Shasta Lodge #2453

Greetings from Redding,

We held our annual Paesano Days this past weekend and had a great turnout on Friday night. The bocce tournament started with a ceremonial first roll by former State Senator Maurice Johannessen who is also former secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs. Sen. Johannessen was very instrumental in bringing the Redding Veterans Home to Redding.

Saturday morning started with lots of people, and then the rain began. The bocce tournament of 32 teams continued, but by midafternoon, as the rain continued, we had to close our food court early and held our raffle early. We had been concerned about people venturing out due to covid, but we had a successful event thanks to our Chair John Tasello and to our many members who helped. But, where was Louie Lodi?

A week prior to our event, the Redding Asphalt Cowboys held their annual Community BBQ. They served a tri-tip dinner in the park and also a drive thru. This is a very large event and this year they served around 7,000 meals. Many of our members donated their time to help this great organization.

We are still playing bocce on Monday mornings. It is open to anyone who wants to come play. When you get this issue of Il Leone, we will be about half way through our City Bocce League, with the regular teams of four playing on Thursday nights and the senior teams of two players playing on Wednesday mornings.

Quite a few of our members plan on going to the Columbus Day Celebration in Reno, Nevada. Hope to see some of you there.

Our next planned event is the fundraiser for Wings of Angels on October 16th. It is an indoor event so we hope we will still be able to hold it. Then in November we will cater a class reunion for a local high school. We will also hold our annual Thanksgiving-Memorial Dinner on November 13th. Our dinner is to honor our deceased members and all the income from this dinner goes to our Scholarship Fund.

While we had hoped it would not rain on Paesano Days, it was wonderful having some of the wit stuff falling for the second time this month. We are hoping for an end to our drought, our fires, and the pandemic.

Wishing you a pleasant autumn, Happy Columbus Day and Happy Halloween.
Your friends at Shasta Lodge.