2020 COSCA Clan & Family Caucus – CANCELLED
We regret that COSCA’s Clan & Family Caucus 2020, planned for April 1 & 2 in Washington, DC, to be held in conjunction with the Annual Tartan Day festivities and events there, is cancelled due to the public health concerns surrounding the spread of the coronavirus. Everything related to Tartan Day in Washington has now been cancelled–the Congressional Reception on the 31st (Capital complex now closed to visitors, including all the office buildings)–and the Symposium on April 1 & 2 (DACOR Bacon House now also closed to meetings). The NYC Tartan Day Parade has also been cancelled. And the visiting delegation of Scottish Gov’t ministers, and our other planned speakers from Scotland, are now stuck at home, under that Nation’s strict social distancing policies.
It has been decided to invite all our scheduled DC Tartan Day Symposium speakers to come to New York City in mid-October for the annual Scottish North American Leadership Conference (SNALC) and speak there–delivering the presentations the had prepared for Tartan Day in DC in April. (If speakers from Scotland are unable to be there in person, we will again resort to streaming video to capture their live presentations for our onsite audience to view and hear, as we’ve done for the past two years at SNALC, and we will post a link on various organizational websites.) The venue we are looking at is the restored, historic Fraunces Tavern, located in lower Manhattan and dating from pre-Revolutionary War times, which has conference space and banquet rooms for rent.
And it has also been decided to reschedule the presentation of the Scottish Coalition, USA’s National Tartan Day Award to Bob Creighton of New Hampshire for that occasion, as most member organizations of the Scottish Coalition will be represented in NYC in October, at SNALC. Hopefully one or more of the Scottish Gov’t ministers who were due to travel to DC in April for Tartan Day can join us there–in person or remotely– and deliver the remarks they had in mind for Tartan Day. Perhaps via streaming video, as Lord Lyon Morrow did at SNALC last year.
700th Anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath
This year, 2020, will be a big year for us in the Scottish-American Community, as we join our cousins in Scotland to celebrate the 700th Anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath — the Scottish declaration of independence from the English king, signed and sealed by King Robert and the Scottish barons in 1320. FYI, this is the lead article in the January/February 2020 edition of The Highlander magazine, which I recommend to
you. Celebratory events are scheduled all year in Scotland, but a procession and a formal (in modern English) reading of the Declaration will take place in the town of Arbroath on April 5th. Learn more here.
COSCA Strategic Planning Committee
Our strategic planning initiative is now up and running, co-chaired by Board member John Cochran. This is a long-range planning exercise that will be ongoing for the next year or more and will focus primarily on membership recruitment and retention, communications, and finances. Any and all members in good standing of COSCA, whether you are an Individual Member or belong to an Organizational Member of COSCA, are eligible to participate in this effort and encouraged to do so. We need your energy and ideas. So if you are interested, now is the time to get involved! Serious work will be commencing over the next few months — to be conducted mainly by conference calls and email. An interim progress report will be delivered at our Annual General Meeting (AGM), which again will be held in early July at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in NC. It is not too late to get involved. If you did not attend the kickoff meeting held in conjunction with last year’s AGM, at which a sign-up sheet was circulated, but want to help, contact John at (614) 325-8178 (his cell), or by email at COSCAStrategicplanning@gmail.com.
Grandfather Mountain Highland Games
