matter of practice for new and unlisted issues when I need to assign them a number for the purposes of this site.   If, at a later time, the regional editor for Blue Book chooses to list this differently, I will change the numbers to follow his lead.   I defer to the editors’ wisdom.

I hope this helps to explain one of the more confusing aspects of the Blue Book’s numbering system.